From jcm at ata.org.pe Mon Aug 1 02:52:15 2005 From: jcm at ata.org.pe (Jose-Carlos Mariategui) Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2005 14:22:15 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Art & Artificial Life International Competition VIDA 8.0 Message-ID: Art & Artificial Life International Competition VIDA 8.0 http://www.fundacion.telefonica.com/at/vida/english/index.html VIDA 8.0 is the seventh edition of this international competition, created to reward excellence in artistic creativity in the field of artificial life. In previous editions, prizes have been awarded to autonomous entities able to bring us pleasure (Tickle 2.0, Tickle Salon 5.0), engage us in irrational conversations (Head 3.0) or invade our social space (Cour des Miracles 2.0); virtual ecologies that evolve with user participation (Autopoiesis 3.0, Electric Sheep and Remain in Light 4.0), autonomous systems that use the feedback obtained as a mechanism and metaphor for transformation (Appearance machine 3.0, Levántate 5.0) and works highlighting the social side of artificial life (Novus Extinctus 4.0, The Relative Velocity Inscription Device 5.0, The Central City 6.0 and Spore 7.0). Other themes are addressed in works that have been given honourable mentions: avatars and players in their unique worlds (Iconica 2.0, Life Spacies II and Unconscious Flow 3.0), new interpretations of the roots of artificial life, such as cellular automatons (Sandlines 3.0, Dadatron 5.0) and system feedback or autonomy translated into simple familiar media (Breathe and Autistic-Artistic Machine 4.0, The Responsive Field of Lattice Archipelogics 5.0). We are looking for art that reflects the panorama of the possible interaction between 'synthetic' and organic life, e.g. - Autonomous agents that shape and perhaps interpret the data-saturated environment we have in common. - Portraits of inter-subjectivity or empathy shared between artificial entities and ourselves. - Intelligent anthropomorphisation of the datasphere and its inhabitants. - User-defined exploration and interaction designed to reduce fear and stimulate interest in the emerging phenomena which, by definition, are beyond our control. An international jury will award prizes to the most outstanding projects in electronic art which use techniques such as digital genetics, autonomous robotics, recursive chaotic algorithms, knowbots, computer viruses, virtual ecosystems and avatars. ** Prizes There is a total of €20,000 in prizes for the three projects selected by the jury: First prize: €10,000 Second prize: €7,000 Third prize: €3,000 There will also be special mentions for a further seven projects chosen by the jury. ** Entry Each project must be submitted as a 5-10-minute video with voice-over narration describing the artistic concept and the technological realization of the project presented. The project must be post-September 2003. The jury's decision will be based essentially on the video. Participants must provide a VHS tape (PAL, NTSC or SECAM format) or DVD for the jury. If your work is awarded a prize or a special mention, you will be asked to provide a video on professional-quality format (Dvcam, Betacam, ¾” U-Matic, MiniDV) for inclusion in The Best of VIDA 8.0 . The competition is open to participants from all over the world; however, each participant may present only one project. To register, read the competition rules, complete and sign the application form and submit it together with the tape to Fundación Telefónica before 30 September 2005. For the video and the VIDA 8.0 website, we also require the following (printed and a copy on CD): - A short biography (150-200 words) of the author(s). - A description of the concept inspiring the project. - Technical information about the project. - One to three images (slides, photos or high-quality scans on CD or the Internet). - A transcription of the video narration. The application form contains the information required on the material that must be supplied to register for the competition. **Production Incentive for productions in Spain, Portugal and Latin America The second category of the competition promotes the production of pieces with artificial life and robotics techniques in Spain, Portugal and Latin America. With prize money totalling €20,000, this category includes prizes for one to three proposals meeting the following criteria: relevant concept, proven quality in previous works and evidence of the artist's ability to produce the piece. The prize is an incentive for production, not a subsidy to cover the total expenses of a project. Consequently, value is placed on the participant's capacity to secure the technical, financial and logistic infrastructure needed to produce the piece. Each project must be described in a memorandum contain no more than 2,000 words. The text must include details of the concepts and techniques to be used to develop the piece. Diagrams, sketches and any other material that supports the proposal and help the jury understand how the piece works should be furnished. The competition is open to participants from anywhere in Latin America, Spain or Portugal. Proposals may be sent in Spanish, Portuguese or English. However, each participant may present only one project. To register, read the competition rules, complete and sign the application form and send it to Fundación Telefónica before 30 September 2005. The application form contains the information required on the material required to register for the competition. ** Dates Projects must be presented between 1 and 30 September 2005. From sudeshna.kca at gmail.com Mon Aug 1 08:13:40 2005 From: sudeshna.kca at gmail.com (Sudeshna Chatterjee) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 08:13:40 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Post 6: What is the official settlement status of Basti Nizamuddin? In-Reply-To: <20050731053538.53157.qmail@web80903.mail.scd.yahoo.com> References: <20050731053538.53157.qmail@web80903.mail.scd.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <3ef603b705073119435675a7a2@mail.gmail.com> What is the official settlement status of Basti Nizamuddin??? When I had started my fieldwork in Nizamuddin, I was convinced that it was an urban village with Lal Dora status. However, clouds of doubt soon gathered over whether this historic village is considered Lal Dora in the city Master Plan. Residents of Nizamuddin as I found out through my research did not pay property tax, and nor did they follow any building bye-laws to construct their modest homes. In fact, building related activities were a constant feature in the basti. Construction, repairs, and demolition of squatters were a cyclic happening in this place where the outside world seems far off and distant, almost forgotten in the bustling immediacies of everyday activities everywhere. In order to find out who controls land in Nizamuddin, whether it was still considered Lal Dora etc. I made several inquiries, and found out that even if residents wanted to pay taxes, they like the city offices I telephoned, had no information as to which was the correct agency to pay to. In one afternoon I called DDA, MCD, the Mayor's office, and the chief townplanner's office to find out the status of Nizamuddin. At the end of the conversation with the townplanner, there was a nebulous concensus that Nizamuddin did not have Lal Dora status. Nebulous because he did not specifically say that it was not but, at least clarified that as soon as an urban status is bestowed on a village, it stopped enjoying exemptions granted to Lal Dora. It then is governed by the plans drawn up for the zone in which it falls. In reference to Nizamuddin and my continued prodding he said, "Because it is an old settlement it is not possible to ascertain original owners. You will find it difficult to get any information from the revenue department about the jurisdiction of the city agencies in the basti. But the fact remains that whosoever is occupying a building or structure in the basti is liable to pay taxes because the status of the village is urban and not rural." After the notional trappings of Lal Dora had been removed from my conception of Nizamuddin basti, I followed up on property taxation rules for the basti, and also sought a firmer confirmation of the legal status. I present the following excerpt from my fieldnotes. I had let the matter rest for a few days. But I didn't rest in peace till I had found a satisfactory explanation. This afternoon, I started googling Lal Dora with a vengeance. I found several newspaper articles referring to the BJP's government's efforts to exempt not only residential property taxes, but also industrial property taxes in Lal Dora areas. There was also mention of extending the Lal Dora areas to many other places, and doing away with Act xxx. None of these news pieces answered my question of 'what is considered under Lal Dora', other than a very tokenist definition of 'most urban villages fall in Lal Dora areas.' I realized that I needed to search for listings of Lal Dora areas. However my google sessions didn't reveal any such list. I then decided to jump into the MCD website and maybe send an email to some listed contact. As I was searching for such a contact, a small dialogue box with changing messages caught my attention. It had telephone nos. for reporting dengue cases; news about digitizing birth and death records from 1998, 278 Delhi hospitals being mobilized to register deaths and births online, where to get information on unit area method—dial 52895552 for MCD to view draft bye-laws on property tax. Seeing a phone number, promising information about property tax flashing in front of my eyes, I decided to call the number and try my luck. A youngish male voice answered the phone. I asked him, "I need some information on Lal Dora areas, is there any listing of all such areas available with MCD?" the voice faltered a little, then asked me back, "Lal Dora meaning rural areas? Which exact area do you have in mind?" I replied, "Nizamuddin basti. I want to know whether this urban village is still a part of Lal Dora." The man said, "do you mind holding the line for a second? I'll be right back." I was put on hold, but thankfully without any background music. He came back soon, and said, "ma'm, which side of Nizamuddin, east or west? There are only two villages in Nizamuddin. They are Bangarpur and Naharpur, I think. Nizamuddin basti is not an urban village." I asked him, "is there a listing of this that I access and see for myself?" He gave me MCD's official website, and asked me to follow the link to property tax, and then download the different lists for rural and urban villages. I thanked him for this information, barely containing my anxiety as this last piece of information completely shatters the established and firmly believed juridico-political conceptions of the basti. I followed the links in the already open MCD webpage in my computer. I could very easily get to the list of urban villages and rural villages. I scanned rural villages first. No mention of Nizamuddin either under village or ward. The urban village listing had Behlolpur-Bangar and Sarai Kale Khan listed as urban villages in ward Nizamuddin. There was no mention of the basti whatsoever. I decided to look up the list for colonies. Sure enough Nizamuddin East and West were listed in high tax categories, B and C respectively. Looking through all these latest property tax documents for the city, one was forced to conclude that Nizamuddin Basti is not an urban village, certainly not Lal Dora. In fact the basti as we know it does not exist by itself but as a part of Nizamuddin West, carrying an unit area tax assessment for category C which amounts to Rs. 400/unit value of area. This cannot be true. There has to be a missing link. I just cannot believe that the city is so foolish that it taxes high-income residents of west and low-income settlers of the basti at the same level. I decided to talk to someone more knowledgeable than the MCD officers. My first port of call was Lalit Batra in Sanjha Manch. I narrated to Lalit what I had just found out and the implications that I had drawn. Lalit first offered that perhaps Behlolpur-Bangar is a misprint for Basti Nizamuddin. We laughed over it. But on a more serious note, I asked him who I should talk to. Lalit suggested Manjeet Singh, the ex-Addl. Commissioner of the slum and jj cluster dept. he gave me Mr. Singh's number. I called Mr. Singh as soon as I finished talking to Lalit. Manjeet Singh answered the phone himself. I introduced myself as a PhD student who is conducting a study in Nizamuddin basti. I said, "Sir, I want to understand the status of the basti. Is it an urban village, is it under Lal Dora?" Silence on the other end prompted me to continue. "I have talked to six city departments this past week, but no one had been able to tell me conclusively what status Nizamuddin basti has. In fact just a while ago, I found out from property tax department of MCD that the basti does not exist as a tax zone, but the basti as we know it is part of Nizamuddin west, which is in a high tax category." Mr. Manjeet Singh then replied, "First and foremost the basti is a human settlement, and it is ruled by taxation laws just as any human settlement in Delhi." "But sir, the tax category that it is a part of now, makes no sense looking at the ground reality. In fact, as far as I know no one pays residential property taxes in the basti simply because they do not know which city agency governs them or what the tax protocols for them are like." "You should talk to the tax inspector and find out from him who is paying taxes and at what rate. Ask to see his revenue map, and ask him if people are not paying taxes, why is that happening and if he has done any survey to find out the reasons. Also the basti as it is an old settlement will be looked after by….(he tried to remember the name)…….check with the city zone office in Asaf Ali Road to see if they have any document on Nizamuddin." Sensing that the conversation was deviating from the central question, I asked, "But sir, I need to know more than anything else if Nizamuddin basti is no longer considered an urban village, when did this recategorization occur?" "I think in the mid 80s when a lot of slum areas were denotified. At that time some slums and urban villages became colonies." "Where can I find this information." "call the slum dept. and ask for a list of denotification of slum areas." "Is there someone I can talk to in the slum dept.?" "Well the best person would have been Mr. Journal Singh. But he just retired. Ask for a Mr. Ramesh, who was my assistant. Tell him that you have talked to me and need this denotification document. If he is not able to give it, he will surely give you some lead." I thanked Mr. Manjeet singh for giving me his valuable time. (Filednotes, July 4, 2005) After this conversation I made a few futile phone calls to the slum department. No one could direct me to the denotification documents. But I still am not convinced as to how the city could blatantly take away the status of urban village from Nizamuddin Basti and club it with any other planned, high tax paying settlement of the city. Nizamuddin Basti not only has historical and tourism potential of international significance, both high priorities in the Delhi master plan for the city to focus on an urban village, but it also embodies all the characteristics such as strong identity, economic activities related to place, compact built-form with mixed uses, to qualify as a special area worth special attention. Moreover, looking at the failures of the subsequent governments to provide adequate housing for the poor, the residents of Nizamuddin deserve the highest achievement awards for looking after thousands of people, mostly poor Muslims, who will find it very difficult to sustain themselves and their families anywhere else in Delhi, while preserving their own unique cultural and religious identities. Request to readers: If any one of you is aware of the legal status of Nizamuddin as a human settlement, please drop me a line. Your insights will be deeply appreciated. Sudeshna From monica at sarai.net Mon Aug 1 09:50:53 2005 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 09:50:53 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] US Homeland Security radio-tags foreign visitors Message-ID: Starting this week, three US border crossings will begin to tag visitors to America with wireless RFID-cards, which contain visitors' personally identifying information and can be read from 12 yards away. The only exempted visitors are Canadians who are not on a US business visa or engaged to an American. If this program is "successful" this program will go live at every border crossing, in addition to the current practice of fingerprinting and photographing visitors. for details: http://www.thewhig.com/webapp/sitepages/content.asp?contentID=119603&catname=Local+News -- Monica Narula [Raqs Media Collective] Sarai-CSDS 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.raqsmediacollective.net www.sarai.net From ambarien at yahoo.co.uk Mon Aug 1 10:01:22 2005 From: ambarien at yahoo.co.uk (ambarien qadar) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 05:31:22 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Film Screening Message-ID: <20050801043122.98043.qmail@web25508.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> WHO CAN SPEAK OF MEN? Dur: 32 minutes Lang: Urdu and Hindi with English subtitles Producers: AJK Mass Communication Research Center, 2003 “An astonishing intimate documentary about middle class Muslim women in India who refuse to conform to feminine norms. They describe in poignant detail the everyday struggles they face in order to be true to themselves. The film is striking in the inclusion of a disarming seven-year-old, Chini, who stubbornly insists that 'she' is a 'he'. The film-maker has had unprecedented access to the women's lives because she also come from the area in which they live. A revolutionary and subversive documentary for its portrayal of contemporary Indian Muslim women.” Review from British Film Institute festival brochure, 2004 Synopsis: Kafeela and Arshi are women in 20s. Chini is 7 year old. They don’t know each other but between them, they share a neighbourhood and a desire to ‘ ‘look and feel’ like men. Together with the filmmaker, they set out to explore their worlds of masquerade through stories and encounters in their daily lives. Situated in the spaces between memory and desire, the film explores masculinity as distinct from the body. Chini, Arshi and Kafeela’s struggles in surviving as men and negotiating a predominantly middle class Muslim neighbourhood make them the stars they are- both on-screen and off-screen. Venue: PARTNERS FOR LAW IN DEVELOPMENT F-18, 1st Floor Jangpura Extension Time: 3.45 pm, Monday ___________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com From pz at vsnl.net Mon Aug 1 10:18:27 2005 From: pz at vsnl.net (Punam Zutshi) Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 10:18:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Film Screening References: <20050801043122.98043.qmail@web25508.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <003c01c59654$4393b4e0$f3fd41db@punamzutshi> Dateless ! 1st August or 8th???? Punam ----- Original Message ----- From: "ambarien qadar" To: ; ; Cc: Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 10:01 AM Subject: [Reader-list] Film Screening > WHO CAN SPEAK OF MEN? > Dur: 32 minutes > Lang: Urdu and Hindi with English subtitles > Producers: AJK Mass Communication Research Center, > 2003 > > "An astonishing intimate documentary about middle > class Muslim women in India who refuse to conform to > feminine norms. They describe in poignant detail the > everyday struggles they face in order to be true to > themselves. The film is striking in the inclusion of a > disarming seven-year-old, Chini, who stubbornly > insists that 'she' is a 'he'. The film-maker has had > unprecedented access to the women's lives because she > also come from the area in which they live. A > revolutionary and subversive documentary for its > portrayal of contemporary Indian Muslim women." > Review from British Film Institute festival brochure, > 2004 > > Synopsis: > Kafeela and Arshi are women in 20s. Chini is 7 year > old. They don't know each other but between them, they > share a neighbourhood and a desire to ' 'look and > feel' like men. Together with the filmmaker, they set > out to explore their worlds of masquerade through > stories and encounters in their daily lives. > Situated in the spaces between memory and desire, the > film explores masculinity as distinct from the body. > Chini, Arshi and Kafeela's struggles in surviving as > men and negotiating a predominantly middle class > Muslim neighbourhood make them the stars they are- > both on-screen and off-screen. > > Venue: PARTNERS FOR LAW IN DEVELOPMENT > F-18, 1st Floor > Jangpura Extension > Time: 3.45 pm, Monday > > > > > > ___________________________________________________________ > How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday > snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com > _________________________________________ > 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 iram at sarai.net Mon Aug 1 13:58:13 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 10:28:13 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Censorship? by Rachna Patni Message-ID: ------ Original Message ------ Subject: Fwd: Censorship? To: reader-list at sarai.net From: Rachana Patni Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 06:47:46 +0200 I agree with the Sarai moderator's position that any censorship to this list has to be on the prerogative of those that contribute. It just does not make any sense to 'shame' the moderator or anyone else for that matter. It is quite interesting that this list is helping break any myth about what the intelligentsia is, or thinks of! What I find troubling is that in responding to the jogi, everyone has more or less forgotten the original post, which was about protecting the rights of Indian Muslim women. While the debate could have taken the shape of arguing about social justice and liberalism and the dimensions of universalism and particularism, it has spiralled down into religious mud-slinging. Maybe this is a good thing. Perhaps these matters cannot be resolved on intellectual high-horses. Why should we, who want to deliberate on pratical realities, insist that our discussion be sanitised? What we need to take on board from this is that there exists a strong social representation of the kind that jogi has brought to our notice. It is not just some view-point that is held by the illeterate, un-educated and opiated religious groups, it transcends all structural positions. Therefore none of us can claim to be clean from this array of thoughts. It permeates our life-spaces. This is troubling, to say the least. And it is also a global pheonomenon today. So the only reason we may want to censor this is if we cannot challenge these views without falling prey to the same standard of arguments. So let's try to change the shape of this argument. Let me begin by asking people what their views are about universalism and particularism in the context of women's rights? This is not merely to help us all talk once again about whether equality is about difference or about sameness? Perhaps we could start with the questions ' Is 'communal' difference an illeberal notion?' For example, do we all agree that women all over the world, without regard to their religion may want similar rights? If certain communities want to systematically hold on to certain differences, is it illeberal to allow them to do so? What of individuals in that communitiy who do not agree? To add to these questions are other related ones: Are differences in liberal societies only permitted when these have been individualistically arrived at? (although one could argue there is no such thing as individualistically, it is still a useful concept) Is there more that one possible vision of what a just society is like? Is democracy totalitarian when it suggests it is the only way to organise socieities? Let's hope that we are well and truly able to overcome the 'jog-rog' . Rachana On 7/30/05, reader-list-request at sarai.net wrote: > Send reader-list mailing list submissions to > reader-list at sarai.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > reader-list-request at sarai.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > reader-list-owner at sarai.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of reader-list digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. RE: reader-list Digest, Vol 24, Issue 60 (Ayona Datta) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 09:28:38 +0000 > From: "Ayona Datta" > Subject: [Reader-list] RE: reader-list Digest, Vol 24, Issue 60 > To: reader-list at sarai.net > Message-ID: > Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed > > Shame on the Sarai moderator and shame on all those who are promoting such > sectarian language in what is supposed to be forum for intellectual and > 'civilised' discussion. Ms Yogi and Mr Roger Das, please take your views to > other fanatical websites where they will welcome your proposals with open > arms. Today I find it embarassing to associate my own history with India > knowing that it is home to such extremist views among the intelligensia. > > > ----Original Message Follows---- > From: reader-list-request at sarai.net > Reply-To: reader-list at sarai.net > To: reader-list at sarai.net > Subject: reader-list Digest, Vol 24, Issue 60 > Date: Sat, 30 Jul 2005 10:49:34 +0200 (CEST) > > Send reader-list mailing list submissions to > reader-list at sarai.net > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > reader-list-request at sarai.net > > You can reach the person managing the list at > reader-list-owner at sarai.net > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of reader-list digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Indo-US pact (mahmood farooqui) > 2. Re: Re: [Reader-list] WHO WILL PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF INDIAN > MUSLIMWOMEN?? (Manosh Chowdhury) > 3. Bombay Floods, Prashant Pandey (Prashant Pandey) > 4. Re: Re: [Reader-list] WHO WILL PROTECT THE RIGHTS OF INDIAN > MUSLIMWOMEN?? (roger das) From vivek at sarai.net Mon Aug 1 13:45:02 2005 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Mon, 01 Aug 2005 13:45:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] New Media Channel in Latin America Message-ID: <42EDDA06.6020403@sarai.net> Alfonso Daniels in Caracas Tuesday July 26, 2005 The Guardian A swastika painted on a US flag flashes across the screen. Out of sight a voice proclaims: "Let's recover our memory and history from the claws of the Empire ..." The voice is replaced by anti-imperialist chants and metallic sounds, then the screen goes dark. Welcome to Telesur, Latin America's answer to CNN and the BBC World Service. A few minutes after 12pm local time on Sunday the new TV channel began broadcasting a pilot service from studios in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, with a team of 25 journalists in nine regional bureaux presenting news "from a Latin American perspective". Telesur promoters describe it as an antidote to western-controlled media hegemony. But even before its launch the channel was being attacked in Washington as a vehicle for anti-US propaganda, with the House of Representatives last week voting to enable the US to broadcast its own signals into Venezuela in retaliation. In response, Hugo Chavez, Venezuela's left-leaning president, threatened to engage in "electronic warfare" with the US if the amendment makes it through the Senate. The war of words has made for a painful birth for the new channel whose 36-strong advisory committee - designed to offer it an aura of legitimacy - include Nobel-Laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, film directors Pino Solanas and Jorge Sangines, and writers Richard Stallman, Eduardo Galeano and Tariq Ali. Telesur's director, Aram Aharonian, says the committee's goal is to remind Telesur of its objectives: to help integrate the continent, show perspectives on Latin American countries ignored by large corporations such as CNN and Reuters, and incorporate those without a voice to transform the region's unfair structures. The channel will also show classic and contemporary Latin American films and a mix of experimental documentaries by young filmmakers. "We've bought part of the offer available, but we're discovering everyday new young directors," says Telesur's producer Nohra Rodriguez, amid the excited buzz of the 60, mostly young, staff coming from across Latin America. If the pilot succeeds, Telesur's staff will rise by September to 150 with inhouse programming jumping from four to eight hours a day, adding new features such as in-depth news reports, and regional music and tourism shows. All will be produced for and by Latin Americans, except some contemporary independent films dubbed Nojolivud (No Hollywood). Although Telesur is backed by the governments of Argentina, Cuba, Uruguay and Brazil, the driving force has been President Chavez, whose government has contributed 70% of Telesur's $10m (£5.7m) financing and owns 51% of the channel. Real power inside Telesur will rest on a seven-strong board of directors led by Venezuela's communications minister, Andres Izarra - "the Turner of Telesur" as he is dubbed, in reference to Ted Turner, founder of CNN. The direct involvement of Caracas has fuelled criticism in the US. Ties between the two countries have deteriorated in the last few years, most notably after the implicit support by the US for the failed coup against Mr Chavez in April 2002, and Washington's rising anger over the Venezuelan president's close association with Cuban leader Fidel Castro. At the heart of US concern is Venezuela's position as one of the US's most important - and until recently reliable - oil suppliers. Last week's amendment to the Foreign Relations Authorisation Act allowing the beaming of pro-US television and radio broadcasts into Venezuela was supported by both Republicans and Democrats, with one member of Congress accusing Mr Chavez of being a "menace in our hemisphere". But the new channel Telesur has not been immune to criticism in Latin America, with some dubbing it "Telechavez". Critics say that in December Mr Izarra was responsible for passing a new media law allowing the prosecution of opposition TV and radio stations and that Telesur's headquarters are located in an annex belonging to Venezuela's communications ministry. During Sunday's launch Mr Izarra told Telesur's audience that the station was not directed against the people of the US, but was "erupting onto the international scene" to counter cultural imperialism. The channel's first news programme began with a critical report on the failure of the humanitarian mission in Haiti, led by Brazil, followed by a story on the plight of refugees in Colombia. If Telesur continues in a similar vein the US may not be the only country to have its feathers ruffled by the new television station. From kaiwanmehta at gmail.com Mon Aug 1 14:24:26 2005 From: kaiwanmehta at gmail.com (kaiwan mehta) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 14:24:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] To be continued... Message-ID: <2482459d050801015468e2518d@mail.gmail.com> Hi Mailing my last posting, it is with great thanks to Sarai and all those who have helped me and supported my work and ideas in many ways. Thanks! 8th and Final Posting In the past 7 postings I enjoyed every interaction I had with the locality of Bhuleshwar that I was studying. In my attempt to construct and represent the history of a locality in this city I tried various modes and methods and was successfully able to pick up many strands in this project. From interacting with families and sweepers to keen observation of decoration and materials of buildings to conducting studio exercises and workshops the experience has been revealing at all points. Here there are various snap shots of some ideas that will go on with my research in the near future. In this last posting I wish to end with the brief story of a man who used this area to launch the premier publishing house in Bombay and preached through practice ideas like widow remarriage and voiced against caste practices. A devout and well lettered man, he came to Bombay escaping extreme poverty in his village in Madhya Pradesh. He came to the city with his siblings and Rs 10 and used his skill at writing and Jain theology to find a job and patronage. He began as a clerk in the office of the Mumbai Panthi Digambar Jain Sabha. He worked for Jain Mitra, a jain magazine in the 1880s and later edited another radical Jain magazine established by him, called the Jain Hiteshi, a monthly. He encounters Abraham Lincoln's Liberty, translates it into Hindi and with this establishes the publishing house – Hindi Granth Karyalaya, which is housed in Hirabaug at C P Tank. Hirabaug was a Jain dharamshala designed in the gothic style. Pandit Nathuram Premi is a name still known, although not so popularly. He saw the potential of the Hindi language and worked to giving it a status in the literary world. He translated or published Hindi translations of various works from Bengali literature. Premchand's biography by his son Amrit Rai, translated into English by Harish Trivedi mentions Premiji twice. One instance mentions where Premchand and Premiji travel from Bombay to Madras for a convention of the Hindi Prachar Sabha. This connection between Premiji and Premchand was mentioned to me by Premiji's great grandson Manish who mentioned how Premchand during his disappointing stay in Bombay lived in the small room home of Premiji. However the chapter on Premchand's stay in Bombay, in the biography has no mention of Premiji, but a passing remark to 'staying as a guest with a friend'. Going on to mention how he was looking for a house in Bombay and the available rates were Rs 50 for a three room flat and Rs 75 for five. Premiji's wide popularity and respect among scholars of Jainism and Hindi litterateurs is obvious from a commemoration volume released for Premiji. I have just managed to lay my hands on this volume and a copy of Jain Hiteshi. Both in Gujarati, will need me to translate them. (However the rains have prevented me from getting them Xeroxed and the volumes being old are tattered and also partly infected so reading them directly is not a good idea. I am hoping they will throw more light on the cultural and political scenario of Bhuleshwar area.) In my continuing study of the area, there are some structural changes entering into the area. A rule for cess buildings called 33/7 allows for old dilapidated buildings to be demolished and be replaced by high rises on gifted TDR. Besides this the economic demographics are also changing, e.g. Jain diamond merchants are taking over many parts for commercial purposes, displacing some of the other Gujarati and Mahrashtrian middle class residents. Both these developments have affected obviously the visual scenario in the area. Socially one is trying to observe what changes are coming in. I visited a Jain temple which is actually an old shrine expanded over. The new expansion that envelops the older temple is evidently decorated with the mass produced Jain temple motifs / aesthetics. Interestingly I noticed how some mother goddess shrines on the old temple have been incorporated into the Jain temple. On questioning their position in the Jain pantheon of gods, a worshipper (whom I know and he is also knowledgeable on religious matters) was unable to answer and was a bit startled by the question. Although my quick logic makes me believe that like many mother goddesses associated with the area, these could have been some local shrines, now incorporated into the Jain temple. The temples, with their trustee structure and investment patterns, are important sites to study some of the social changes affecting the area. Generally as you walk the area one sees various high rises - just completed or yet in construction. Their aesthetics is something to ponder over. In their attempt sometimes to be 'in a heritage area' they pick up any element the architect assumes to be located 'in heritage' and applies it to a building. Most of these elements so plastic in form or colour and often blown up in proportion (to match the gigantic aesthetics of the builder logic) assume a new look. Disgusting to the nostalgic mind but interesting to see a new logic of default. Actually only on a second look do you realize how a possibly heritage element has changed to its present form. These claimants of 'heritage located (and respecting the same)' often become coloured and crafted boxes as they rise beyond the third or fourth floor level. They feel obliged to be heritage located on the lower stories and then they try to announce their new and fashionable position. Trendy with cut-outs and shapes coloured or carved in the concrete and plaster surfaces. It could remind one of those sci-fi movies where some mutants have started living with a striking monstrous presence amongst the earlier species. If you remember some of the earlier postings, the existing species today were mutants themselves once. Well this last posting talks in brief of some of the observations I plan to study and document as my study will carry on beyond this fellowship. This fellowship has been a great boon in setting me out on various notes that will in the near future get collated into a comprehensive account. I have just initiated an elective programme on the subject at the architecture college I teach and that will also take off from the studies done under the Sarai fellowship. This fellowship has allowed me to experiment with my ideas, collect newer ground information and do some essential base work and build a foundation for the study to carry on. Thanking Sarai and all those who have helped me and responded to the posts, Kaiwan -- Kaiwan Mehta Architect and Urban Reseracher 11/4, Kassinath Bldg. No. 2, Kassinath St., Tardeo, Mumbai 400034 022-2-494 3259 / 91-98205 56436 From shivamvij at gmail.com Mon Aug 1 15:28:11 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 15:28:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] BOOK RELEASE CEREMONY Message-ID: AMBEDKAR STUDY CIRCLE ( JNU, New Delhi) invites all for BOOK RELEASE CEREMONY "Caste-ending Bourgeois Democratic Revolution & Its Socialist Consummation" Author- Sharad Patil Chief Guest: Rajni Kothari, eminent Political Scientist Speakers: Prof. Valerian Rodrigues (JNU) Prof. Gopal Guru (JNU), Sharad Patil Prof. S.K. Thorat, Director, IIDS, New Delhi Date: 2nd August, 2005 (Tuesday) Venue: School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium , JNU Time: 2.15 pm Sd/- Anoop Kumar Convenor, Ambedkar Study Circle JNU, New Delhi 0-9871086609 From rochellepinto at yahoo.com Mon Aug 1 17:40:56 2005 From: rochellepinto at yahoo.com (rochelle pinto) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 05:10:56 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Re:inhabiting the city In-Reply-To: <20050730180540.5B3B428E346@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20050801121056.25254.qmail@web30506.mail.mud.yahoo.com> While earlier postings emphasise an oppositional relationship between elite and non-elite migrants in Bombay, a distinctive facet of the Konkani print sphere in Bombay was its use as a means of assimilation of rural migrants to an urban space. Salaried jobs, and access to Bombay’s affordable print market gave Goan migrants a voice that they lacked as a non-monetised society in Goa. The pamphlets and leaflets they produced brought them frequently into the public eye as audacious participants in a realm from which they had formerly been excluded. Within Bombay, print helped rearticulate the relationship migrants had to each other outside of the familiar structures of the village and its linked institutions. Print did not always have such a specifically utilitarian function. Texts without an overt use had subtler offerings to make to readers. Love stories for example, suggested how an urban neighbourhood and a religious or ethnic community were formed simultaneously in Bombay, and how the structure of the city in turn altered individual relationships. The following is an excerpt from the short story ‘Chukicho Guneam Jose ani Elvinacho’: ‘All of the people in Cavel knew that Elvina and I liked each other’, claimed the narrator in the opening line of the story: Elvina and I lived in Cavel. I lived in Athaide's house and Elvina lived in the bungalow directly in front of it; and if the reader thinks I'm lying, he can go ask someone if Sr. Jose Fernandes, a journalist in around 189- stayed in Athaide's house during this year, and if you don't get a reply, then Maussi (aunt) de Pincenez, whom the whole of Cavel knows and who she knows, won't rest until she's told you. The use of a French name, ‘Pince-nez’, to suggest the nosiness of the universal neighbourhood aunt seems to have drawn from norms typical to comedy of manners, which survived through the century in Konkani plays. Authenticity and familiarity with the city were established through statements which delivered to their readers a city which was already knit into a range of relations which made it known and familiar, and inextricable from the romances and enmities which unfolded through novels. A detailed description of what the narrator saw from his balcony as he hoped for a sight of his paramour established the daily routine of Cavel, with people combing their hair, going to church, drinking tea, and wishing the local notary a good morning. J. Godinho’s, ‘Antonio Arab or the Exploits of a Goan seaman’, a story of crime and adventure located in the byways of central Bombay, similarly laid a claim to the city through the naming of streets inhabited by protagonists. These emotive claims on urban space helped make Bombay home to migrants who could return only when finances permitted. This sphere of print and reading was almost exclusively limited to the non-elite. In the 1890s, Portuguese, English and Konkani texts continued to have largely divided readerships. The Portuguese cookbook, Recipes for Confectionery and Household Dishes prepared by the Portuguese Community in the Bombay Presidency by Maria Luiza Garcez e Mello was therefore probably intended for elite Goans, while The Goan Cook’s Guide was explicitly intended for another audience. Pedro Dias’ The Goan Cook’s Guide seems to have had a unifying effect on readers. The title of a 1915 publication, Goan Cuzneracho Sangat, the Association of Goan Cooks, suggests it. Another edition of the Guide emerged in Bangalore in 1905. Dias himself was stationed in Quetta, but used the Bombay print market and the sagacity of his brother who worked there, to get an appropriate introduction written to his text. The Goan Cook’s Guide must have been invaluable to cooks as it had interest tables, salary charts, glossaries, menus, and a vocabulary in English, French, Hindustani and Konkani, apart from recipes in Konkani for, among other things, the Half-pay Pudding, Conservative Pudding, Nurse Hannah’s Pudding and Mysterious Pudding. Similarly, the recipes in João Manuel de Souza’s The Goan Barman’s Guide for the Byculla Cocktail, Cholera Cocktail, Corpse Reviver, India Cocktail, Stars and Stripes and American lemonade, suggests that an ease with Anglo-American drinking habits among barmen employed on ships, in clubs, and in restaurants, had to be swiftly acquired. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From rochellepinto at yahoo.com Mon Aug 1 17:42:16 2005 From: rochellepinto at yahoo.com (rochelle pinto) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 05:12:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: reader-list Digest, Vol 24, Issue 62 In-Reply-To: <20050730180540.5B3B428E346@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20050801121216.13955.qmail@web30511.mail.mud.yahoo.com> While earlier postings emphasise an oppositional relationship between elite and non-elite migrants in Bombay, a distinctive facet of the Konkani print sphere in Bombay was its use as a means of assimilation of rural migrants to an urban space. Salaried jobs, and access to Bombay’s affordable print market gave Goan migrants a voice that they lacked as a non-monetised society in Goa. The pamphlets and leaflets they produced brought them frequently into the public eye as audacious participants in a realm from which they had formerly been excluded. Within Bombay, print helped rearticulate the relationship migrants had to each other outside of the familiar structures of the village and its linked institutions. Print did not always have such a specifically utilitarian function. Texts without an overt use had subtler offerings to make to readers. Love stories for example, suggested how an urban neighbourhood and a religious or ethnic community were formed simultaneously in Bombay, and how the structure of the city in turn altered individual relationships. The following is an excerpt from the short story ‘Chukicho Guneam Jose ani Elvinacho’: ‘All of the people in Cavel knew that Elvina and I liked each other’, claimed the narrator in the opening line of the story: Elvina and I lived in Cavel. I lived in Athaide's house and Elvina lived in the bungalow directly in front of it; and if the reader thinks I'm lying, he can go ask someone if Sr. Jose Fernandes, a journalist in around 189- stayed in Athaide's house during this year, and if you don't get a reply, then Maussi (aunt) de Pincenez, whom the whole of Cavel knows and who she knows, won't rest until she's told you. The use of a French name, ‘Pince-nez’, to suggest the nosiness of the universal neighbourhood aunt seems to have drawn from norms typical to comedy of manners, which survived through the century in Konkani plays. Authenticity and familiarity with the city were established through statements which delivered to their readers a city which was already knit into a range of relations which made it known and familiar, and inextricable from the romances and enmities which unfolded through novels. A detailed description of what the narrator saw from his balcony as he hoped for a sight of his paramour established the daily routine of Cavel, with people combing their hair, going to church, drinking tea, and wishing the local notary a good morning. J. Godinho’s, ‘Antonio Arab or the Exploits of a Goan seaman’, a story of crime and adventure located in the byways of central Bombay, similarly laid a claim to the city through the naming of streets inhabited by protagonists. These emotive claims on urban space helped make Bombay home to migrants who could return only when finances permitted. This sphere of print and reading was almost exclusively limited to the non-elite. In the 1890s, Portuguese, English and Konkani texts continued to have largely divided readerships. The Portuguese cookbook, Recipes for Confectionery and Household Dishes prepared by the Portuguese Community in the Bombay Presidency by Maria Luiza Garcez e Mello was therefore probably intended for elite Goans, while The Goan Cook’s Guide was explicitly intended for another audience. Pedro Dias’ The Goan Cook’s Guide seems to have had a unifying effect on readers. The title of a 1915 publication, Goan Cuzneracho Sangat, the Association of Goan Cooks, suggests it. Another edition of the Guide emerged in Bangalore in 1905. Dias himself was stationed in Quetta, but used the Bombay print market and the sagacity of his brother who worked there, to get an appropriate introduction written to his text. The Goan Cook’s Guide must have been invaluable to cooks as it had interest tables, salary charts, glossaries, menus, and a vocabulary in English, French, Hindustani and Konkani, apart from recipes in Konkani for, among other things, the Half-pay Pudding, Conservative Pudding, Nurse Hannah’s Pudding and Mysterious Pudding. Similarly, the recipes in João Manuel de Souza’s The Goan Barman’s Guide for the Byculla Cocktail, Cholera Cocktail, Corpse Reviver, India Cocktail, Stars and Stripes and American lemonade, suggests that an ease with Anglo-American drinking habits among barmen employed on ships, in clubs, and in restaurants, had to be swiftly acquired. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From rochellepinto at yahoo.com Mon Aug 1 17:42:29 2005 From: rochellepinto at yahoo.com (rochelle pinto) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 05:12:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: inhabiting the city In-Reply-To: <20050730180540.5B3B428E346@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20050801121229.12083.qmail@web30514.mail.mud.yahoo.com> While earlier postings emphasise an oppositional relationship between elite and non-elite migrants in Bombay, a distinctive facet of the Konkani print sphere in Bombay was its use as a means of assimilation of rural migrants to an urban space. Salaried jobs, and access to Bombay’s affordable print market gave Goan migrants a voice that they lacked as a non-monetised society in Goa. The pamphlets and leaflets they produced brought them frequently into the public eye as audacious participants in a realm from which they had formerly been excluded. Within Bombay, print helped rearticulate the relationship migrants had to each other outside of the familiar structures of the village and its linked institutions. Print did not always have such a specifically utilitarian function. Texts without an overt use had subtler offerings to make to readers. Love stories for example, suggested how an urban neighbourhood and a religious or ethnic community were formed simultaneously in Bombay, and how the structure of the city in turn altered individual relationships. The following is an excerpt from the short story ‘Chukicho Guneam Jose ani Elvinacho’: ‘All of the people in Cavel knew that Elvina and I liked each other’, claimed the narrator in the opening line of the story: Elvina and I lived in Cavel. I lived in Athaide's house and Elvina lived in the bungalow directly in front of it; and if the reader thinks I'm lying, he can go ask someone if Sr. Jose Fernandes, a journalist in around 189- stayed in Athaide's house during this year, and if you don't get a reply, then Maussi (aunt) de Pincenez, whom the whole of Cavel knows and who she knows, won't rest until she's told you. The use of a French name, ‘Pince-nez’, to suggest the nosiness of the universal neighbourhood aunt seems to have drawn from norms typical to comedy of manners, which survived through the century in Konkani plays. Authenticity and familiarity with the city were established through statements which delivered to their readers a city which was already knit into a range of relations which made it known and familiar, and inextricable from the romances and enmities which unfolded through novels. A detailed description of what the narrator saw from his balcony as he hoped for a sight of his paramour established the daily routine of Cavel, with people combing their hair, going to church, drinking tea, and wishing the local notary a good morning. J. Godinho’s, ‘Antonio Arab or the Exploits of a Goan seaman’, a story of crime and adventure located in the byways of central Bombay, similarly laid a claim to the city through the naming of streets inhabited by protagonists. These emotive claims on urban space helped make Bombay home to migrants who could return only when finances permitted. This sphere of print and reading was almost exclusively limited to the non-elite. In the 1890s, Portuguese, English and Konkani texts continued to have largely divided readerships. The Portuguese cookbook, Recipes for Confectionery and Household Dishes prepared by the Portuguese Community in the Bombay Presidency by Maria Luiza Garcez e Mello was therefore probably intended for elite Goans, while The Goan Cook’s Guide was explicitly intended for another audience. Pedro Dias’ The Goan Cook’s Guide seems to have had a unifying effect on readers. The title of a 1915 publication, Goan Cuzneracho Sangat, the Association of Goan Cooks, suggests it. Another edition of the Guide emerged in Bangalore in 1905. Dias himself was stationed in Quetta, but used the Bombay print market and the sagacity of his brother who worked there, to get an appropriate introduction written to his text. The Goan Cook’s Guide must have been invaluable to cooks as it had interest tables, salary charts, glossaries, menus, and a vocabulary in English, French, Hindustani and Konkani, apart from recipes in Konkani for, among other things, the Half-pay Pudding, Conservative Pudding, Nurse Hannah’s Pudding and Mysterious Pudding. Similarly, the recipes in João Manuel de Souza’s The Goan Barman’s Guide for the Byculla Cocktail, Cholera Cocktail, Corpse Reviver, India Cocktail, Stars and Stripes and American lemonade, suggests that an ease with Anglo-American drinking habits among barmen employed on ships, in clubs, and in restaurants, had to be swiftly acquired. ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From deb99kamal at yahoo.com Mon Aug 1 23:46:24 2005 From: deb99kamal at yahoo.com (Debkamal Ganguly) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 11:16:24 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Crime Fiction: Secret Doors, Amorphous maps, Swapankumar, Borges Message-ID: <20050801181624.52601.qmail@web52801.mail.yahoo.com> Dear friends, In the last posting I have tried to provide an over view of common characteristics of the villains scattered in hundreds of crime tales written by Swapankumar. In the current discussion I would like to highlight some of the common formal narrative techniques used again and again by Swapankumar, on the face value which might not appear as crafty, innovative and brilliant like the stories by Sir Aurthur Conan Dyle, Agatha Christie, or even those of Satyajit Ray, but the recurringly similar stories of Swapankumar might have latent significance to a curious reader. In my proposal written to Sarai, I talked about one of my reserach area would be the portrayal of 'the city' in crime tales under discussion. After reading more than hundred Swapankumar tales, the images of 'the city' (mostly Kolkata) described by Swapankumar appropriates some kind of coherent narrative texture. I would like to indulge myself to look for generalizations in those scattered paragraphs of descriptions of the city and 'other' spaces. 1. Generally the story starts from heart of the city of Kolkata. In the beginning of the story, the location in Kolkata is established often from accurate sounding names of streets, junctions, landmarks of the city, having a convincing tone about the authenticity of the place almost in terms of jounalistic reality, like: Harrison Road, Welesley Street, Boubazar, the crossing of Vivekananda Road nad Almherst Street etc. These details of the city are often supposed to match with the real 'map' of Kolkata. But as the crime, criminal and detective move out of the city, the 'authenticity' factor of spatial location gets fused more and more. Like, in a town near Sunderban (the famous mangrove forest) Canning, Swapankumar writes about underground tunnels connecting to sea, while in actuality sea is still far away from Canning. There are similar examples, like, a 12,000 ft high mountain in the jungle near Pune (Chhatrapatir Talowar lit. The Sword of Chhatrapati), a dense forest with ruins of palaces in Birbhum district in West Bengal (detective Deepak lands up there when he jumps with a parachute from a plane going from Kolkata to Bombay). Thus Swapankumar strategically has coagulated geographically mapped 'true' spaces with imaginary spaces placed within the co-ordinates of real space. Here I am not going to entertain the argument that he was a 'lazy' writer, not to check all the authentic details of a space (actually that habit of checking the 'trueness' of space was categorically practised by Styajit Ray), or not so 'creative', so that he has not able to create tensions in 'real' spaces. Here my observation would be that, his approach towards 'space authenticity' varies from center (the city of Kolkata) to the margin. In the center the space is properly mentioned with all real markers and that concrete contours of the mapped center tends to get diffused more and more as the event rolls out of the territory of Kolkata. Here one might ponder over the nature of space as an objectified entity, as a mapped territory within the discourse of colonial engagement. Borrowing from Thongchai Winichakul (a historian from Thailand), Benedict Anderson showed the nature of pre-colonial representations of space in cosmographs, where world is shown as intermediary between the spiritual spaces of over and under, aligned along the sacred vertical line of axis mundi. Even the more political view of boundaries between two empires were perceived from eye level, and distinguishing markers were set accordingly, not from a birds eye view of horizontal modern map. The colonial enthusiasm and curiosity organised survey in unmanned places and by this process quantification and territorialization of space happened in terms of square miles and drawn boundaries of irregular shape projected on two dimensional paper. The shape of the map served as a container-object to be filled in with contained-objects like census and survey data of various kinds produced by the colonial governance and authority. The simple logistics of pictorial presentation of vast spaces in tiny maps was itself an abstract representation of reality according to Anderson. In that context Swapankumar's strategy of depicting spaces away from the center through coagulated, amorphous mapping, acts as a deterrant to the process of objectification of the space. 2. There are lot of secret doors and passages that crowd the tales of Swapankumar. As mentioned in the last posting, detective Deepak most of the time misses the serial criminal at the last moment. And most of the time it is found that the criminals have escaped through some undiscovered secret doors or secret passages. This strategy is so overtly used, that many might find it too simplistic. But if we look at the first few crime tales written in the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century (specially 'Haridas-er Guptakatha' written in 1897 by Bhuban Chandra Mukhopadhyay or 'Mayabi' written in 1904 by Panchkori Dey) there one could find reference of these secret passages and secret doors. Actually in medieval architecture there were provisions for secret doors and passages in the forts and palaces for the safety of the royal family during the sudden unwarranted attack of the enemy. While Bhuban Chandra and Panchkori placed their crime tales in those abondoned ruins of the structures of the pre-colonial era, those secret passages can be considered as reality. The aristocrats owning those palaces etc were no more and the criminals got hold of those ruins along with the knowledge of the secret structures. But Swapankumar frees those secret structures from the ruins of late medieval era and extends the elments of the secret architecture to the late colonial and even post-independent buildings. Thus a boarding lodge in one of the crowded main road of central Calcutta, or a bungalow in a northern hill town in West Bengal can have secret doors and passages. For me these imaginary secret passages are the connectors of two parallel spaces; one is real, mapped, concrete space and the other is imaginary and of amorphous nature, both casting their shadows on both simultaneously. And those two spaces are not delineated in concrete terms. That way, a mapped space in the center, in the city, under the gaze of surveillance of colonial authority or the newly emerged independent nation state can have links with those secret imaginary spaces through those secret corridors and doors and those imaginary spaces are inhabited by archetypal villains like Dragon, Kaalnagini or Kaalrudra. 3. In Swapankumar's tales one can discover some urban legends, which has a resonance from the past. A parcel containing pieces of a female body is a theme of one of Swapankumar's story in Biswachakra series. One can find the distinct refrain from Panchkori Dey's 'Mayabi' (1904) and even from an accounted real incident, written in the series 'Darogar Daptar' (written in 1890s) by retired police professional Priyanath Mukhopadhyay. As Priyanath claims most of his stories are real life incidents, that way, one can estimate about a similar incident that had happened in Kolkata atleast once during the years of 1890s or before. In the same story Swapankumar introduces the act of cannibalism also. Thus Swapankumar has tried consistently to dwell on the elements provided by his predecessors in terms of secret doors or urban legends etc while tearing out the temporal signature and association from those events. While that temporality has been tampered with, the incidents become timeless and finally tend to precipitate in the imaginary spaces connected to real world by secret doors. 4. The act of detection by 'India's best detective Deepak' is often facilitated by overhearing. At times Deepak secretly listens to the plans by the criminals, placing his ears on the closed doors, or at times it is the turn for his assistant Ratanlal or some other characters to do so. Again one can find the use of secret listening in the writings of Panchkori Dey. One can dismiss those listenings as unimaginative plot structures. But these acts of secretive listenings tend to connect the unseen, private world of the criminals to the public sphere of law and jurisdiction. The organic 'tunnels' of ears also seem to connect the secret spaces/secret actions/secret motives to the open world of reason and judgement. Thus the secret doors and secert listenings are two oppositely directed tools used in reverse ways in the course of navigation from/to the real world thorugh the imaginary-amorphous spaces. While leafing through different stories of Swapankumar, I by chance read a story by Jeorge Luis Borges, 'Tlon, Uqber, Terterius', compiled in his enigmatic collection 'Labyrinth'. There he wrote about an 'imaginary' entry in an encyclopaedia, on an 'imaginary' planet Tlon, where secretively every conceivable knowledge discipline practised on the earth has been given an 'imaginary' and 'unreal' face, just to counter the overwhelming pressure of concrete logic and instrumental reason. The works of Swapankumar, with their outer trechearous simplicity and inner nagation of dominant stereotypes of logic and reason, tend to fabricate that labyrinthine imaginary spaces, populated by criminals of unfamiliar type and connected by hidden doors and secret listenings. There are other points also, like Swapankumar's gendered description of the city, how it resonates with the image of city seen by god fearing Haridas in Haridas-er Guptakatha written long before Swapankumar started writing, how the city has been shown again and again as a space that regenerates crime -----I would like to discuss those in the final report submitted to Sarai. Debkamal ------------------------------------------- 404 Vimla Vihar 8-49 Gautamnagar St no. 1 Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad - 500060 India Phone - 9246363517 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050801/f2d537ce/attachment.html From prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com Mon Aug 1 19:59:12 2005 From: prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: 1 Aug 2005 14:29:12 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Bollywood Music, Babloo Da, Prashant Pandey Message-ID: <20050801142912.27300.qmail@webmail53.rediffmail.com> Hi all This is my nth(?) posting and want to tell that this is not my last. A lot of respondents are travelling for shows abroad so i will keep posting interesting things even after the fellowship period. Thanks to a lot of readers who have taken a very keen and critical interest in my work. This time I bring for you a conversation with Babloo Chakravarty, Bollywoods’ legendary arranger. Sixty plus, he is full of energy. A conversation with him opens up a Bible of film music arrangement. He is the past, the present and the future of this industry. He continues to embellish and give structure to threadbare tunes just like he did with R.D. Babloo da says that he has been a thorough acoustics composer. He has done it all. He told me that he saw the disco age coming and vanishing "this trance-vrance will also vanish in some time, be replaced by some other gimmick” But he believes that pure acoustical form of playing is fast being replaced by sampled digital sounds. This deeply disturbs him. Its not that Babloo da is an “old man doing nothing just talking”. Almost every third hindi hit film comes from this humble Bengali old man. When I meet him he takes me by complete surprise “today only my movie releasing what is the name of the movie? Mahesh bhatt film Zaahaar” (Zeher) I think millions of music lovers especially of the younger generation must thank this old man for arranging the current super hit Zeher which has the club hit “vo lamhe” . He goes to fetch water for me and I start to look around his small drawing room which is almost half the size of Sarai’ café area. There is a wooden dining table just next to me where a children color book is lying open. Right in front of me there is an old black & white almost 20 by 20 R.D Burman framed photograph. Then with out much fuss I get up and notice the usual awards. What catches my attention is an iifa award for best background score for Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. Before he comes back I get back to the sofa and start checking my Dictaphone for inevitable goof-ups. Everything is fine. By now I have developed an Obsessive compulsive research disorder- checking re-checking re-winding- replaying my Dictaphone. I say to myself “why do I have to f*** this piece of metal every time” I am slightly nervous as well because I have read and heard about him a lot. I advice you all to run a search on him on imdb.com. Bablu da is actually a Violinist like Pyarelal ji or Ismail Darbar. He has played with all the music directors of the 50s ( Anil Biswas, SD Burman,Salil da , Madanmohan ji , C Ramchandra ji, Kalyan ji anadji. Then “R.D became music director in 1962. Laxmikant Pyarelal in 63 so I played with all of them. But I started doing arrangements from 60 onwards and when Satte pe Satta came out R.D said “ Bablu you join me as an arranger” , so from that movie to 1942- a love story I did all R.D films” You were associate composer for Ijaazat(1987,Gulzar) ? See I did everything. I arranged, composed played instruments. It was a close team of people and we had a great time. Then I did Milli and Chupke Chupke for S.D Burman. Shyamal Mitra’s “Amanush” . then Bappi Lahiri came. This was followed by Anu and Jatin Lalit. I started with Anu as he was doing Baazigar, Sir, Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Aaayi that was early nineties. With Jatin-Lalit I have done some 40 films mohabbatein, Sarfarosh, Raju Ban gaya Gentleman, Kabhi haa Kabhi Na, Dil vale Dulhaniya Le Jainge kuch kuch hota hai khamoshi. That’s whole Jatin- Lalit catalogue Yes almost all . I see an IIFA award for Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. Yes I got it. It was announced in Malaysia. This is for the background score of the film. First time they decided to give it to composer of background score. I didn’t know about it even I did not know if I was nominated. Jatin called me and said dada you have got an award. Tell me one thing dada how has it been working with Anu Malik and Jatin-Lalit ? See these are not young composers. So you should see them as senior composers of current times. They I think are really good at their job. Anu is very spontaneous and talented. He is very versatile. Dada don’t you think Anu is following the footsteps of Shanker-jaikishen Yes his music is like that. He does lot of Mexican style also na? Yes.. Annu is capable of much more. And Jatin-Lalit? (His eyes brighten up) Vo log R.D ka sahi sahi samajhta hai ( they understand R.D very well) If R.D were to have a musical successor I think it will be Jatin-Lalit. But but only in soft songs R.D’s fast song like Pia tu—they still havenot done it anything like that. But both of them are really good. With fast numbers I think they have their own approach. And R.D ? Leave that thing it was something different. Even today R.D is all over his style . Rhythm scanning What is scanning? Meter from outside (he means just by listening) you can tell its an R.D song Jatin-lalit follow his sweet songs ( romantic songs). But R.D did lot of gimmick songs like Mehbooba Mehbooba its very tough to do that. But R.D style comes naturally to Jatin-Lalit. Its not that they listen to R.D cassettes and then make music. They used to sing in R.D’s troop ? Yes jatin lalit Vijaya( Vijaya Pandit) Sulochana(Sulochana Pandit) all of them were kids they were so small they used to stand on stools as they couldn’t reach the mikes. You have a 50 year old career of superhit music making what are your emotions right now with the digital methods coming in . samples pro-tools. See sound comes to me in acoustic giving heart see right now I am talking to you .you are saying yes yes.. ya.. ya moving your head like that your eyes are shining there is no beat but there is an interaction between us. There is a live-liness to it. This is called contact. This is manual talking. Machine can not do it. Music is also like that. I show you a photo and you say” wah” but if I take you to Kashmir Swtzerland then you will say (with greater emphasis) “waah”. Live acoustic is that thing. I call my guitar player. I will say “you are not playing it right “ He will say “no I am playing right” can a machine say that? I call say Ramesh aiyer Bhupendra or anybody they have their own expression own language They speak to me. Their guitar can cry it can laugh. Are you going to play the same sample for crying as well as laughter? I will call 5 guitar players everybody plays differently. When they play together in perfect sync then it is music people who have played for 30 years such people can play. These are people I depend on. I write a score I sing it I play it on harmonium. Then they come and play that piece with their own interpretation. Flute, mandolin brass section, trumpet, 12 string, guitar- absolute manual playing makes a lot of difference. But I must learn new things like pro-tools. But I must write the score myself. Prashant I am trying my best (his voice weakens) but there are times when it becomes very unmanageable for me. Electonics sound design rhythm laptop machines try kar raha hoo.( I am trying these things) Do you miss old times? Right now studios have become very small . Mics too changed completely. Recording happens in pro tools. Earlier we did work on 4 tracks. Every body played together even the singer would sing in one go. Imagine those 4 minutes what tension it must be? “If I make mistake everybody will look at me “ , this is what we thought . There was so much concentration and energy. And above all the musicians and technicians said to them “if I make a mistake lata ji has to sing again I must not make a mistake.” There was confidence and dedication. I am not criticizing but so fast we are going these days u can learn to play computer so early so fast ? These days people I meet are scared to say that they are musicians. They say all the time “I am just learning sir I am just learning sir”. You can’t test them. They are scared. With machines and laptops and loops they feel safe. I am not saying its bad as your generation loves listening to this music. But I can not do this way. I play acoustics I write my score (bablu da can write both Indian and western notations) proper then sit with musicians who come prepared and record them It’s a long journey for you dada and guess all musicians must have played for you I started with Kercy Lord Charanjit Singh then came Ronnie Viju shah then came chtti Taboon ,Amar ,Jackie, Rajesh, Raju,( Raju Singh) sardar so this is just the keyboard Section players. And these are 3 generations of players .? (Correcting me) Four Yes do you see any changes in attitudes with these new and young players? No not much but they must practice more and more and must keep patience. There is no point hurrying to become a music director. Play with different people. Stop. Understand. Be in control then go ahead. A lot of second and third generation arrangers I spoke to are in tremendous awe of you. What about filmmakers and producers? See anybody who comes to me I tell them that I do only acoustics and hence it will cost you. Yet everybody comes. I don’t work if people want artificial sampled music. Without acoustics I won’t do. All the producers know it what is the name of this film?? Zeher? Yes they gave me extra money to do it. Acoustics playing gives a great sound. I am violinist and I call people who have played for 20 years 25 years. Then they sit on the chair. Can such a movie flop? (He means the musical success of the film) Did Dilwale Dulhaniyas music flop? I will use real people with real instruments BUT But I will use pro-tools also. Keyboard programming is fine. But chuck it there and then after you have got a song going. Once the whole song is on the keyboard. I call somebody like Manohari who comes like a lion and plays a saxophone piece or English flute. But prashant, it will be foolishness if I don’t use the current formats of programming. So I have to use both. So first get it done on the computer-keyboard then call the musician to play it in his own style. Then as my musicians come and play their instruments I will keep deleting the electronic version of it. Voh to nahi rakh sakte na? (We cant keep it can we?) But mechanical samples are cheap But I have lost my musicians due to this. See there are musicians who are dependent on us. They have their families to support. One musician has 4-5 people in his familiy. Multiply 400-500 with this. I heard from an assistant music director that a lot musicians are selling fruit juice As they have no work . Yes work has reduced then there is another problem nobody encourages Their kids to learn guitar or violin these days. Earlier if a player came to a recording with his son it was natural that the son was also learning violin and one day would play.. but now no more maximum the kids are learning keyboard as at least they wouldn’t starve. Sir. If a commercial trend of using real acoustic sounds come back then we will not have any players after 10-15 years Exactly this is my point. Playing in film is a particular style. You learn it after you know both Indian and western styles. This is related to any instrument. A lot of international artists come to Bombay to record Bollywood style violin. (Interviews with several arrangers revealed that Britney Spears, Boy George, a number of pop artists from south East Asia and England have recorded bollywood style flute, strings, accordion in the past) After some time we will have to go to U.S or any other country to record strings because their wont be good players here. I will appeal to everybody that they should think about instruments and players and their families. (we stop the interview here but Babloo da says something that I want to record so we start again) What is your message for film producers, music directors and so on? Prashant this is music. Music comes from musicians. I am saying that the musicians are there that’s why we say its music.. How can you make music without musicians? ............................................................................................................................................ Prashant Pandey (Sarai) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050801/91cfd16a/attachment.html From anupamajayaraman at gmail.com Mon Aug 1 22:21:50 2005 From: anupamajayaraman at gmail.com (Anu pama) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 22:21:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Water Campaign Meeting Reminder Message-ID: <3d572e50050801095116233997@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, This is a reminder (the last and only) for a preliminary meeting on the Campaign Against the Privatisation of Water on August 4, Thursday at SCM House, Mission Road at 5:30 pm. C R Neelakantan will be a key speaker at this meeting. He has actively been involved in the Plachimada movement and various other struggles in Kerala against Enron, nuclearisation and recently against the construction of an Express Highway that will cut across farm land, backwaters and settlements. Looking forward to seeing you there. In Solidarity! Regards, Anu _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From rahul_capri at yahoo.com Tue Aug 2 10:11:41 2005 From: rahul_capri at yahoo.com (Rahul Asthana) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 21:41:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] The Missing Personal law In-Reply-To: <20050731053538.53157.qmail@web80903.mail.scd.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20050802044141.54089.qmail@web53605.mail.yahoo.com> Quoting from Mahmoods splendidly written article- quote ----------------------------- "Demanding an immediate reform of the process through which Qazis make the kinds of decisions that we have been lately witnessing, (and this still begs the question of what gives them the sanction to do so) is not the same as demanding a Uniform Civil Code. The latter involves streamlining a much greater variety of customary, ritualistic, caste-based and inheritance-related practices by an entire gamut of communities-regional, caste, fraternity, brotherhoods. I am not sure this homogenizing sweep is entirely necessary either. The gleeful Shariah-bashers, however, should remember that gender oppression is a universal phenomenon although it seems more conspicuous and repugnant in the other" --------------------------------------------------- unquote I think this paragraph says it all. This is where the movement should be directed at. Peeps sitting in the MPLB and panchayats are not as much concerned in the divinity or immutability of the laws, but their power to have the final say on it.If that power can be vested in judiciary and magistrates who are scholars of Islamic law decide on their interpretations,it will be a great step ahead. There are examples how in a misogynistic society Islamic laws which protect female rights have been twisted. Meher is an example. There is a general trend in which "good" muslim women are expected to forego meher,though it is against the islamic law. It will be a great if we can channelize our energies in either abolition of PLB, make it just a consulting body or allow appeals against its decision.All the ethical debates of the necessity of a personal law can go on later. regards Rahul --- mahmood farooqui wrote: > A piece I wrote on the sharia/personal law etc... > > _____________________ > > The Case of the Missing Personal Law > > Undoubtedly the Imrana case is more about the > oppressive caste-Panchayat system than about the > putative Sharia or Muslim Personal Law. For several > years now Panchayats in the Western regions of North > India have produced a series of criminal judgements > curbing individual choices. That it has been turned > into another indictment of the Personal Law/Sharia > reflects more the biases, for and against, prevalent > in this society about that code. > > Muslim Personal Law and the Sharia are not quite the > same things but it is one of the abiding successes > of > colonial legal order that the differences between > them > have been greatly elided. As Bernard Cohn has > established elsewhere, in their search to discover > authentic Hindu and Muslim laws in the eighteenth > and > nineteenth century, the colonial rulers perforce > constructed them anew. This does not mean that they > had no connection with prior legal practice and > understanding but that their enactment reflected > British concerns with property relations more than > the > existing customary and legal reality. > > The Muslim Personal Law as it stands today is not a > comprehensive body of statute. It is a collective > term > of reference for a variety of distinct enactments > that > were passed by Parliaments and other State > Legislatures in the course of the last century, > including the infamous 1986 amendment and the 1937 > Application of Muslim Law (Sharia) Act. When we talk > of reforming the Personal Law, therefore, we must > remember that we are not talking of reforming a > comprehensive and extant code. For it to be > reformed, > it needs first to be properly codified. Only the > Parliament can do that. > > The Sharia on the other hand is an even more > amorphous > term. It is supposedly derived from injunctions in > the > Quran and the traditions from the Prophet’s life > (the > Hadith) but in actual fact is a compilation of > rulings/opinions (that is, the fatwa) given by > theologians and religious scholars down the > centuries. > Sometime in the ninth century four different schools > of jurisprudence, based on the above principles, > precedents and rational analogy, came to be > instituted. These are highly complex and > sophisticated > systems of legal thought, and since they are based > on > precedent they can be pushed both into a > conservative > or an evolutionary direction. These four different > schools of Jurisprudence, also called the Fiqah, the > Hanafi, the Shafai, the Malilki and the Hambali > supposedly govern Muslim civil practice in most > countries. However, even these apply only to Sunni > Muslims. > > The Sharia therefore is not the same thing for all > Muslims. Apart from Shia and Sunni differences, > there > are divisions within Sunnis along the lines of these > four schools and further along the line of > observances > and practices, witness the bloody battles between > Barelvis and Deobandis in Pakistan. Then there are > also the Ahl-e Hadis, the Ismailis, the Khojas, the > Bohras and several other groupings who form a part > of > the 72 sects of traditional Islam. Then there are > also > several biradaris and caste groupings whose Personal > Laws vary with custom and local usage even within > singular sects. > > The implications of these disputatious details in > practice is that on any possible issue, say the > Imrana > case or the similar Guria-Arif case, different > schools > of thought can come up with different > rulings/opinions > and can all claim to emanate from the Sharia. For > instance, in both the Guria and the Imrana case the > Shafai School has more liberal provisions than the > Hanafi ones and depending on which scholar you talk > to, even the Hanafi school is said to contain other > precedents that could have been drawn upon in these > two cases. > > Part of the reason why Sharia remains so intractable > and so amenable to misinterpretation, by > practitioners > and critics alike, is because it does not exist as a > code or a text, it inheres in these millions of > fatwas > including what one understands of their context and > their spirit. As one wit has commented the ‘Sharia > is > less Shara and more Shar’, meaning it is less a > system > of rules and more a cause of evil, for the simple > reason that in a patriarchal and diverse society, > the > men, as the Mullahs are, can resort to the most > arcane > and obscure traditions to continue their sway. > > Undoubtedly, in its time Islam was one of the first > organized religions to institute and codify rights > for > women. A properly codified Muslim Personal Law can > take the best of the interpretations from these > different schools of opinions, thoughts and practice > and come up with a modern and equitable code. > However, > even if one takes the best of all systems of Islamic > thought to compile a comprehensive code there would > still be areas like inheritance and status of > witnesses where the principles will fall far short > of > current ideals. > > Time and again, in the modern era, Muslim thinkers > and > clerics have come unstuck on the issue of gender > equality. It is not enough to argue, as many liberal > Muslims do, that Islam ‘gives’ women a lot of > rights. > In the modern world it is not for anyone to ‘give’ > any > rights to women, they should have it as a natural > right. What we need is a codified Personal Law for > the > Muslims which is in consonance with modern notions > of > gender equality. It may be derivative from what is > understood as Islam/Sharia, it may be not, but that > is > beside the point. > > Demanding an immediate reform of the process through > which Qazis make the kinds of decisions that we have > been lately witnessing, (and this still begs the > question of what gives them the sanction to do so) > is > not the same as demanding a Uniform Civil Code. The > latter involves streamlining a much greater variety > of > customary, ritualistic, caste-based and > inheritance-related practices by an entire gamut of > communities-regional, caste, fraternity, > brotherhoods. > I am not sure this homogenizing sweep is entirely > necessary either. The gleeful Shariah-bashers, > however, should remember that gender oppression is a > universal phenomenon although it seems more > conspicuous and repugnant in the other. > > > > > > > > > > > > ____________________________________________________ > Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page > http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs > > _________________________________________ > 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: > > ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From rochellepinto at yahoo.com Tue Aug 2 10:38:31 2005 From: rochellepinto at yahoo.com (rochelle pinto) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 22:08:31 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: reader-list Digest, Vol 25, Issue 4 In-Reply-To: <20050802034602.31F0C28F5F4@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20050802050832.50385.qmail@web30510.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Sorry - have no idea why the last posting was sent three times over. ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com Tue Aug 2 13:24:52 2005 From: ghoshvishwajyoti at rediffmail.com (vishwajyoti ghosh) Date: 2 Aug 2005 07:54:52 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] HONDA : Action Alert Message-ID: <20050802075452.30918.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> On 25 July, 2005, workers of Honda Motorcycles and > Scooters India Pvt Ltd in > Gurgaon, Haryana, in North India, were brutally > attacked by the police armed > with staves. More than 700 received injuries to the > head and limbs. The > Honda workers were agitating for their right to > organize in the face of > harassment by the Honda management. Japanese auto > major Honda had busted > earlier efforts by its workers to unionise, leading > to a simmering > discontent among its workers. In December 2004, a > Japanese manager had > kicked an Indian labourer. Workers had also raised > issues regarding sexual > harassment and disrespect of Indian workers by > Japanese employees, and > Indian management staff. In June 2005, the company > attempted to force many > workers to sign “good conduct” agreements that > barred the workers from > organizing, protesting or engaging in collective > bargaining. > > > > On 26th July, the Haryana Police once again attacked > workers and their > families inside the Civil Hospital premises where > the wounded from the > previous day’s brutalities were recuperating. Social > activists and renowned > political figures were witness to the police > atrocities at the behest of the > Japanese multinational. > > > > Ironically, rather than take action against the > State police or the Honda > management for violating workers’ right to organize, > the governments at the > Centre and State are bending over backwards to > ensure that the Japanese are > not hurt by the controversy. Both the Japanese and > Indian Governments have > refused to acknowledge the human rights violations > inherent in the > conditions leading up to the workers’ demonstration > and the police brutality > during the demonstration. > > > > The statement of the Japanese envoy to India, Mr. > Yasukuni Enoki, has > further enraged workers and people of India. Rather > than ask Honda to > respect India’s labour laws and investigate its > malpractices, the Envoy > refers to the workers’ protest as “a disadvantage > for India’s image as an > FDI (foreign direct investment) destination and also > a negative image on > Japanese management.” > > > > The Indian Government will not stand up for its > citizens against a > multinational, particularly one from a rich country. > Bhopal, Enron and > Sterlite have taught us that. Only public-spirited > individuals and > organizations can challenge these atrocities. > > > > Even while protests against the Indian and Haryana > Governments are mounting, > we request you to also write strong condemnatory > letters to or phone the > Japanese embassy, and to spread the word around. A > model letter is below: > > > > Yasukuni Enoki > > Ambassador > > Embassy of Japan > > 50-G Shantipath, Chanakyapuri > > New Delhi 110 021 > > Phone +91 1126876564, 26876581 > > Fax +91 11 26885587 > > > > > > > > > > To: Mr. Yasukuni Enoki, > > Ambassador, Embassy of Japan > > 50G Shantipath, Chanakyapuri > > New Delhi 110 021 > > Fax: +91 11 26885587 > > > > > > DATE: > > > > Sirs: > > > > I am appalled at your response to the tragic > brutalisation of workers of the > Honda Motorcycles & Scooters India Pvt Ltd by the > Haryana state police on > 25-26 July, 2005. The charges against the Japanese > company in question are > very serious. The company has allegedly engaged in > frustrating efforts by > workers to organize, and has reportedly taken a > casual attitude towards the > charges of racism and harassment leveled against the > Japanese employees of > Honda, and the Indian management. > > > > It is unfortunate that you project Japan in such a > poor light, as an > uncaring nation that is incapable of appreciating > the difficulties and > circumstances of workers. We are particularly > shocked that you chose to > project the workers’ protest as “a disadvantage for > India’s image as an FDI > destination.” Surely, you will agree that honour, > dignity and healthy > working conditions are far more important for Indian > workers than FDI. India > may benefit from Japan’s FDI; but so does Japan. > Honda and Japan, both > benefit from increased access to the Indian market, > and availability of > inexpensive and skilled workforce. We take strong > exception to your > assumption that India should court FDI without > regard to its workers’ > well-being, or that workers should abandon their > rights to organize, to > protest, to bargain collectively, or to hold their > management accountable. > > > > Even while public-spirited individuals and > organizations are mobilizing to > take the Indian and Haryana Governments to task for > brutalizing Honda > workers and bending over backwards to accommodate > the interests of Japanese > capital, I’m writing to urge you to initiate an > enquiry into the allegations > of union-busting, and racist and sexual harassment > in the Honda company. > > > > I hope that you’d be able to view the happenings in > Gurgaon from a labour > justice perspective, and set right the damage that > you have caused to the > image of Japan. > > > > Sincerely, VISHWAJYOTI GHOSH, D-598/c, CHITTARANJAN PARK, NEW DELHI-11019, INDIA CELL: 0091-9891238606 STUDIO: 0091-11-51603319 RES.: 0091-11-26270256 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050802/6fd245cf/attachment.html From kcoelho at email.arizona.edu Tue Aug 2 22:18:00 2005 From: kcoelho at email.arizona.edu (Karen Coelho) Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 22:18:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] belated july posting: visible and invisible grids Message-ID: <022101c59782$749917e0$0301a8c0@user> VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE GRIDS Harping on my theme of "something urban there is that loves a grid," I have been cataloguing the myriad grids that form the urban landscape - from fences and gates to scaffoldings and service maps -- and recognize how fully the form has insinuated itself into the everyday urban aesthetic. While crafting solutions to urban concerns of security, separation and vertical access, it also compels our imagination and dominates our visual sense of order. What of the invisible? I have been examining how the order that undergirds urban life, specifically the subterranean networks of pipes, cables and channels that constitute urban infrastructure services, the material of our daily water and energy supplies, are imagined and represented in discourses of urban change. In cities like Chennai, which set their benchmark at "world class" based on endless expansion of service and infrastructure facilities, glimpses of the underground grid carry burdens of meanings associated with progress, growth and dynamism. Sometimes these glimpses are not so promising, like the more-than-occasional pools of overflowing sewage that spread on the city streets, telling of a block in the underground drainage system. But most of the urban excavations occurring in the city these days, the disemboweled streets with pipes and cables lying exposed, the torn up sidewalks and gaping trenches, are all part of a vocabulary of urban progress, indexing expansion of the cable network, broadband access for all, improvements to the water system, modernization of the electrical grid. A few citizens remain cynical. An activist engaged in campaigns to revitalize water bodies around Chennai commented on the symbolism of the large pipe segments lining the streets: "The government wants to show that they are doing something on the river conservation project, that they are improving the drainage system - it is nothing but show!" To most of us urban terrestrials, the underground grids remain conceptual, if not mythical. Not even the engineers who built them, nor the workers who repair and handle them everyday have first-hand knowledge of the underground network in its entirety. They have seen, built, repaired segments, and then proceeded to picture the rest in the form of grid maps by assembling pieces from narrative history, scientific interpolation, popular knowledge and guesswork. A Metrowater engineer revealed how tenuous official knowledge of the pipe system was and how much the water officials relied on the local knowledge of residents and depot laborers: "When I am out there trying to fix a leak, it is often the public that comes and points out, 'Sir, this is where there is a joint, or a sluice valve, this is where somebody had fixed a leak some time back.' One of our biggest challenges on the job is handling water pollution, diagnosing where it comes from. It is like detective work - hard for an engineer. This is where the public really helps - 'Sir, there was a stormwater drain built here in 1956.' And eighty percent of what they say is true!" This account of service maps pieced together from memories of workers and local residents was corroborated by a city councilor I interviewed: "There are no blueprints at all for the pipes that have been laid, they [the Metrowater staff] rely on us to tell them where the pipes are! They have some maps at the depots, but these are 25 years old and they are not updating them as they do all these renovations. It is only the old employees of Metrowater who know the real facts of the pipes, where the loop lines are, where the valves are. They tell the new AEs [Assistant Engineers]." No state bureaucracy worth its salt would be content to let things lie thus. Getting a better grip on the hidden grid is at the core of efforts to improve the city. In Metrowater, gathering detailed empirical data on the state of the underground pipe network is an important component of the reforms undertaken since the mid-1990s. Data on locations, lengths, diameters and interconnections of pipes are being meticulously assembled from multiple sources. As a retired senior engineer told me, "Information was available in bits and pieces with a number of people, now it is being compiled in one place. Historical data, like when the pipe was laid, is not so complete. ...Completion drawings are supposed to be done at depots, but are not usually available. Or they get lost during transfers from one official to the other. Now completion drawings are available with the construction wing but we need to digitize them. Only recently we have put in the stipulation that a contractor has to give detailed information on water pipes. This is one of the major assets created. Earlier we only had very sketchy information on it." He went on: "Definitely major projects now are implemented on a better data basis. For two reasons: one, we have the data, and two, funding agencies, like the Government of India, have demanded that all projects be supported by documentation and data. So the new procedures have been in operation since about 1998, now we won't have any problems in the future. " Writing large this bid for closer surveillance of the underground grid, the Tamilnadu government embarked on an ambitious scheme to visualize the entire subterranean network. As The Hindu reported in June 2005, "A three-dimensional map detailing every nook of the city and its sub-surface systems will soon be a reality. The power supply lines, the telecom network, the water supply and sewerage lines and buildings dotting the cityscape will all be incorporated into the map, officials involved in its preparation said. The number of service lines criss-crossing the metropolis has grown tremendously as the city (sic). The service agencies - Chennai Corporation, Metrowater, Electricity Board and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited - have struggled to keep pace with the swelling demand for utilities and thus planning suffered." (The Hindu, June 6 2005). The report claimed that the base map would be created from aerial photos taken by the Survey of India, with other information plotted into this frame, and that the map would cost a crore of rupees, at the rate of Rs. 60,000 per sq km. But transparency and visibility cannot be bought for this price. Available maps of the underground network -- which, by the way, are pretty elaborate and authoritative - are half-truths with a purpose. A senior government official described to me the drainage system in the city, confessing, in her characteristically pithy style, that official representations of the grid misrepresented the real situation: ".In Choolaimedu a brand new [sewage pumping] station was constructed, but when we went to the slum near there, it was just covered in shit, there was shit everywhere, even inside the pumping station. The station was not functioning at capacity. Nobody was taking sewage connections!! It was just too expensive! We claim that the city is 90% sewered, but in reality this figure does not make sense because the main sewage lines may cover 90% of the area, but not all houses are connected to this system." Available maps remain schematic and speculative not only because they reflect the planner's wishful thinking, or deficiencies in information, but because they seek to euphemize the web of secrets, lies, compromises and settlements through which the service is negotiated on the ground The official contours of the grid are daily manipulated by bypass connections, hidden diversions, illegal lines, most of these installed by Metrowater's own workers and many with the knowledge or active collusion of field engineers. Some of these get eventually "regularized," others remain illicit, lucrative sources for the government staff who installed them. Thus complete transparency about the underground grid is not only hard to acquire, it is actively subverted by local interests. The grid is a favored urban myth because it glosses over the messiness of lived reality, offering a cleaned-up presentable version that is almost believed. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050802/164797a3/attachment.html From prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com Tue Aug 2 22:27:47 2005 From: prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: 2 Aug 2005 16:57:47 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Bombay floods, Prashant Pandey Message-ID: <20050802165747.11589.qmail@webmail6.rediffmail.com> It starts with a simple miscalculation. Its 2.30 pm. 25 th july. I have a research appointment at Bandra. Outside my flat in Ghatkopar, its raining. I "think" it’s just like any other routine rain. So I come out with my umbrella and a small polythene bag containing a notebook and other stuff. Its raining very hard. There is a mountain just behind our society and muddy water is flowing high and wild. I “think” that the rain will subside so I take a short cut to the main Road i.e L.B.S marg ( lal bahadur shashtri road), a very prominent road which runs parallel to the central line in Bombay. 2.45 pm Shreyas cinema Ghatkopar west I manage to get an auto for Bandra the auto wallah ignores the commuters who are trying to hitch a ride. We have come to the Thane-VT highway. Now I see rains all over. I am inside the auto and I am all wet. Near VidyaVihar flyover the auto comes to a standstill. I complain “ I should have taken the train”. Auto-driver replies, “Trains are not running since morning” For the first time realize what mess I have gotten into. I lose patience pay up whatever fare and stand on the flyover looking at speeding cars and trucks. 3.30 pm VidyaVihar Flyover I triple on a bike with two funny guys who are going to Dharavi. They tell me that Bandra is 5 minutes walk from Dharavi. I still “think” that the rains will stop in some time. I get down at Dharavi after having witnessed some great biking ( avoiding skidding and traffic policemen). 5.30 pm Dharavi There is traffic jam that slowly unravels. Its huge and extends all over. Road to dadar full. Road to sion full .road to bandra full. I leave my second auto. Now I am walking with thousands of women, men, girls and boys. I am stuck and there is no going back. I decide to go for my appointment at Carter Road. So from Dharavi I walk to Carter Road. Trees have fallen down. I see cars going down. There is lot of sound that I hear. Shouts cat calls hooting. 7.30 pm Carter Road I am three hours late but this looks like a calamity. Isn’t it? I take out my phone to call up the person who I went to see. Guess my phone looks like a water game (the kinds that they sell in trains). So I cancel my plans 9 pm Bandra Station (West ) I decide to stay at Bandra Station like everybody. But once I see it. I can’t. Bandra station is badly flooded and is swelling with people. I meet a lady and a young man. All of us want to go to areas that are on the central line- Sion( lady), Ghatkopar(myself) and Thane(young man). We persuade an auto driver who chooses to listen to us only amidst 20 other commuters yelling at him the places they want to go. Barely 10 meters has the auto moved towards Bandra east flyover, we find ourselves in the most bizarre traffic jam in the universe. Its amorphous, purposeless, dark and unending. part of this jam is constituted by people who are watching theirs cars and motorcycles go down in water some 15 meters way. It’s like star gazing when they tell each other “that’s my car” 11 pm Between Bandra West & East Back in auto the lady who is a school teacher has lost it. She is breathing heavily. I get a man to call her relatives who stay nearby. ( everybody shared drinking water and smiles but no mobile phones so this was a great gesture on that mans part) A miracle happens- the call consummates with out any pee-pee or getting cut. However the lady is troubled because she hasn’t met these relatives for 8-9 years. She tells me, “ kabhi jaroorat nahi padi” . her husband had called up her school and left this phone number. I propose a grand plan of walking to Sion. She rejects it while the young man is thinking about it. I come up with another plan,” We will walk to Bandra Kurla Complex ( home for state-of-the art but now flooded offices) and stay in ICICI like others. We cannot, later I learn, as there is almost 5 ft of water to be crossed. I believe it this piece of information. Before anything happens the lady is out of the auto and has left without paying(?) the autowalla. This auto-walla has the most quixotic plan. He wants to take an unimaginable U-turn and come back to Bandra Station and take S.V road ( Swami Vivekanand Road). He would take us to Andheri (east) and then to Ghatkopar through Marol Naka. This auto wallah is a sadist. (I had heard two hours back that 12 kids died in Marol and Andheri was hell with its gutters.) Though he plays us some remixes blaring with a ghoom ghoom sound from the damp speakers and I give him my cellphone to warm it in some heated quarter of his auto. He opens a box and keeps it there. Now this young man and I both are trying out life in this wet auto. We try to sleep (a fake put-on form of sleep), discuss cricket and two hours later come to a conclusion that this auto wallah is cheating us. “Ye Behen**** humko shendi laga raha hai” The auto wallah is merrymaking with other taxi drivers. So we decide to leave the auto and find way on our own. We pay up after the customary mutual allegations. We tell him that we cannot pay 100 rupees for nothing. He is a marathi yet to defeat him I ask him, “are you from Delhi “The auto driver is wondering at our unity. I give him 70 rupees for taking us 10 meters away from the point where we actually boarded the auto. 2 am Bandra east We have decided we will walk to Sion. There are lots of people who strongly dissuade us. There are jokes, discussions and kissagoi (storytelling) – in 3 feet water climbing upto our thighs. I want to get out of this gorgonic jam. I tell him” all these are middle class losers who are stuck with their cars with their fat wives and we don’t have any (cars and wives) so lets move on we wont die” I tell him about my adventures with a hippie in Rishikesh where he tried teaching me swimming in Ganges. Now this young mans battery is on full charge. And we embark on this uncertain journey. The basic rule, we have identified is to think that once we reach such and such area there wont be a jam there wont be water After an unsuccessful attempt we manage to come on the road that leads to Sion. There we meet a mad group going to Dharavi. A lot of swanky cars and their owners (now in baniyan) are greeted with hoots. Meanwhile I pursaude a Tata Safari owner not to venture ahead( in good faith and judgment). He believes me, turns back the beast and gives us a ride till Sion. All this while, I try to conceal my smile. 2.40 am Sion We get down at Sion flyover. The first thing that the young man says is “ yaar tum bade kaam ke aadmi hoo” Actual introductions happen now. His name is Vivek Hasija. He is working in sales in Esselworld. I am Prashant Pandey and I am a researcher. “Office nahi jana hota parr kaam kafi ho jata hai kabhi-kabhi”, I tell him. He wonders that we were so busy trying to stand straight in shit water that even forgot to ask each others name. Now we have to walk straight to reach Ghatkopar or Thane. There we join thousands of people walking straight from Mantralaya (the secretariat near VT). Everybody by now has developed a mutual respect for humanity. The way is dark, silent and the people are different too. Unlike Bandra here they are walking in a single line holding each others hands making a never ending human chain, from VT to Thane. At Kurla we see household items from the slums floating in the water. There is a fridge and umpteen plastic pots dancing in water. Then somebody tells me about a school kid and a driver floating dead in a car in Andheri. I see for the first time dead bikes. Taxis that are about to die their lights blinking titanically. Everybody is trying to balance in these thigh-high waters yet manages to say “ch ch ch”, an apt ex-pression for the loss of life and livelihood and an unidentified guilt. Some funny middle-aged man starts shouting- saap saap (snakes snakes) to which a lady replies,”aree itne gandle paani me to saap kya aap bhi marr jainga”(In this dirty water both you and snake will perish) Then there are these young executives who are trying to capture whatever you call it the moment . by their camera phones. They as soon as they click they wrap their phones in a three layered polythene self made packs a feat that I could not achieve therefore my RIM ( Reliance India Mobile), the dream of Dhirubhai, died in a watery grave. And here I imagine the whole setting as a science fiction set. - Thousands of people walking in 3 ft of water a heavy rain in full moon. People in Bombay are obsessed with two things. Reaching office and reaching home. Vivek Hasija is a very good travel partner. If I lose him he calls my name. His bag is heavy and now he has kept my stuff in it. I too take has bag for a long stretch. He hasn’t eaten except a breakfast and he is wearing leather shoes. 5 am Ghatkopar-Andheri Turn We have continuously walked for almost 3 hours. Its time to say bye as we have hit the Ghatkopar turn. I am very sorry as I made him walk too much. He looks haggard and terribly home-sick. He wants to sleep on the flyover like these women but I remind him about his mom who kept calling him every hour. I am sure he wont rest there and would move on. We had great time on this journey and we shout to each other our mail ids as it is raining so hard that we can’t write anything on anything. I take a left turn and join the gujju crowd of Ghatkopar and Godrej employees. Now I am feeling like a Zombie. My feet, thighs are sore. “I swear I will never wear any cloth any jeans any underwear.” My black wrangler weighs tonnes now. It’s dragging my legs down. Only saving grace is my Ram Chappals single-Rubber frame no religious connotation) bought after I saw Kaiwan Mehta wearing it in yogic comfort. 6.30 am Damodar Park. My Society. I am back after almost 16 hours of aimless, just fun (?) walking. There is no electricity and I have to take stairs for 12 floors that are there in the building. 6.45 am 12 floor my flat All the windows are shut yet there is water . On the ceilings on the walls on the floor . I throw my clothes and smell them for the first time. I wash There is a Maggi noodles packet (my principal fantasy during the journey). I have my tea and noodles and settle down on a clean, not- wet bed. Folks after that I have lead a very routine life. Regards Prashant -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050802/cca64379/attachment.html From anhad_delhi at yahoo.co.in Tue Aug 2 17:35:33 2005 From: anhad_delhi at yahoo.co.in (Anhad Delhi) Date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 17:35:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] 60 years of Hiroshima Message-ID: 60 years of HIROSHIMA Peace, Anhad, Insaaf, Youth For Peace, Sangat and CNDP (Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace) invite you to a PEACE CONCERT Date: August 6, 2005 Time:6:30pm onwards Prize Distribution by Nafisa Ali Poetry Recitation by Zohra Segal, Sharmila Tagore & Gauhar Raza Fusion Music: INDIAN OCEAN Venue: Hall No.2, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi For any further enquiry contact: Anhad Ph:23327366/67 _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From anupamajayaraman at gmail.com Mon Aug 1 22:27:30 2005 From: anupamajayaraman at gmail.com (Anu pama) Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 22:27:30 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Water Campaign Meeting Reminder Message-ID: <3d572e5005080109574e78c1b5@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, This is a reminder (the last and only) for a preliminary meeting on the Campaign Against the Privatisation of Water on August 4, Thursday at SCM House, Mission Road at 5:30 pm. C R Neelakantan will be a key speaker at this meeting. He has actively been involved in the Plachimada movement and various other struggles in Kerala against Enron, nuclearisation and recently against the construction of an Express Highway that will cut across farm land, backwaters and settlements. Looking forward to seeing you there. In Solidarity! Regards, Anu _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mayur at sarai.net Wed Aug 3 11:53:15 2005 From: mayur at sarai.net (mayur at sarai.net) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 08:23:15 +0200 (CEST) Subject: [Reader-list] The age of surveillance: a new =?iso-8859-1?q?=93dotcom_boom=94?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=3F_?= In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <53985.219.65.132.156.1123050195.squirrel@mail.sarai.net> The age of surveillance: a new “dotcom boom”? William Davies 2 - 8 - 2005 Will the era of digital networks and terrorism produce the worst of both worlds: a society of mass surveillance that increases insecurity? William Davies maps a new political-technological frontier. ------------------------------------------ The most important lesson that marketers and futurologists can learn about new technologies is not to extrapolate too far from the “early adopters”. Be it cars, telephones, televisions or computers, the long-term implications of new tools are never apparent at the outset, but only emerge once they have become ubiquitous across society. The car began life as a rich man’s toy, but its most profound long-term consequence was the growth of suburbs. The television was initially an object of fascination for the family to congregate around, rather than the perennial and solitary experience that it has become for many individuals. In recent years, we’ve witnessed what happens when mobile phones and internet connections shift from the margins of society to the mainstream. William Davies is a senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr), and author of a new report, Modernising with Purpose: A Manifesto for a Digital Britain. Marketers use the term “tipping-point” to describe the moment when a product makes the transition from being unusual and eye-catching, to being pervasive and invisible. One minute an item is being paraded like a trophy, of rarity and novelty value. The next it is a necessary accoutrement, without which modern living would seem impossible. The language of “early adopters” and “tipping-points” is generally used when looking at the fast-moving though ultimately frivolous world of consumer habits. But perhaps we can identify something analogous to a tipping-point that took place on a more historically significant level, around five years ago, in the eighteen months that followed the dotcom crash. Speculation about the shape and politics of the “digital age” had been rife for decades. The tipping-point in question occurred between the collapse of the Nasdaq and that of the World Trade Center, when one narrative about the function of digital networks in our society stuttered to a halt, and another one emerged. The underlying purpose of mass digitisation changed. Same technology, different story The purpose of digital networks is not something that the IT industry likes to dwell on too much. It is very often quite happy letting hype sell its products for them. But one doesn’t need to scratch beneath the surface too far to recognise that the Bill Clinton era of the “information super-highway” and stock-option millionaires was driven by a very different type of sales-pitch than the George W Bush era of iris-scanning and data retention. An economic narrative of wealth creation has been firmly replaced by a political narrative of control, yet each is rooted in the same technologies. In the wake of the London bombings of July 2005, the pessimistic question has to be asked: did that period between April 2000 and September 2001 represent a tipping-point? As moronic and greedy as the dotcom boom and its associated fripperies may have been, there was an innocence about all of that investment and innovation, as if the benefits would flow later somehow or other. But having been drawn into the digital age by the allure of its newness – just like any “early adopters” – we may now be settling down into a surveillance society where privacy is at best conditional, and contingency is monitored and dealt with. Historians may one day reflect on the bizarre coincidence by which westerners exuberantly flooded their societies with digital technology for very little reason whatsoever, just in time for it to be put to use as part of the largest international policing programme ever. This is not to say that the economic narrative for digital modernisation never stacked up at all. There are plenty of areas where businesses and public services have been made more efficient or effective, but there are also many that have fallen at the hardest hurdle of innovating the social and managerial processes through which productivity gains are made. Compared to the surveillance possibilities that this infrastructure has opened up, the business case for pervasive computing looks comparatively weak. After the first London attacks on 7 July, the British home secretary Charles Clarke defended plans to track internet and email records, saying: “the more we can survey the way in which people operate, the way in which they make their phone calls, the better your chance of identifying patterns of behaviour which are a threat.” The IT industry will be relatively unconcerned by this transition. Like the stock markets, technology companies are unlikely to do much more than shrug, and shift additional capital into biometrics and out of e-commerce. In academic departments, meanwhile, debates between Nietzscheans and Marxists, which dominated 20th century European philosophy, seem to have been won for the time being by the former. Marxists such as Giovanni Arrighi struggle desperately to explain how contemporary politics is still explicable in terms of the logic of capitalism, but common sense suggests that, à la Nietzsche, it is far easier to explain in terms of the primeval desire for control. So were we duped by the story about the “information society” and the “digital revolution”? Many companies certainly feel so, and as these digital networks become a growing battleground between extremists and internationally coordinated police forces, many citizens may be wishing we could turn the clock back. As one blogger, Lee Maguire, jokes grimly on his website: “Homepages, eh? I've always suspected there was a huge 'Big Brother' database containing everyone's private details ... and now I'm responsible for writing my own entry.” The high-tech fetish Both libertarians and capitalists – always fairly comfortable bedfellows – have been pushed to the margins of the digital age for the time being. The worry, but also in a way the hope, is that we will now charge headlong into a high-tech surveillance society. Why is this both a worry and a hope? Because it won’t work. In fact it could potentially make our security situation worse. As the American security guru, Bruce Schneier puts it: “technology will continue to alter the balance between attacker and defender, at an ever-increasing pace. And technology will generally favour the attacker, with the defender playing catch-up.” Ever more complex technology can not only produce new security threats, as the internet itself has demonstrated, but also create distractions for security services, as they become more focused on spotting patterns in complex systems, and less on human judgment. It could be that we are about to enter the equivalent of a dotcom boom in surveillance technologies. There will be no shortage of suppliers eager to join in, even if they hesitate to become too openly enthusiastic about this bubble compared to the previous one. But a boom would inevitably be followed by a crash in confidence in technology. Just as companies discovered that productivity gains depended on improving their social processes, and not on infrastructure alone, security services will have to learn the same lesson. The question is whether they will have to go through the same painful process of boom and bust to get there. The primary hope must of course be that terrorism is dealt with effectively, which will be a political feat not a technological one. In the same way that we hope we have not entered a sustained era of terror, we must also hope that surveillance, tracking and pattern-spotting does not turn out to be the long-term role of digital networks in society. If police forces and governments put their faith in IT and under-invest in social capabilities in the same way businesses did a decade ago, they will get the same nasty shock as those businesses did. But then, hopefully, another phase of the digital age might begin. From chauhan.vijender at gmail.com Wed Aug 3 21:39:24 2005 From: chauhan.vijender at gmail.com (Vijender chauhan) Date: Wed, 3 Aug 2005 21:39:24 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Beeti Vibhavri Jaag Ri Message-ID: <8bdde454050803090944fbe0eb@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, Vivek suggested sharing some of the creative writing that 'happened' while working on the project. Font issue remained unsettled. Anyway I'm giving here a link for you all http://shabdashilp.blogspot.com/2005/06/blog-post_22.html Thanx From jcm at ata.org.pe Thu Aug 4 04:19:46 2005 From: jcm at ata.org.pe (Jose-Carlos Mariategui) Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2005 15:49:46 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] VAE9 // (PERU) Message-ID: (spanish follows below) VAE9 // International Festival of Video and Electronic Art 2005 Cities: Arequipa / Cuzco / Lima / Puerto Maldonado / Trujillo | PERU http://www.festivalvae.com/ Omnívoros is first of many exhibitions that will be presented in the cities of Arequipa, Cuzco, Lima, Puerto Maldonado and Trujillo as part of the 9th edition of the International Festival of Video and Electronic Art 2005 (VAE9). 'Home' of Olaf Breuning (Switzerland) will be presented al the Ojo Ajeno Gallery; Art and Politics Series will present the installation 'Alternative Economics/Alternative Societies' of Oliver Ressler (Austria) and 'Dolores from 10 to 10' of Coco Fusco (U.S.A.) at the Sala Luis Quesada Garland ; the video installation 'Incessamment' and the interactive project 'Circulez y'a rien a voir' of Cecile Babiole (France) in gallery ARTCO; 'Strike' of Eder Santos (Brazil) will be shown at the new Gallery of the Ricardo Palma University ; and the exhibition series Art and Robotics with the works 'Silverfish Extream' of Constanza Silva (Canada), 'Prehysterical machine' of Bill Vorn (Canada) and 'Stereo reality' of Jose Carlos Martinat (Peru) and Enrique Mayorga (Peru), will be presented in the ICPNA of Lima. Video selections from Argentina, Canada, Chile, Mexico, Iran, Finland, Cuba and the United States, will be presented in addition to a selection of Peruvian videos that participated in the Second National Video and Electronic Art Prize 2004. Also, they will be to the winning videos in 2nd Biennial of Video Art of the I.A.D.B.. The curator Suonemi Mine will offer a conference on the Finnish video art; whereas Eusebio Bañuelos presents a panorama of the experimental video in Mexico. In addition a Cycle of Electroacustic Music will follow at the Cultural Center of Spain and the Goethe Institute. Manuel Rocha Iturbide (Mexico) will give a concert in the Goethe Institute, whereas Peruvian Rafael Junchaya, Nile Velarde, Gilles Mercier and the Tanuki group Yonin Metal Extra will offer concerts in the Cultural Center of Spain. Lilia Perez of the CENART, Eusebio Bañuelos and Manuel Rocha Iturbide will give lecture, while Manuel Rocha, Alexander Branches and Jean Francois Kenney will give a workshop on electronic music composition. For more information: http://www.festivalvae.com/ email: vae at infonegocio.net.pe VAE9 9no Festival Internacional de Video Arte Electrónica 2005 Ciudades: Arequipa / Cuzco / Lima / Puerto Maldonado / Trujillo | PERU http://www.festivalvae.com/ Omnívoros es la primera de muchas muestras que se realizarán en las ciudades de Arequipa, Cuzco, Lima, Puerto Maldonado y Trujillo . Le siguen Home de Olaf Breuning (Suiza) en la Galería el Ojo Ajeno ­ Centro de la Fotografía; Arte y Política con la instalación Alternative Economics / Alternative Societies de Oliver Ressler (Austria) y Dolores de 10 a 10 de Coco Fusco (EE.UU.) en la Sala Luis Miró Quesada Garland; la video instalación Incesantemente y el proyecto interactivo Sigue de largo, no hay nada que ver de Cecile Babiole (Francia) en la galería ARTCO; Huelga de Eder Santos (Brasil) en la nueva Galería de la Universidad Ricardo Palma; y la exposición Arte y Robótica con las obras Silverfish Extream de Constanza Silva (Canadá), Prehysterical machine de Bill Vorn (Canadá) y Stereo realidad de José Carlos Martinat (Perú) y Enrique Mayorga (Perú), en el ICPNA de Lima. Paralelamente se proyectarán selecciones de video de Argentina, Canadá, Chile, México, Irán, Finlandia, Cuba y Estados Unidos, además de una selección de videos peruanos que participaron en el Segundo Concurso Nacional de Video y Artes Electrónicas 2004. Asimismo, se mostrarán los videos ganadores en la 2nda Bienal de Video Arte del BID. La curadora Mina Suonemi ofrecerá una conferencia sobre el video arte finlandés; mientras que Eusebio Bañuelos presentará un panorama del video experimental en México a partir de una selección de videos recientes. Además se llevará acabo un Ciclo de Música Electroacústica en el Centro Cultural de España y en el Instituto Goethe. Manuel Rocha Iturbide (México) dará un concierto en el Instituto Goethe, mientras que los peruanos Rafael Junchaya, Nilo Velarde, Gilles Mercier y el colectivo Tanuki Metal Yonin Plus presentarán conciertos en el Centro Cultural de España. Se llevará a cabo la 2nda Conferencia Internacional de Arte Medial: Panorámica del Arte Electrónico en México, a cargo de la curadora Lilia Pérez del CENART, acompañada de Eusebio Bañuelos y Manuel Rocha Iturbide. Por otro lado, se realizarán talleres sobre composición electroacústica a cargo de Manuel Rocha. Alejandro Ramos ofrecerá un taller de introducción a la composición musical asistida por computadora, y Jean Francois Kenney dictará un taller sobre el software Max/MSP. Para más información: http://www.festivalvae.com/ vae at infonegocio.net.pe From k.kuldeep97 at rediffmail.com Wed Aug 3 17:09:23 2005 From: k.kuldeep97 at rediffmail.com (kuldeep kaur) Date: 3 Aug 2005 11:39:23 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] hospital's labour room as a space for unheard voices: study abstract Message-ID: <20050803113923.31810.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> hello sory for being late. i don't have any excuse for this delay. here i am sending my abstract of the study. i am looking forward for your comments on the abstract. with regards Kuldeep kaur LABOUR ROOM AS A SPACE FOR UNHEARD VOICES The study was an effort to understand the various pressures and to assess information level of would be mothers. Every case unfolded new pressures. The study resulted in exploration of various myths, misconceptions and fears of would be mothers about their reproduction health. This exploration was a good exercise to understand the social-psychological pressures women carry while admission in the labour room. One aspect of the study was based on observations of the mothers and their attendants before and after the declaration of sex of the new born. While mothers were considered main respondents the attendants’ comments were noted in the margins of the same questionnaire. Labour room in any organize city, as Chandigarh becomes a space for interaction and communication with each and every section of women. In the initial stages of the study I was expecting to get my respondents from the urban business families and rich farmers of Punjab and Haryana. I was surprised to get large number of respondents from migrant labour from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. The second big segment was from agriculture labour. Moreover, most of them were ‘acute emergencies’ with life threatening conditions. Regularly supervised cases were with proper health records they were admitted, delivered and discharged in routine but these acute emergencies were brought in labour room to save the lives of mother and child so these were complicated cases. The study of labour room explored the attitude and psychological pressures on would be mothers. They are admitted for childbirth, which is a big event in the family and social life. Primary gravidas are more concerned about the well being of their child than sex of the unborn. Most of them enter the institution of marriage with unstated promise of reproduction within two to three years. Failure results in experiments with their bodies. These experiments vary from taking unidentified medicines and visiting Deras or religious places for treatment to prove their fertility. Respondents who don’t conceive within first year of their marriage were getting infertility treatments. Husbands are expected to consult a doctor only after final reports of wives with ‘nothing wrong’ remarks are received. Primary Gravidas decides avoid use of contraceptives on basis of advises by elderly women of the family. ‘No Contraceptive before the birth of first child’ is precious lesson for them with the logic of ‘avoidance of permanent infertility’. Most of my respondents (Primary Gravida) were following this safe path to motherhood. Reproduction is as natural as respiration for a married woman is the lesson they have learnt. Pooja (a girl with polio-affected lower limbs), Meena (a girl with phychosis) Poonam (a girl with mental retardation) have to produce children although they never get their due share in other spheres of life. For most respondents of this study age of marriage is directly related to school- going years. The respondents who discontinued their studies after fifth to eighth standards got married till the age below eighteen. Those with tenth or plus two are married by the age of twenty. The respondents who are working with professional degrees were married in their late twenties. An important finding of this study was ‘economic dependence’ of respondents. Most of the respondents are dependent on their in-laws for basic requirements of life. They may be in government service or working, as labourer but still their earning or income is considered secondary. None of the respondent was sole ‘bread-earner’ of her family. If their in-laws own a house or property, their share is negligible or they are unaware of it. Many respondents prefer motherhood after marriage. Most of the workingwomen especially in private sectors choose to leave their jobs for brought-up of children. Even the ‘place of delivery’ is largely decided by cost, distance and preference of husbands. The choice of pregnant lady or the availability of health facilities is not the consideration. Some of the respondents follow the traditional custom to shift with their parents during first delivery. >From the study it is revealed that ‘traditional dais’ are still providing their services to a big chuck of population. In this study, most of the mothers, who have migrated from U.P., Bihar for labour depend upon dais for antenatal care and ‘delivery services’. The rural Chandigarh (villages attached with U.T) and slum areas in Chandigarh have untrained dais. The respondents with multigravida preferred their services (living in these area) during antenatal period and at the time of delivery. Antenatal Care health schedule is totally ignored e.g. no urine pregnancy test for confirmation of pregnancy, no ultrasounds for fetal well being and congenital malformations, no investigations for pregnancy induced complications, even regular pressure monitoring is not done although pre-eclampsia is a major life-threatening condition in pregnancy. Anemia is never diagnosed (in my respondents under dai referred cases most are with Hb 6gm-8gm. This HB is diagnosed at their arrival in the labour room when most of them are about to deliver. The reports are received after the delivery which means that this major variable remain unknown to the health staff. Without this report the patients cannot be blood-transfused, which may turn out to be fatal in certain cases.) Home deliveries are preferred due to cost effectiveness and faith on traditional dais. The respondents who are primary gravida are worried about well being of their womb-child. In case of multi-gravidas these worries multiply. The respondents with one or two female offsprings are under tremendous pressures. Primary-gravidas repeatedly speak of well-being of their un-born child but multi-gravidas are with series of abortions or tales of ‘how they feel being mother of female child/ern’. They visit ‘son-giving’ gurus, they are being harassed from the in-law and they get more physical complications e.g. one respondent Anita was explained in written during time of previous L.S.C.S. (lower segment caesarian section) that her uterus is unable to bear another child and it can rupture during third pregnancy but she ignored under family pressures. The pressure of ‘being a mother of a son’ made her ignore medical science. Her life is at stake. Family glorifies her ‘sacrifice’ to become mother. As her mother-In-law said, “she is with marvelous will-power. God has to bless her with son now”. The study explores how religious institution and religion shapes attitude/psychology of a woman to fit into social machine as a ‘production-unit’. Fate, will of God and helplessness before nature are widely used words by my respondents. How many children they are planning to give birth to; whom do you visit for/after conception; are questions, which brings out their religious socialization that is beyond reason. One of the interesting part of this phenomena is how they accept ‘mal-treatments’ and ‘exploitations’ after they fail to produce male-offspring. This was clear from large number of respondents who opt for ‘miracle-treatments’ after having female child/ern despite being Sikhs. Most of the Sikhs women with male-offspring show their disbelief in Tantar-mantar. This is clear from the study that reproduction related exploitation is directly related to sex of the child. Maintenance of hierarchy is another pressure on woman. If you are single daughter-in-law you are suppose to produce owner of the property or business. Primary-gravida mentions this with hesitation but multi-gravidas are more open about this. Information level of ‘would be’ mother about contraceptives, menstrual cycle, labour process and process of pregnancy is full of misconceptions and misinformation. Source of information are mothers or mother-in-law. Most of the respondents who adopted contraceptives are mothers of sons. After first delivery they follow the advise of the health staff. Those who do not use any contraceptives were instructed but they ignored to produce a son as early as possible. On this issue they simply emphasized on to complete the family that is ‘a girl and a son’. It can be ‘one son and second son’ but it is never as ‘one daughter and second daughter’. Many respondents were willing for permanent sterilization only if they attain ‘norm of complete family’ otherwise they choose to try again. Menstruation cycle came as a threat for emotional integrity of the respondents. Some respondents have to leave the school as soon as they got menarche. Some were restricted in their daily activities. For most of the respondents, the mother was the fundamental source of information. Information is full of fears, confusions and with ethical instructions for women. ‘Impure blood’ is the term used by most of the respondents. ‘It is necessary’ is the explanation by them while responding to ‘how it happens’ and ‘why it happens’? Most of the respondents got actual information about delivery process with their own experience of delivering child. Multi-gravidas are with fears of labour pains. Primary-gravidas are uncertain about how the whole process will happen. Somehow they were unanimous on the point that labour process is the most difficult phase of womanhood. Education and ability to purchase information materials was utilized by some respondents to purchase magazines like Femina, Meri Sehali, Grahshoba etc. They refer to them as authentic source of information. The social and economic status of women is expressed in their responses to the question about their responsibilities in case of particular sex of the new born. On this question most of the respondents responded from their existing conditions. As labourer woman said that both have to earn their livelihood, so parents have equal responsibilities, as Hindus women from business families said that dowry, difficultly during marriage and social security are deciding determinant factors about responsibilities of son or daughters. This attitude retains its social legitimacy through female agents of patriarchy. The elderly women gave voice to this phenomenon as ‘teacher’ of coming generation. Some of the respondents realize that girl is a burden. Son is a future investment who is going to provide care and security in old age. He is considered valuable from economic, emotional point of view and expanding the family tree. Some respondents are with the view that girls are constant emotional responsibility for family even after their marriage. Respondents were also united on the concept that son is compulsion for continuation of family tree and for the care of family heritage. The ‘institute of marriage’ comes under questions, as girl is born to get married, produce children and live with other family (of husband). All her contribution to the families of parents and in-law lacks any recognition and reciprocation. One segment of the study was focused on observation of the attendants and their responses after delivery. Post-natal attitude of women and their families menifest the pressures they have entered the labour room with. The silences, pauses, blank looks, heavy walks of attendants and complains of pains (of psychosomatic origin) by the mother after the birth of baby girl tells the story. On the other hand exchange of enthusiastic wishes, distribution of sweets, making immediate calls to relatives and friends in laud voices, tips to sweepers and ward helpers, gifts and over-care of baby and mother, over-thankfulness to health staff and arrival of relatives in large number are clear expressions of sense of achievement at the birth of a male child. Respondents, who delivered son, were getting ‘shaguns’ at the bedsides; sweets were distributed. These respondents complained no problems about breast-feeding and insisted upon early discharge. They were getting attention of their mothers or female attendants. Most of the respondents who delivered daughters were received with unwelcome gestures. Some try to get relief by weeping. Primary-gravidas were hopeful for next time. Multi-gravidas were complaining about ‘no breast milk’ for baby. Even some of the patient’s attendants refuse to have clothing’s for the newborn. No sweets, no smiles, no shoguns. Respondents who were friendly with me show special thanks to me if they produce son, otherwise I have to go to their bed and ask, “How are you? Answer is well written on their faces. Worst of them are respondents with stillbirths. Newly-mothers refused to share their beds with them if there is any emergency. This study can be helpful to define the contours of research that can take place with labour room as point of reference. These researches can be of multiple help to the policy makers, social scientists, women organizations and society at large to understand the pressures on women while entering the labour room. The studies of backward and forward linkages of these pressures can help to understand women in a better way. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050803/20fe6705/attachment.html From aarti at sarai.net Wed Aug 3 14:57:11 2005 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti) Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2005 14:57:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] CLASS AND NATIONALISM TALK Message-ID: <42F08DEF.3040505@sarai.net> *The Programme of Advanced Social and Political Theory*, CSDS, Delhi invites you to a talk by Professor Yael Tamir She will speak on *CLASS AND NATIONALISM* on Tuesday, August 9, 2005 at 3pm in the Seminar Hall, CSDS Profesor Tamir teaches Political Theory at Tel Aviv University. She has been a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton University, and a fellow in Ethics at Harvard University. She is the author of Liberal Nationalism All are cordially invited Rajeev Bhargava _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From vrjogi at hotmail.com Thu Aug 4 19:14:42 2005 From: vrjogi at hotmail.com (Vedavati Jogi) Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 13:44:42 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: [arkitectindia] Tips for Writing Public Emails for ArkFoundationInternet Discussion Forum In-Reply-To: <00b101c59855$b8a8f5d0$0303a13b@ashokfb3a1b8e2> Message-ID: hearty congratulations mr. ashok. you could dare to expose these psedosecularists, they are more dangerous than terrorists. can secularism be more imporatant than nationalism? i sincerely feel indian secularism is all 'bakwas'. these secularists will not mind selling off this country to terrorists because latter happened to be the muslims. i am a maharashtrian married to a kashmiri pandit who has become regugee in his own country. as they are hindus nobody in interested in their welfare because this act will tarnish their secular image. 'talking to pakistan' 'talking to terrorists' etc. etc. is secular because they are muslims. i hate this pseudo secularism i hate these secularists. vedavati ravindra jogi >From: ASHOK ROW KAVI >Reply-To: arkitectindia at yahoogroups.com >To: arkitectindia at yahoogroups.com >Subject: Re: [arkitectindia] Tips for Writing Public Emails for >ArkFoundationInternet Discussion Forum >Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2005 23:33:52 +0530 > >Correct Meher, >This whole lot is a set of cowards. For example, they will post anonymous >postings abusing Hindus and then send you backdoor messages abusing you -- >still anonymous, mind you. >This list is full of hypocrites and liars. It is not about community action >or work at all. It is about abusing Hindus and must be kept on a watch >list. >But remember, the anonymous postings will not stop. They are such cowards. >They attack the Hindus when their own communites are full of filth and >hatred. The very Kalma excludes other religions and spiritual thoughts. >But they will never face the facts. All Muslims are NOT terrorists, but >every terrorist caught till now is a Muslim. >The anonymous poster knows that and he is a coward. Therefore he will never >give his name. It would be interesting to trace him but then he might be >headed for the USA. >If the intelligence bureau is monitoring this please get Left-n-right or >the other way around. Who cares? >He's a coward. if he iahs the guts let him enter this list using his real >name. I'll expose his backdoor messages later on >Ashok Row Kavi > ----- Original Message ----- > From: meher engineer > To: arkitectindia at yahoogroups.com > Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 2:18 PM > Subject: Re: [arkitectindia] Tips for Writing Public Emails for >ArkFoundationInternet Discussion Forum > > > Dear Dr Ansari, > > I did not seek to enter this Forum; I think someone suggested my name to >the people at JNU who run it. I have two points ro make > > i) I do not read all the stuff in the Discussion Group. But when I tried >responding to a write up, by Farhat Naz (I think that is the correct name), >about the difficulties faced by Muslim children in getting an education I >was "electronically" told that I could not do so. I guess some registration >is needed. Pl. guide me on how I can respond to what I read, when I want >to. > > ii) As to the current row, If Ashok Row Kavi actually wrote "*******" >without spelling the word out then he was being as silly as the people who >introduced the phrase "expletive deleted" in the famous Watergate tapes of >President Nixon. Abuse, however impolite, is something that happens all the >time e.g., in the Maharashtra Assembly when the new, "Dance Girls" Bill was >being discussed. But no moderator can allow it to overwhelm everything >else. He has to be a bit like a Chairman at a turbulent meeting, but his >job is easier because there are no spoken arguments in cyberspace. Perhaps >he should warn people when he thinks they are stepping out of line, once or >twice, and, if they persist just expe him from the Group. In a country >where expulsion- of children from school - still happens, such an expulsion >cannot be considered unpardonable. > > wirh reagrds, > > meher engineer. > > PS I hope this gets to you > > Ark Foundation wrote: > Dear Members and Supporters of Ark, > > We use the Ark Internet Discussion Forum (Arkitectindia) as a media to >transmit information about, and promote, Ark Foundation's activities as a >Social Action Group, and share our thoughts and expertise about social >development directly related to Ark's activities. It may help other social >action groups in improving their programmes and in the same way we can >improve our activities. I'm aware that for some of you, the Ark Discussion >Forum is also a virtual location to hang around and feel part of something, >which is great! > > Lately, there has been a high volume of emails discussing a broad >range of subjects. While these topics - e.g. Islam, Hinduism, communalism, >secularism, Marxism, terrorism, and general chit chat - are often >interesting, it takes us away from our focus as a community-based >development organisation. > > To remind you, Ark's focus areas are: > > 1. Primary Education > > 2. Health-Currently we are conducting workshops and > awareness campaign on "Reproductive Health and > Family Planning" > > 3. Women and Child Care > > 4. Environmental awareness > > 5. Promoting village development through agency of > people (local folks/villagers themselves) > > 6. Creating and managing collective village resources > > The two key PROJECTS which fall into these categories are the >development of Ark High School in Kataila village, Ghazipur district, Uttar >Pradesh into a fully fledged primary and secondary school, and Reproductive >Health workshops for rural women. > > TIPS: > I thought these tips might help to keep our discussion board focused >and helpful to our cause as a fledgling Social Action Group. Here are a few >things that you might want to remember: > > � Discussion Forums: > Discussion Forums are more prepared and thoughtfully presented than >Internet chat rooms, and serve as a written record of our organisation's >interactions. Discussions might contain a brief flurry of posts, or an >extended dialogue that may take weeks or months to run its course, as has >happened in the past. > > � Purpose of Ark Discussion Forum: > To develop and improve the activities and voluntary efforts of Ark >Foundation and members as well as to promote communication between staff, >volunteers, members and supportive individuals. Within this guideline there >are other potential uses, from sharing research and practice information >and updates between Ark and other individuals and NGOs, recruiting >volunteers, promoting a project, fundraising for an activity or project, >reporting on recent workshops and activities, and hosting topical >discussions on issues directly related to Ark Foundation activities. As >such, emails are expected to be relevant, concise and professional. > > � Purpose of the Moderator: > The Ark Discussion Forum Moderator has the ability to exert editorial >control over the discussions by removing unwanted posts, adding or deleting >users, or creating additional discussion topics, and generally facilitating >the growth of the discussion forum. > > � Avoid Email Overload: > People on mail lists are used to reading tons of emails a day. Without >careful selection and good 'promotion' of your points, your email may not >be posted or read. Things that may help get your message across and >encourage stimulating debates are: > - a simple yet effective email title/subject header > - be clear why this issue relates to the organisation's > goals and objectives on education and reproductive health etc. > > Thank you for reading this. I welcome any comments you may have, and I >look forward to the continuation our Internet Discussion Forum. Please mail >your comment and suggestion before August 15, 2005 so that we can include >your ideas and experiences in moderating the e-forum (Arkitectindia) from >August 16, 2005. > > > We are open for comment, criticism and suggestion. Please be generous >in criticizing us so that we can develop a proper understanding before >starting moderatig the e-forum mails properly. > Remember most of the active members of Ark are JNU students. It will >be highly beneficial for individuls and social action groups working in >different field. It is here we request the experienced and learned member >of this e-forum to kindly comeforward to guide us for maximum utilisation >of arkitectindia for the cause of sustainable development. I repeat, the >last date to email your comment and criticism to run the e-forum properly >is August 15, 2005. I hope the new intellectuals will get feedback >accordingly. > > Kindly follow the link to know more about Ark Foundation: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arkitectindia/message/336 > > Regards, > > Shaheen Ansari, Ph.D. > Programme Coordinator > Ark Foundation > www.arkindia.org.in > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arkitectindia/ > Phone: +919868740449,9868701491,9312838170 > > --------------------------------- > Free antispam, antivirus and 1GB to save all your messages > Only in Yahoo! Mail: http://in.mail.yahoo.com > > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS > > a.. Visit your group "arkitectindia" on the web. > > b.. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > arkitectindia-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com > > c.. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of >Service. > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _________________________________________________________________ Try the new MSN Desktop Search Toolbar. http://server1.msn.co.in/sp05/msntoolbar/index.asp Just answer 3 simple questions. From chauhan.vijender at gmail.com Thu Aug 4 21:52:46 2005 From: chauhan.vijender at gmail.com (Vijender chauhan) Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 21:52:46 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Bush administration refuses to relinquish US control of Internet Message-ID: <8bdde454050804092248ed2207@mail.gmail.com> Bush administration refuses to relinquish US control of Internet By Mike Ingram http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/jul2005/inte-j15.shtml A statement published by the US government last week reverses previous promises to relinquish control of the Internet's Domain Name and Addressing System (DNS) and transfer it to an international body. The DNS is the method by which Internet addresses in mnemonic form (e.g., wsws.org) are converted into the equivalent numeric IP (Internet Protocol) address used by the hardware that routes all Internet traffic. The US announcement states that governments have a "legitimate interest in the management of their country code top level domains (ccTLD)"—for example, "de" for Germany, "cn" for China, etc. It goes on to assure them that "the United States is committed to working with the international community to address these concerns, bearing in mind the fundamental need to ensure the stability and security of the Internet's DNS." This assurance is virtually meaningless, however, considering how the DNS system works. At the heart of the Internet are 13 so-called "root servers," 10 of which are in the US. These maintain the records allowing a domain name, such as wsws.org, to be translated into an IP address pointing to a specific computer on which a web site is held, or from which email is served. Local DNS servers acquire files from the root servers, telling them the location of all the different addresses on the Internet. The root servers perform a critical role in routing traffic that ends in a top-level domain, such as a country-specific code. Of particular importance is the main server, or root server A, presently managed by Verisign Inc., a corporation listed on NASDAQ, the largest US hi-tech stock market. Root server A contains the authoritative records for all top-level domains, such as "com," "net," "org" and "gov," as well as those for the top-level domains of every country in the world. Every 12 hours or so, root server A copies a file to the other 12 root servers, thereby ensuring that when a web user clicks on a link, his browser displays the correct page. All changes to DNS records are made only on root server A and are subject to approval by the US Department of Commerce, giving the American government the ability to deprive an entire country of effective use of the Internet. While some commentators have dismissed this as an unlikely scenario, some recent examples show that it is not so far-fetched: * In April 2004, Libya "disappeared" from the Internet for three days, after the "ly" domain was disabled, reportedly following a dispute between two people who each claimed to have control over the top-level domain. * A more worrying example was the handing over of the Afghanistan top-level domain to the US-backed interim authority after a letter allegedly signed by the domain's previous administrator was produced. The "af" domain name is now referenced to servers based in New York, which are owned by the United Nations Development Programme. * During the war against Iraq in 2003, the domain records for the English-language site of the Arabic news service Aljazeera were diverted to a pro-war web site, supposedly after hackers broke into Verisign's servers that hold the DNS records. Not surprisingly, the move by Washington to maintain its control over the routing of Internet traffic has provoked international criticism. Patrik Linden, a spokesman for the foundation that runs the Swedish national domain .se, said the US announcement was "rather confrontational" towards those who would prefer that an international body take control of the domain name system. "This kind of statement doesn't exactly favour that discussion," Linden said, adding, "This is perhaps what a lot of people thought [the US] had intended all along." Masahiko Fujimoto of the data division of Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said, "When the Internet is being increasingly used for private use, by business and so forth, there is a societal debate about whether it is befitting to have one country maintaining checks on that." The official response from Europe has been more muted. The Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries, CENTR, issued a statement simply asking the Bush administration to give further consideration to international concerns. "We encourage the US to further explore, together with registry managers and other governments, the means by which the execution of these functions can be enhanced and decentralised using proven technology in order to optimise efficiency, accuracy of data, Internet stability and security," the CENTR statement read. "This approach," it continued, "can contribute to depoliticise the role of the root [server], and empower the relevant local Internet registries and the respective local Internet communities (including governments) to exercise local supervision of their components in the root zone. This should minimise the need for any procedural intervention by other parties." American control of the Internet is a result of its origins as a research project set up by the US Defence Department. From 1968 to 1984, the ARPANET was managed by BBN Planet on behalf of the US government. By this time, the network had grown to include academic as well as government research facilities, and in 1984 there were about 1,000 hosts connected to the network. With the invention of the World Wide Web five years later, the Internet, as it became known, underwent an explosive growth. In 1993, the National Science Foundation, which assumed responsibility for the Internet, created InterNic, consisting of three organizations: AT&T to handle database services, Network Solutions, Inc. to handle host and domain name registration, and IP assignment and General Atomics to handle information services. Network Solutions began registration services for "com," "net," "org" and "gov" domains. The handing of the domain names to Network Solutions Inc. was widely regarded as the privatisation of the Internet, but the US government maintained its control through the Department of Commerce. In 1998, during the presidency of Bill Clinton, the Department of Commerce selected the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)—a California-based non-profit organisation largely comprised of international Internet Society members—to take over the running of the domain name services. However, the Department of Commerce maintained a veto over modifications to the root server databases, which the agreement stipulated that Network Solutions would continue to manage. Though ICANN was put in place supposedly to ease international concerns over US control of the Internet, it has never been fully accepted by those responsible for country top-level domains. In 2004, Erkki Liikanen, European Commissioner for Enterprise and Information Society, gave a speech aimed at encouraging more European countries to sign up to the Country Code Names Supporting Organisation (ccNSO), which is the ICANN supporting body for different countries around the world. He called ICANN "a unique experiment in self-regulation" before stating, "The expectation among governments at the outset was that ICANN would provide a neutral platform for consensus-building.... It was also hoped that ICANN would provide a way for the US government to withdraw from its supervisory role. In this way, we could achieve a greater internationalisation and privatisation of certain key functions. It has yet to fully deliver on either of these objectives." Liikanen said that "the absence of any clear picture" from the US about its intentions was "not helpful," but he called for the ccTLDs (country code top level domains) to sign up anyway. Otherwise, governments would conclude that ICANN had failed. There are indications that this is also the position of the United Nations, which is due to deliver a review of Internet governance later this year. According to the Register Internet technology web site, the review team is considering calling for the handing over of elements of Internet control to a UN body, possibly the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The New York Times on July 4 reported, "Brazil, India, Syria, China and other countries have proposed that an international body take over from ICANN. Last month, the European Union called for an 'international consensus' on Internet governance, without specifying the role of governments, the private sector or ICANN." Some commentators believe it is calls for UN control that have caught the attention of the Bush administration, prompting last week's announcement by the US government. The overtly political character of the decision was underlined in a presentation given by the assistant secretary of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Michael Gallagher, full of tributes to the Bush administration and the president personally. It opened with a slide stating, "Thanks to the president's policies, America's economy is strong." A number of other slides dealt with investment and trade opportunities in India, China and Russia and the role of the Internet and telecommunications in facilitating such opportunities. A slide entitled "Commitment to security and stability of the Internet DNS" spoke of America's role in founding the Internet, and stated, "This historic role continues today with DoC (the US Department of Commerce) being the steward of the critical elements of the Internet's underlying infrastructure—the domain name and addressing system (DNS)." Despite a declaration in the conclusion that the US "will work with the international community to find appropriate ways to address Internet governance issues," the real message is clear. The Internet is considered both a major strategic resource for the US and a potential weapon against America's rivals, over which the Bush administration does not intend to relinquish control. From turbulence at turbulence.org Thu Aug 4 20:17:38 2005 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 10:47:38 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Artists' Studios: "kanarinka projects" Message-ID: <42F22A8A.3080403@turbulence.org> August 4, 2005 Turbulence Artists' Studios: "kanarinka projects" http://turbulence.org/studios/kanarinka/index.html kanarinka's recent collaborations include opening a nail salon at the Boston Center for the Arts, walking with her head in a bucket of Coke in Canada, staging a taste test with teenagers in a parking lot in Roxbury, podcasting interviews with residents of Boston's South End, launching an international, public database of Corporate Commands, and rolling around on the ground in a white lab coat. kanarinka's research interests include public space, performing cities, experimental urbanism, social cartography and infinitely small things. She is working on new definitions for "psychogeography" and "microperformance" (feedback is encouraged). BIOGRAPHY kanarinka is the co-founder of the non-profit collective iKatun, Director of the Institute for Infinitely Small Things, and the Director of Exhibitions & Programs at Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA. She also collaborates with groups like glowlab, spurse and Sifting the Inner Belt. kanarinka has a BA (Phi Beta Kappa, summa cum laude) in International Relations from Tufts University and an MFA in Studio Art from Maine College of Art. She teaches computer programming at RISD's Digital Media program. For more Turbulence Artists' Studios please visit http://turbulence.org/studios -- Jo-Anne Green, Co-Director New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc.: http://new-radio.org New York: 917.548.7780 . Boston: 617.522.3856 Turbulence: http://turbulence.org New American Radio: http://somewhere.org Networked_Performance Blog and Conference: http://turbulence.org/blog -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050804/3a073187/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From vrjogi at hotmail.com Thu Aug 4 19:14:42 2005 From: vrjogi at hotmail.com (Vedavati Jogi) Date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 13:44:42 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: [arkitectindia] Tips for Writing Public Emails for ArkFoundationInternet Discussion Forum In-Reply-To: <00b101c59855$b8a8f5d0$0303a13b@ashokfb3a1b8e2> Message-ID: hearty congratulations mr. ashok. you could dare to expose these psedosecularists, they are more dangerous than terrorists. can secularism be more imporatant than nationalism? i sincerely feel indian secularism is all 'bakwas'. these secularists will not mind selling off this country to terrorists because latter happened to be the muslims. i am a maharashtrian married to a kashmiri pandit who has become regugee in his own country. as they are hindus nobody in interested in their welfare because this act will tarnish their secular image. 'talking to pakistan' 'talking to terrorists' etc. etc. is secular because they are muslims. i hate this pseudo secularism i hate these secularists. vedavati ravindra jogi >From: ASHOK ROW KAVI >Reply-To: arkitectindia at yahoogroups.com >To: arkitectindia at yahoogroups.com >Subject: Re: [arkitectindia] Tips for Writing Public Emails for >ArkFoundationInternet Discussion Forum >Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2005 23:33:52 +0530 > >Correct Meher, >This whole lot is a set of cowards. For example, they will post anonymous >postings abusing Hindus and then send you backdoor messages abusing you -- >still anonymous, mind you. >This list is full of hypocrites and liars. It is not about community action >or work at all. It is about abusing Hindus and must be kept on a watch >list. >But remember, the anonymous postings will not stop. They are such cowards. >They attack the Hindus when their own communites are full of filth and >hatred. The very Kalma excludes other religions and spiritual thoughts. >But they will never face the facts. All Muslims are NOT terrorists, but >every terrorist caught till now is a Muslim. >The anonymous poster knows that and he is a coward. Therefore he will never >give his name. It would be interesting to trace him but then he might be >headed for the USA. >If the intelligence bureau is monitoring this please get Left-n-right or >the other way around. Who cares? >He's a coward. if he iahs the guts let him enter this list using his real >name. I'll expose his backdoor messages later on >Ashok Row Kavi > ----- Original Message ----- > From: meher engineer > To: arkitectindia at yahoogroups.com > Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 2:18 PM > Subject: Re: [arkitectindia] Tips for Writing Public Emails for >ArkFoundationInternet Discussion Forum > > > Dear Dr Ansari, > > I did not seek to enter this Forum; I think someone suggested my name to >the people at JNU who run it. I have two points ro make > > i) I do not read all the stuff in the Discussion Group. But when I tried >responding to a write up, by Farhat Naz (I think that is the correct name), >about the difficulties faced by Muslim children in getting an education I >was "electronically" told that I could not do so. I guess some registration >is needed. Pl. guide me on how I can respond to what I read, when I want >to. > > ii) As to the current row, If Ashok Row Kavi actually wrote "*******" >without spelling the word out then he was being as silly as the people who >introduced the phrase "expletive deleted" in the famous Watergate tapes of >President Nixon. Abuse, however impolite, is something that happens all the >time e.g., in the Maharashtra Assembly when the new, "Dance Girls" Bill was >being discussed. But no moderator can allow it to overwhelm everything >else. He has to be a bit like a Chairman at a turbulent meeting, but his >job is easier because there are no spoken arguments in cyberspace. Perhaps >he should warn people when he thinks they are stepping out of line, once or >twice, and, if they persist just expe him from the Group. In a country >where expulsion- of children from school - still happens, such an expulsion >cannot be considered unpardonable. > > wirh reagrds, > > meher engineer. > > PS I hope this gets to you > > Ark Foundation wrote: > Dear Members and Supporters of Ark, > > We use the Ark Internet Discussion Forum (Arkitectindia) as a media to >transmit information about, and promote, Ark Foundation's activities as a >Social Action Group, and share our thoughts and expertise about social >development directly related to Ark's activities. It may help other social >action groups in improving their programmes and in the same way we can >improve our activities. I'm aware that for some of you, the Ark Discussion >Forum is also a virtual location to hang around and feel part of something, >which is great! > > Lately, there has been a high volume of emails discussing a broad >range of subjects. While these topics - e.g. Islam, Hinduism, communalism, >secularism, Marxism, terrorism, and general chit chat - are often >interesting, it takes us away from our focus as a community-based >development organisation. > > To remind you, Ark's focus areas are: > > 1. Primary Education > > 2. Health-Currently we are conducting workshops and > awareness campaign on "Reproductive Health and > Family Planning" > > 3. Women and Child Care > > 4. Environmental awareness > > 5. Promoting village development through agency of > people (local folks/villagers themselves) > > 6. Creating and managing collective village resources > > The two key PROJECTS which fall into these categories are the >development of Ark High School in Kataila village, Ghazipur district, Uttar >Pradesh into a fully fledged primary and secondary school, and Reproductive >Health workshops for rural women. > > TIPS: > I thought these tips might help to keep our discussion board focused >and helpful to our cause as a fledgling Social Action Group. Here are a few >things that you might want to remember: > > � Discussion Forums: > Discussion Forums are more prepared and thoughtfully presented than >Internet chat rooms, and serve as a written record of our organisation's >interactions. Discussions might contain a brief flurry of posts, or an >extended dialogue that may take weeks or months to run its course, as has >happened in the past. > > � Purpose of Ark Discussion Forum: > To develop and improve the activities and voluntary efforts of Ark >Foundation and members as well as to promote communication between staff, >volunteers, members and supportive individuals. Within this guideline there >are other potential uses, from sharing research and practice information >and updates between Ark and other individuals and NGOs, recruiting >volunteers, promoting a project, fundraising for an activity or project, >reporting on recent workshops and activities, and hosting topical >discussions on issues directly related to Ark Foundation activities. As >such, emails are expected to be relevant, concise and professional. > > � Purpose of the Moderator: > The Ark Discussion Forum Moderator has the ability to exert editorial >control over the discussions by removing unwanted posts, adding or deleting >users, or creating additional discussion topics, and generally facilitating >the growth of the discussion forum. > > � Avoid Email Overload: > People on mail lists are used to reading tons of emails a day. Without >careful selection and good 'promotion' of your points, your email may not >be posted or read. Things that may help get your message across and >encourage stimulating debates are: > - a simple yet effective email title/subject header > - be clear why this issue relates to the organisation's > goals and objectives on education and reproductive health etc. > > Thank you for reading this. I welcome any comments you may have, and I >look forward to the continuation our Internet Discussion Forum. Please mail >your comment and suggestion before August 15, 2005 so that we can include >your ideas and experiences in moderating the e-forum (Arkitectindia) from >August 16, 2005. > > > We are open for comment, criticism and suggestion. Please be generous >in criticizing us so that we can develop a proper understanding before >starting moderatig the e-forum mails properly. > Remember most of the active members of Ark are JNU students. It will >be highly beneficial for individuls and social action groups working in >different field. It is here we request the experienced and learned member >of this e-forum to kindly comeforward to guide us for maximum utilisation >of arkitectindia for the cause of sustainable development. I repeat, the >last date to email your comment and criticism to run the e-forum properly >is August 15, 2005. I hope the new intellectuals will get feedback >accordingly. > > Kindly follow the link to know more about Ark Foundation: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arkitectindia/message/336 > > Regards, > > Shaheen Ansari, Ph.D. > Programme Coordinator > Ark Foundation > www.arkindia.org.in > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arkitectindia/ > Phone: +919868740449,9868701491,9312838170 > > --------------------------------- > Free antispam, antivirus and 1GB to save all your messages > Only in Yahoo! Mail: http://in.mail.yahoo.com > > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo > > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS > > a.. Visit your group "arkitectindia" on the web. > > b.. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > arkitectindia-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com > > c.. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of >Service. > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _________________________________________________________________ Try the new MSN Desktop Search Toolbar. http://server1.msn.co.in/sp05/msntoolbar/index.asp Just answer 3 simple questions. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Make a difference. Find and fund world-changing projects at GlobalGiving. --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arkitectindia/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: arkitectindia-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ From iram at sarai.net Fri Aug 5 14:00:34 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net) Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 10:30:34 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Fwd: Call for participation: UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2005 Message-ID: ------ Original Message ------ Subject: Fwd:Call for participation: UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2005 To: announcements at sarai.net From: "nisar keshvani" Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 07:33:15 +0200 Call for participation: UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2005 Young artists from around the world are invited to take part in this year’s award devoted to the theme of “Cities and creative media”. Organized in collaboration with Art Center Nabi, the Award would be delivered to non-realized project proposals in order to embrace a wider audience of creators, who have the innovative artistic ideas but not necessarily the means. The call specifically aims at encouraging young emerging artists to cultivate new forms of expressions using new media and technology in reflecting on how urban spaces and city environments could be transformed into creative outlets. The submission deadline is 14 September 2005. All project proposals should be submitted online at the official website of submission (http://www.nabi.or.kr/un esco_award), where participants will also be able to find further detailed infor mation (description of sub-themes, general guidelines, submission criteria, etc) All submissions should be in English. The total prize money is US $10,000, which would be divided into and given to more than one laureate, in some cases a group of artists. In addition, the Nabi center (Seoul, Republic of Korea) is organizing a “special honorary mention” category to the Award, targeting realized projects that could be re-embodied within the urban context of the city Seoul. The award-winning projects would be selected by an international jury, assembled on this occasion representing the five geo-cultural regions (Africa, Arab States, Asia/Pacific, Europe/North America, and Latin America/Caribbean). For more information, contact: unesco_award at nabi.or.kr digiarts at unesco.org UNESCO DigiArts portal: http://portal.unesco.org/digiarts -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "nisar keshvani" Subject: Call for participation: UNESCO Digital Arts Award 2005 Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2005 14:13:23 -0500 Size: 3346 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050805/6a6025f0/attachment.mht -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From aarti at sarai.net Fri Aug 5 15:00:23 2005 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti) Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 15:00:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: [arkitectindia] Tips for Writing Public Emails for ArkFoundationInternet Discussion Forum In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <42F331AF.8020607@sarai.net> Dear Ms. Jogi, I have been following this thread with some initial interest, which has quickly turned to fatigue. If you have an argument to make, please make it. If you do not, please stop deluging this list with statements that reflect neither engagement, nor analysis, nor insight. Please carry on this conversation in forums which might actually reposnd to you in the vein you desire, because that reponse clearly does not seem to be forthcoming here. I notice this thread died a natural death, but now you seem to have started exporting conversations being carried on on other lists, here. Please desist. We do not wish to be party to this conversation any longer. regards Aarti Vedavati Jogi wrote: >hearty congratulations mr. ashok. you could dare to expose these >psedosecularists, they are more dangerous than terrorists. can secularism be >more imporatant than nationalism? i sincerely feel indian secularism is all >'bakwas'. these secularists will not mind selling off this country to >terrorists because latter happened to be the muslims. >i am a maharashtrian married to a kashmiri pandit who has become regugee in >his own country. as they are hindus nobody in interested in their welfare >because this act will tarnish their secular image. 'talking to pakistan' >'talking to terrorists' etc. etc. is secular because they are muslims. i >hate this pseudo secularism i hate these secularists. >vedavati ravindra jogi > > > > >>From: ASHOK ROW KAVI >>Reply-To: arkitectindia at yahoogroups.com >>To: arkitectindia at yahoogroups.com >>Subject: Re: [arkitectindia] Tips for Writing Public Emails for >>ArkFoundationInternet Discussion Forum >>Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2005 23:33:52 +0530 >> >>Correct Meher, >>This whole lot is a set of cowards. For example, they will post anonymous >>postings abusing Hindus and then send you backdoor messages abusing you -- >>still anonymous, mind you. >>This list is full of hypocrites and liars. It is not about community action >>or work at all. It is about abusing Hindus and must be kept on a watch >>list. >>But remember, the anonymous postings will not stop. They are such cowards. >>They attack the Hindus when their own communites are full of filth and >>hatred. The very Kalma excludes other religions and spiritual thoughts. >>But they will never face the facts. All Muslims are NOT terrorists, but >>every terrorist caught till now is a Muslim. >>The anonymous poster knows that and he is a coward. Therefore he will never >>give his name. It would be interesting to trace him but then he might be >>headed for the USA. >>If the intelligence bureau is monitoring this please get Left-n-right or >>the other way around. Who cares? >>He's a coward. if he iahs the guts let him enter this list using his real >>name. I'll expose his backdoor messages later on >>Ashok Row Kavi >> ----- Original Message ----- >> From: meher engineer >> To: arkitectindia at yahoogroups.com >> Sent: Wednesday, August 03, 2005 2:18 PM >> Subject: Re: [arkitectindia] Tips for Writing Public Emails for >>ArkFoundationInternet Discussion Forum >> >> >> Dear Dr Ansari, >> >> I did not seek to enter this Forum; I think someone suggested my name to >>the people at JNU who run it. I have two points ro make >> >> i) I do not read all the stuff in the Discussion Group. But when I tried >>responding to a write up, by Farhat Naz (I think that is the correct name), >>about the difficulties faced by Muslim children in getting an education I >>was "electronically" told that I could not do so. I guess some registration >>is needed. Pl. guide me on how I can respond to what I read, when I want >>to. >> >> ii) As to the current row, If Ashok Row Kavi actually wrote "*******" >>without spelling the word out then he was being as silly as the people who >>introduced the phrase "expletive deleted" in the famous Watergate tapes of >>President Nixon. Abuse, however impolite, is something that happens all the >>time e.g., in the Maharashtra Assembly when the new, "Dance Girls" Bill was >>being discussed. But no moderator can allow it to overwhelm everything >>else. He has to be a bit like a Chairman at a turbulent meeting, but his >>job is easier because there are no spoken arguments in cyberspace. Perhaps >>he should warn people when he thinks they are stepping out of line, once or >>twice, and, if they persist just expe him from the Group. In a country >>where expulsion- of children from school - still happens, such an expulsion >>cannot be considered unpardonable. >> >> wirh reagrds, >> >> meher engineer. >> >> PS I hope this gets to you >> >> Ark Foundation wrote: >> Dear Members and Supporters of Ark, >> >> We use the Ark Internet Discussion Forum (Arkitectindia) as a media to >>transmit information about, and promote, Ark Foundation's activities as a >>Social Action Group, and share our thoughts and expertise about social >>development directly related to Ark's activities. It may help other social >>action groups in improving their programmes and in the same way we can >>improve our activities. I'm aware that for some of you, the Ark Discussion >>Forum is also a virtual location to hang around and feel part of something, >>which is great! >> >> Lately, there has been a high volume of emails discussing a broad >>range of subjects. While these topics - e.g. Islam, Hinduism, communalism, >>secularism, Marxism, terrorism, and general chit chat - are often >>interesting, it takes us away from our focus as a community-based >>development organisation. >> >> To remind you, Ark's focus areas are: >> >> 1. Primary Education >> >> 2. Health-Currently we are conducting workshops and >> awareness campaign on "Reproductive Health and >> Family Planning" >> >> 3. Women and Child Care >> >> 4. Environmental awareness >> >> 5. Promoting village development through agency of >> people (local folks/villagers themselves) >> >> 6. Creating and managing collective village resources >> >> The two key PROJECTS which fall into these categories are the >>development of Ark High School in Kataila village, Ghazipur district, Uttar >>Pradesh into a fully fledged primary and secondary school, and Reproductive >>Health workshops for rural women. >> >> TIPS: >> I thought these tips might help to keep our discussion board focused >>and helpful to our cause as a fledgling Social Action Group. Here are a few >>things that you might want to remember: >> >> · Discussion Forums: >> Discussion Forums are more prepared and thoughtfully presented than >>Internet chat rooms, and serve as a written record of our organisation's >>interactions. Discussions might contain a brief flurry of posts, or an >>extended dialogue that may take weeks or months to run its course, as has >>happened in the past. >> >> · Purpose of Ark Discussion Forum: >> To develop and improve the activities and voluntary efforts of Ark >>Foundation and members as well as to promote communication between staff, >>volunteers, members and supportive individuals. Within this guideline there >>are other potential uses, from sharing research and practice information >>and updates between Ark and other individuals and NGOs, recruiting >>volunteers, promoting a project, fundraising for an activity or project, >>reporting on recent workshops and activities, and hosting topical >>discussions on issues directly related to Ark Foundation activities. As >>such, emails are expected to be relevant, concise and professional. >> >> · Purpose of the Moderator: >> The Ark Discussion Forum Moderator has the ability to exert editorial >>control over the discussions by removing unwanted posts, adding or deleting >>users, or creating additional discussion topics, and generally facilitating >>the growth of the discussion forum. >> >> · Avoid Email Overload: >> People on mail lists are used to reading tons of emails a day. Without >>careful selection and good 'promotion' of your points, your email may not >>be posted or read. Things that may help get your message across and >>encourage stimulating debates are: >> - a simple yet effective email title/subject header >> - be clear why this issue relates to the organisation's >> goals and objectives on education and reproductive health etc. >> >> Thank you for reading this. I welcome any comments you may have, and I >>look forward to the continuation our Internet Discussion Forum. Please mail >>your comment and suggestion before August 15, 2005 so that we can include >>your ideas and experiences in moderating the e-forum (Arkitectindia) from >>August 16, 2005. >> >> >> We are open for comment, criticism and suggestion. Please be generous >>in criticizing us so that we can develop a proper understanding before >>starting moderatig the e-forum mails properly. >> Remember most of the active members of Ark are JNU students. It will >>be highly beneficial for individuls and social action groups working in >>different field. It is here we request the experienced and learned member >>of this e-forum to kindly comeforward to guide us for maximum utilisation >>of arkitectindia for the cause of sustainable development. I repeat, the >>last date to email your comment and criticism to run the e-forum properly >>is August 15, 2005. I hope the new intellectuals will get feedback >>accordingly. >> >> Kindly follow the link to know more about Ark Foundation: >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arkitectindia/message/336 >> >> Regards, >> >> Shaheen Ansari, Ph.D. >> Programme Coordinator >> Ark Foundation >> www.arkindia.org.in >> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arkitectindia/ >> Phone: +919868740449,9868701491,9312838170 >> >> --------------------------------- >> Free antispam, antivirus and 1GB to save all your messages >> Only in Yahoo! Mail: http://in.mail.yahoo.com >> >> >> >> >> __________________________________________________ >> Do You Yahoo >> >> >> >>------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS >> >> a.. Visit your group "arkitectindia" on the web. >> >> b.. To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: >> arkitectindia-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com >> >> c.. Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of >>Service. >> >> >>------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >> >> >> > >_________________________________________________________________ >Try the new MSN Desktop Search Toolbar. >http://server1.msn.co.in/sp05/msntoolbar/index.asp Just answer 3 simple >questions. > > > > > >------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> >Make a difference. Find and fund world-changing projects at GlobalGiving. >--------------------------------------------------------------------~-> > > >Yahoo! Groups Links > ><*> To visit your group on the web, go to: > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/arkitectindia/ > ><*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > arkitectindia-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com > ><*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: > http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > > > > >_________________________________________ >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 shuddha at sarai.net Fri Aug 5 19:48:16 2005 From: shuddha at sarai.net (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 19:48:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Media Representations of 13 December Message-ID: <42F37528.6060905@sarai.net> Dear All, please find below a longish posting (apologies for length in advance, and for cross posting on the Reader List and Commons Law) occasioned by the Supreme Court verdict on the 13th December ('Parliament Attack') case. The post tries specifically to look at the twists and turns in the media representations of the 13th December case. I look forward to criticisms, comments, discussion and reflections. regards Shuddha --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Media Trials and Courtroom Tribulations : A Battle of Images, Words and Shadows Preliminary Notes Towards an Enquiry into the Conduct of the Media with Regard to the Trial of the Accused in the '13th December : Attack on Parliament' Case - 2001 - 2005 Shuddhabrata Sengupta ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "The acquital of an innocent man is not an occasion for celebration, but a cause for reflection." Syed Abdul Rehman Gilani, on his being acquitted by the Supreme Court on charges of conspiracy in the "13th December, 2001 : Attack on Parliament" Case. August, 4, 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the 4th of August, 2005 (yesterday) the Supreme Court of India gave its verdict on the 13th December, 2001 'Attack on Parliament' Case, acquitting two of the original accused, SAR Geelani, lecturer in Arabic at Zakir Husain College, Delhi and Afshan Guru (aka Navjot Sidhu) wife of one of the accused Shaukat Husain Guru, and upholding the death sentence pronounced by the Delhi High Court and the Special POTA court on Mohammad Afzal. The High Court's pronouncement of a death sentence on Shaukat Husain Guru was commuted to 10 years imprisonment. In announcing this verdict, the Supreme Court of India upheld the Delhi High Court's acquital of SAR Geelani and Afshan Guru. Geelani had been sentenced to death, and Afshan Guru awarded five years of rigorous imprisonment by the judge of the special POTA court, S.N. Dhingra on the 18th of December, 2002. The Justices P.V. Reddy and P.P. Naolekar, while acquitting SAR Geelani on the grounds that the prosecution was not able to present adequate evidence against the accused, maintained that there was still a 'needle of suspicion' against SAR Geelani, but that suspicion alone could not form the basis of a sentence in the absence of robust evidence. With the pronouncement of this verdict by the highest judicial authority of the Republic of India, a sordid chapter in the history of this republic has come to a provisional and uncertain conclusion. One hesitates to use the term 'end' because the unpredictable nature of events as they unfold, perhaps in the immediate future, perhaps due to a random discovery in the archives many decades hence, may yet deliver us another 'turn' in the unravelling of this story which might still give cause to startle us all. Or it might not, and as in what befalls many unexplained twists and turns in the script of our times. we may learn to become inured to the tug of an uncomfortable and persistent memory of things and people that went amiss. Like the 'out-takes' in footage that never quite made it into a film, about which we can say that we have a memory of being present as witnesses at the shooting, but little or no recall of ever having seen them on screen, like papers, documents, transcripts, bodies and memories that turn to dust and are scattered - the history of the attack on the Parliament of India too will in all likelihood become a hazy recollection with only the words and images of 'terrorists' and 'martyrs' and 'threat to national security' thrown up in bold relief, and with all else obscured within a labyrinth of shadows. Some people call this forgetting, others call it history. The history of the Republic of India could fill an archive of lost memories. Perhaps there needs to be, somewhere near India Gate, not far from the present 'National Archives' and the Parliament, a site earmarked for a building to house a 'National Archive of Forgetting'. A building - part Lutyens, part Le Corbusier, part Raj Rewal, part Kafka and part Borges, that in its architectural imagination would do true justice to the delicate combination of pomp, paranoia and amnesia that buttresses the foundations of the republic. While there may be widespread relief in the knowledge that SAR Geelani and Afshan Guru are now acquitted (if not unconditionally exonerated) by the judicial apparatus, the turn of events does not give anyone any cause for celebration. Neither the Delhi Police and the prosecution, who have seen their arguments fall like so many dead birds from the judicial sky. Those who have stood by Geelani and sought to defend him can breath easier, and pause at the end of the maelstorm that has occupied their sleeping and waking hours, but their is little cause to rejoice. The court has maintained that there is a 'needle of suspicion' even as it has not been able to show any evidence to substantiate this charge. We need to ask how this 'needle of suspicion' got created, and why it continues to persist, quivering in the minds of the judges even as they comb swathes of missing and faulty and forged evidence. As Geelani himself said in a press conference immediately after the pronouncement of the verdict, the "The acquital of an innocent man is not an occasion for celebration, but a cause for reflection." Why, after all did the police and concerned security agencies, and large sections of the 'independent' media have to go to such lengths to frame a man against whom they could not provide a shred of quality evidence in the special POTA court, in the High Court, and in the Supreme Court? Now that at least two of the accused can walk free, and one other can live (albeit in prison) we need to begin to ask what really happenned. Some others may have to do whatever is necessary and permissible under the law to ensure that Shaukat Husain too is able to to leave prison sooner and that Mohammad Afzal does not take the final walk to the gallows. The doubts about the circumstances that led to the attack on the Indian parliament will persist as long as the primary actors in the case do not reveal, or are not compelled to reveal, through the process of an independent and impartial inquiry the roles that they have played. A committee to demand precisely such an inquiry has indeed been constituted by a group of citizens, but as of now, no agency of the state, or civil society, and no voices of substance in the media have either endorsed or echoed their demand. If Mohammad Afzal is indeed executed, then some of the truths that he alone (barring some of his handlers and interrogators) has access to, will follow him to his grave.In the event that the spin doctors of the media continue to play the role that they have played so honorably in the duration of this entire set of trials, it is unlikely that anything approximating the truth will ever be made available to the public in India, or indeed, anywhere in the world. The gentlemen and women of the fourth estate, the shining knights of the free press and electronic media of India will once again have demonstrated their willingness to construct an elaborate machine made out of smoke and mirrors that does more to conceal than to reveal. For an alternative version of the events to eventually emerge, it is crucial that Mohammad Afzal's death sentence be challenged, and that SAR Geelani (on whose life there have been two extra-judicial attempts, once while he was in prison, and again outside his advocate Nandita Haksar's residence by an as yet unidentified assailant in February this year). Both Geelani and Afzal need to live if we are to get any closer to the truth of what happenned on the 13th of December 2001, and why Geelani was framed. It is vital to understand that the 'climate of suspicion' that has led to Afzal's conviction, and to the Supreme Court's unwarranted remark that a 'needle of suspicion' still points at Geelani are a product of more than four years of consistent information management and the production of images. Judges, like the rest of us, are as likely to be swayed by these images and processed bodies of information in the media, and we need to be sharply aware at least of the fact that the management and processing of information is a key element in the realpolitik of 'terrorism and counter-terrorism' before we jump to any conclusions about appotioning guilt and innocence. My hunch is that the criticial media literacy of the highest judiciary of the Republic of India is not so immaculate at the present as to render it immune to prejudice.The role played by the production of moving images, in film and video, in cinema and on television is particularly pertinent here, and I will attend to this in some greater detail later in this essay. As of now, barring a presidential pardon, or the unlikely re-opening of the case, Afzal will hang. One hopes, for all our sakes, that it is otherwise, and that the circumstances that led to the alleged 'terrorist' attack on the parliament of what is sometimes loosely called the 'largest democracy in the world' , to the passing of the most draconian preventive detention law by the legislature of the same 'largest democracy' - (the thankfully now repealed POTA,) and the situation of near war that lasted for more than a year between two nuclear weapons states who are also neighbours, will one day become available in the public domain. Until then, the delicate combination of secrecy and hyperbole, of understatement and exaggeration, of straight lies and half cooked truths, of skullduggery and sentimentality, will continue to taint the history of communication practices in our republic of forgotten truths and remembered illusions, where (as elsewhere), the 'media', the 'television and film industries' and the 'intelligence community' dance an elegant tango in which it sometimes becomes difficult to discern who leads who on the dance floor. This text is only a call for a sustained meditation on this condition. And an attempt, to account for and ask some questions about the overproduction of images and the aporiae within them that surround the representations of what is called 'terrorism', the events of the 13th of December,and the trials that followed. I do not pretend to give a comprehensive account of what happenned, because I do not possess the necessary critical forensic-legal apparatus by way of training, nor am I an expert media 'analyst'. I am a media practitioner, and I write this from the standpoint of someone who practices media and who observes what others practice. I do hope however, that reading this might prompt those who have the necessary legal-forensic apparatus, or who may lay claim to being expert media analysts, to ask some hard questions on the role that the media have played in this case, and with regard to the respresentation of 'terrorism and counter-terrorism' in general, and provoke some reason for introspection within the community of media practitioners. A thorough enqiry into these matters will make it necessary for us to examine a whole range of materials - charge-sheets, court records, depositions, defence and prosecution arguments, judgements as well as news reports, television news and current affairs programmes, televised enactments or dramatizations and feature length fiction films. This text is a culled from preliminary notes towards such an excercise, but even in making these notes I have become aware of the fact that the task of reflection on the media requires us to consider media materials, not as isolates, but as elements in a networked reality. Where cinema, television, newspaper reportage and even public service messages enter into elaborate interweaving feedback loops that re-inforce and sustain each other, either through direct quotation, or through narrative 'enhancements' that create a situation where each message enhances its claim to credibility by relying on the credentials of the other. Thus, when hearing a voice say authoritatively on a televised commentary accompanying a visual of a slain man's visage that the face belongs to a 'terrorist' we are implicitly being asked to invoke 'images' of terrorists faces that we may have seen in fiction film. Conversely, when a fiction film consciously evokes the aesthetic register of the rough hewn 'documentary' look and feel of news reportage when invoking terrorism, it is doing so in order to buttress its own claim to credibility. Events and processes such as the 'reading' of 13th December and its aftermath take place at the intersections of a densely networked media space, where messages, memories, events, and mediums relay and overlay each other. These realities make the task of sophisticated and sensitive readings of media, not an academic excercise but an urgent political task, that has bearings not only on the destinies of our polity but also, as in the 13th December case, on the life and death of individuals. The galling neglect, incapacity or unwilllingess, on the part of a vast majority of media scholars and critics in India to undertake this excercise, and the lax ethical standards of many media practitioners has in the final analysis to be read against what happens to us as a polity, and what happens to the lives of individuals and to those close to them. For too long we have looked at media materials - be they film, or television, or print as if they exist in isolated, hermetic universes . This mode of analysis that sees 'cinema as cinema alone' and that does not take into account the networked information world inhabited and created by viewers, readers, audiences and producers of media materials through a constant process of interactive, cross referential and self referential iteration of media objects is totally inadequate when it comes to the task of understanding the place of images, sounds, words and information that attempt to express the contemporary realities we live in. It is important to remember that on seeing the pictures of the bodies of the slain alleged 'terrorists' who entered the precincts of the Parliament building on the morning of the 13th of December, the then home minister, Lal Krishna Advani is said to have remarked that the assailants 'looked like Pakistani Terrorists'. Advani must have known what he was talking about (at least the part about their looking like 'Pakistanis' ) since he looks a lot like a Pakistani himself (as do many north Indians and migrants to India like Advani from the provinces of British India that became West Pakistan in 1947). But more importantly, he was able to assert the fact that they looked 'like...terrorists'. It is important to pause and consider how exactly we know that someone looks like 'terrorists'. The Delhi police, which has had considerable experience in handling 'terrorists' and 'terrorism' over the years, has reminded us in a series of thoughtful public service advertisements that 'terrorists' are suspicious because they stand out by virtue of their somewhat unusual appearance and behaviour (they were clothing unsuited to the weather etc) , and that simultaneously they are suspicious precisely because they blend in so easily with the general population. It is this combination of 'standing out' and 'blending in' at the same time that causes alarm. It is possible to say that one can't quite make out if a person 'stands out' if he/she 'blends in' at the same time. But to this, like Advani, we know that we can respond with certainty, because we feel we know that when we see a 'terrorist' we will be able to recognize one. After all, we have 'seen' people who convincingly embody 'terrorism' many times. We have seen them on identikit photographs pasted on to walls and street corners, we have seen their disfigured, hooded and blurred faces in newspaper and magazine photographs and television reports, and we have seen them up close, countless times in mainstream cinema. We have seen the face of the terrorist so often, and so intimately as a moving image that in a sense the terrorist actually lives in our own heads, and where we to ever come across his body, living or dead, or his image, we would be immediately in a position to cross check his features against the indelible impress of those features in our nervous system. The production of terrorism is not something that happens sui generis. The production of terrorism is almost always, in every society, also a production of images of terror. In fact the fear that terrorism induces in general terms is not so much by way of the actual impact of explosives, gun shots and incendiary or lethal materials but by way of a circulation and amplification of images and their effects. We know this from every instance of spectacular terrorism that we have witnessed in the last hundred or so years. So much so that even more or less arbitrary calendrical notations like 9/11, 12/13 or now, more recently, 7/7, become indexical images of terror. All we need to do is to see a particular alphanumeric arrangement to experience at the very least a twinge of the recognition of of the feeling that terror induces. If the production of terrorism is so interlaced with the production of images, we can also say that the production of certain images is also linked to a climate that gives credibility to the production of a certain set of seemingly self evident truths about terrorism. Sometimes to create the consequences that a terrorist incident produces it is necessary to create a strong body of images that will serve the necessary purposes in a focused way. The tried and tested tactics of infiltration into existing terror cells or political groups, or the creation of such cells were none exist, or when those that exist are too weak to perform a spectacular act of terror are well documented in the extant literature on the work and function of intelligence agencies of various states. The MI6 's murky relationships to the IRA, and later, the provisional IRA, Mossad's successful infiltration of the Palestinian Abu Nidal group, and the Italian and Belgian intelligence agencies dealings with the mafia, ex-nazis, far right militias, fascists and secret societies in setting off a chain of spectacular terrorists incidents in the 1980s (including the Bologna train station bombing of 1974 and 1980 that killed 113 people and wounded 180) that could later be attributed to 'left wing' terrorists is very well documented, as is the history of the infiltration of the 'naxalite' movement in India in the 1970s by Indian intelligence bureau and special police operatives. The picture of a shadowy dalliance between 'terrorism' and' counter-terrorism', between 'militants' and 'surrendered miltiants', between people in and out of different kinds of uniform is also beginning to emerge from the battlegrounds of Kashmir, Assam and the North East. Miltiary intelligence officers, 'special task force' personnel, intelligence bureau operatives and a host of 'free lance' professionals occasionally masquerading as 'insurgents' to give effect to 'special operations' is freely written about in magazines like 'Force' - a journal specifically catering to the professional needs and realities of 'armed forces and security personnel' in India. There is no reason to suppose that the tacticians and strategists of the 'intelligence community' that owes its fealty to the Indian state do not from time to time have to consider it necessary to 'create' or manufacture instances of terrorism, when it suits the purposes of the state to do so. This is standard practice worldwide, especially under the conditions of the 'global war against terror', and there is no reason to suppose that Indian intelligence professionals are anything but abreast of key global trends in this regard. This 'creation' of terrorism is something that generally requires a calibrated media strategy and information management such that the bodies and actions that characterize a particular operation can be 'rendered' in a manner that is convincing and useful. The overproduction of enthusiastic and detailed reports on the supposed backgrounds, past lives and actions of the primary accused in the 13th December case bear an overwhelming stamp of such a close alignment between the need to create a body of convincing 'evidence' on the part of the security and intelligence community and the media's thirst for a meaty story. Television channels and newspapers routinely projected the accused and arrested as 'terrorist masterminds and co-conspirators' without even the caveat that this was as alleged by their captors. The enthusiastic reportage of the 'arrest' of the prime accused Afzal, Shaukat Husain and Geelani, which in some instances bordered on the hysterical, particularly in the week following the 14th of December, (when Geelani was detained under POTO) is particularly noteworthy. In the stories that began to make their appearance, the swoops were a result of the brilliant investigations carried out by the police on the mobile phone records of the phones and sim cards found on the bodies of the alleged slain terrorists. Not one newspaper or television channel paused to ask why a group of terrorists going on what could clearly be a 'suicide mission' or one in which the chances of their being captured was very high, should carry identity cards, diaries detailing their actions and plans and mobile phones that could be made to yield entire directories of their contacts. No one paused to ask what can only be very reasonable questions about the veracity and provenance of these records and documents, nor were any questions raised about the absence of stringent forensic procedures and criteria pertaining to the recovery of data from these documents. Court records show that the phone records relevant to the conversations between Afshan Guru and Shaukat or to certain conversations that Geelani is said to have had that were produced by the police as evidence (after much dithering) are actually of the days 'after' they were detained. Not a single newspaper or television news programme in those days, or in the early days of the trial in the special POTA court could exhibit the necessary degree of reticence or patience required in the handling of a case as sensitive as this one. If the investigating authorities or the prosecution, or the police said that phone records said something, no one actually asked to see the phone records, or to examine the dates, let alone the content of what transpired. The fact that the death sentences handed out by the POTA court were on the basis of false, forged, or inadmissible or absent evidence was not remarked upon by any news channel. A notable exception however, which should not go unremarked is the reportage of the case in the Hindu, which, barring a stray story in the early days, was marked by balanced and faired reporting, especially the reports filed from the court by Anjali Mody and which even subjected other media reports of the case to some degree of critical scrutiny Finally, when the defence asked for the phone records to be produced and examined by independent and knowledgable witnesses, what came to light were discrepancies in translation and transcription. The fact that the translated sentence 'It becomes necessary sometimes' ('yeh kabhi kabhi zaroori hota hai'), apparently said in response to a question about 'what has happenned in Delhi' , which Geelani said referred to a domestic dispute and which the prosecution claimed was about the attack on parliament, and on which hinged the entire structure of the case against SAR Geelani was not found to be audible in the tape of the phone intercept when it was played repeatedly for the benefit of the two indpendent defence witnesses - a documentary fillmmaker, Sanjay Kak and a trade union activist, Sampath Prakash, both native Kashmiri speakers. It needs to be mentioned that while the media attention on SAR Geelani, as the 'intellectual preceptor' of the terrorists was particularly intense, it was less so with regard to Mohammad Afzal, the man whose 'confession' in detention, an instrument inadmissible in ordinary law as evidence (although permitted in POTA) escaped much by way of scrutiny. The media nailed Geelani on the basis of this confession. But the media did more. Newspapers detailed property Geelani is said to have amassed as rewards for his labours, as well as the minutiae of his contacts with a student of 'west asian' origin who must have been an 'arab terrorist'. But no newspaper or television channel ever mentioned, that Afzal identified as a former JKLF militant and fruit merchant, was in fact a 'surrendered miltiant' and that he had for seven years been harrassed by, and on occasion worked for, the 'Special Task Force' a shadowy counter-terrorism outfit that operates with impunity in Kashmir. The fact remains that in his statement to the court Afzal said unequivocally that he met one Tariq, a trusted lieutenant of the arch-terrorist 'Ghazi Baba' who is said to have motivated him to return to the ways of the 'jihad for azaadi' in an STF training camp in Dral in South Kashmir, and his wife's statement that Afzal was instructed to bring two of the men later identified as the 'slain terrorists' in the Parliament Attack to Delhi and provide them with shelter while they were in 'transit' by none other than his STF handlers, went unremarked, with one significant exception, to which we will refer later. It is interesting to speculate as to how some stories made their way into the media, and how some stories remained virtually 'out of bounds' even if they made their appearance sometimes in court documents. It is also interesting to consider whether this pattern of ommission and insertion or fabrication pointed to the collaborative authorship (between the police, the intellgience community, and the media professionals and channels/newspapers) of these media materials . It is still not clear as to where the origins of these stories lay, and why they appeared so frequently, and why they were given so much space. One thing is certain, the efficient public relations and media excercises carried out (whether through fear or favour, or simply, access) by the 'Special Cell' of the Delhi Police in order to make the journalists community simply re-produce what was fed to them in routine press briefings seems to have worked well. The operation worked particularly well with television, with several channels broadcasting 'exclusive' interviews with what seemed to be an affable and loqacious prime accused Mohammad Afzal on the 20th of December. If media professionals highlighted elements from Afzal's first 'confessions' in custody to substantiate their allegations against Geelani, they also obscured the fact that later, during the filming of the 'broadcast confession' of 18th December, Afzal explicitly denied the fact that Geelani had anything to do with the conspiracy. It was only when footage from this 'interview' was reproduced in a special Aaj Tak ('100 Days after the Attack') programme that it came to light that Afzal had actually explicitly exonerated Geelani. When SAR Geelani's defence lawyers called upon the Aaj Tak reporter who took that interview, Shams Tahir Khan as a witness, it became clear from his deposition that journalists had in fact been instructed, indeed threatened, by the much decorated Delhi Police 'Special Cell' officer and 'Encounter' specialist, ACP Rajbir Singh that airing the latter part of Afzal's 'confession' would invite dire consequences on any journalist present who chose to do so. These developments did not deter Zee News, one of the most zealous extra judicial prosecutors of the 13th december case from producing an extensive 'docu-drama' on 13th December which it aired on more than one occasion, even as the tgrial progressed including in the countdown to the final hearings in the special courts. This television programme has an interesting and chequered history. Its premiere screening too place in the august presence of the then home minister and dead Pakistani identification expert, L.K. Advani. Advani praised the film as an excellent example of investigative journalism and in fact even compared it to favourably to a subsequent Zee TV expose (on the attack on 'Akshardham' in Gujarat) saying that the former was much more meticulous and thoroughly produced. The film, which relayed and re-presented news, was itself news on the Zee News Channel, and its making was featured as a lead story on the Zee News network. The film, with a stentorian commentary by the Bollywood 'B' Movie Star Raza Murad, featured a troupe of actors, enacting the 'conspiracy'. The script of this television programme, as stated in a text insert at the begining of the programme is based on the charge-sheet of the Delhi Police in the case. What is particularly interesting are the many parallels, both in plot, mise-en-scene and narrative detail between the charge sheet, the Zee TV film and the Shahrukh Khan-Manisha Koirala starring film by Mani Ratnam - 'Dil Se'. We see the same procedures - procurement and manufacture of identity cards, the reconnaissance of the landmarks of Lutyens Delhi on winter days, the listening to hindi film music as terrorists work (on Radio in the film, downloaded from computers in the TV programme) the hint of romance, the presence of a hard line intellectual ideologue, the same locale - the alleyways of Old Delhi, around Karim's and the same method of masquerade as security 'personnel' . There is an uncanny similarity between the plots, almost as if the 'terrorists', the police investigators, and the producers of the docu-drama had seen the film together and discussed its merits in a film analysis class before going their separate ways to give form and shape to their different agendas. Or, could it be, that the police genre of literature and filmmaking, which often shapes the trajectories of alleged 'terrorist' incidents, found in 'Dil Se - 13 December' a suitable vehicle for the execution of one of their most complex plots till date? We will never know whether or not this is indeed the case, until some of the key actors in this 'film' decide to speak. But it is self evident that a private news network gaining access to the highest echelons of the home ministry in order to be able to re-enact and shoot on the grounds of the Parliament, with the extensive operational co-operational of police and security personnel points to a close embrace between the security appraratus and a media agency. And just as the justices of the Supreme Court may well have their reasons to continue to point their 'needles of suspicions', we too will have reason to begin looking for, and pointing, our needles of suspicion in the directions that they lead us. We will need to continue to ask questions as to why the events of 13 December and their aftermath needed the extent of 'spin doctoring' that we have seen? We will have to continue to ask why the prosecution's case in the 13 December case had to be argued, not only in the court, but also on air, in living rooms, between commercial breaks. There are no doubts left any more about the fact that the arguments were flimsy and untenable. That they were bad in law, and that they could not be sustained under cross examination. This is perhaps why they had to be buttressed with so much media hype, in the hope that TRP ratings would work where forensic evidence may fail. The dense tangle between film and reality in the 13 December case does not begin and end with 'Dil Se', there are two other films that bear looking at as well, (and there may well be more to come) one being '16 December', and the other 'Khaki'. The two films have two distinct approaches, and are noteworthy not because I think they influenced what I think is the 'scripting' of 13 December, but because they are mirrors through which 13 December can be read. 16 December (titled so because it happens to be the date on which India won the 1971 war against Pakistan, and so is the date when in the film, a Pakistani soldier turned terrorist wants to unleash a nuclear attack on Delhi as an act of vengeance). As can be expected, the film features a dedicated bunch of Indian intelligence operatives (including the model turned actor Milind Soman who portrays a surveillance expert, with a special fondness for mobile phones) who foil the plot and save Delhi, India and the world from Nuclear Armageddon. What is interesting about 16 December is the way in which it 'naturalizes' surveillance technologies, (CCTV cameras, satellite based video surveillance, human surveillance through street based 'agents' who happen to be an army of blind beggars with sharp ears, and mobile phone interception) to produce a seamless evidentiary narrative. Mobile phones are high technology, the capacity to tap mobile phones is still higher technology and truth flows out of higher technology. What is even more interesting is a remarkable sequence in the film when the entire intelligence apparatus connives to create a 'simulation', an image of a location in far away Afghanistan on the floor of a 'film studio' so as to hoodwink a drugged and captured 'terrorist' into talking. This tacit admission of the practice by intelligence agencies of 'staging' incidents relating to 'terrorism' as a measure necessary in order to combat terrorists is almost like a sudden revelation of the 'repressed' narrative of how intelligence agencies actually create the realities that we think they are combatting. One might recall also the climactic revelation in the Sanjay Dutt-Jackie Shroff-Hrithik Roshan starrer 'Mission Kashmir' (with its own oblique references to the enigmatic figure of 'Ghazi Baba') of how a 'video simulation' of 'terrorists in Indian army uniforms' (found during the course of a raid by Indian military personnel dressed as 'terrorists' on a 'terrorist hideout' ) blowing up a Muslim holy shrine in Srinagar in Kashmir is yet another instance of the way in which the 'production of images' is seen as key to the 'production of terror'. The deliberate confusion in the appearance of combatants in and out of uniform, of masked men who appear in the middle of the night and wreck devastating violence, in the pursuit of an 'image', who could be, 'militants' or 'soldiers' or 'both' is a reflection of the shadowy realities that have overtaken Jammu and Kashmir. Here, as we observed earlier, we know who is who, even though the 'terrorist' - 'stands out' and 'blends in' at the same time. It is as if the apparatus of illusion that is the cinema had taught many lessons to the secondary art of the moving image of statecraft, at least in its 'terror/counter-terror' avatar. Seen in the light of the extraordinary 'entente cordiale' between security and intelligence agencies and the image producing agencies of the media in India, the film '16 December' becomes an interesting if unwitting source for the making of an oblique comment on the reality of '13 December'. In a similar, though perhaps more conscious vein, the film 'Khaki' (starring Amibtabh Bacchan, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgun, Arshad Warsi and Aishwarya Rai) actually invoked the figure of a 'rogue security agent' acting to protect what he thinks are the interests of the nation state, by seeking to eliminate what we are at first led to believe is a 'suspected terrorist mastermind' - a Dr. Ansari, whose appearance, demeanour and dignified silence, particularly in the first half of the film, cannot but fail to bring to mind what we know of SAR Geelani. Ansari is later revealed to be someone who knows 'vital information' about the engineering of a communal riot by corrupt politicians (shades of 'Gujarat 2002 here) and his silence is an effort to protect what he knows so that he can reveal it at the most appropriate moment. Although the film follows the formula of good cops versus 'rogue' cops (not exactly 'bad' cops, but cops used by shadowy forces within the state beyond their control) it again points out the macabrely pantomimic character of 'war against terror'. What do 'Dil Se', 'Mission Kashmir', '16 December' on the one hand, and the Zee TV docu-dramas add up to? They add up to the metaphorical identikit photograph of the terrorist in our heads whom we can recognize when we look at almost anyone's face, regardless of whether they 'stand out', or 'blend in'. This is the terrorist writ large as 'everyman' so much so that Zee TV can use the footage from the 're-enacted' scenes of the 13 December film even in another programme, an 'Inside Story' special broadcast barely on 'the Al Qaeda Terror Manual' on the evening of the 24th of July, in the wake of the London bombings of the 7th of July and barely days before the final Supreme Court verdict on the 13 December case on the 4th of August. This programme, which can be seen as a sort of do-it-yourself 'how to become a terrorist even if you never thought of becoming one', with details of how to obtain and mix chemicals to make bombs, the details of poisoning drinking water systems, how to form cells and conduct communications using codes, etc (in a classic example of the 'system' actually egging people on to become the 'terrorists' that it can then frighten the rest of us with) again used the same scenes of the actors playing Geelani, Shaukat, Afzal and the five dead men. Though this time it did not name them. But anyone who had seen the earlier '13 December' film would immediately recognize once again the fictionalized SAR Geelani hectoring his cell comrades in the sequence on 'organization of terrorist cells'. Just as anyone who had seen the '13 December' film would have seen the gratuitous and grainy images of 'terrorists' training under pine trees and of a televised 'encounter' with the late and larger than life 'Ghazi Baba' caressing a strangely shaped 'Scorpion' pistol in what was marked 'file footage' Like a nightmare or a bad b movie that condemns its audience to constant re-runs, the 'images' of the Zee News-Delhi Police Special Cell Co Production collaborative genre of 'terrorism' refuses to give up its ghost. It returns to haunt our television screens, back to back with 'Crime Reporter' and a host of other sensational programmes that can only be described as a sad case of police-porn-snuff movies on late night but prime time television. It returned to our screens momentarily when Geelani was shot by an unidentified gunman in Delhi on the 9th of February, 2005. When earnest reporters, and television news anchors, across channels, for several days following the incident, instead of asking why the police were constantly shadowing Geelani, his brother, his friends, asked why his advocate had thought it wise to save his life by taking him immediately to hospital, and not wait for him to succumb to his injuries as she went through the process of filing, first and foremost, a 'proper FIR (first information report) as per procedure, with the Delhi police' The night of 4thAugust, 2005 (yesterday) was occasion for broadcasts on the final supreme court judgement on the 13 December case. These broadcasts, produced once again the latest (and perhaps last) episode in this continuing 'b' series TV show. Zee News produced yet another 'special' dovetailed into its prime time news show at 9 PM. This time it was titled - '13 December : Ek Saazish'. The news report had shown a high ranking Delhi police special cell officer Ashok Chand (in a split screen with the first ever viewing of surveillance camera footage from the Parliament on 13 December) offer an explanation of the splendid conduct of the Delhi Police in the case, after all, Afzal had been convicted as a result of the investigation. The others could not be convicted, because, as the reporter explained to the anchor in the studio, the terrorists had used high technology - mobile phones and laptops. And what this implied was that we need better and stricter laws to deal with such high tech terrorists, so that no one would be able to get away. There is some irony in the fact that the 'very high techonology' which had helped the police write their charge sheets in the first instance, was now being blamed for their inability to fix the blame on say, a Geelani, on whom, the report continued to assert, the 'needle of suspicion' stayed firm and unwavering, though somewhat unsubstantially. So, mobile phones help catch 'terrorists', mobile phones are also so high tech that they can be used by those 'terrorists' and their advocates to subvert the commendable work done by hard working police officers. Therefore bring back laws, or make new laws that can make the task of using evidence from mobile phones and other high tech devices 'easier' for the prosecution. In other words, bring back or make laws that enable phone tapping and surveillance on a generalized scale, that facilitate the faulty transcription and translation of tapped conversations, that enable the manipulation or obfuscation of phone records,and that do not have to produce the taped evidence in court in order to obtain a necessary conviction, and that enable the airing and unofficial pre-censoring of 'interviews' of the accused in detention in the media while a trial is in process, so that television network news executives can have an easier nights sleep and count their takings. In a remarkable admission, and in passing, while playing once again the 'dramatization' of Afzal's indoctrination (once again from the '13 December' film) the Zee News broadcast commentator said in passing what was to the effect - 'Afzal was a surrendered militant, he had worked off and on for the STF for seven years, and he had met Tariq in an STF camp in Dral'. Why was this piece of information which had been available in the court records, like everything else in this case, since the 21st of September, 2002, not made public knowledge either in the previous Zee News programmes, or in any programmes thereafter to inform the public. Any reasonable person would surmise that a person who has been in regular contact with intelligence operatives of the Indian state, who has been harrassed by them, who has had money extorted by them (as per his wife's statement made to a newspaper) must also be asked what relationships these operatives had to the sequence of events leading up to 13 December. If one needle of suspicion points at 'militants' and their handlers, whether local or across the border, then, clearly, another 'needle of suspicion' (which looks stronger, at least, circumstantially) also points to the activities and personnel of the shadowy agency or cluster of agencies called the 'Special Task Force'. Until these details are investigated, we cannot come to any certain conclusion about who Afzal is, what role he played, and why he has to die. Why also, were the surveillance camera footage of the vehicle seen proceeding towards the parliament building about as far as the 'Red Cross Road-Sansad Marg' roundabout not ever made public before? Was it because the channel had to 'wait' until the case was satisfactorily 'closed'. Surely any journalist or television producer would know that the vicinity of the parliament and other sensitive government buildings have been photographed on CCTV cameras for a long time. Surely an analysis of the movement of the car, as seen in this footage would be able to tell us something about how the car was approached, which barriers it crossed and how. Could it be that the white ambassador car we see in the surveillance footage had prior clearance to approach the parliament, at least till a sufficient distance, before all hell could break loose. Could it be, that those watching the white car approach, were watching, and waiting. In the end, more questions than ever, remain un-answered. About the conduct of the intelligence and security agenices, about the conduct of the media and about our gullibility as citizens to be quick to condemn, first SAR Geelani, and now Mohammad Afzal. Questions remain about the fact that news channels and papers can see it fit never to apologize either to SAR Geelani and Afshan Guru for the deliberate distortions of the truth that these organs of the media were party to, throughout the course of the trials. Not once, did Zee News or any other news channel offer an apology to any of the accused, or to the public for the emotional stress that their broadcasts may have caused, even as they continued to highlight the 'plight' of the families of the 'martyred' security and other personnel who fell in the line of duty on December 13, 2001. Even in the telecast of the 4th of August, 2005, Zee News considered it necessary to provoke the family members of one of the 'martyred' security personnel into an outburst demanding death for all the accused. It did not however deem it necessary to reflect on the fact that the families of SAR Geelani, Afshan Guru, Shaukat Husain or Mohammad Afzal too had had to suffer, first knowing that their loved ones were in prison, that they were brutally tortured, and that they had to go through the trauma of hearing that they had been awarded death sentences. Not once did any news channel ever apologize for creating and sustaining the climate of suspicion against people who were ultimately acquitted, they did not see it necessary to issue a single note of regret to their viewers for having failed to live up to their stated claims of providing free, fair, fearless and objective reportage. The events of 13 December and their aftermath, along with the sad episode of the Kargil War, are probably the nadir as far as a deviation from media ethics and professional standards are concerned for a vast swathe of the 'free and independent media' in India. In the end, the truth, or the truths (there may be many and conflicting truths) may yet turn out to be more complex and disturbing than either Zee News or the Supreme Court of India can permit themselves to imagine or ask. Zee News, or 'any other alphabet News' is not asking, at least not yet, any of those slightly difficult questions. And if the Supreme Court of India is to have its way, Afzal is going to hang some day. Some of the answers will die with him. SAR Geelani remains alive, and we hope he lives long, but as he has himself said, - let us not celebrate the acquital of the innocent, let us instead pause to reflect on where we are and how we got here. Geelani has reminded us that his fate is not special, that there are many in his generation, in Kashmir and elsewhere who have had to go through things that are as bad, or worse. And few have had his good fortune, to come out of it alive and sane. For their sake, and so that Geelani's quiet and dignified fight for justice for those still in prison, or are facing the gallows, or have 'disappeared', or have turned up with bullets in their heads, we must all continue to ask some very hard questions, for a very long time. It is possible that the mainstream media will be a weapon in the process of silencing such questions. It is also possible that professionals in the mainstream media will become more aware and sensitive to the ethical and professional demands associated with their practice, and will occasionally refuse to toe the lines dictated in smoke filled back rooms where channel executives, editors, senior correspondents and intelligence agents gather for quiet chats. We hope for the latter, the demands of justice, and freedom in South Asia will depend on such acts of refusal to 'spin' stories out of blood and smoke. August 5, 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES and ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have relied extensively on the information (court records, deposition etc) and analysis undertaken, collected and collated in 'December 13 : Terror over Democracy' by Nirmalangshu Mukherjee, 2005, published by Promilla and Co. Publishers, in association with Bibliophile South Asia, New Delhi and Chicago. I acknowledge my gratitude for the scholarly diligence and care with which Nirmalangshu Mukherjee unravels the December 13 case. I have also relied on the report of the meeting to discuss the media trial of SAR Geelani held at Sarai CSDS in. I would also like to acknowledge conversations that I have had with Nandita Haksar and Vrinda Grover while thinking about the background to the 13 December case. For more information on the 13 December Case please see the website of the All India Defence Committee for SAR Geelani Also see Nandita Haksar's article in Sarai Reader 04 Tripta Wahi's article in Sarai Reader 05 and, an earlier posting by me on the Reader List : The Worst is Always Precise, http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2002-December/002080.html which has links to several newspaper reports relevant to the 13 December case The films I watched while thinking about this text were 'Dil Se' (Director : Mani Ratnam, 1998), 'Mission Kashmir' (Director : Vidhu Vinod Chopra, 2002), '16 December' (Director, Mani Shankar, 2002) , 'Khaki' ( Director : Raj Kumar Santoshi, 2003) and the Zee News Telefilm on 13 December, as well as the Zee News 'Inside Story' on the Al-Qaeda Terror Manual, broadcast on 24th July, 2005, and the News at 9 and Special Programme at 9:30 : '13 December Ek Saazish' also broadcast on Zee News on the evening of July 4, 2005. I also watched several news broadcasts on Aaj Tak, NDTV, Rashtriya Sahara and Zee News, through the course of the successive trials in the special POTA court, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court. Readers interested in the murky history of the invovlement of European State intelligence agencies under the ambit of 'Operation Gladio' to 'create' incidents of terrorism and sustain a 'strategy of tension' particularly in Italy are advised to refer to 'Fascism and the Establishment : Italy and the Strategy of Tension' http://struggle.ws/freeearth/fe3_italy.html. Google searches incorporating the words 'Gladio, P2, Italy, Belgium' are also likely to yield interesting results. An equally interesting though less candid account of the work of intelligence agencies in India, particularly the IB, by a former intelligence operative, can be found in 'Open Secrets: India’s Intelligence Unveiled' By Maloy Krishna Dhar, Manas Publication, Delhi, 2005 -- Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Raqs Media Collective) The Sarai Programme Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054, India Phone : + 91 11 23960040 Fax : + 91 11 23943450 E Mail : shuddha at sarai.net http://www.sarai.net http://www.raqsmediacollective.net From tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in Fri Aug 5 20:16:16 2005 From: tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in (Tapas Ray) Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 20:16:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world Message-ID: <012d01c599cc$99ccef90$0100a8c0@tapas> I am a confirmed lurker on this list (as in a few others), who prefers listening to talking. But I find myself sufficiently intrigued by the posts of this person, who calls herself/himself "Vedavati Jogi", to say a few things. I hope people here will pardon me if my post shows that I have missed something. I do confess that I haven't read everything over the last few days. I am not at all certain that this person is who s/he claims to be. Please note that the name "Vedavati Jogi" translates as a female yogi, who has acquired the wisdon of the Vedas ... should have been "Jogini", but that would have given the game away, and in any case Jogi fits in nicely as a surname, because we all have heard of Ajit Jogi, haven't we? The point here is, the name seems too perfect to be real. I suspect it has been dreamt up by some prankster. Please also note this jogi's/jogini's email address - vrjogi at hotmail.com. Good old Hotmail, which - like scores of other free email services - lets you assume any name that your fertile brain can think up. Not for them the rigours of identity and address proof (which I have had to provide to VSNL before being given an account). What may be the nature of the prank? Again, my suspicion is that this person is playing the devil's advocate. If s/he were sincerely advocating the devil's cause, I think s/he would have been - well, tried to be - a little less crude in her/his advocacy. Whatever it is - whether or not s/he has her/his tongue in her/his cheek - would it be too much to ask this person to raise the level of her/his invectives a little? If s/he does, that will give everybody a chance to actually discuss things. Just a thought - even though this list is not moderated, is it not possible to bounce someone if she/he makes a nuisance of herself/himself? Tapas Ray > hearty congratulations mr. ashok. you could dare to expose these > psedosecularists, they are more > dangerous than terrorists. can secularism be more imporatant than > nationalism? i sincerely feel > indian secularism is all 'bakwas'. these secularists will not mind selling > off this country to > terrorists because latter happened to be the muslims. > i am a maharashtrian married to a kashmiri pandit who has become regugee > in his own country. as > they are hindus nobody in interested in their welfare because this act > will tarnish their secular > image. 'talking to pakistan' 'talking to terrorists' etc. etc. is secular > because they are > muslims. i hate this pseudo secularism i hate these secularists. > vedavati ravindra jogi From vijender_chauhan at hotmail.com Fri Aug 5 22:45:51 2005 From: vijender_chauhan at hotmail.com (vijender chauhan) Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 22:45:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: <012d01c599cc$99ccef90$0100a8c0@tapas> Message-ID: Hi, I need not be in agreement with 'thoughtful' argument going on with 'worthy' vedavati but mr Roy how come avid readers like you (as the claim go) can suggest 'silencing' the voice the way you suggest. No I don't have a better way out but it DO NOT mean endorsing 'fundamentalist like' way you are suggesting. When dispotism creep in it surely come this way only(A apparently rational way). And trust me once arrived it will not stop at silencing 'vedavatis of this world' only. It will surely reach Tapas' as well. So please let the wisdom prevail and let it be so through a process only. Hope you all will consider vijender
From: Tapas Ray <tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in>
To: reader-list at sarai.net
Subject: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world
Date: Fri, 05 Aug 2005 20:16:16 +0530
>I am a confirmed lurker on this list (as in a few others), who
>prefers
>listening to talking. But I find myself sufficiently intrigued by
>the posts
>of this person, who calls herself/himself "Vedavati Jogi", to say a
>few
>things. I hope people here will pardon me if my post shows that I
>have
>missed something. I do confess that I haven't read everything over
>the last
>few days.
>
>I am not at all certain that this person is who s/he claims to be.
>Please
>note that the name "Vedavati Jogi" translates as a female yogi, who
>has
>acquired the wisdon of the Vedas ... should have been "Jogini", but
>that
>would have given the game away, and in any case Jogi fits in nicely
>as a
>surname, because we all have heard of Ajit Jogi, haven't we? The
>point here
>is, the name seems too perfect to be real. I suspect it has been
>dreamt up
>by some prankster.
>
>Please also note this jogi's/jogini's email address -
>vrjogi at hotmail.com.
>Good old Hotmail, which - like scores of other free email services -
>lets
>you assume any name that your fertile brain can think up. Not for
>them the
>rigours of identity and address proof (which I have had to provide
>to VSNL
>before being given an account).
>
>What may be the nature of the prank? Again, my suspicion is that
>this person
>is playing the devil's advocate. If s/he were sincerely advocating
>the
>devil's cause, I think s/he would have been - well, tried to be - a
>little
>less crude in her/his advocacy.
>
>Whatever it is - whether or not s/he has her/his tongue in her/his
>cheek -
>would it be too much to ask this person to raise the level of
>her/his
>invectives a little? If s/he does, that will give everybody a chance
>to
>actually discuss things.
>
>Just a thought - even though this list is not moderated, is it not
>possible
>to bounce someone if she/he makes a nuisance of herself/himself?
>
>Tapas Ray
>
>
>>hearty congratulations mr. ashok. you could dare to expose these
>>psedosecularists, they are more
>>dangerous than terrorists. can secularism be more imporatant than
>>nationalism? i sincerely feel
>>indian secularism is all 'bakwas'. these secularists will not mind
>>selling
>>off this country to
>>terrorists because latter happened to be the muslims.
>>i am a maharashtrian married to a kashmiri pandit who has become
>>regugee
>>in his own country. as
>>they are hindus nobody in interested in their welfare because this
>>act
>>will tarnish their secular
>>image. 'talking to pakistan' 'talking to terrorists' etc. etc. is
>>secular
>>because they are
>>muslims. i hate this pseudo secularism i hate these secularists.
>>vedavati ravindra jogi
>
>
>_________________________________________
>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: <https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/>
_________________________________________________________________ NRIs, does your family in India need money urgently? http://creative.mediaturf.net/creatives/icicibank/ICICI_NRI_ERA.htm Open an ICICI Bank NRI savings A/c From lawrence at altlawforum.org Sat Aug 6 10:10:38 2005 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Sat, 06 Aug 2005 10:10:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Enculturing Law Message-ID: HI All Passing on the details of A conference that may be of interest to many. http://www.cscsban.org/html/EnculLaw.htm Lawrence Enculturing Law: New Agendas for Legal Pedagogy Conference Organised in collaboration with Alternative Law Forum and National Law School of India University, Bangalore NLSIU Campus 11-13 August 2005 (Supported by IDPAD, New Delhi) Programme Schedule DAY 1 9:00 AM-9:30 AM: Inaugural 9:30 AM-11:00 AM. Keynote Session: Contemporary Challenges for Scholarship in Law Society and Culture Upendra Baxi (University of Warwick) - 'The Dominant, Residual, and the Emergent Cultures of Law: Some Voices From the Past' B.S.Chimni (National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkota) - 'The Future of the New Law Schools: Some Critical Reflections' Eleanor Wong (National University of Singapore) - 'Pedagogical challenges for en-culturing the law classroom: Reflections on the legal writing program at NUS' 11:00 AM-11:30 AM. - Tea Break 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM- Discussion after comments from session respondent: Prof. Babu Matthew (Currently Country Director, Action Aid India, New Delhi) 12:30-1:30 p.m - Lunch Break 1.30 PM - 2.30 PM Session 2: Critical and Interdisciplinary Traditions in Anglo-American Legal Scholarship Roger Cotterrell (Queen Mary and Westfield College, London) - 'Culture, Comparison, Community - Social Studies of Law Today' W T Murphy (London School of Economics) - 'Cultures of Criticism: Reflections on contemporary legal education' 2:30 PM-3:15 PM - Discussion after comments from session respondent: Sudhir Krishnaswamy (NLS, Bangalore) 3:15 PM- 3:30 PM - Tea Break 3.30 PM - 4.30 PM Session 3: Challenges for the Comparative Study of Legal Cultures Partick Glen (McGill University, Montreal) - 'Legal Systems, Legal Traditions and Legal Education' Volkmar Gessner (International Institute for the Sociology of Law, Onati) - 'Legalization and the Varieties of Capitalism' 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM - Discussion after comments from session respondent: Arun Thiruvendagam (Doctoral Candidate, New York University), and special respondent on the day's proceedings: Prof. Peter Van Der Veer (Co-Chair, IDPAD, The Netherlands). DAY 2 10 AM - 11.30 AM: Session 1: Reworking Legal Methods I: The Women's Question in Post-Colonial Societies: Challenges for a Comparative and Cultural Study of Law Hyunah Yang, Seoul National University, Seoul - 'Reading the Recent Changes in Korean Family Law: Toward a Postcolonial Legal Feminism in Asia' Jothi Sauntharajah (National University of Singapore) - 'Toying with Tradition: Law, CEDAW and Singapore' Flavia Agnes (Advocate, High Court of Mumbai) - 'Re-visiting the Personal Law Conundrum: Reflections on the Resolution of the Womens Question in Hindu Personal Law' 11:30 AM -11:45 AM - Tea Break 11:45 a.m - 12:45 p.m - Discussion after comments from session respondent: Dr. Rajeshwari Sundar Rajan (University of Oxford, UK) 12:45-1:30 p.m Lunch Break 1.30 PM - 2.00 PM Session 2: Reworking Legal Methods II: Social and Political Histories in the Study of Law Tanika Sarkar, Delhi University, Delhi - 'Between Laws and Faith: Hindu Personal Laws in the 19th Century Public Sphere' 2:00-2:45 p.m - Discussion after comments from session respondent: Janaki Nair (Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, Kolkata) 2:45 PM -3:00 PM - Tea Break 3.00 PM - 4.30 PM Session 3: Reworking Legal Methods III: Re-Focussing Rights: Reflections on the Place of 'Rights' in a Legal Classroom Jayadeva Uyandgoda (University of Colombo) - Righting the Wrongs in the Margins: Issues in Constitution Making in a Society in the Transition from War to Peace: Sri Lanka Jonathan Klaaren (University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) - 'The Globalisation of Governance: New challenge for conceiving regimes of rights" Oliver Mendelsohn (La Trobe University, Victoria) - 'What is Distinctive About Indian Law and How Can that Distinctiveness be Represented in the Classroom?' 4:30 pm -5:30 pm - Discussion after comments from session respondent: Dr. Sitaramam Kakarala, CSCS, Bangalore DAY 3 9.30 AM- 11.00 AM Session 1: New challenges for the cultural scholarship of law I: Law and the Study of Cinema (Organised by ALF) Anne Barron (London School of Economics) - 'The (Legal) Properties of Film: Copyright Law and Cultural Analysis' Ashish Rajadyaksha (CSCS) - 'On the Properties of Cinema: Why Law is Important for Cultural Analysis' 11.15 AM - 1.00 PM Session 2: New Challenges for the Cultural Scholarship of Law II: Law and the Study of Media Practices and Knowledge Production (Organised by ALF) Shuddhabrata Sengupta (The Sarai Programme, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi) - 'Cyber-culture, New Media and the Proliferation of Knowledge Production: Challenges for the Regulation of Knowledge Practices. Lawrence Liang and Namita Malhotra (ALF, Bangalore) - 'Media Practice as Legal Practice: Exploring the World of the Cinematograph Act, 1952' 1:00-2:00 p.m Lunch Break 2.00 PM - 3.00 PM Session 3: Rounding Up Exploratory discussions for future collaborations for research in Law Society and Culture, etc. For Further Details: Contact person: Mathew John, Fellow, The Law & Culture Programme Centre for the Study of Culture & Society (mathew at cscsban.org) Note on the Conference: This note seeks to address some of the critical problems facing contemporary legal education, especially legal education in large parts of the global south. While the problems are likely to be numerous and varying from context to context we try to identify some range of the possibly common problems that assume salience for a study of law in its social and cultural context. Not having full access to the range of challenges facing other social and legal contexts we start with the problems that animate our own efforts to initiate this conversation on legal education. The program for Law, Society and Culture at the Centre for the Study of Culture & Society (CSCS), Bangalore was set up in 2003 in order to address what we believe is a crisis in law teaching, research and scholarship in India. We see the problem at three levels: First: it is far from controversial today to assert that contemporary India has rather modestly developed traditions of legal scholarship. The legal community as well as other allied humanities disciplines have by and large failed in building a research project in law with distinctly Indian problems and possibilities. Model centres of legal teaching and research like the Indian Law Institute and the National Law School have also largely failed to definitively determine the paths of Indian legal scholarship. Thus even at its very best (though of course with a few notable exceptions) Indian legal scholarship has not managed to travel far beyond the production commentaries that chart the movement of doctrinal legal trends across various fields. Second: Modest research traditions have meant that the legal classroom has not been able to grapple with social problems outside the vicelike grip of doctrinal legal analysis. Though experiments like the National Law School in Bangalore have met with some success in moving beyond strict doctrinal approaches, the legal lens continues to blur when it falls upon approaches outside of its disciplinary frame. Teaching and learning law has therefore continued to remain a self-referential enterprise in the interpretation of rules. As a result, legal education in India has not been successful in going beyond meeting minimal requirement of producing 'legal technicians' for a range of legal markets. Collectively these two aspects of the problem give rise to a third problem. That is, the inability of legal education in India to respond holistically and meaningfully to contemporary challenges. This problem is made especially acute today with the collapse of the developmentalist/wefare state. Without the institutional and conceptual backing of the developmentalist state the contemporary Indian university in general and legal education in particular is unsure of the concerns that it ought to be contending with and consequently the content that academic programs must now assume. Though this discussion has been framed by the Indian example we suspect that it would roughly hold true for many other countries of the global south. The problem of the ideological crisis of the welfare/developmentalist state is however a far more general problem that throws open the question of the social mandate of legal education in all contexts across the world as well. There is therefore no denying the usefulness of comparative discussions through these problems. It is in this context that we propose a seminar to dialogue some range of the issues that we identified above from an international and comparative perspective. Exploring the promise of interdisciplinary study One way in which the CSCS Law and Culture Programme has sought to respond to the problems outlined above has been by advocating a strongly interdisciplinary approach to the study of law. Drawing heavily from social, cultural, economic, historical and anthropological approaches to law, the program has been committed to exploring an approach to contemporary social issues that would be distinct from the prevalent model emphasising doctrinal analysis. While the turn towards interdisciplinary study holds promise for a holistic response to social problems the usefulness of this approach is not necessarily self-evident and thereby raises a further range of questions. Some of them include - What shifts in the contemporary political economy and mindscapes have made for the generation of contemporary interdisciplinary study in law, society and culture? What merits does this mode of studying social phenomena possess? Does this mode of addressing problems make significant advances in the manner in which these problems have conventionally been addressed? If so, how? Is the cultural turn an alibi for the impossibilities and impasses in the study of human societies? If so how might we move beyond these stumbling blocks? Though one might not necessarily be convinced about the usefulness of the interdisciplinary approach one cannot help but notice its usefulness in identifying and studying distinct sets of pointed socio-legal conversations of considerable contemporary significance. Some examples of these exchanges relevant to India would include the debates on caste, the contests over rights to the urban metropolis, the challenge of religious and ethnic violence, issues of rights, the questions raised by women's movement in India and so on. Underpinning many of these debates are the concerns that frame legal systems in most parts of the global south through the tensions of Modernity and Tradition, Coloniality and Post-Coloniality as well as Orientalism and Post Orientalism. We believe that many of these conversations tease out interesting aspects of legal problems in contemporary India especially the difficulties involved in understanding the working of law in post-colonial contexts. It is against this background that we propose a three-day seminar to discuss the manner in which these issues are configured as challenges for legal education. Further we also believe that all or many of these concerns resonate with experiences in contexts beyond India. Therefore we expect the seminar to think through some of the issues outlined above from a range of international perspectives, a task made especially urgent by the challenges of globalisation and the global crisis in determining the social mandate of law, legal systems and legal education. Organisational Details and Particulars As organizers we believe that an ambitious academic exercise such as the one outlined above one cannot but be a truly cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary exercise in order to make it both meaningful as well as enriching. Accordingly we are hopeful that a wide range of scholars from across the world will contribute to the dialogue at the seminar. The seminar is structured as a set of three panels per day on each of the three days, with two to three speakers per panel and each panel moderated by a joint respondent. The audience beyond the participants will primarily be law students and other interested social science students from Bangalore and probably a few other parts of the country. Intellectually seminar breaks down as follows: The first day is concerned with socio-legal debates emanating from legal academy and the concerns that it will explore are: - 1. The institutional and epistemic challenges facing legal academy in the global south (through the case of India). 2. The burdens of the critical traditions in legal study ( i.e. Marxist tradition, feminist traditions, the Critical Legal Studies movement etc.) and their impact or usefulness in the study of contemporary social problems. 3. The challenge of comparative legal study given that liberal legal models are the templates that determine the contours of legal systems (jurisdictions) in most parts of the world. The second day deals with the way in which social scientist have found themselves confronted with legal problems, the manner in which they have addressed these problems and the place that such efforts must or could have on legal curricula. We hope to explore the following themes. 1. Law and the resolution of the women's question in post-colonial societies 2. The place of social and political histories in the study of law 3. The Margin of Rights: Post colonial critiques of rights discourses The third day will be put together by a collaborating organisation, Alternative Law Forum and will primarily address new forms of knowledge production outside the conventional university space and which have implications for the study of law. Home | About CSCS | Projects | Faculty | Media Archive | Courses | Contact us From jace at pobox.com Sat Aug 6 19:37:44 2005 From: jace at pobox.com (Kiran Jonnalagadda) Date: Sat, 6 Aug 2005 19:37:44 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] User interface on LiveJournal In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <84296581-F0AA-45DF-B5D6-C4537CBDBBC4@pobox.com> On 01-May-05, at 9:51 PM, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > 5. User pictures are critical to community on LiveJournal, > significantly more so than on other communities that allow > identifying icons. Userpics are used to convey not just identity > but also emotion. Like several other forums on the net, LiveJournal allows users to upload pictures of themselves. However, LiveJournal is unique in its approach to user pictures (userpics), with some interesting consequences. To begin with, while most sites require that the picture be of the account owner only, even penalising violations (eg. Orkut), LiveJournal places no such restrictions. Most LJers do not use their own picture (my observation). LiveJournal allows multiple userpics per account -- three for free accounts and fifteen for paid. Additional userpics can be purchased for an annual fee. Userpics can be assigned keywords. When making a post or a comment, the user can select from their defined keywords, and the corresponding picture is shown. If no keyword is selected, the picture marked as default is used. Pictures may be removed or replaced with other pictures bearing the same keywords, and all corresponding uses of the keyword will show the new picture. Most users organise their pictures and keywords to depict emotional states. Here is an example of a well-organised collection: http://www.livejournal.com/allpics.bml?user=minn Perhaps because of the large size allowed (100x100 pixels), userpics are very significant on LiveJournal. Pictures tend to be unique, well differentiated from the others. Consider this collage showing the userpics of the friends of a particular user: http://teemus.mozcal.org/friendsCollage/?username=luv_serendipity (thanks, teemus!) Users come to be identified by their pictures, and in conversations involving two or three correspondents, names are entirely ignored. However, while LiveJournal ensures that users may only post with their own accounts (or accounts they have access to), there is nothing stopping one user from using the same picture as another user. The uniqueness of a userpic is only guaranteed by common courtesy. This can have interesting consequences when users intentionally swap pictures. Here is one early experiment with participants swapping both pictures and writing styles: http://www.livejournal.com/users/khorgath/75988.html Sadly the effect is not visible now because (a) you need prior familiarity with the userpics, and (b) all these users deleted their adopted pictures when they ran into the picture limit, but didn't carry forward the picture keywords. I have attempted to recreate the page as it appeared in February 2003, using current pictures where the old ones were not available. Please look at both names and pictures carefully: http://home.seacrow.com/~jace/sarai/lj/userpic-swap.html Here is another experiment in which userpics speak louder than words in a conversation (also partially mangled): http://www.livejournal.com/community/pesit/2016.html?thread=6112#t6112 Online communities looking to understand how they can improve participation levels could do well to follow LiveJournal's model of userpic as identity. There is a lot more to this than I've covered, but due to time constraints, I will break here. -- Kiran Jonnalagadda http://www.pobox.com/~jace From tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in Sun Aug 7 07:29:55 2005 From: tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in (Tapas Ray) Date: Sun, 07 Aug 2005 07:29:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world References: Message-ID: <000e01c59af3$ce2aa980$0100a8c0@tapas> First, I did not claim to be an avid reader of the things being posted here. On the contrary, I said I HAVE NOT read everything that has been posted. Second, "the process" is a good thing, but because it is such a good thing, it needs to be protected. "Eternal vigil is the price of freedom". If we believe in "the process", we should defend it, not only from those who openly say they are fighting to end it and blow up police jeeps to prove it, but also from those who use it as a short or medium term tactical move, in order to ultimately destroy it and install in its place their own utopias, whether it is "Ram Rajya" or the "classless society". We should not forget that the Bolsheviks, and after them the Nazis, used "the process" to subvert it so effectively. The same tactics are being used by both flanks of the political spectrum in India, and there is no need to see the Sarai list - or any list for that matter - as a space that completely transcends the mundane space of day-to-day politics. Tapas Ray Calcutta > Hi, > I need not be in agreement with 'thoughtful' argument going on with > 'worthy' vedavati but mr Roy how come avid readers like you (as the claim > go) can suggest 'silencing' the voice the way you > suggest. No I don't > have a better way out but it DO NOT mean endorsing 'fundamentalist like' > way you are suggesting. When dispotism creep in it surely come this way > only(A apparently rational way). And trust me once arrived it will not > stop at silencing 'vedavatis of this world' only. It will surely reach > Tapas' as well. So please let the wisdom prevail and let it be so through > a process only. Hope you all will consider > vijender From zainab at xtdnet.nl Sun Aug 7 17:18:30 2005 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Sun, 7 Aug 2005 15:48:30 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Of disease, germs and health! Message-ID: <3995.219.65.12.121.1123415310.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> While It Rained, It Dawned On Me While it rained heavily in Mumbai, I was sitting oblivious, throughout, in a Naturopathy Ashram at Uruli Kanchan called Nisargopchar. Life is an interesting story of twists and turns. About two months ago, I contracted various illnesses including fever, cough, cold, an injury, a stomach bug, etc. I began doctor shopping in the hope of obtaining some relief and cure. But nothing came to my aid. About a month ago, I decided to go off on a weekend nature trek. During the course of the trek, my coughing increased severely. A friend advised me on taking the juice of a Himalayan plant which is known to spew out cough from the lungs. On taking the juice, my stomach began to activate on its own and I felt as if my dormant digestive system had begun working again. I spoke with my friend about this. We began talking about illness and disease at length. He mentioned to me how his mother, who suffering from myasthenia gravis, was wrongly diagnosed by the doctor as suffering from tuberculosis and was then put on tuberculosis drugs. Consequently, her condition worsened and two months later, the doctors realized that she was actually not suffering from tuberculosis. “I have heard of several cases like this where doctors look at symptoms and put patients on tuberculosis drugs only to find out that the patient is not actually suffering from tuberculosis. Doctors have become specialists instead of viewing the body as an integral whole,” my friend began to say, “They look at the skin problem as only a skin problem instead of examining whether something is wrong somewhere else. Then, the course of conventional medicine is to treat the skin problem externally, usually by suppressing the problem.” I began to research on my own sickness and discovered that I was suffering from a condition known as Candida. The world of the Internet revealed to me that doctors do not even acknowledge Candida as a problem. The symptoms are totally unrelated and the usual procedure is to go doctor shopping since there are multiple problems. In fact, the intake of antibiotics only increases the condition. Candida is caused when the Candida bacteria in the stomach begins to form pods. This occurs due to excessive intake of sugars, white bread, yeast (bakery) products and these days, mainly due to over-chlorination of waters by the municipal corporation. It appears that 80% of the world’s population suffers from Candida, with women being more susceptible to this condition. The only cure to Candida is dietary control. The first step for me then was to stop all antibiotics and go in for a complete detoxification. Therefore, I decided in favour of the Nature Cure Ashram at Uruli Kanchan. At the Ashram, the treatment is mainly in the form of helping to restore the body balance through removal of toxins which have accumulated in the body. Nature Cure believes that we each have an innate body intelligence and that the body is a wonderful mechanism which can heal by itself when allowed to through dietary restrictions, fasting and adequate rest. While at the Ashram, as I read several old books on Nature Cure and observed the method of treatment, what interestingly became obvious was the ‘myth’ of the ‘germ theory’ of disease as first propagated by Louis Pasteur and now, widely accepted in the medical community and among the masses. The germ theory of disease leads us to believe that the body is but a poor host to germs floating externally in the atmosphere. The human being is but a sorry victim to these deadly germs. What the theory fails to account is the fact that not all diseases are caused by germs, cancer for instance! Nature Cure believes, and here I quote Harry Benjamin, is that disease is caused owing to accumulation of toxins in the body. These toxins accumulate over a period of time and depending on your body’s constitution, the toxic matter may be deposited in either the lungs or the heart or the throat or the back, etc. We just give different names to different diseases, but the basic cause of disease lies in faulty lifestyle habits including faulty diet and inadequate rest to the body including the digestive system and other mechanisms in the body. I was particularly interested in the ‘germ theory’ of disease because it is so widely prevalent that to believe that germs are not necessarily the cause of disease is too difficult to accept in our current paradigm. We think of germs and associate them with certain populations including the ‘hawkers, slum dwellers, pavement dwellers,’ etc. These are germ spreading populations. And I wonder why we do not think of food consumed in hotels and restaurants as not germ propagating or disease causing for that matter. The other interesting thing which came to my notice during my stay at the Ashram was the amount of State Control in terms of medicine and medical treatment. The drug industry is huge and its basis lies in greater belief in germs and the germ theory. Modern medicine has allowed us to subjugate our body intelligence and suppress signs of body’s throwing out of toxins as ‘disease’. Thus, in case of fever and common cold, when the body is attempting to throw out accumulated mucus and toxins from the system, we resort to medicines to suppress the unwell condition, thus leading the body to deposit the toxins elsewhere, causing greater harm. State Control appears in the case of ‘the state’s benevolence’ in giving treatment. It appears that vaccines and vaccination only harm the body more than helping it. I was appalled when I came back and read that our supreme government, apart from deciding on terrorism and terrorists (which is another suspicious matter altogether), is now deciding on what we should eat – the banning of the sale of any non-iodized salt. Did we ever seek to question whether we truly require the amount of iodine that is ‘given’ to us in the salt sold in the market? What are our body’s requirements? I am now beginning to become skeptical of medical research that is being published. I’d rather make independent inquiries apart from popular theories floating in the market. I am also beginning to re-examine debates on medical patents and the flow of public tax money in medical research. Wouldn’t it be better if a segment of that money is utilized in making available rich and pesticide-free fruits and vegetables to the population? What alternatives are available to us? Can we think differently? Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From nisar at keshvani.com Fri Aug 5 21:58:45 2005 From: nisar at keshvani.com (nisar keshvani) Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 09:28:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] LEA June - July '05: New Media Arts, Technology and Education @ MAAP Singapore Message-ID: <4606146.1123259325873.JavaMail.root@m24> *sincere apologies for cross-posting* Leonardo Electronic Almanac: June - July 2005 ISSN#1071-4391 art | science | technology - a definitive voice since 1993 http://lea.mit.edu LEA’s June – July double issue, guest edited by Dr Hock Soon Seah and Kim Machan, sees yet another special edition, this time about New Media Arts, Technology and Education. This reviewed international conference was organized as part of the Multimedia Art Asia Pacific Festival 2004 held in Singapore. In our first essay, Dew Harrison questions the teaching of digital media theory to new practitioners where it is understood as deriving from lens and screen-based media. It examines other routes through 20th century art history to current practice in digital art and determines the validity of Marcel Duchamp as influential on contemporary practice generally, and on Conceptual Art specifically. In *Virtual Campus – It is fun and educational*, Alexei Sourin, with Konstantin Levinski and Qi Liu share with us the "great multimedia place for electronic education and fun, research and games, meeting new friends, and immersion in campus life" that is, a virtual model of Nanyang Technological University, and how it "teaches students how 3D shapes and their colors can be easily defined with parametric and implicit functions.” Erik Malcolm Champion’s piece then deals with astral travel in virtual realms, where he evaluates conceptual understanding in digital reconstructions of past cultures. His paper discusses the case study of an ancient Mayan site, Palenque, to suggest ways of creating a platform conducive to cultural learning using virtual environment technology. Next, a joint effort by Andrew H. K. Lam and Andy Tam T. K. explores how the conditions of media art have changed radically over the past few years. Their paper aims to project a vision in the relationship between the institution and the market, within the framework of the role of media art and infrastructure across the Asian continent. In *Digital Speculations*, Bharat Dave describes selected projects that served as vehicles for critical investigation of interactive digital media and their potential for exploring different ways in which experiences can be imagined, constructed, and communicated. Finally, Elizabeth Sikiaridi and Frans Vogelaar share their work, *Idensity®*, which develops scenarios for an interplay of the urban space and the media domain. One From the Vault, the monthly dose of things past, looks at Curtis E. A. Karnow’s Molten Media and the Infiltration of the Law, a piece which first appeared in June 1995. For Leonardo Reviews, Michael Punt’s selections include those of new panel member David Beer, with his reflections on Tia DeNora's book, *After Adorno: Rethinking Music Sociology*. Also featured is *The Transparent Body: A Cultural Analysis of Medical Imaging*, reviewed by Jan Baetens, another of the newer members who has already made a significant contribution to this project. Eugene Thacker's review of Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Bioscience completes this section. In ISAST news, read about *Leonardo’s* move to a new home, brainstorm with them for their upcoming 40th anniversary, and find out about the latest Leonardo at SIGGRAPH Town Hall Meeting in August. Also, keep updated with our series on *The Pacific Rim New Media Summit: A Pre-Symposium to ISEA2006*, where another working group chair shares the group’s scope and objectives. Bytes features two vastly different calls for papers/artwork that will surely be of interest to many. Also, find out more about current exhibitions by Jacques Mandlebrojt at the 17 Earagail Arts Festival in Donegal, Ireland. Lastly, Jill Sykes mourns the passing of Australian Joan Brassil, 85, who was an artist of unique character and singular talents. ************************************************************************ 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 The Leonardo Educators Initiative ------------------------------------------------------- The Leonardo Abstracts Service (LABS) is a comprehensive database of abstracts of PhD, Masters and MFA theses in the emerging intersection between art, science and technology. Thesis Abstract Submittal form at http://leonardolabs.pomona.edu LEA also maintains a discussion list open only to faculty in the field. Faculty wishing to join this list should submit their details @ http://mitpress2.mit.edu/e-journals/LEA/faculty.html What is LEA? ---------------------- For over a decade, the Leonardo Electronic Almanac (LEA) has thrived as an international peer-reviewed electronic journal and web archive, covering the interaction of the arts, sciences and technology. LEA emphasizes rapid publication of recent work and critical discussion on topics of current excitement. Many contributors are younger scholars and artists, and there is a slant towards shorter, less academic texts. Contents include Leonardo Reviews, edited by Michael Punt, Leonardo Research Abstracts of recent Ph.D. and Masters theses, curated Galleries of current new media artwork, and special issues on topics ranging from Artists and Scientists in Times of War, to Zero Gravity Art, to the History of New Media. Copyright© 1993 - 2005: The Leonardo Electronic Almanac is published by Leonardo / International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology (ISAST) in association with the MIT Press. All rights reserved. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050805/2da94ab4/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From iram at sarai.net Mon Aug 8 12:20:39 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 08:50:39 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Critics At Large Invitation; Write for new Film Blog! Message-ID: <6dee8017e6705348ea7f65f61ec24d10@sarai.net> ------ Original Message ------ Subject: Critics At Large Invitation; Write for new Film Blog! To: reader-list at sarai.net From: Critics At Large Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2005 08:28:32 +0200 Tired of the abysmal level of film criticism, or what passes for it, in the Indian media? Interested in contributing to a more in-depth, perhaps occasionally tongue-in-cheek, but always interesting, understanding of ccinema in India, one that is neither obsessed with box-office stats (like what works with the masses and what works with the classes 9the source for the title of our blog), nor with aesthetic and critical parameters derived solely from arty film-ed classes? Film Critics At Large invites you to contribute reviews, short comment pieces, and any other writing you might care to churn out on the topic of cinema in India to a new blog, to be found at http://indianfilm.blogspot.com, titled Masses and Classes: Film Criticism for the Intelligent Indian. (Don't go running, there's nothing on there as of now). The idea is to make this a place to turn to for intelligent commentary on Indian cinema, both current and old. So if you have seen something recently that makes you want to scream, jump for joy, or generally share your reactions with a wider audience, send your thoughts to this email address. Or if there's a particular film you've always loved, tell us why. All submissions must be in English, and should include the writer's full name, and whether or not they would like to be named on the blog (if not, please supply a pseudonym so that your readership can recognise you). Submissions will, of course, be edited for length and clarity, but we hope to not turn down anything of genuien interest, howsoever long (isn't that one of the great things about a blog?) Feel free to forward this to anyone you know who might be interested. Best wishes, The Critics At Large team. -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Critics At Large Subject: Critics At Large Invitation; Write for new Film Blog! Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2005 18:46:40 -0400 Size: 3991 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050808/0643da30/attachment.mht From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com Tue Aug 9 12:30:44 2005 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 00:00:44 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: <012d01c599cc$99ccef90$0100a8c0@tapas> Message-ID: <20050809070044.35580.qmail@web51410.mail.yahoo.com> For those who think VJogi maybe a prankster, the following info maybe useful: A person named Vedavati Ravindra Jogi produced a film for the PSBT, called ONE BY CHANCE, ONE BY CHOICE. This film is "A look at the predicaments; joys and difficulties of couples who adopt a second child even though they have a biological one of their own. Vedavati is director of Spandan Communications, producing audio-visual educational films and multimedia CDs. She has worked with Balchitravani producing over 50 television programmes for children. (God save those poor kids) --- Tapas Ray wrote: > I am a confirmed lurker on this list (as in a few > others), who prefers > listening to talking. But I find myself sufficiently > intrigued by the posts > of this person, who calls herself/himself "Vedavati > Jogi", to say a few > things. I hope people here will pardon me if my post > shows that I have > missed something. I do confess that I haven't read > everything over the last > few days. > > I am not at all certain that this person is who s/he > claims to be. Please > note that the name "Vedavati Jogi" translates as a > female yogi, who has > acquired the wisdon of the Vedas ... should have > been "Jogini", but that > would have given the game away, and in any case Jogi > fits in nicely as a > surname, because we all have heard of Ajit Jogi, > haven't we? The point here > is, the name seems too perfect to be real. I suspect > it has been dreamt up > by some prankster. > > Please also note this jogi's/jogini's email address > - vrjogi at hotmail.com. > Good old Hotmail, which - like scores of other free > email services - lets > you assume any name that your fertile brain can > think up. Not for them the > rigours of identity and address proof (which I have > had to provide to VSNL > before being given an account). > > What may be the nature of the prank? Again, my > suspicion is that this person > is playing the devil's advocate. If s/he were > sincerely advocating the > devil's cause, I think s/he would have been - well, > tried to be - a little > less crude in her/his advocacy. > > Whatever it is - whether or not s/he has her/his > tongue in her/his cheek - > would it be too much to ask this person to raise the > level of her/his > invectives a little? If s/he does, that will give > everybody a chance to > actually discuss things. > > Just a thought - even though this list is not > moderated, is it not possible > to bounce someone if she/he makes a nuisance of > herself/himself? > > Tapas Ray > > > > hearty congratulations mr. ashok. you could dare > to expose these > > psedosecularists, they are more > > dangerous than terrorists. can secularism be more > imporatant than > > nationalism? i sincerely feel > > indian secularism is all 'bakwas'. these > secularists will not mind selling > > off this country to > > terrorists because latter happened to be the > muslims. > > i am a maharashtrian married to a kashmiri pandit > who has become regugee > > in his own country. as > > they are hindus nobody in interested in their > welfare because this act > > will tarnish their secular > > image. 'talking to pakistan' 'talking to > terrorists' etc. etc. is secular > > because they are > > muslims. i hate this pseudo secularism i hate > these secularists. > > vedavati ravindra jogi > > > _________________________________________ > 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: > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From iram at sarai.net Tue Aug 9 13:36:38 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (Iram) Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 13:36:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: 5th post by biswajit and nilanjan Message-ID: <42F8640E.9030405@sarai.net> Fifth Posting by Biswajit and Nilanjan -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Nilanjan Dutta" Subject: 5th post by biswajit and nilanjan for readers list Date: 7 Aug 2005 08:41:30 -0000 Size: 19340 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050809/2499f73d/attachment.mht From vrjogi at hotmail.com Tue Aug 9 20:05:46 2005 From: vrjogi at hotmail.com (Vedavati Jogi) Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 14:35:46 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: <20050809070044.35580.qmail@web51410.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: i am neither a prankster, nor a person who is hungry for (cheap) publicity. whatever i have written ..i really mean it. india is a democratic country, everybody has right to express his or her views. i too have right to write what i feel. i sincerely feel secularism practised in india is not a true secularism, because secularism should not overpower nationalism, secularist are denying to understand that politics in india has become extremely muslim centric because of this pseudo secularism. country has already been partitioned on the basis of religion once, do you want it to happen again? gandhi nehru's muslim appeasment policies were mainly responsible for partition. this secularism is leading this country towards partition no. 2. i am not against any patriotic muslim.from mohammad rafi to irfan pathan, shahrukh khan, amiir khan.....they are 100% indians. but how can i call those people,' indian 'who don't accept the law of the land? they don't have any right to stay in this country. pseudo secularists, forget 'godhra' & keep cursing gujrat cm for gujrat riots, can a single person however heavyweight may be a cm, be responsible for riots? can he do that without any help from hindu society? why did hindus from gujrat vote for him again? i request all secularists to please introspect, stop hindu bashing. please don't think that 'protecting even antinational elements among muslims is secular' and protecting hindus is communal (like they did with kashmiri pandits) give more importance to national security, national pride. your socalled secularism is not in the interest of this country. >From: Yousuf >To: Tapas Ray , reader-list at sarai.net >Subject: Re: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world >Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 00:00:44 -0700 (PDT) > >For those who think VJogi maybe a prankster, the >following info maybe useful: > >A person named Vedavati Ravindra Jogi produced a film >for the PSBT, called ONE BY CHANCE, ONE BY CHOICE. >This film is "A look at the predicaments; joys and >difficulties of couples who adopt a second child even >though they have a biological one of their own. > >Vedavati is director of Spandan Communications, >producing audio-visual educational films and >multimedia CDs. She has worked with Balchitravani >producing over 50 television programmes for children. > >(God save those poor kids) > > > >--- Tapas Ray wrote: > > > I am a confirmed lurker on this list (as in a few > > others), who prefers > > listening to talking. But I find myself sufficiently > > intrigued by the posts > > of this person, who calls herself/himself "Vedavati > > Jogi", to say a few > > things. I hope people here will pardon me if my post > > shows that I have > > missed something. I do confess that I haven't read > > everything over the last > > few days. > > > > I am not at all certain that this person is who s/he > > claims to be. Please > > note that the name "Vedavati Jogi" translates as a > > female yogi, who has > > acquired the wisdon of the Vedas ... should have > > been "Jogini", but that > > would have given the game away, and in any case Jogi > > fits in nicely as a > > surname, because we all have heard of Ajit Jogi, > > haven't we? The point here > > is, the name seems too perfect to be real. I suspect > > it has been dreamt up > > by some prankster. > > > > Please also note this jogi's/jogini's email address > > - vrjogi at hotmail.com. > > Good old Hotmail, which - like scores of other free > > email services - lets > > you assume any name that your fertile brain can > > think up. Not for them the > > rigours of identity and address proof (which I have > > had to provide to VSNL > > before being given an account). > > > > What may be the nature of the prank? Again, my > > suspicion is that this person > > is playing the devil's advocate. If s/he were > > sincerely advocating the > > devil's cause, I think s/he would have been - well, > > tried to be - a little > > less crude in her/his advocacy. > > > > Whatever it is - whether or not s/he has her/his > > tongue in her/his cheek - > > would it be too much to ask this person to raise the > > level of her/his > > invectives a little? If s/he does, that will give > > everybody a chance to > > actually discuss things. > > > > Just a thought - even though this list is not > > moderated, is it not possible > > to bounce someone if she/he makes a nuisance of > > herself/himself? > > > > Tapas Ray > > > > > > > hearty congratulations mr. ashok. you could dare > > to expose these > > > psedosecularists, they are more > > > dangerous than terrorists. can secularism be more > > imporatant than > > > nationalism? i sincerely feel > > > indian secularism is all 'bakwas'. these > > secularists will not mind selling > > > off this country to > > > terrorists because latter happened to be the > > muslims. > > > i am a maharashtrian married to a kashmiri pandit > > who has become regugee > > > in his own country. as > > > they are hindus nobody in interested in their > > welfare because this act > > > will tarnish their secular > > > image. 'talking to pakistan' 'talking to > > terrorists' etc. etc. is secular > > > because they are > > > muslims. i hate this pseudo secularism i hate > > these secularists. > > > vedavati ravindra jogi > > > > > > _________________________________________ > > 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: > > > > > > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around >http://mail.yahoo.com >_________________________________________ >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: _________________________________________________________________ Looking for a date? http://match.msn.co.in/match/mt.cfm?pg=channel&tcid=234764 Meet interesting singles like you From zainab at xtdnet.nl Wed Aug 10 12:03:21 2005 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 10:33:21 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Promenade Notes - Space, Boredom and City Message-ID: <3076.219.65.10.168.1123655601.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> I am back at the promenade today. As I am crossing from the road to reach to the promenade, I become aware that the promenade and the busy road are two worlds which exist simultaneously. Both the worlds are completely different and yet, they exist side by side. As I sit on the promenade wall, I watch the traffic movement and the timing of every signal. There is such regularity and continuity on the road. The cars pass by at regular intervals and the traffic signals operate at regular intervals with the cars coming to a halt. There is a kind of order which operates on the roads. While on the promenade, the order is of a different kind, not governed by traffic signals. There is no chaos even, but a subtle order. There is some kind of self regulation which produces order for the promenade and the people as a whole. I find this very interesting. Time operates in a different way on the road and in a different way on the promenade. I cannot make much statements about this as of now, but I need to watch more carefully to come up with any observations. As I sit on the promenade, somehow my love affair with this city begins once again. I spot Kinjal, younger sister of my once-upon-a-time college buddy. “I come here to jog regularly. See how much weight I have put on,” Kinjal tells me. After a while, she sets off. First she walks, then she does a bit of warm-up and finally, she is off jogging! As I watch her go away, I think of the fact that the space of the promenade is a regularity in some people’s lives. It is becoming a regularity in my life as I visit each day and make observations (and conclusions). It is a regular feature of the golden haired sexy lady who jogs with her dog regularly. It is a regular feature for Mr. Thakkar. Similarly, the railway station is a regular feature in a lot of people’s everyday lives. Yet, there is, I am certain, a distinct distinction between the regularity of the promenade space and the regularity of the railway station space in people’s life – and maybe that distinction is a matter of both time and space and also speed. At this point, I am wondering whether spaces become boring for people. What does the promenade space mean for people who live on Marine Drive? Are they fed up of it? Similarly, is Mr. Thakkar fed up of the promenade now that he has been coming here since 1985? What about the old people who congregate regularly at the promenade? Is the space boring for them? What brings in boredom? I think this is an interesting line of investigation which I would like to indulge in apart from other questions which I have. Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From anannyaleh at yahoo.com Tue Aug 9 18:17:22 2005 From: anannyaleh at yahoo.com (Anannya Mehtta) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 05:47:22 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] On film viewing Message-ID: <20050809124722.46978.qmail@web51106.mail.yahoo.com> Introduction I am going to make this posting in two parts. The first part is a prologue comprising of a poetic historical narrative. The second part will comprise of a series of interviews .The telling of experiences related to film viewing and film cultures of five city dwellers. The first section is part imaginary. The writing attempts to understand - what kind of physical and mental space does the film centre denote? What happens there? Who visits these centers regularly? It also hints towards the idea that these institutions are still growing and slowly defining their own roles and public images. A possible journey. A radial city turns into a web of by lanes and many centers. The imagination of Delhi’s geography is overwhelmingly preoccupied, one could claim by certain accident of history. Luyten’s, the famous British architect, vision for Delhi has occupied the city’s memory many years after everything else about the city seemed to have changed. Luytens’ residence for the viceroy of India was to become the centre of reference for many new buildings, housing colonies, offices, residences, parks and cultural centers. The residences of various diplomats within the imagined circle and offices of the highest government officials remained structures of restricted access. Yet, ironically its long imperial vistas of India Gate acquired a life of its own, a culture, mood and pace that was inviting to ordinary people. The parks were free spaces, open for all to come and sit in and to talk and play in. During the summer neon mobile ice cream carts criss-crossed each other offering cool sweet treats (ice creams and fizzy drinks) to the many families and friends that got together to sit and talk. The winter fog gave privacy to courting couples while those sitting in little groups with loud conversation added to the generalized feelings of warmth. As the city grew and the old ideas of what constitutes the centre broke, centers of activity, visitation, conversation, play, work and fun emerged. Examples are the coffee house in C.P. the Delhi School of Economics cafeteria within the University campus, the coffee shop at Triveni. Here people were seen to talk politics, strategies for change were enunciated, careers were planned and gossip was exchanged (As they say there was no where else to go). Most people knew each other not because Delhi was small, but due to the fact that he intellectual elite comprised a tiny insular circle. These public spaces, apparently accessible and unrestricted and democratic, were in fact open to only the few. Slowly the city dotted itself with numerous coffee shops, malls and restaurants all ablaze with life. Creating limitless options for just hanging out in pubs, markets and malls. These places, specially the malls morphed into sites for social and cultural transactions. Alongside the malls, the city saw film clubs and film center’s swell into life. People obviously enjoy these visits and these places occupy an important part in their lives as places for friends to share their experiences and spaces through which they negotiate the city. Cities are branded as being areas were people live their lives in private. In the extract, “The Hotel Lobby” from The Mass Ornament, Siegfried Kracauer uses the spatial architecture of the hotel room to describe the modern experience of living in a city. The lobby of a hotel accommodates all who go there to meet no one. The lobby appears a space of silence; avoided eye contact gave anonymity and is governed by a noisy silence. The space gives rise to a civility that confounds interaction. The malls and pubs in the city follow a somewhat similar story, wherein strangers remain strangers. Despite this the city has spaces that bring people together, where they can share their histories, stories and aspirations for communion and conversation. The film centre (non commercial film centers) is the new kind of public sphere of the modern times allowing for many forms of interaction. Habermas explained that the public sphere came into Europe in the eighteenth century, creating the ground for democratic participation. It was embodied in coffee houses, political clubs and literary journals. For Habermas voluntary unions outside the realm of the state and the economy created the public sphere. This ranged from churches, cultural associations and academic sites to independent media, sport and leisure activities. The traditional notion of public sphere meant that a public would congregate to address a common purpose. It is this notion of addressing a common idea or purpose that the modern experience of film centre disturbs. These film clubs are not places for only rational thought, but spaces marked by possibilities for meeting ones deeper needs of emotional and intellectual stimulation. A site that aids exploration - perchance a hedonistic journey. THE FILM CENTRE AS THE VILLAGE WELL – (idea’s and conversations live in places) The psychological notion of free space belongs both to the village well and the foyer of any film centre. It is an indeterminate space, leading to a possible film screening as well as hinting towards other possibilities, a chance meeting which may be the start of something new. The village well allows for stealing time from daily order and routine. Waiting together with others both at the village well and the film centre foyer are special since they are marked by anticipation and sharing. Both these spaces do not necessarily demand that a common concern tie these individual together. The kind of associations, friendships and concerns that emerge from these places remain unstructured and full of diversity of interest with a plurality of ways of communicating. The space is marked by causal conversations. To use Shankar Ramaswamy idea of Tal Mel, (Ramamswamy’s works center s around the laboring classes in urban areas-He is currently a P.HD scholar at the university of Chicago) –factory workers and the lower unskilled or skilled workers find companionship and dignity in an environment which is harsh and resists a rights oriented political and social platform to the laborers) Using this idea of Tal Mel –which points towards a context through which sharing of ideas and hopes can more easily take place. I propose that the film centre also helps people to come together not for instrumental reasons but to share, empathize and to foster respect for other’s situation in an alienating environment. THE FILM CENTRE, WHAT FLOWS THROUGH IT ? (flows of conviviality ) The film centre is a cauldron of entertainment. politics and issues brewing in it are uncensored movies, coffees, moods, masks, disguises, lovers and actors, jokes, borrowing and lending, a permission for multiple readings – films good ones and bad ones, different languages and technical delays. The film centre becomes a theatre were monologues about the language of film and the philosophy behind aesthetics unravel slowly and cryptically, the props being cigarettes and new books that are paraded as fashions accessories. The space is marked by many styles of greetings and gossip, with the idea that it is all a free treat come many vicarious pleasures. Most film screenings take place in the evening – for most people it’s the time of the day when work is over. The atmosphere seems charged and full of energy for socializing. This time of the day is considered free time. One sees that people sneak into the cinema hall, late, after the credits have appeared and disappeared, taking longer drags from an already dying cigarette. This behavior is akin to saying that it is more important to greet and gossip with each other, to unwind and meet people than to be sitting inside the cinema hall. There seems to be a mixture of curiosity and mirth in the atmosphere. These fleeting conversations are often like talking even calendars for what else is happening in the city – What is most exciting about the film centers in the city – is the fact that their role and function are not fossilized and binding – they operate with a shy flexibility, appealing to many different interests. These spaces can change their identity and become the mouthpiece of feminist concerns for example, the Habitat Centre by hosting a bold series of films on women’s issues in collaboration with various organizations working on gender. Due to a festival like this an obvious increase and change in the viewing public is felt, making it easier for a larger audience to enter this world of films. “We stitched fifteen one minutes to make a short film”- a group of people from St. Stephen’s College who I happen to meet at the arts faculty canteen, told me they had shot a small film on the city with a still camera which allowed for capturing one minute worth of moving images, “we then just stitched it all together” to make a short film. We used a friend’s computer which had a simple editing program. The idea was to make a photo narrative on the city. We choose to shoot in places which we either like or are most familiar with which are the university campus, the ridge ,the new Delhi railway station. On asking them what they did with the film – we took it to Sarai and the British Council and were hoping it would get shown as part of the experimental film festival or as a fifteen film before the Friday screening at Sarai One can’t help but think of these spaces as confused spaces, unsure and blurry about their exact role in the film circuit. This slight confusion opens out these places to larger group, aiding in a multidisciplinary engagement with the city and its people. Since the film centers intermittently take active interest in encouraging new cinema, experimental in nature by amalgamating both theory and practice the film centre becomes a site for lectures on film theory and short workshops on filmmaking. THE TEASING GAME The public self-image of these film centers is one of openness and freedom yet they are unable to truly reach out to a larger public. This restriction is not necessarily a linguistic one, but is governed by access and class. This film experience is for the public with the power to travel and with a need to be elsewhere. It markets aesthetics and foreign cultures with that a disguised mobility. These film screenings are underlined by an idea of being open to all. These places are “all are invited” brand of places. The culture centre posts its notices in the national dailies making it appear as though the films are within the reach of anyone who is interested. The reality is somewhat different. Many of the centers require membership. For example, the India Habitat Centre and the India International Centre, which are exclusive and allow only members. The other Centers such as the French Culture Centre, Sarai and Siri Fort have no rules restricting entries. Many of those who frequent these film centers feel earlier gaining entry into the film hall was a lot easier than now, even if the auditorium is empty a guard will check for a membership card (at the French Culture Centre). A game of teasing the public by which I mean that all are invited concept knowing it does not necessarily work creates a false feeling of giving easy access to the masses. This delusional self-image is inherently built in the very system of the film centers. Easy access is for those who dress in a certain way and speak the language of the privileged. This implies that no real increase or change in the public is ever felt. These spaces open themselves to a larger audience yet very soon face a crisis of space, accommodation and motivation where in large hordes of students and others will be sent back because while all are invited there is only space within these events for some to partake of this experience. In conclusion the film centre is what Ray Oldenburg calls third places – the first and second being home and the work spaces. Oldenburg claims third places are essential for interpersonal integration. A third place is essential for identification and belonging, social support, participation, and inclusion. The features of a third place are –“Conversation is the main activity, the third place is a leveler, it is on neutral ground, there are regulars, it is a home away from home, there is a low profile, the mood is playful” (1996:42). __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050809/c0834b0b/attachment.html From padmalatha.ravi at gmail.com Wed Aug 10 00:00:50 2005 From: padmalatha.ravi at gmail.com (Padmalatha Ravi) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 00:00:50 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: References: <20050809070044.35580.qmail@web51410.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: With all due respects to democracy and the right to express. May I ask what is the nationalism you are referring to? Is it something that does not include any other community but Hindus? India is a secular country cos we as a nation believe in it. And when a people believe in it that is called "Nationalism" You refer to the Muslim centric politics of the country but fail to notice that caste / community has played crucial role in almost every decision we as a nation have taken. Even in a Hindu majority state, politicians manage to play the caste card and marginalise communities - hindu comminities. There are umpteen evidences of such cases. And you say it is not right to blame Mr. Modi cos he is just a single person...But he is a person with enormous powers, he is the Chief Minister of a state not a helpless bystander. Yes the people voted him back, but we very well know that the so-called intelligent voters can be worked on to great extent with the fear factor. I am not very sure of the definition of the 100% indian here. Is it people like Mr. Modi who are "fighting for the cause of hindus," or is it people like me and you who let couple of vote seeking, power hungry politicians let us tell what to believe? On 8/9/05, Vedavati Jogi wrote: > > i am neither a prankster, nor a person who is hungry for (cheap) > publicity. > whatever i have written ..i really mean it. india is a democratic country, > everybody has right to express his or her views. i too have right to write > what i feel. > > i sincerely feel secularism practised in india is not a true secularism, > because secularism should not overpower nationalism, secularist are > denying > to understand that politics in india has become extremely muslim centric > because of this pseudo secularism. country has already been partitioned on > the basis of religion once, do you want it to happen again? gandhi nehru's > muslim appeasment policies were mainly responsible for partition. this > secularism is leading this country towards partition no. 2. > > i am not against any patriotic muslim.from mohammad rafi to irfan pathan, > shahrukh khan, amiir khan.....they are 100% indians. but how can i call > those people,' indian 'who don't accept the law of the land? they don't > have > any right to stay in this country. pseudo secularists, forget 'godhra' & > keep cursing gujrat cm for gujrat riots, can a single person however > heavyweight may be a cm, be responsible for riots? can he do that without > any help from hindu society? why did hindus from gujrat vote for him > again? > > i request all secularists to please introspect, stop hindu bashing. please > don't think that 'protecting even antinational elements among muslims is > secular' and protecting hindus is communal (like they did with kashmiri > pandits) > give more importance to national security, national pride. your socalled > secularism is not in the interest of this country. > > >From: Yousuf > >To: Tapas Ray , reader-list at sarai.net > >Subject: Re: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world > >Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 00:00:44 -0700 (PDT) > > > >For those who think VJogi maybe a prankster, the > >following info maybe useful: > > > >A person named Vedavati Ravindra Jogi produced a film > >for the PSBT, called ONE BY CHANCE, ONE BY CHOICE. > >This film is "A look at the predicaments; joys and > >difficulties of couples who adopt a second child even > >though they have a biological one of their own. > > > >Vedavati is director of Spandan Communications, > >producing audio-visual educational films and > >multimedia CDs. She has worked with Balchitravani > >producing over 50 television programmes for children. > > > >(God save those poor kids) > > > > > > > >--- Tapas Ray wrote: > > > > > I am a confirmed lurker on this list (as in a few > > > others), who prefers > > > listening to talking. But I find myself sufficiently > > > intrigued by the posts > > > of this person, who calls herself/himself "Vedavati > > > Jogi", to say a few > > > things. I hope people here will pardon me if my post > > > shows that I have > > > missed something. I do confess that I haven't read > > > everything over the last > > > few days. > > > > > > I am not at all certain that this person is who s/he > > > claims to be. Please > > > note that the name "Vedavati Jogi" translates as a > > > female yogi, who has > > > acquired the wisdon of the Vedas ... should have > > > been "Jogini", but that > > > would have given the game away, and in any case Jogi > > > fits in nicely as a > > > surname, because we all have heard of Ajit Jogi, > > > haven't we? The point here > > > is, the name seems too perfect to be real. I suspect > > > it has been dreamt up > > > by some prankster. > > > > > > Please also note this jogi's/jogini's email address > > > - vrjogi at hotmail.com. > > > Good old Hotmail, which - like scores of other free > > > email services - lets > > > you assume any name that your fertile brain can > > > think up. Not for them the > > > rigours of identity and address proof (which I have > > > had to provide to VSNL > > > before being given an account). > > > > > > What may be the nature of the prank? Again, my > > > suspicion is that this person > > > is playing the devil's advocate. If s/he were > > > sincerely advocating the > > > devil's cause, I think s/he would have been - well, > > > tried to be - a little > > > less crude in her/his advocacy. > > > > > > Whatever it is - whether or not s/he has her/his > > > tongue in her/his cheek - > > > would it be too much to ask this person to raise the > > > level of her/his > > > invectives a little? If s/he does, that will give > > > everybody a chance to > > > actually discuss things. > > > > > > Just a thought - even though this list is not > > > moderated, is it not possible > > > to bounce someone if she/he makes a nuisance of > > > herself/himself? > > > > > > Tapas Ray > > > > > > > > > > hearty congratulations mr. ashok. you could dare > > > to expose these > > > > psedosecularists, they are more > > > > dangerous than terrorists. can secularism be more > > > imporatant than > > > > nationalism? i sincerely feel > > > > indian secularism is all 'bakwas'. these > > > secularists will not mind selling > > > > off this country to > > > > terrorists because latter happened to be the > > > muslims. > > > > i am a maharashtrian married to a kashmiri pandit > > > who has become regugee > > > > in his own country. as > > > > they are hindus nobody in interested in their > > > welfare because this act > > > > will tarnish their secular > > > > image. 'talking to pakistan' 'talking to > > > terrorists' etc. etc. is secular > > > > because they are > > > > muslims. i hate this pseudo secularism i hate > > > these secularists. > > > > vedavati ravindra jogi > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________ > > > 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: > > > > > > > > > > > >__________________________________________________ > >Do You Yahoo!? > >Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > >http://mail.yahoo.com > >_________________________________________ > >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: > > _________________________________________________________________ > Looking for a date? > http://match.msn.co.in/match/mt.cfm?pg=channel&tcid=234764 Meet > interesting > singles like you > > _________________________________________ > 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: > -- Cheers Padma -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050810/51c6f333/attachment.html From rgdj12 at yahoo.com Tue Aug 9 19:21:29 2005 From: rgdj12 at yahoo.com (roger das) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 06:51:29 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Death and Bazaar...... Message-ID: <20050809135130.70366.qmail@web42405.mail.yahoo.com> I would like to draw the attention of all that in the organisation like sarai there is partiality dominating the process of selecting Independent fellows. I have notice so many absurd or irrelevant topics were selected this time but I was surprise to see the same useless topic was selected this time also. In 2003-2004 [Hindi] submited by Md. Abdul Khaliq, Delhi and in this year 2004-2005 the same topic but in english Death and the Bazaar: A Look at the Death Care Industry submitted by Tasneem, Fatima and Marya, Delhi. The only difference this time was the medium and sex. Like the other, this auspicious organisation too goes for fairer sex irrespective of their talent and originality. This shows that these fair sex lack professionalism and due to these kind of people there is umemployment in our country. Their place would have been filled by new topic by any talented and intelligent person if the organisation fellowship there was a topic Dilli Ke Kabristanhen Aur Shamshanhen Ka Vishleshanatmak Rekheinkan had been act impartially during selection. I didnt expect such thing from sarai. And above all I am sure they are not going to post this letter to the list like before. I must advise these girls to not cheat from next time if they really want to succeed in life. But I know they will say WHO CARES! and continue copying roger --------------------------------- Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050809/8327710a/attachment.html From t.ray at vsnl.com Tue Aug 9 14:09:08 2005 From: t.ray at vsnl.com (t.ray at vsnl.com) Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 13:39:08 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world Message-ID: <3e963863e98490.3e984903e96386@vsnl.net> > For those who think VJogi maybe a prankster, the following info maybe useful: > > A person named Vedavati Ravindra Jogi produced a film Yes, a Google search for "Vedavati" turns up information on an amateur film-maker of that name, living in Pune and in an apartment building with a tell-tale name. However, the search turns up more material, which some may find interesting - about a mythical character (apologies to those who object to "mythical") called Vedavati - it seems she and not Sita was the one who had been abducted by Ravana. (To think that I didn't know this!) So, it seems the war was a mistake after all. For other ignorant people like me, here's the link - http://www.urday.com/vk.htm From zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in Wed Aug 10 03:30:02 2005 From: zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in (khalid jamal) Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2005 23:00:02 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Genre of a Parallel Cafe' Message-ID: <20050809220003.22515.qmail@web8601.mail.in.yahoo.com> We have parallel cinema, parallel security and so on. We can very well have Parallel Cafes’ in India, too, where there is diverse variety in food. On one hand, we have big multinationals in the form of fast food joints and on the other we have our very own Haldiram’s,Nathu’s and others, with yet another “genre” of food-space like coffee houses. But we also have the culture of street food which I see, participate-in and read about, especially in books written by foreign authors, who often come as tourists. And in all these places, you find a particular kind of work culture, space dynamics and a different feel, which clearly differentiates one from another, apart from the economics. In India coffee houses, for eg., service may sloppy and the décor shabby but the coffee is reasonably priced without the fuss of the trendier cafes like café coffee day or barista. You don’t see the orange-yellow combination walls with neon lights and English speaking workers in stripped uniforms. Instead you see, black and white photographs of Nehru, Gandhi and Indira adorning the white walls and waiters dressed in whitish uniforms. And they are waiters, No Relationship builders!! There are no ”complimentaries” and no free”smiles”.You pay for the coffee and that’s exactly what you get. No value addition. But you find things rather simple, as you find there is no long and winding menu of coffee types to choose from.There is no need to confuse your latte with your cappuccinos or your macchiato with your mocha. Coffee comes as coffee, no frills, no fancy names. And its delicious. After spending 4 or 5 rupees, you will certainly not complain!! Oh, I am researching on fast food chains!! So let’s talk about it. I have been writing while working in these joints in Delhi. Before I write more let me present, for the sake of global perspective, some experiences of my friend Kate, who works for McDonald’s in New Zealand. She’s doesn’t seem to be very happy unlike her Delhi counterpart, say Lubna Khan. This is what she has to say: “A drizzling haze hangs over the deceptive cheerfulness of the building’s golden arches, a monument to greasy, guilt-laden food, and a haven for those who just can’t resist the fifth sandwich. Beckoning the unwary traveler are neon lights glittering in the drive-thru, resembling the hungry eyes of some great beast which is ready to devour his new victims with ferocious delight. Calmly approaching the building, I pause to look out onto the street; dreary shades of gray pavement and brown water squash my sudden urges for escape. Dirty isn’t the word I’d use to describe the lobby, not after taking in the swarming flies, the smell of overfull garbage buckets, and swirls of dried mud creating an almost artistic design on the floors. Encrusted ketchup and other sauces decorate the tables I pass; trays covered with used, open napkins sit brashly on others, a reminder of customers who can’t be bothered to carry the tray to the garbage cans located conveniently by the door. Filthy places attract filthy people, and I watch as a child gleefully throws French fries on the floor, her mother unmoving, uncaring. God, I wish I could storm into her house and do the same, spatter ketchup on the walls with malicious glee, carve my name on her table with a penknife when I think no one is looking, or wad up my garbage and throw it on the floor in front of her. Hell, that’s what this is; hell for the yet-to-be-damned. It would take a four-armed angel to do what we’re expected to do, and angel who could stand phrases like ‘oh, and while you’re at it, could you add another four orders of burgers to that? Just a moment, I wanted them to be fries instead.’ Kid, I’d like to tell you where you could shove those fries, we already made the damned burgers you don’t want anymore. Labor is a joke to some; I’d like to introduce them to working at the grill, bending over layers of grease plastering itself on your exposed skin, burning your fingers to the point of blistering. Mop all you want, the grease won’t come off the floor, just like it won’t get out of your hair; you’ll smell it in your sleep, you’ll taste it in the morning. No one has yet to escape the work dream, the one where the mechanical beeping to alert the employee of finished food never goes away. Oh, the beeping is the worst part, for it never stops and haunts the best of dreams, it damages your hearing without you even noticing, it crawls into the smallest corners of your mind and pops up once you finally get some peace. Part of the problem is the pay, not enough to really make an indent on that school bill, just enough to stave off the threat of just quitting right then and there. Quick, stop that trainee from leaving before we suck her in completely! Rats, too late, I guess I’ll be the only closer for the rest of my short-lived food service career. Sucks to be me, sucks even more to be working drive-thru, where people assume you are deaf and need to be yelled at, wait until they finish their cell phone call, or take that bucket of change as payment. Trucks are the worst of all; their hyped-up engines shriek into the earphone, producing instant earache; they should be banned for all eternity. United, I think we can made a firm stand to teach those soccer moms and overweight weekend warriors a lesson or two about the merits of small, quiet cars. Vacillators are some of the worst; they hold up the lines of cars in the drive-thru, they quaver over the menu to the cashier. Would it not be an almost guaranteed snarky response of the next in line, I’d have a bit more patience with them. Xyloidic is what I’m becoming at home, too drained to do much else but zone. Yes, I hate my job. Zealously so, with a passion felt by my colleagues; perhaps we’ll rise up and start a rebellion against obnoxious customers, snappish managers, and really, really bad food.” Well, no matter what people say, I found McDonald’s happening. As a worker, I experienced some kind of energy and penetration in whatever I did there. I always carried it with me. Be it my spotless uniform, or the “five second” rule which means if something falls on the floor, you pick it up in five seconds. Or all those engineered actions from the application of clockwise spiral squirts of ketchup and mustard to the placement of two pickles and a ring of onions on the burgers. I even had occasional dreams where the squirting of said condiments repeats endlessly throughout the night. Well, they were dreams as long as I was on single shift and nightmares on doubles!! I do not know if I am appreciating or critiquing the work that I did while carrying my research forward. As long as as I worked, I remained engaged and at the end of the day I wrote everything down. Now weather I wrote as a worker or as a researcher remains to be debated. I think I should be the part of that debate. But I one thing is for sure, and was clearly apparent to me especially when I observed work at Nathu’s and Haldirams.Nothing happened on its own in Pizza Hut and McDonald’s. “May I”, “can I” , “smile” , “excuse-me’s”, “have a good day”, “try this”, “extra cheese?”, “bigger?”, and several other “spontaneous” actions were well scripted in advance and rehearsed. I view all the above as a preparations.Preparations to do good business,to bring customer back again, to empathize, to identify, and to relate with him. It seems to me as if McD and other MNC’s, through their work culture tell the customer,”We are not Indian but we will go extra mile to serve you and show that we CARE” I found this missing in our haldirams and nathu’s. They seems to be saying,” Oh, we sell food. If you want to buy, come in, pay and take it.” These attitudes were reflected in the way the initial contacts were made, the way the food was served, in the ambience around, the way workers interacted with each other and to the customers, the way the furniture or crockery were moved from one point to another, and so on. Let me take the e.g. of uniforms while acknowledging the crucial role that economics play here. McDonald’s is recruiting Russell Simons,P.Diddy and Tommy Hilfiger to perform a miracle a makeover: Turn its employee’s mundane uniform into hip street wear.As it attempts to change its image from a fat purveyor to phat icon, especially in post-McLibel and post -super size me- times. The world largest employer is turning to these style-setters for what could be an $80 million makeover for its army of workers. The idea certainly is not only to give their employees a new-look and infuse sense of pride , but also to turn them into walking brand billboards as they circulate among their peers. This is what the Chief Marketing officer of McD in the US said about this overhaul: “We are looking at how do we make our uniforms more appealing,more desireable.It is very important to differentiate between what employees have to wear and what they want to wear. It’s a very important aspect employee pride. McDonald’s have evolved and become a lifestyle brand...since it’s now relevant to our lifestyle, let’s go one step further and make its employees relevant to our style as well”. Today, in fast food chains, atleast in Pizza Hut and McDonald’s, employees are not allowed to step out of the outlet while wearing the “work” uniform. Its one of the biggest sins here. And if you have to, you use the back door. Now with the change both, in the physical uniform and idea behind it, the ultimate test is whether employees would wear the outfits outside of work as a fashion statement. In other words fashion is one of the languages that McDonald’s is tapping into to improve its relevance especially with the youth. When it launched its” Iam lovinit” platform, fashionable crew uniforms in several countries including Netherlands, became the rage and customers begged to buy their own versions!! And why not, if Italian police can wear Armani and Delta Airlines flight crew can wear uniforms designed by international designer, Kate Spade, why not the McDudes ONE LIFE. ONE SHOT. Happiness, Health & Peace, Syed Khalid Jamal --------------------------------- Check out Yahoo! India Rakhi Special for Rakhi shopping, contests and lots more. http://in.promos.yahoo.com/rakhi/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050809/b73f3b9c/attachment.html From iram at sarai.net Wed Aug 10 15:12:27 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (Iram Ghufran) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 15:12:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Posting Guidelines Message-ID: <42F9CC03.2050402@sarai.net> Dear all, A few members of the Reader List are having trouble with sending and receiving emails to the list. In order to ensure it's smooth functioning and to allow for systematic archiving of all emails, please follow the posting guidelines. Please give a clear SUBJECT HEADER to your postings. Please do NOT MAIL ATTACHMENTS. Please send in your postings in PLAIN TEXT only. Postings that do not follow the above guidelines come up for administrative approval. All others reach the Reader List members directly without administrative intervention. Best Iram Ghufran (On behalf of the list administrator) From vivek at sarai.net Wed Aug 10 15:01:51 2005 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 15:01:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] response to Roger Das In-Reply-To: <20050809135130.70366.qmail@web42405.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20050809135130.70366.qmail@web42405.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <42F9C987.3020901@sarai.net> Hi, As a coordinator of the independent fellowship programme at Sarai, I would like to respond to the mail below and make some important clarifications. Hopefully these will be of use to future applicants as well as to members of the reader-list community. 1. Firstly, I would like to reiterate that the reader-list is an *unmoderated* list. This means that no one at Sarai approves or rejects mails based on their content. However, we insist on postings only in plain text and not html format; the reason for this is partly to prevent the spread of viruses and other malicious files. Dear Roger, a quick look at our archives shows that your messages were all in html format, and a return message was sent to you asking for you to resend the message in plain text format, which you did not do. So in future, please be sure to set your mail client to send messages in plain text and not html, and there will not be any problem with posting. It goes without saying that on an unmoderated list such as ours, the members are themselves responsible for ensuring a high standard of discussion, and avoiding vindictive or personal attacks. 2. Independent fellowship applications are carefully read and vetted by a large committee with diverse interests. Selections are made on the basis of the quality and relevance of the proposal and not for any other reason; we have found that the involvement of a diverse and closely engaged committee helps to ensure this. 3. If an i-fellows proposal addresses the same general topic that has already been covered by an earlier project, this is not necessarily grounds for disqualification. What we would look for in the new project is that it approaches the old theme from a different angle or methodology, and that it complements or adds to the earlier work in an interesting and valuable way. Thus, we are able to build a growing body of related research, rather than just having scattershot and singular attempts. 4. In the case of the project you refer to, Roger, it was selected partly because of the rich, sophisticated and nuanced quality of the writing in the proposal, the distinctiveness of its approach (informed by literature, filmmaking practice and ethnography) and, also, because it showed the participants had already done detailed preparatory research and visits to the graveyard/crematorium in question, prior to applying. The focus of the work on a single site was also a factor, because it meant the research could more likely be feasibly completed in the fellowship period. Furthermore, we do indeed consider all of the selected projects as addressing topics that are useful and relevant to our own work and the intellectual depth of our networks, especially since there are virtually no other funding avenues in the Indian context for much of the research that we support. 5. It is extremely unfair and sexist to suggest that fellows are given preference on the basis of their gender. We recently did a detailed statistical analysis of the gender ratio in all the years of the fellowship program and found that, both overall and in individual years, slightly more men than women received the fellowship; this matches up with the national sex ratio. Since all the fellowships are listed on our website, you're welcome to do the math yourself. Lastly, I would like to say that we are sorry if we have alienated or offended any of the applicants to the programme whose proposal was not selected. Last year, for instance, we received more than 450 applications; subjectivity is an integral part of the selection process in the humanities, arts and social sciences; we may well err in rejecting very good proposals every year, and we have a cap on the number of projects we can fund. At the same time, we continue to be excited by the proposals we have selected, and by the sheer range of the fellows' themes, approaches, and backgrounds. Yours, Vivek. roger das wrote: > I would like to draw the attention of all that in the organisation > like sarai there is partiality dominating the process of selecting > Independent fellows. I have notice so many absurd or irrelevant topics > were selected this time but I was surprise to see the same useless > topic was selected this time also. In 2003-2004 *[Hindi] submited by > Md. Abdul Khaliq, *Delhi and in this year 2004-2005 the same topic but > in english *Death and the Bazaar: A Look at the Death Care Industry > submitted by *Tasneem, Fatima and Marya, Delhi. The only difference > this time was the medium and sex. Like the other, this auspicious > organisation too goes for fairer sex irrespective of their talent and > originality. This shows that these fair sex lack professionalism and > due to these kind of people there is umemployment in our country. > Their place would have been filled by new topic by any talented and > intelligent person if the organisation fellowship there was a topic > /*Dilli Ke Kabristanhen Aur Shamshanhen Ka Vishleshanatmak Rekheinkan > */had been act impartially during selection. > > > > I didnt expect such thing from sarai. And above all I am sure they are > not going to post this letter to the list like before. > > I must advise these girls to not cheat from next time if they really > want to succeed in life. But I know they will say WHO CARES! and > continue copying > > > > roger > > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > From tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in Wed Aug 10 16:24:58 2005 From: tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in (Tapas Ray) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:24:58 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world Message-ID: <006501c59d99$f441b070$0100a8c0@tapas> > from mohammad rafi to irfan pathan, shahrukh khan, amiir khan.....they > are 100% indians. So, now we have a definition of Indianness - the degree of a Muslim's Indianness (expressed in terms of percentage) corresponds to the level of his/her fame and fortune. > i am neither a prankster, nor a person who is hungry for (cheap) > publicity. whatever i have > written ..i really mean it. india is a democratic country, everybody has > right to express his or > her views. i too have right to write what i feel. I would like to repeat what I said the other day, in response to Vijender Chauhan's post - people who work to demolish democracy, often do so in the name of, and under the protection provided by that same democracy. > pseudo secularists, forget 'godhra' & keep cursing gujrat cm for gujrat > riots, can a single person > however heavyweight may be a cm, be > responsible for riots? can he do that without any help from > hindu society? why did hindus from gujrat vote for him again? I take the liberty of thanking Ms Vedavati for her advice on behalf of all pseudosecularists. I also take this opportunity to point out that Mr Modi did what the Bolsheviks and the Nazis did - murder democracy by using democracy. And while doing so, Mr Modi excelled in the Nazi art of rabble-rousing. A truly democratic sciety, which wants to continue to reproduce itself and NOT LET ITSELF BE MANIPULATED BY TOTALITARIAN FORCES into something other than itself, should outlaw or at least place restrictions on these forces, apart from fighting them ideologically. Logically enough, we have laws against antinational activities. These forces are antinational, too, in that they are trying to destroy the nation as it has been constructed according to modernist ideals. So why should they not be bracketed with other antinational groups? If they want to play the game of mediavalism in its postmodern avatar, so be it. But then they should have the courage to come out of the system they are trying to destroy. At least the Maoists - those groups which do not fight elections - have shown the courage to do so. From tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in Wed Aug 10 16:39:05 2005 From: tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in (Tapas Ray) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 16:39:05 +0530 Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world Message-ID: <008601c59d9b$ed1ba1f0$0100a8c0@tapas> With apologies to Ms Vedavati, I am forwarding a message I have received from her offlist. This is because there is nothing personal in the message, and it pertains to the discussion going on onlist. I have a couple of points to make for Ms Vedavati's kind consideration. It seems she has not noticed that a discussion actually has been going on. ("Argument" is the word she likes.) I don't know if she has been too wrapped up in her own rhetoric to listen. Second, her name, address ... "identity" is the word that escapes her ... is very much the business of those who are "arguing" here. We are not ghosts, but real human beings talking about real human situations. Tapas Ray (In the flesh for the present, but would love to be a ghost some day.) ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vedavati Jogi" To: Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 2:26 PM Subject: Re: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world > if you can't argue with me on 'socalled secularism practised in india by > people like you' no problem. but stop this stupidity, my name, address > etc.is none of your business... > >>From: t.ray at vsnl.com >>To: reader-list at sarai.net >>Subject: Re: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world >>Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 13:39:08 +0500 >> >> > For those who think VJogi maybe a prankster, the following info maybe >>useful: >> > >> > A person named Vedavati Ravindra Jogi produced a film >> >>Yes, a Google search for "Vedavati" turns up information on an amateur >>film-maker of that name, living in Pune and in an apartment building with >>a tell-tale name. However, the search turns up more material, which some >>may find interesting - about a mythical character (apologies to those who >>object to "mythical") called Vedavati - it seems she and not Sita was the >>one who had been abducted by Ravana. (To think that I didn't know this!) >>So, it seems the war was a mistake after all. For other ignorant people >>like me, here's the link - >> >>http://www.urday.com/vk.htm >> >> >> >>_________________________________________ >>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: > > _________________________________________________________________ > Try the new MSN Desktop Search Toolbar. > http://server1.msn.co.in/sp05/msntoolbar/index.asp Just answer 3 simple > questions. > > From vivek at sarai.net Wed Aug 10 17:46:28 2005 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 17:46:28 +0530 Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: <008601c59d9b$ed1ba1f0$0100a8c0@tapas> References: <008601c59d9b$ed1ba1f0$0100a8c0@tapas> Message-ID: <42F9F01C.8000407@sarai.net> Hi Tapas and all, As a practising pseudo-secularist myself, I of course align with your and others' reasoned positions politically, and have been quite disturbed by some of the rhetoric that has recently made its presence felt on the list. *However*, I do think we should really refrain here from discussing any person on the list or her/his personal details, especially if they are not already public figures. It happens a lot on the Hindutva lists, where individuals of a certain political leaning are blacklisted and discussed in a very personal and invasive way. I don't think we should stoop that low, and eventually it's likely to backfire. Googling is inevitable; but it does raise the spectre of surveillance and violations of privacy. To discuss an individual in this way on-- don't forget-- a listserve with over 1100 subscribers worldwide is, I think, hurtful. I certainly wouldn't want my identity being probed in public like that. And what, after all, happened to sophisticated discussion and analysis? Humour and irony are always welcome; but with a little sensitivity, please. My ten paise, Vivek Tapas Ray wrote: > With apologies to Ms Vedavati, I am forwarding a message I have > received from her offlist. This is because there is nothing personal > in the message, and it pertains to the discussion going on onlist. > > I have a couple of points to make for Ms Vedavati's kind > consideration. It seems she has not noticed that a discussion actually > has been going on. ("Argument" is the word she likes.) I don't know if > she has been too wrapped up in her own rhetoric to listen. > > Second, her name, address ... "identity" is the word that escapes her > ... is very much the business of those who are "arguing" here. We are > not ghosts, but real human beings talking about real human situations. > > Tapas Ray > (In the flesh for the present, but would love to be a ghost some day.) > > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Vedavati Jogi" > To: > Sent: Wednesday, August 10, 2005 2:26 PM > Subject: Re: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world > > >> if you can't argue with me on 'socalled secularism practised in india >> by people like you' no problem. but stop this stupidity, my name, >> address etc.is none of your business... >> >>> From: t.ray at vsnl.com >>> To: reader-list at sarai.net >>> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world >>> Date: Tue, 09 Aug 2005 13:39:08 +0500 >>> >>> > For those who think VJogi maybe a prankster, the following info maybe >>> useful: >>> > >>> > A person named Vedavati Ravindra Jogi produced a film >>> >>> Yes, a Google search for "Vedavati" turns up information on an >>> amateur film-maker of that name, living in Pune and in an apartment >>> building with a tell-tale name. However, the search turns up more >>> material, which some may find interesting - about a mythical >>> character (apologies to those who object to "mythical") called >>> Vedavati - it seems she and not Sita was the one who had been >>> abducted by Ravana. (To think that I didn't know this!) So, it seems >>> the war was a mistake after all. For other ignorant people like me, >>> here's the link - >>> >>> http://www.urday.com/vk.htm >>> >>> >>> >>> _________________________________________ >>> 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: >> >> >> _________________________________________________________________ >> Try the new MSN Desktop Search Toolbar. >> http://server1.msn.co.in/sp05/msntoolbar/index.asp Just answer 3 >> simple questions. >> >> > > > _________________________________________ > 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 tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in Wed Aug 10 20:12:55 2005 From: tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in (Tapas Ray) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 20:12:55 +0530 Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world Message-ID: <005501c59db9$cc245190$0100a8c0@tapas> Vivek: Apologies to you and to other "practising pseudo-secularists" who have found my posts unethical. But I have a point or two to make about personal details. I think this list - or any listserv for that matter - is a public space, which people enter with full knowledge of its publicness. Therefore, I think it is reasonable that they should expect to have the spotlight turned on their persons if they choose to enter into a discussion, especially on a controversial topic. By joining the list, and further by entering into a discussion, Vedavati has indicated a conscious choice to pass from the private to the public, even if she is not already a public figure, in the sense that she does not hold public office or is not well-known around the country or the world or whatever community one may choose as the reference. Now the question of personal details. Unless you know something about the person, how do you place her/his statements in context? How do you interpret them? When you attend a meeting, don't you ever (consciously or unconsciously) place the speaker's statements in the context of what you know about her/him as an individual in all its dimensions? As for the concrete case of our discussion on Vedavati, I do not think I have mentioned anything other than what is relevant to the discussion. When I wrote that she seems to live "in an apartment building with a tell-tale name", I meant that the name of the apartment building underlines her stated beliefs. I could have quoted the name of the building, indeed the address itself, but did not because I thought it would be neither necessary, nor right to pinpoint her apartment the way some US news web sites have pinpointed certain individuals' homes not only with addresses but also with satellite photographs. However, anyone can find Vedavati's address, even from the telephone directory (if one does not have access to the internet, which leaves out members of this list by definition). Yes, googling does raise questions of surveillance and invasion of privacy. But is it fundamentally different from looking up a person on the phone book? In the case of search engines, the "phone book" covers the entire world and given you not just the phone number and the address, but masses of other information. Also, surveillance is usually understood in the sense of an activity of governments and corporations. I am sure you know they have other, extremely sophisticated methods - such as email interception - and do not depend just on search engines. Using the term "surveillance" with reference to the practice of "googling" people seems a bit out of proportion to me. Cheers, Tapas > Hi Tapas and all, > > As a practising pseudo-secularist myself, I of course align with your and > others' reasoned positions politically, and have been quite disturbed by > some of the rhetoric that has recently made its presence felt on the list. > > *However*, I do think we should really refrain here from discussing any > person on the list or her/his personal details, especially if they are not > already public figures. It happens a lot on the Hindutva lists, where > individuals of a certain political leaning are blacklisted and discussed > in a very personal and invasive way. I don't think we should stoop that > low, and eventually it's likely to backfire. > > Googling is inevitable; but it does raise the spectre of surveillance and > violations of privacy. To discuss an individual in this way on-- > don't forget-- a listserve with over 1100 subscribers worldwide is, I > think, hurtful. I certainly wouldn't want my identity being probed in > public like that. > > And what, after all, happened to sophisticated discussion and analysis? > Humour and irony are always welcome; but with a little sensitivity, > please. > > My ten paise, > Vivek From grade at vsnl.com Thu Aug 11 01:11:17 2005 From: grade at vsnl.com (Rakesh) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 01:11:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Nanavati report - Action taken Message-ID: <004001c59de3$8e44d5a0$9c0d130a@user378> Dear friends, Strangely, neither the left nor the BJP has made much vociferous protest about the Action taken report on the Nanavati report. The visible protests seem to be much more by Akali groups leaving an impression of protests by Sikhs. Quite apart from this, given the engagement of civil liberties, democratic rights, human rights groups with this issue (PUCL and PUDR had brought out the report "Who are the guilty" at that time indicting many congress leaders at the time), we should try to hold a protest. Preferably, not the standard dharna at Jantar-Mantar, rally to be stopped at Parliament Stree Police Station. Maybe we could have an effigy of Justice and take it to Nigambodh Ghat for burial/cremation with mukhotas of smug loking Sajjan Kumars, Bhagats, tytlers and other congress leaders. We should try for a wider participation. And more creative forms of protest! in solidarity rakesh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050811/26f233cc/attachment.html From itsnishant at gmail.com Wed Aug 10 15:37:23 2005 From: itsnishant at gmail.com (Nishant Shah) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 15:37:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] In response to Roger Message-ID: Hi, I just wanted to, as a Sarai fellowship programme reject this year, applaud Vivek for his patient reply. While I did not land the fellowship myself a lot of my friends did and yes, a few of them were also women and such a sexist statement on the part of Roger wanted me to go out and start a troll account somwhere. However, I must say that it has been a pleasure to read most of the postings on the list. Even though the topics were diverse and the participants had very radical, sometimes disparate methods to deal with their problems, it was an experience worth the having. A lot of them are unrelated to the fields that I work in and quite a few gave me new knowledge about things around me and I am thankful to all of them. I am generally a quiet lurker - yes I did not even, as a gujarati, jump into the Vedavati woes - but this particular mail by Roger stung something somewhere. I think this year's participants are as interesting as last year's and such unfair statements as made in the comment just got me into writing a few lines to say, as they do in bangalore - ignore madi! Just a small mail to balance out the horrible after taste Roger's mail left in my mouth. cheers everybody. Hope you have a good conference Nishant Shah -- Nishant says Tell me something about yourself. Go ahead...tell all -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050810/a66cbf79/attachment.html From jeebesh at sarai.net Thu Aug 11 12:20:53 2005 From: jeebesh at sarai.net (Jeebesh Bagchi) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 12:20:53 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] After Honda Message-ID: <42FAF54D.1030509@sarai.net> dear All, Now the heat and shock is more or less over around the workers in Honda factory in Manesar, near Gurgoan. Newsaapers do not anymore carry stories and TV channels wait for another spectacular site of confrontation. Meanwhile criminal cases on around 300 workers will take its toll for the next 15 years or more. For those of you interested in thinking about these events, do have a read of this text written in 1998, by some people based in Faridabad industrial area. best jeebesh ------------------- http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Lobby/2379/leadry.htm SELF ACTIVITY OF WAGE-WORKERS Towards a Critique of Representation & Delegation *Theories and practices of representation & delegation are a stumbling block in the self-activity of wage-workers. They hinder wage-workers' resistances, refusals and steps of change. What follows is a part of a larger critique of representation & delegation that we are engaged in. We invite you to join us in this attempt.* CONTENTS * *Lead-ry * Routine lead-ry Lead-ry - * Depth of conflict management * Self-activities of wage-workers * Activities of a fringe left * A critique of a fringe left * A preliminary sum-up * Self-activity of wage-workers against Politics of Closure * Lead-ry *For over four years now we have encountered numerous arguments and counter-arguments in conversations amongst wage-workers on the role of leaders in routine factory life. The backdrop to these conversations has been the unfolding of events in factories where workers find themselves trapped. What is attempted here is a systematization of numerous experiences and observations to obtain a better understanding of shop-floor life in order to confront it more effectively. * *"On the shopfloor we are at all times in direct antagonism with the supervisor/ foreman. This antagonism is because of the supervisor's constant attempt to maintain work flow." * *"Supervisors constantly keep their eyes on us. They threaten us with charges, threets & suspension, placate us with overtime & advance payments and use outright deceptions to keep us in check." * *"Supervisors constantly nag us to fulfill production quotas and maintain quality. They perpetually hassle us to ensure a minimal rejection of products. Raw material utilization is another never-ending bone of contention." * *"We never tell supervisors what is in our hearts. No supervisors can know what we are thinking and planning. They are actually in constant fear of us." * *"Routinely we engage in slowdowns, quality slackening, wastage, breakage and clogging. Breakage and clogging are what we all do, all the time - but never talk about it, even with each other. We never even voice our appreciation or acknowledgment of what someone has done … its an open secret." * *"Whenever the discontent on the shopfloor becomes very sharp and the atmosphere surcharged, supervisors lose their voice." * *Routine Lead-ry* *"Leaders are from amongst us. We have an ambivalent relationship with them." * *"Because they are from amongst us, leaders know a lot about us, about our inclinations and our thoughts. Leaders do not work themselves. They tell us to ensure that production does not fall and promise to take care of the rest as they claim to be our watchdogs (pahredar)." * *"Leaders have financial clout. This is not just from union dues & other collections. A lot of money comes from cuts & commissions in the purchase of uniforms, shoes, festival sweets, festival gifts like blankets, almirahs, suitcases, watches and kitchenware. Cuts from canteen contractors and scrap-dealers. Lumpsums from managements for long term agreements. Control of cooperative societies and welfare funds." * *"Contenders for leadership spend a lot of money during elections (in the factory). Because leadership means financial clout." * *"Being a leader entails no work in the factory and much money. This is enough to sway a lot of workers." * *On small benefit networks* *"Leaders, ex-leaders and potential leaders create and maintain intricate networks spread throughout the factory through incentives like advances, loans, lighter jobs, preferable shifts, employment to kith & kin, gate passes, tours, better food from the canteen without any payment, grants from welfare, first preference." * *"Networking by leaders also uses caste and regional identities." * *"Leaders and ex-leaders are often found ensconced in the offices of the personnel manager or some other official. Persons with close links to this or that managerial faction can provide facilities to their close followers (laguea-bhaguea). Leaders and their camp-followers makeup ten to fifteen percent of the factory's workers." * *"Those who constitute the networks are articulate in various ways _ from muscle power to slippery tongues." * *"These networks which are constituted on the basis of material incentives and favours are very intricate. They make a "tantra" and "jaal" (apparatus and mesh) to keep constant tabs on, as well as affect the weather and temperature on the shopfloor." * *"Those who constitute the networks are conduits for the circulation of rumours, baits, airy-fairy promises, and even lies. These networks make constant efforts to justify and valorize leaders and their powerful social & political links." * *"Leaders are basically middle-persons. And like all middle-persons they sometimes get small things done for us on an individual basis." * *"We have everyday fears of disciplinary actions, chargesheets, suspensions and physical attacks. Leaders' networks routinely highlight, heighten and exaggerate these fears to keep us pacified." * *During shopfloor confrontations* *"Supervisors run away from the shopfloor whenever worker discontent grows and workers take an openly confrontationist stance. In such cases management refuses to talk to workers directly. It sends leaders to the shopfloor." * *"Most of us weigh the situation again and again, and hesitatingly take steps back and forth on contentious issues. Leaders' networks try to pacify us by exaggerating our fears. Meanwhile, the networks of ex-leaders and potential leaders try and instigate us to an openly confrontationist stance in an attempt to establish their leaderships." * *"Leaders' pet rant to pacify us is that 'you start the work, we'll take care of the matter'. When workers refuse to listen and open confrontation continues, selective suspensions and dismissals begin." * *"In such situations, suspensions and dismissals force workers to talk to the leaders. The leaders then scold workers for having taken steps without their advice. They present the suspensions and dismissals as a consequence of not heeding them." * *"The issues of contention are effectively sidelined by the leaders. They shift the focus to suspensions and dismissals." * *"Routinely, when workers demand small relief on individual or group basis, the management does not act. When leaders say the same thing, the management acts. This increases the power of the leaders." * *Some conclusions* *"We used to give union dues on the understanding that we would get benefits in exchange. Wages will increase and our jobs will be safe. But during the past twenty years things have been just the opposite." * *"For twenty-eight years I have been witnessing a reduction in the number of workers and an increase in production." * *"Earlier we used to give union dues but now the management deducts union dues from our salary." * *"Trapped by one assurance or another, we contribute union dues. It is only later that we find that all these assurances were hollow." * *Lead-ry: department of conflict management Lead-ry is an art and a science, mastered only by a few, and used to sit on our heads. It requires: * *· Sharp skills in discontent measurement and the ability to arrive at swift quantitative solutions i.e. 'at what' and 'at how much' will the workers accept the disagreeable. This involves a wide spectrum of activities ranging from passing on sums of money to slapping a supervisor's face. * *· Highly developed rhetorical skills, which are used to sway, to create prejudice and to convince. * *· Organising skills, which are used to build and sustain well-oiled networks at minimal cost. These skills involve astute psychological reading of individuals and groups of individuals. They also require a down to earth grasp of identity politics and maneuvers. * *Managements' regime of work, productivity and discipline is routinely confronted and opposed by wage-workers. Routine activity of lead-ry is to coax, cajole and threaten wage-workers into accepting these regimes. * *Lead-ry routinely negotiates agreements with management and attempts to implement them by overcoming wage-workers' opposition. "Whenever a new machine or fixture is brought workers refuse to work on them. Leaders are the main instruments to implement these changes. Placation, suspension and fear are used by l eaders for this." * *The main activity of lead-ry is to actively discourage the routine self-activity of wage-workers. Individually and in small groups, workers are always taking steps on their own that disrupt the work-routine. These seemingly minor irritants are a major threat to production and discipline. Leaders and their networks, i.e. lead-ry, is constantly engaged in hindering, devaluing and hijacking the self-activity of wage-workers. * *To put it bluntly: higher management makes strategies, leaders & personnel managers act as tacticians, and supervisors & leaders' networks execute these strategies. * *Self-activities of wage-workers* *Perhaps not universal, it is still true that most people have the capacity as well as the ability to act and participate as "NOT AS UNEQUALS" in small informal groups. The layering of experience, the excitement and the unpredictability associated with what takes place each day is not because we participate as 'equals'. Instead, it is because each of us carries our individuality and is able to express it freely in such groups. * *This participation as "NOT AS UNEQUALS" is spread over various facets of life and an individual is often a participant in more than one informal group at most times. * *The wider implications of these informal groups of "NOT AS UNEQUALS" stand out clearly when we look at their play in some detail in institutional structures, whether factories, offices, banks or the media. * *The moment of entry into a factory is the moment of entry into the disciplinary grid of work & productivity, as well as a jungle of informal groups. Strict entry schedules set up by managements are transformed into stretchable entry times. The act of punching-in is often put into disarray by proxy-punching or transformed by kicks that literalize the machine into a punching bag. * * 'Entry time' is made distinct from 'commencement of work' by long handshakes - backslaps - chitchat. It is often that work commences after 9 o'clock tea in an 8 A.M. shift. * *Management strategies like changing the placement of the 'punch-in' from factory gate to departments, the imposition of fines, like a fifteen minute wage-cut for being late by one minute, are visible signs of managerial desperation. * *Proxy-punching in the Goodyear Tyre factory has forced the management to issue identity cards containing computer floppies, even though it has meant an increase in cost. Workers' kicks in the Bata Shoe factory repeatedly dysfunctional ized the punching machine and forced the management to appoint an attendance clerk to go to each department and mark workers' attendance. * *Using lead-ry networks, management conducts time studies to work out grids of intensification. These are the periods when the wink of an eye and the utterance of a phrase put into practice well thought-out schemes involving co-ordinated steps by small affinity groups of seven-eight workers. And, whether they are premised on time studies or on agreements with leaders, the biggest stumbling block to increases in the workload are the informal groups of workers. * *Keeping the immediate supervisor in check is a task that all workers have to take up. It is a very common sight to find five-six workers heckling a supervisor when s/he is trying to boss over some worker. Immediate supervisors are often nervous, tense and anxious despite the brave face they put up. In a hand tools factory, a supervisor who bullied and humiliated workers was lucky to survive. On a cold winter night shift, the machines lay idle because of shortage of material and the supervisor went to sleep in his cabin with a coal fire to keep him warm. Workers slept on as a factory ghost locked the supervisor's cabin door. It was the routine round of security personnel that led to the breaking open of the door and the saving of the supervisor's life. * *Helping one-another does not remain confined to affairs dealing with the company. Discussions of events in one-another's residential locality, schools, hospitals, etc. are very common amongst groups of workers during breaks which are often extended, to the constant chagrin of managements. Intricate inter-linking amongst workers coagulates them into entities where a member is never alone. This plays a major role in keeping the bossism of management or the goonery of lead-ry in check, whether in the factory, on the road or in residential localities. Anyone mistaking an individual to be only an individual is immediately shown the real side of things. In fact, the affinity groups in factories are a continuation of affinity groups at large in society. * # *Innumerable actions, immense diversity and an extremely high unpredictability of affinity groups keep management and leaders in check. A phrase often floating in management-lead-ry negotiations is "Will the workers accept this?" * *Rules and regulations are easily made. Agreements can easily be signed. Workers not accepting or fulfilling given production targets can have their services terminated. Given the universal co-option of unions and leaders by managements, there seems to be nothing stopping managements from doing what they want. Then, why the ever-present, ever-troubling question "Will the workers accept this?" * *In a factory manufacturing wires, management stream-rolled workers from one job to another. Anyone saying 'NO' was shown the gate. The coolness and quietness with which small groups of workers accepted this and interchanged operations, from acid to water to oil back to water, oil and acid, only infuriated the management when they discovered that ninety tonnes of wire was sent back by a consignee as being defective. Arbitrary job changes came to an abrupt end. * *To counter the delay in wage-payment, a handful of workers working for a contractor in a textile factory simply went to the canteen and sat there. The workers' silence in response to the haranguing of the chief executive completely unnerved the management. * *A management of a tractor factory increased production quotas using agreements with the union. Workers operating computerised machines responded by changing around the tapes that governed work sequences. The management had to very quickly replace the machines. * *Anyone blowing the whistle is shown his or her place. In a hand tool-manufacturing factory, new machinery even further cut down the time between two operations. In order to obtain some breathing space, two cranes were made to move from opposite sides, clash and cause a breakdown. A maintenance worker complained to the management. One day, cranes were in operation but were said to be not working. The maintenance worker was called for repair. He climbed a crane and when he was checking it, the other crane began moving towards his crane. His shouts for mercy braked the other crane, but they proved to be a brake for management schemes as well. * *And then, things like not greeting a boss. The management of a factory stopped overtime payments to pay clerks. The five pay clerks responded to this loss of dues by moving like automatons whenever they came across their boss. The silence of the clerks got on his nerves and the management had a nervous breakdown. Overtime dues were restarted. * # *It is these constant innumerable, insidious, unpredictable activities by small groups of workers that underlie the stress that managements give to representation - articulation - long term agreements. * *Representation - articulation - unity - long-term agreements versus wage-workers' silences - mumbling - incoherence - constantly nagging non-unitary demands are expressions of the functioning of a large number of small informal groups in an institution. They are the signs of expressions of the individualities of workers. * *In a factory, workers in small groups would often go to the general manager to put up their grievances or seek relief. The harassed manager met this self-expression of workers by posting a guard in front of his office and issuing explicit instructions that workers would not to be allowed to enter his office in groups and only one worker would be allowed to go in along with a leader. In this way, not only was his paternal mask shattered but also the upkeep of his position demanded new costs. * *Management responds to the adamancy of these small groups of workers by harping on the threat to harmonious industrial relations. Lead-ry denounces the actions and demands of these small groups as a selfishness that poses a threat to workers' unity. Sixteen hot chamber workers in a factory left their place of work on a hot summer day complaining of excessive heat. Operations involving five hundred workers came to a standstill. Hot chamber workers had been demand ing relief during summers through a lowering of temperature, but the management was not willing to agree, as this would lessen the pace of drying and therefore slow down the chain of work. Assurances had been aplenty and many a long-term agreement had completed its tenure. This step of the hot chamber workers was met by the leaders with such epithets: "All these years they did not feel the heat, it is only today that they have acquired this delicacy. They want to spoil our relation with the management. Wheat advance is around the corner - now the management will refuse to give it. They only look at themselves. Their selfishness is harming all the other workers. The management listens to us because we represent you. But if small groups do not listen to us and take steps on their own, then why will the management talk to us? It is only our unity that is holding back the management, otherwise it will do whatever it wants. These hot chamber workers are harming our unity, and if tomorrow the management takes action against anyone we will not be responsible." * *In the Escorts Yamaha motorcycle manufacturing factory, disenchantment with and denunciation of leaders was similar to innumerable other places. In a confrontation with the management, 300 workers on the assembly line refused to have anything to do with leaders and jammed the assembly line on their own. Leaders denounced these workers and reciprocated by saying that they would not intervene on their behalf - this would teach them a lesson. Workers in other departments did not lay down their tools in sympathy with the assembly line workers. Instead, what was observed was that management and leaders were conspiring for a lockout/strike to launch a major attack on the workers. There are two thousand five hundred workers in the factory. All the workers side-stepped the leaders and decided to continue production in other departments while the assembly line workers would keep the line jammed. Meanwhile, money would be collected department-wise to compensate their financial loss. As the assembly of a motorcycle per two minutes stood still, management and leaders bid their time, confident that the past would repeat itself and workers would have to accept the mediation of leaders. A week after the jam, overtime payments of the previous month were made. One hundred rupees was contributed by each worker, and collected in a rota department-wise. It was decided that a like amount would be contributed when monthly wages were to be paid. This step of the workers unnerved the management as well as the lead-ry. Leaders on their own started holding talks with the management and an ex-partie agreement fulfilling the assembly line workers' demands was made to get the assembly line moving. * *Refusals* *Self-activities of wage-workers also encompass layers and layers of routine refusals. A few such refusals are: * * *" Never make a complaint against a co-worker to a supervisor or to a manager." * * *" Never to give evidence in favour of management against a co-worker." * * *" Not to get entangled in competition. To give more production in competition with co-workers is unacceptable." * * *" Refuse to be carried away by managerial appreciation & recognition to give more production." * * *" Even the shadow of money is unacceptable in inter-personal relations." * *Seismic lead-ry* *It is not un-often that competitiveness in the market demands sharp rise in productivity. This entails a major attack on wage-workers. Major attack means large-scale retrenchment, big increase in work intensity, sharp cuts in wages besides other cost cutting and efficiency drives. * *In these conditions managements plan new strategies and lead-ry adopts new tactics. The unfolding of events is very intricate. To discern the intricate web of strategy and tactics we take as an illustration the unfolding of events in Gedore Hand Tools, Faridabad in 1982-1984 of which we have a first hand experience. * *Background* *Gedore Hand Tools, headquartered in Germany, had three plants in Faridabad exploiting 3500 wage-workers. U.S.A was a major market for its produce. Hand tools enterprises located in China and South Korea were Gedore's market competitors. Shrinkage of production in the auto and engineering industries in the early 1980s sharpened the competition in the hand tools market. In this scenario, in order to maintain its competitiveness, Gedore management planned a major int ensification of work through automation and large-scale retrenchment. For installation of an automatic plating plant Gedore management took a loan of Rs. 2.5 crores (~ $2.5 millions) from the Industrial Development Bank of India, a government of India enterprise. * *The unfolding of events* *In the beginning of 1982 incidents of chargesheeting, suspensions, transfers from one department to another, shifting workers from one job to another, wage-delays, downgradation in canteen quality, insistence on quality in production, strictness about production targets, time strictness, no rest during shift hours etc. increased noticeably. * *In a gate meeting on June 7, 1982 union leaders spoke at length about capitalism, global crisis, company in crisis, and then asked the workers to make sacrifices in the larger interest. They put forward three alternatives to choose from: * *- 25% reduction in wages. * *- Go on special leave for six months at half wages. * *- Retrenchment of 600 workers. * *Workers rejected outright all these options put forth by the leaders. At this rejection, managements' escalated their strong-arm tactics and instigation. Leaders and ex-leaders oiled their networks and accelerated mobilisations around caste and regional identities. * *Workers disenchantment with leaders increased rapidly. Their self-activity became more pronounced. Large number of workers stopped paying union dues, attending union meetings, side-stepping leaders in day to day activity and began to deal directly with management individually and in small groups. Graffiti inside the plants increased. * *A group of workers belonging to, or influenced by, the fringe left posed inconvenient questions in a signed handbill on June 12, 1982. The handbill read "… management says that it does not have money even to buy raw materials - then where are the crores of rupees (millions of dollars) for automation coming from? Is it not because of automation that 600 workers are being told to resign? Soon, will you not talk of the need to retrench a thousand workers? Instead of struggling against it, haven't union leaders become advocates of the management?" * *The confidence of the leaders was shaken. Management was put on the defensive. Uneasy questions in the workers' minds became points of widespread discussion. The tactic deployed by leaders and management - of announcing their attack in the gate meeting - had turned out to be a blunder. For damage control, the leaders adopted silence and the management took steps - show cause and advice l etters were issued to the signatories of the handbill. * *Through a circular, management warned workers to beware of disruptive forces. It said that automation was for the health of the workers. The management claimed that it had never had any intention of retrenching workers who would be made surplus by automation. If the management had wanted, it could have retrenched half the workers as it had been paying full wages to idle workers for one and half years. The circular ended with a rhetorical flourish: "Increase produc tion OR perish!" * *A twisted version of the management slogan: "Increase production AND perish!" became popular amongst the workers. * *The sequence of events at this point is as follows : there are prolonged delays in the payment of wages, machinery for automation reaches the plants, leaders maintain a strict silence, and ex-leaders attempt to form a rival union. There are physical attacks, by leaders and their network, on workers who still try to focus discussion on the looming retrenchment. To silence these voices, management uses suspensions. Besides the delay in wages, the issue of the annual bonus is used as another diversionary entanglement. Further on, the management goes for work suspension at half wages for three days and says that this may continue for quite some time. * *Leaders complement these steps taken by the management for an open confrontation by ordering a tool down strike on February 12, 1983. Fiery speeches at gate meetings became a regular feature. Dissenting workers who have been trying to focus attention on looming retrenchment are denounced as disruptive elements and attacked. On February 21, 1983 leaders announce at a gate meeting that they have reached an agreement with the management. In the agreement it is agreed that no further work suspensions would take place but wages of January'83 would be paid in January'84. The workers reject this agreement. The management then tries, unsuccessfully, to instigate violent confrontations amongst workers through ex-leaders. * *The same agreement is again put for approval at the gate meeting of February 28, 1983 after a number of thundering speeches challenging the management to lockout the factory if it wanted. The workers again reject the agreement. * *After the second rejection, the leaders announce that the way now is to go for an 'open struggle'. A meeting of factory delegates (who had been elected in 1980) and other militant workers is called and suggestions asked for. Leaders then reject the suggestion for demonstrations on the plea that the conflict was with the Gedore management and not with the government. However, as soon as t he question of steps against the management comes into focus, the leaders somersault and announce a demonstration & a sit-down at the district administration chief's office to be organised on Mar, 21. * *On March 20, leaders call another gate meeting. Besides members of their network in the three plants, leaders bring their supporters from other factories and spread them out strategically. The same agreement is announced yet again. It is immediately hailed by the strategically placed supporters! And before the workers can react, leaders and their henchmen jump the factory gate and rush in to the plant to switch on the machines. * *The leaders had here used a time tested and most effective strategy. By switching on machines and restarting the plants, the workers would now be split into confronting groups, where one section would demand a continuation of the tool down strike while the other would be in favour of resuming work. This clash amongst the workers, and the concomitant unfolding of violence, would then facilitate large-scale retrenchment. * *But in this case this strategy failed miserably. Enraged, the 3500 workers rush into the plant, shut down the machines and then beat up the leaders who are forced to run away. The President of the union who was also beaten and had to turn tail, had been the president of the union for ten years and was also the President of CITU, Faridabad district unit of the central trade union of Communist Party of India (Marxist). * *Production does not resume. There is now massive police deployment. Leaders again try to start the machines at night. They are again forced to retreat. Tool down continues. * *Some workers belonging to the fringe left call a general body meeting on 23rd March, the weekly rest day. All the workers attend it. A committee proposed by militant, articulate workers and ex-leaders to obtain the resignation of leaders is not opposed. In view of the mounting discontent of workers, the leaders have to resign. After the resignations, the struggle committee, however, does not materialize and the ex-leaders take over. * *Tool down continues till April 14, 1983. The workers reluctantly accept the agreement that they had rejected earlier. * *Stalemate. The issue of retrenchment has got bogged down. * *The cycle of shopfloor instigation and wage-delays reemerges as a part of renewed attempts to retrench workers. Police are now posted inside one of the plants. Mobilisations being made on the basis of region and caste come to the fore. There is now a delay in the payment of wages to supervisory and clerical staff. * *The management obtains government approval for retrenchment of 300 workers. Leaders hide the list and deny that there is any retrenchment on the cards. They start talking about a new long-term agreement and preparation of a demand charter for it. * *At this juncture, management steps up attempts at violent confrontations amongst workers. Old leaders form a committee with the claim that they will negotiate a good agreement with the management. Mobilisation by the two lead-ry networks on the basis of caste, region and plant identity became frantic. The management flames the fire by locking out the third Gedore plant in February 1984. Enraged workers attack the existing leaders and the committee of old leaders uses this opportunity to take over leadership. Lockout in the third plant is lifted. * *The finishing off* *And then began joint action by the management, leaders, police, state administration and the media, to retrench workers in Gedore Hand Tools. A gang of 15 to 20 leaders and their musclemen freely roam the three plants. They pick workers from their machines, take them to the plant time-office and force them, through physical violence and threats, to sign resignation letters. In this way, up to 50 workers are forced to resign in a single day. Workers coming to factory for work and those leaving after shift hours are attacked on the roads and forced to resign. Workers are threatened at their homes and forced to resign. Workers who had lodged complaints with the police find that the police have framed cases against them. Government administration merely files away the complaints made at the District Administration office. Newspapers do not print any news of these events. Not even letters about a fellow worker who committed suicide on the rail tracks after he was forced to resign. * *In these circumstances hundreds of workers sought shelter in their villages for months. * *And the environment at Gedore? Armed police in tents inside the factory, armed police in trucks making rounds of the three plants. * *This is how the stalemate was broken and retrenchment implemented. Even then, it took one more year to retrench 1500 workers out of the 3500 in Gedore Hand Tools, Faridabad. * *Fallout* *The inability of the management, lead-ry and state administration to entrap wage-workers in time tested snares, forced them to divest themselves of their constitutional garbs as well as leader militancy. They had to resort to brute force to implement their policies. This repression, however, could not bring with it the myth of "glorious defeat" with its martyrs and heroes as well as the attendant mortgaging of wage-workers' critical evaluation. * *But not getting trapped was not sufficient for the workers and they were disabled by the methodical repression of the management. This could happen, fundamentally, because management repression did not create sufficient ripples and repercussions amongst other wage-workers. Workers' self-activities had remained disjointed, unlinked and uncoordinated even within the enterprise. A dynamic expansion of wage-workers' self-activities is critical for linking wage-workers of one enterprise with those of other enterprises. But the unfolding of workers' self-activity was impeded by their not questioning of representation & delegation. * *Seismic lead-ry - at a higher level* *The frequency of extensive area-wide, region-wide, nation-wide attacks on wage-workers, compressed in ever-shortening periods of time is increasing. The attacks entail huge wage-cuts, enormous increase in work-load and mass scale retrenchments. And they are implemented, primarily, in two ways. * *One: through instigation to mass violence by playing the politics of identity, and * *Two: through the foisting of credible, militant leaders. * *In Indonesia, 1997-98, through the massive attacks on wage-workers, one can see these strategies being played out: * *I. Media highlighted riots between 'ethnic Indonesians' and 'migrant Chinese'; * *II. "Confirmed reports say that the US has been pressuring Jakarta to release one of the top political dissenters from imprisonment. 'The US move is to enable Jakarta to cool the rising temperature down to some extent', say sources". [HT, Delhi 29 March 1998] * *Activities of a fringe left * *The fringe left that was a participant in the events in Gedore Hand Tools in 1982-84 existed around a monthly workers newspaper. Some workers of Gedore were members of this fringe left and we have emerged from this background.The activities of this fringe left had been geared: * *- to unmask the collaboration of leaders with managements. * *- to keep in focus the issues that managements and leaders seek to hide. * *- to unmask formal and phoney steps like one-day token strikes, token demonstrations and formal mass meetings that are organised by leaders. * *- to create and establish an effective alternate leadership to be constituted by militant, credible leaders from amongst the workers. * *- to unify workers around this alternate leadership. * *- to launch organised, conscious struggles under this alternate leadership. * *- to push for demonstrations, mass meetings & strikes. * *A critique of a fringe left* * The process of unmasking management-leader collaborations brought into focus contentious issues that management and leaders seek to hide. This centre-staging of otherwise hidden agendas helped unleash the self-activity of wage-workers. Management notices and leaders rhetoric, demand charters and agreements, all came under constant scrutiny by wage-workers. "What to do?" and "How to do? " became topics of routine discussion. Routine self-activity of workers as individuals and in small groups increased. * *The medium of circulation of information around these activities was through a regular monthly newspaper, frequent handbills, wall-letters and conversations. These simple acts created considerable hurdles in the implementation of the retrenchment policy at Gedore Tools. * * But it is the alternative proposed by fringe left that is problematic, in fact, fatal. The mobilisation of wage-workers envisaged by the fringe left, in fact, is premised on the erasure of the self expressions and self-activities of wage-workers at large. * *The problem of militant & credible leaders* *In the latter half of the 19th century and the first quarter of the 20th century, fierce polemics raged on the question of real and phoney representations/ representatives of the interests of wage-workers. The polemics spanned ideology, strategy and tactics. 'Reform or Revolution' was often the high point of the debate. The reality that has unfolded since has, however, made the very premises of this debate redundant. * *Towards the last quarter of the 19th century, requirements of production enterprises for accumulated labour reached such dimensions that individual ownership of production enterprises became unfeasible. to to as the major source of funding for production enterprises are what has unfolded in these one hundred years. Individuals as owners/ part owners of production enterprises have increasingly become insignificant. Acts forcing bankruptcies of individual owners have lost their cutting edge. Enterprises have acquired institutional forms. With enterprises becoming monoliths of massive amounts of accumulated labour, head-on collisions of living labour with these institutional monsters are counter productive for living labour, whether in the form of an individual wage-worker, a group of wage-workers or a mass of wage-workers. And, working for head-on collisions is the raison d'etre of the fringe left. * *In this scenario, the blurred boundaries between phoney, formal and real struggles have melted, become indistinguishable, giving way to a continuum. Formal-token, phoney-instigated-provoked, militant struggles, despite some differences of form, have in essence become indistinguishable. It is through repeated experiences that large numbers of wage-workers have learnt that these are harmful for them. It is this that underlies the unwillingness of workers to struggle - the word 'struggle' is here being used in the sense of the dominant meaning s that it has come to have. And it is this that underlies the fringe left's activities to 'agitate workers' in order to overcome what it decries as the apathy and passivity of wage-workers. It is in this context that the fringe left creates the polemics of militant & credible leaders. * *In general, the alternate leadership, the militant & credible leaders for whose creation the fringe left is geared, is a fringe phenomenon like itself. It is only in the event of major attacks on wage-workers that the alternate leadership of militant & credible leaders can and often does acquire leverage amongst large numbers of workers. And it is only then that the 'dead-endness' of militancy, and the fact that it actually causes serious damage, becomes obvious. * *Unity and unifocality are the mantras of state and proto-state apparatuses. Even those fringe left groups that are explicitly anti-state have as their axis activities that are geared to unity and unifocal forms. This is what makes even such fringe left groups proto-states. * *In fact, it must be stated that it is very doubtful if representation was at any time in the interest of wage-workers. A hundred years compel us to engage in a critical retrospective analysis. With all that wage-workers have experienced in this time, history proves that any and every representation is counter-productive for wage-workers. * *Demonstrations, mass meetings and strikes are all events premised on unity and unifocality, and implicit in them are both representation and delegation. The logic for these events is that these are shows of strength and thus in the interest of wage-workers. Facts, however, point to the contrary. * *Demonstrations* *Demonstrations involve an elaborate plan of date, time, route, destination, pace, slogans, demands, those to lead, those to maintain order, those to address and those to talk 'on behalf'. Organisational infrastructure is a prerequisite for a demonstration. Ninety-five percent of wage-workers cannot organise demonstrations themselves, they can only join in as followers. For a worker to become a part of a demonstration, the worker has to in effect erase any idea of self-activity and self-expression, or, has to deceive him or herself by parroting the pre-written script as self-expression. * *Demonstrations are means and occasions for displaying the strength of organisations and leaders. The index of strength is numbers and the index of militancy is the number & intensity of skirmishes with the police, which range from charges by mounted police, water cannon charges, tear gas shelling, arrests, and firing. The success of a demonstration is measured by the grandiosity of the spectacle it provides to the media. What are erased are the injuries and the long court cases inflicted on wage-workers. Those who are killed are made into martyrs and transformed into icons to shackle any criticism or questioning. * *Workers, by and large, are aware that demonstrations make them easy targets for police attacks besides gagging their self-expression. This is evident from the distance that workers maintain from demonstrations. In fact demonstrations often have to be organised during shift hours with the connivance of managements. * *Mass meetings* *Most frequently, mass meetings that wage-workers have to encounter are gate meetings at the factory and office. Gate meetings are held by leaders. The rule is that only leaders will speak in the gate meetings. The logic put forward is that any other vocalization will show disunity amongst workers to the management and weaken bargaining power. To see to it that the rule is implemented, lead-ry musclemen are strategically placed in gate meetings in order to summarily deal with any worker who tries to speak. Recognition of a new leadership hap pens with the successful holding of a gate meeting, because holding a gate meeting constitutes a challenge to the existing leadership. * *The most encountered mass meetings, i.e. gate-meetings, exclude wage-workers self-expression both by logic and force. * *The fringe left often called for general body meetings (GBM) away from the factory premises in order to overcome the prohibition of any expression of dissent at gate-meetings. However, an elaborate organisational apparatus is also a prerequisite for holding general body meetings. These are occasions that require venues, agendas, stages, stage-managers, order keepers and elaborate time management. By their very nature, general body meetings are arenas for fights between leaders, ex-leaders and potential leaders with their lists of articulate speakers and cheer groups. * *General body meetings demand from wage-workers time bound (two to three minutes) coherent presentations on specific agenda. These presentations have to be speeches to audiences of hundreds or thousands. This demand on the workers by itself excludes most workers from expressing themselves in general body meetings. Those who are not thus excluded have to filter through the lists of speakers of contending lead-ry networks. * *Workers have seen through general body meetings for what they are. Now the norm is that out of a thousand workers, approximately 150 will attend them. * *There are other kinds of mass meetings that play on higher scales of representation. An illustrative example: >From 1977 to 1979 in Faridabad, there were sporadic multi-nodal outbursts of workers discontent in hundreds of factories. In October 1979 unions jointly called a mass meeting. Around 100,000 workers assembled and the atmosphere was very charged. The huge number of workers spilled out of the meeting ground and road and rail traffic was forced to halt. Well-prepared police and paramilitary forces then began indiscriminate firing. Factories functioned normally from the next day. This incident ensured a smoother functioning in the industrial b elt for the next few years. And a martyrs' column was duly erected. * *Strikes * *This fringe left's activity regarding strikes was on two planes. One - phoney strikes called by leaders for the implementation of management policies and formal strikes to make their presence felt, were denounced. Two - The call was given for real strikes, and for militancy in real strikes. * *Denunciation of phoney and formal strikes opens greater possibilities for workers self-activity as questions regarding what to do, what not to do, how to do, how not to do are unleashed. However, calling for real, militant strikes has disastrous consequences for wage-workers. * *Vis-a-vis management, work stoppage at either factory or larger levels is no longer a powerful weapon of wage-workers. On the contrary, lockouts by managements and strikes by leaders are powerful instruments used to launch major attacks on wage-workers. In the last twenty years we have not come across any strikes, anywhere in the world, that have not resulted in large-scale wage cuts, retrenchments, work intensification or closures. * *A few illustrative examples: * *Bombay Textile Strike of 1982-83 in 60 textile mills. 250,000 workers unified under a militant leadership on a charter of demands. Management policy was to retrench 90,000 workers and close down old mills & sell the premium land. Under normal circumstances, such large-scale retrenchment would have taken more than ten years. Through the strike, however, this policy was implemented in one year. * *East India Cotton Mills, Faridabad, 1979. Automation was to be implemented. Management needed to retrench 3000 out of 6000 workers. A strike was called by the union for a one-percent increase in bonus. Militant strike, and a lot of violence. Three thousand workers dismissed. * *Lakhani Shoes, Faridabad, 1983,1988,1996. Three major strikes by three different unions. Each time there is violence and militancy. Each time all workers are dismissed. Lakhani Shoes has registered a very fast growth rate in output. Number of factories of the company has increased from 3 in 1983 to 22 in 1997. * *Requirements of a strike* *The requirements of a strike are factory-wide issues and an elaborate organisational structure. Also, mobilisation of workers through persuasions, deceptions, hopes and threats. * *The activity of fringe groups during strikes that are not organised by them is geared to make the strikes increasingly militant. In factories where they have a physical presence and they are able to get an echo they may be able to take over the leadership of the strike by forming struggle committees of militant workers. What are the courses open to these struggle committees? * *Prolongation of the strike does not help. Rather, the longer the strike is stretched, the weaker becomes the strength of the workers vis-a-vis management. Such being the reality, struggle committees are forced to resort to: * *· Direct confrontations with state administration to pressurize the state-apparatus to act on the management. The steps are big and volatile, be they demonstrations, mass meetings, road jams and railway stoppage. These steps provide easy and visible targets to repressive organs of the state-apparatus. Given past experience, workers rarely follow those advocating these steps. * *· Mobilisation of media, artists, stars, influential persons, other representatives, parliamentarians, grass-root activists to persuade state administrations to act on management. * *Wage-workers are initially hopeful spectators to these performances and then slowly disperse as disenchantment sets in. * *Both these action-courses lead to an immobilization and dispersion of workers and ensure an implementation of management policy. * *Unified militant struggles, whether in the form of demonstrations, mass meetings or strikes, are akin to military operations with their generals, captains, sergeants and, of course, foot soldiers. Organisations linked to the management or organisations that are proto-states are alone capable of running such operations. * *A Preliminary Sum-up* *In general, when wage-workers resistances, refusals and steps of change are discussed, the imagery that crop up is that of mass demonstrations, mass meetings, strikes, pitched battles, insurrections. The corollaries to these are the non-mundane qualities of heroism, sacrifice, bravery, martyrdom, courage, wisdom, articulation, discipline and unity. By these very definitions, the self-activities of most wage-workers are excluded. This imagery inherently posits a spectacular arena for lead-ry to deprive the wage-workers of their voices. * *More painful still is that big, mass, spectacular movements make easy targets of wage-workers for managerial apparatuses to control, manage and, if necessary, crush. * *Big implies mobilisation on a mass scale. Conducting and directing committees are intrinsic to such events. Seemingly a large number of people become active, but actually it is representatives and leaders who think, decide and issue orders whereas numbers at large have to march to the tunes trumpeted. Mobilisations by representatives are for representatives. * *Defeats are camouflaged as victories in order to legitimize the re-creations of these representational forms. Repeated experiences with 'big' have led wage-workers at large to keep aloof from them. This is often characterized as passivity and apathy of wage-workers. * *When wage-workers daily routine oppositions become too much for a management or when a management has to go in for a major restructuring, retrenchment, wage-cut or intensification, it often resorts to spectacular work stoppage. Since production enterprise is no longer the private property of individuals (i.e. capitalist), prolonged stoppage of production is no longer a question of life and death for a management as it was for a capitalist. When necessary, managements resort to strikes, lockouts, work suspensions, suspension of operations by creating big factory-wide, area-wide issues with the help of representatives.With strikes becoming the weapon of managements, those attempting to genuinely represent wage-workers' interests are crushed. Furthermore, individuals have become so insignificant vis-a-vis institutional structures that commitments or personalities hardly make any difference. * *For all of us self-activity of wage-workers is of paramount importance. It is this area that we want to open out for discussion and debate. * *As wage-workers we know that all of us, everyday and at everyplace, have to contend with oppressive and exploitative conditions around us. Individually and in small groups we take steps on our own. In small groups, we interact with each other 'not as unequals' ensuring the self-expression and self-activity of each one of us. * *Confining ourselves to workplace experiences we can say that each one of us has an affinity group of half a dozen or so amongst whom all participate 'not as unequals'. In these affinity groups a lot of premeditation and co-ordination takes place. The activities of affinity groups span from mutual help to routine resistances against productivity and discipline, along with refusals and steps of change that question and challenge hierarchy, competition, money relations and wage slavery. * *The problems as we see them are: * *I. The importance of self-activity as reflected in these steps taken by affinity groups is denied. The steps by themselves are small and thus belittled. When they are talked about, they are derisively characterized as insignificant workplace skirmishes, or merely survival calisthenics. * *II. Constant attempts are made by managements to suppress these self-activities through representation. * *III. Wage-workers often do not give much importance to their self activity because of the invisibility of the social effects of the small steps engendered by their self-activities. * *IV. There is a tremendous lack of linkages between affinity groups (which can only be horizontal and multi-nodal). This lack makes wage-workers vulnerable to getting coagulated into a mass whenever wider level issues are forced or arise. This coagulation if not created by representatives (which is ofttn the case), then in itself engenders representation. * *V. More importantly, co-ordination between affinity groups is hampered by a lack of discussion on experiences of affinity groups. * *Lest we be misunderstood, we would like to make it clear that we are not for small steps per se but our concern, rather, is for self-activity. Self-activity in terms of routine resistances, refusals and steps of change by wage-workers at large on a sustained, extended and expansive scale, encompassing a multifaceted global reality. * *SELF-ACTIVITY OF WAGE-WORKERS AGAINST POLITICS OF CLOSURE* * * *DEFINING CLOSURE * *A viable enterprise means that enough surplus is being extracted and realised in order to be appropriated as taxes, interest payments, cuts & commissions, managerial life-style and dividends. * *For financial institutions, management & state apparatus, a company becomes non-viable & sick when the extracted and realised surplus is not sufficient to meet the existing levels of taxes, interest rates, cuts & commissions, managerial life-style and dividends. * *It is not uncommon to find that state apparatuses, financial institutions and management are sometimes forced to reduce their amounts of surplus appropriation to keep an enterprise running. But the overriding tendency, of course, remains one of perpetually increasing the amounts that are appropriated, resulting in increasing "sickness" and "unviability". The dominant propaganda and media, however, all the while speaks of "sickness" and "closure" in terms of either mismanagement or lack of profitability (i.e. inability to pay dividends). This screens the fact that the major portion of extraction from wage-workers is appropriated as taxes, interest payments, cuts & commissions and managerial lifestyle. * *POLITICS OF CLOSURE* *The common interests of management, financial institutions and state apparatus dictate the survival, running and growth of an enterprise. In their common interest, they collaborate to increase intensity of work & workload, decrease wages, retrench workers and create techniques to counter wage-workers' self-activity. * *Despite all the cunning and guile, force and deception used to keep an enterprise viable, when an enterprise "becomes unviable", then it is in the management's interest to swindle as much as it possibly can of the company's assets. When a goose no longer lays golden eggs, wisdom advises - 'Cut and Eat the Goose'. * *There is a well-tried out management method to grab as much as is possible of wage-workers' legal dues before the closure of a factory. Along with the months of outstanding wages, years of provident funds/ pension funds, gratuity/ retirement benefits, years of bonus and leave travel allowances, etc. are also not paid. Company properties are then sold off with the management taking large cuts & commissions. * *This has been a routine exercise in a large number of factories which have been closed in Faridabad and other places. The dominant schema is : * # *When a factory "becomes sick", and closure has been decided, management - through union leaders - instigates strikes, and/or violent incidents to create conditions for lockouts. This facilitates the dispersal of workers. In these situations, management stops coming to the factory and wage workers are channelised into long drawn out civil and criminal court cases - fifteen years is very common. During all this, closure is very actively camouflaged. In the rare cases where the court cases are finally decided in favour of the workers, and the workers are at hand to take their legal dues, there is no property in the company's name to pay. Banks' and state apparatuses' dues (taxes and other bills) gulp most of the little that remains.* *A BREACH IN THE POLITICS OF CLOSURE* *This is the scenario that is being tried out in Jhalani Tools Limited, Faridabad. But the wage-workers in Jhalani Tools are actively countering this management-leaders-state administration schema to gobble-up workers dues through various modes of self-activity. These steps of self-activity, in our opinion, have wider ramifications for wage-workers. * *Management of Jhalani Tools stopped paying wages to workers from Mar'96. * *The past experiences of wage-workers in Faridabad and specifically in Jhalani Tools, have thoroughly discredited leaders amongst wage-workers. Through silence and passivity, the 2,000 workers countered leaders' and management's methods of instigation around tangential issues. No heed was paid to grand agreements, identity politics, change of union affiliation, change of leaders, provocat ion by transfers, instigation to violence etc. Four groups of leaders have come (have been brought) and gone, banging their heads against this wall of 'dull and dumb' silence. * *With mounting legal dues and increasing hardships, workers had hesitatingly started looking for alternative courses of action. Initially a small group of workers in Sept.'96 had on their own demanded back wages from the state labour department officers. Slowly, in affinity groups of 5-8, workers complaints to the state officials increased. And very soon the working of the labour department and district administration was almost jammed when 300 small groups of workers separately started approaching the officers. Legal obligations of separate dates and hearings were done away with, but then talking to hundreds of workers at the same time was another impossibility. Like the management, the district officials desperately tried to foist leaders on workers, but failed. Faced by this stubborn refusal to accept anyone as leaders, district officials then tried their best toinstigate workers to violence. They failed again. * *Another facet of this incident is that collecting a crowd by giving a single date to 300 affinity groups facilitates the spread and legitimization of the ageless rhetoric of unity and delegation (for negotiation with management and administration). This was attempted by the district administration. But an interesting metaphor to counter this arose from within the crowd outside the administration office. A worker responded to the call for "unity and delegation" by calling out that - "Bees united in a hive can easily be smoked off and their honey taken away. But if affinity groups of bees swarm about, no one dares to touch their honey". * *Then the management tried to create leaders and instigate strikes through summary dismissals of workers. But even when the number of dismissals reached a hundred, the workers neither made leaders nor took to violence. * *With this stepping up of pressure by management, leaders and state officials, the workers of Jhalani Tools in August'97 started taking very simple steps to take their predicament to more than 300,000 co-workers in Faridabad & Delhi. Overcoming hesitation, fear & shame, some workers in small groups of 8-10 started standing along various roads during morning and evening shift hours with hand written placards. This was done to engage in discussions with workers of other factories without any intermediaries. They have been doing this daily since Aug'97. * *On the placards is written: * *"We are from the 2000 workers who have not been paid their wages for (so many) months"; * *"What is to be done when management does not pay wages?"; * *"We have changed leaders four times and union flags three times, but each time it has been from the frying pan into the fire"; * *"We have made many complaints to govt. officials and ministers but conditions have gone from bad to worse"; * *"Metal Box, Delta Tools, Electronics Ltd. and now Jhalani Tools workers. Whose turn tomorrow?"; etc. * *Everyday they space themselves along a different road. Along each route that they stand on, workers from hundreds of factories pass by. The response of workers at large has been tremendous. Dispersed, multi-nodal conversations without intermediaries are emerging about the urgent need for new modes of self-activity of workers. Over this period of eleven months, more than 200,000 workers have read these placards and thousands of workers have stopped to have extensive conversations with them. In almost all factories of Faridabad (and large number of factories & offices in Delhi) questions posed by these workers are being debated. What is being discussed by an ever-increasing number of wage-workers is how to act on their own strength against the triumvirate of state, management and representatives. It is a constant process of conversation, argument and counter-argument as to the 'Whats' and 'Hows' of steps of self-activity. There is awareness that the charted out paths and networks of representatives, leaders and their organisations are all geared to subvert this process. * *Management, leaders and state officials are finding it difficult to instill fear in workers at large as they can find no appropriate targets for their terror tactics. More difficult than the small numbers of workers on the roads, is the problem that the straight and silent faces of workers are posing for the bosses. An additional difficulty for the bosses is the workers' refusal to go to court despite all the advice that the specialists have been doling out wholesale. * *More and deeper discussions have been taking place amongst Jhalani Tool factory workers. These have found visible expression in forms like wall letters and graffiti, but a truly significant fallout has been that workers have innumerable and extended conversations within and outside the factory premises and with co-workers as well as workers from all other factories. From being a problem of one fac tory, it has now become a problem of all workers. * *To counter the increasing self-activity of wage-workers, the provincial government organised elections, in Oct' 97 in order to establish a new leadership in the factory. From Dec' 97 the management started paying wages. However, these steps failed to put a brake on the workers' self-activity. Neither the issue of back wages & other dues could be side tracked, nor could the management sell the IIIrd plant of the factory, nor could it make leadership credible amongst workers. * *In this situation, in Apr' 98, the management resorted to massive wage-cuts in order to instigate workers. Failing again, the management then created an atmosphere of fear & violence and threw out the elected leaders - replacing them with its hand picked works committee in the first week of June'98. This hand picked committee has resorted to direct physical attack and identity politics. But the continuous rise in workers' self-activity has put a hold on this. * *Small groups of workers with placards standing on the roads have increased and are increasing in number and so are the workers in conversations with them. Thereby not only creating problems for Jhalani Tools management, which has not been able to close the factory, but also for managements of thousands of factories.* KK / Collectivities, June, 1998. Majdoor Library, Autopin Jhuggi, N.I.T. Faridabad, 121001, India E-mail KK/Collectivities (revelrytion at hotmail.com) Return To Collective Action Notes Home Page From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com Thu Aug 11 13:17:40 2005 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:47:40 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: <005501c59db9$cc245190$0100a8c0@tapas> Message-ID: <20050811074740.80089.qmail@web51409.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Tapas/Vivek and others Just to clarify that when I mentioned Ms.Jogi's identity as someone who made a film for PSBT, I did not get that information by googling. I had been looking at some of the films made by PSBT and found her name and synopsis by accident. And since I rememberd her postings at Sarai, I wondered what kind of children's films would be made by someone who is so full of angst against some. Whether we discuss these details in public or not, but we cannot ignore them if we are even a bit concerned about what's going on in the world. I would like to continue the debate with Vedavati in a positive manner, and would be happy if I can reduce any of her misundersandings. --- Tapas Ray wrote: > Vivek: > > Apologies to you and to other "practising > pseudo-secularists" who have found > my posts unethical. But I have a point or two to > make about personal > details. > > I think this list - or any listserv for that matter > - is a public space, > which people enter with full knowledge of its > publicness. Therefore, I think > it is reasonable that they should expect to have the > spotlight turned on > their persons if they choose to enter into a > discussion, especially on a > controversial topic. By joining the list, and > further by entering into a > discussion, Vedavati has indicated a conscious > choice to pass from the > private to the public, even if she is not already a > public figure, in the > sense that she does not hold public office or is not > well-known around the > country or the world or whatever community one may > choose as the reference. > > Now the question of personal details. Unless you > know something about the > person, how do you place her/his statements in > context? How do you interpret > them? When you attend a meeting, don't you ever > (consciously or > unconsciously) place the speaker's statements in the > context of what you > know about her/him as an individual in all its > dimensions? As for the > concrete case of our discussion on Vedavati, I do > not think I have mentioned > anything other than what is relevant to the > discussion. When I wrote that > she seems to live "in an apartment building with a > tell-tale name", I meant > that the name of the apartment building underlines > her stated beliefs. > > I could have quoted the name of the building, indeed > the address itself, but > did not because I thought it would be neither > necessary, nor right to > pinpoint her apartment the way some US news web > sites have pinpointed > certain individuals' homes not only with addresses > but also with satellite > photographs. However, anyone can find Vedavati's > address, even from the > telephone directory (if one does not have access to > the internet, which > leaves out members of this list by definition). > > Yes, googling does raise questions of surveillance > and invasion of privacy. > But is it fundamentally different from looking up a > person on the phone > book? In the case of search engines, the "phone > book" covers the entire > world and given you not just the phone number and > the address, but masses of > other information. Also, surveillance is usually > understood in the sense of > an activity of governments and corporations. I am > sure you know they have > other, extremely sophisticated methods - such as > email interception - and do > not depend just on search engines. Using the term > "surveillance" with > reference to the practice of "googling" people seems > a bit out of proportion > to me. > > Cheers, > > Tapas > > > > Hi Tapas and all, > > > > As a practising pseudo-secularist myself, I of > course align with your and > > others' reasoned positions politically, and have > been quite disturbed by > > some of the rhetoric that has recently made its > presence felt on the list. > > > > *However*, I do think we should really refrain > here from discussing any > > person on the list or her/his personal details, > especially if they are not > > already public figures. It happens a lot on the > Hindutva lists, where > > individuals of a certain political leaning are > blacklisted and discussed > > in a very personal and invasive way. I don't > think we should stoop that > > low, and eventually it's likely to backfire. > > > > Googling is inevitable; but it does raise the > spectre of surveillance and > > violations of privacy. To discuss an individual > in this way on-- > > don't forget-- a listserve with over 1100 > subscribers worldwide is, I > > think, hurtful. I certainly wouldn't want my > identity being probed in > > public like that. > > > > And what, after all, happened to sophisticated > discussion and analysis? > > Humour and irony are always welcome; but with a > little sensitivity, > > please. > > > > My ten paise, > > Vivek > > > _________________________________________ > 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: > > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com Thu Aug 11 13:54:57 2005 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 01:24:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050811082457.90961.qmail@web51406.mail.yahoo.com> Yes I maybe prejudiced. But, if her films are perfectly sensible, politically correct, and cinematic masterpieces, then why such a schism between her work and her postings (which speaks volumes for our society). And if the films are as problematic as the postings, then it is worthy of concern anyway. (sorry for carrying this stupid arguemnets to such lengths) --- shivam wrote: > "I wondered what kind of children's films would be > made by someone who > is so full of angst against some." > > Yousuf, > This is another example of prejudice, if I dare > dissent: what about > judging the film by its merit, with what the film > is, rather than what > the filmmaker has been saying on an online mailing > list? > My ten paise, > sv > > -- > We are protean. We can become anything. > www.shivamvij.com (Blog) | mail at shivamvij.com > (Email) > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From mmdesai2 at yahoo.co.in Wed Aug 10 15:51:08 2005 From: mmdesai2 at yahoo.co.in (mmdesai) Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 15:51:08 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Abstract of the Presentation Message-ID: <003d01c59d99$7bccbea0$0a18fea9@com1> Women and their Spatial Narratives in the City of Ahmedabad An Abstract of the Presentation By Madhavi Desai (I will be making a 15-minutes long PowerPoint presentation with visuals.) The city of Ahmedabad is used as a convenient setting for a test case of the study of this nature. The basic premise of the research project is that though the city is theoretically available to all citizens, women are not fully able to physically and culturally participate in it. After introducing the three major parts of the city, I will be focusing on the various issues studied by me. Basically I have looked at the two ends of the urban scales: the individual being (female) on one hand and the city planning process on the other. Focussing on the middle class, this research attempts to document the spatial activities and experiences of women in Ahmedabad in the traditional as well as the modern sections. The research methods used include observation, questionnaires/interviews and map interpretations as well as library research. One of my objectives was to look into women's notions of what a city is in terms of their image and descriptions. I largely failed to achieve this. Somehow most women said they could not draw and were also unable to give detailed description of their urban image. Like Sudeshna's concept of "child friendly city", this work moots a "women friendly city". There is hardly any literature available on the subject in the subcontinent context. I hope this study, however limited, will be useful to women's groups, city municipality, designers and city planners. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050810/17b54bb3/attachment.html From mallroad at gmail.com Thu Aug 11 14:36:37 2005 From: mallroad at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 14:36:37 +0530 Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: <20050811082457.90961.qmail@web51406.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20050811082457.90961.qmail@web51406.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <21049825050811020648db1352@mail.gmail.com> hmmmm, I didn't say they are, or could be, cinematic masterpieces. Just that we are trying to brand her film(s) even before seeing them. We all object to such labelling when it's done to us, no? As for the schism, again, why do we have to see every individual in only one light? Shivam On 8/11/05, Yousuf wrote: > Yes I maybe prejudiced. But, if her films are > perfectly sensible, politically correct, and cinematic > masterpieces, then why such a schism between her work > and her postings (which speaks volumes for our > society). And if the films are as problematic as the > postings, then it is worthy of concern anyway. > > (sorry for carrying this stupid arguemnets to such > lengths) > > > > --- shivam wrote: > > > "I wondered what kind of children's films would be > > made by someone who > > is so full of angst against some." > > > > Yousuf, > > This is another example of prejudice, if I dare > > dissent: what about > > judging the film by its merit, with what the film > > is, rather than what > > the filmmaker has been saying on an online mailing > > list? > > My ten paise, > > sv > > > > -- > > We are protean. We can become anything. > > www.shivamvij.com (Blog) | mail at shivamvij.com > > (Email) > > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around > http://mail.yahoo.com > -- "There are all kinds of religious and secular people, ones that believe in religion in the public and the private sphere, ones that believe in religion in the private but in not in the public sphere and those who believe in the public but not in the private sphere. The last category is the most insidious, as they do not believe but can make others believe." Shivam Vij ~ Delhi, India Email: mail at shivamvij.com | Blog: www.shivamvij.com From tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in Thu Aug 11 18:34:34 2005 From: tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in (Tapas Ray) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 18:34:34 +0530 Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world References: <20050811082457.90961.qmail@web51406.mail.yahoo.com> <21049825050811020648db1352@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <005c01c59e75$681cb040$0100a8c0@tapas> I think the question boils down to this: can you see the text (Vedavati's film) as completely autonomous of the author? Maybe one can interpret it in total isolation from its roots, in which case it can be seen as autonomous. But that will be only one of many possible interpretations, and "the point survives" (as I believe some lawyers like to say) that it was born of a concrete situation, at the hands of a person who is herself the product of history, both biologically and psychologically, with a certain genetic make-up and situated in a certain social setting. If the text is, thus, both autonomous and rooted in the author, no matter how the reader "reads" it, is it not sure to retain traces of the author's persona? In that case, aren't Vedavati's films for children a matter of concern, as Yousuf suggests? Tapas > judging the film by its merit, with what the film is, rather than what the > filmmaker has been > saying on an online mailing list? From shivamvij at gmail.com Thu Aug 11 23:38:28 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 23:38:28 +0530 Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: <005c01c59e75$681cb040$0100a8c0@tapas> References: <20050811082457.90961.qmail@web51406.mail.yahoo.com> <21049825050811020648db1352@mail.gmail.com> <005c01c59e75$681cb040$0100a8c0@tapas> Message-ID: Dear Tapas, Yousuf and you are both right only if you have seen the film. However, my point was that Yousuf seems to be objecting to the film without even seeing it, merely on the basis of VJ's postings on the list - which, by the way, have nothing to do with the film. In fact, VJ didn't even tell us she made films - this unrelated detail was brought in by Yousuf. Right? Probably the film does reflect her conservative views. Probably it does not. We can know this only when we have seen the film. Let us not match prejudice with prejudice but with reason. Cheers, Another pseudo-secularist On 8/11/05, Tapas Ray wrote: > I think the question boils down to this: can you see the text (Vedavati's > film) as completely autonomous of the author? Maybe one can interpret it in > total isolation from its roots, in which case it can be seen as autonomous. > But that will be only one of many possible interpretations, and "the point > survives" (as I believe some lawyers like to say) that it was born of a > concrete situation, at the hands of a person who is herself the product of > history, both biologically and psychologically, with a certain genetic > make-up and situated in a certain social setting. If the text is, thus, both > autonomous and rooted in the author, no matter how the reader "reads" it, is > it not sure to retain traces of the author's persona? In that case, aren't > Vedavati's films for children a matter of concern, as Yousuf suggests? > > Tapas > > > judging the film by its merit, with what the film is, rather than what the > > filmmaker has been > > saying on an online mailing list? > > > > _________________________________________ > 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: > -- We are protean. We can become anything. www.shivamvij.com (Blog) | mail at shivamvij.com (Email) From tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in Fri Aug 12 00:07:16 2005 From: tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in (Tapas Ray) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 00:07:16 +0530 Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world References: <20050811082457.90961.qmail@web51406.mail.yahoo.com> <21049825050811020648db1352@mail.gmail.com> <005c01c59e75$681cb040$0100a8c0@tapas> Message-ID: <004001c59ea3$b71a7730$0100a8c0@tapas> > Yousuf and you are both right only if you have seen the film. Shivam: My point is that one does not have to watch a film to know that it carries a little piece of the film-maker - this is a fundamental fact totally independent of anybody actually viewing the film and finding things that seem to match the film-maker's personality. Whether or not children should watch a film that carries Vedavati's imprint, is a secondary question. Tapas From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Aug 12 00:27:03 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 00:27:03 +0530 Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world In-Reply-To: <004001c59ea3$b71a7730$0100a8c0@tapas> References: <20050811082457.90961.qmail@web51406.mail.yahoo.com> <21049825050811020648db1352@mail.gmail.com> <005c01c59e75$681cb040$0100a8c0@tapas> <004001c59ea3$b71a7730$0100a8c0@tapas> Message-ID: The film would of course carry a bit of the filmmaker, may be more than a bit. But how do you know it is exactly that bit of her identity that she has expressed and we have interpreted in her postings on this list? -- We are protean. We can become anything. www.shivamvij.com (Blog) | mail at shivamvij.com (Email) From tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in Fri Aug 12 08:35:19 2005 From: tray at cal2.vsnl.net.in (Tapas Ray) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 08:35:19 +0530 Subject: Fw: [Reader-list] The Vedavatis of this world References: <20050811082457.90961.qmail@web51406.mail.yahoo.com> <21049825050811020648db1352@mail.gmail.com> <005c01c59e75$681cb040$0100a8c0@tapas> <004001c59ea3$b71a7730$0100a8c0@tapas> Message-ID: <000e01c59eea$d2661b10$0100a8c0@tapas> It may not, as you say - but then I am not sure that someone's personality can be broken up into discrete parts that are independent of one another. Diferent dimensions of her identity may be in conflict with one another in some situations, but when they form the personality, isn't the finished product, if you will, an integral whole? Tapas > The film would of course carry a bit of the filmmaker, may be more than a > bit. But how do you know > it is exactly that bit of her identity that she > has expressed and we have interpreted in her > postings on this list? -- We are protean. We can become anything. www.shivamvij.com (Blog) | mail at shivamvij.com (Email) From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Aug 12 13:35:11 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Fri, 12 Aug 2005 13:35:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Who are the Guilty? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: The report below is *the* instructive document on the 1984 riots. This slim document has been responsible in large measure in keeping up the pressure on the government on the issue of justice to the victims of the '84 riots. Who are the Guilty? Report of a joint inquiry into the causes and impact of the riots in Delhi from 31 October to 10 November 1984 by PUDR - PUCL http://www.sacw.net/i_aii/WhoaretheGuilty.html From mediachef at gmail.com Sat Aug 13 12:36:37 2005 From: mediachef at gmail.com (Steve Dietz) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 02:06:37 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Theme: Transvergence - Call for Participation ISEA2006 Message-ID: <85d7931b050813000652cf3956@mail.gmail.com> CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ISEA2006 THEME: TRANSVERGENCE http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/transvergence/index.html Deadline October 3, 2006 This is an invitation by the ISEA2006 Symposium and ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge to groups and individuals to submit proposals for exhibition of interactive art work and projects reflecting on the thematic of the transvergence. Creative interplay of disciplines to catalyze artistic, scientific, and social innovation is evidenced by decades of multi-/ pluri-, inter-, and trans-disciplinary discourse and practice. Emphasis on the dynamics subtending this interplay has led to the notion of transvergence, a term coined by Marcos Novak which overrides discipline-bound issues and demands, and serves as the focus of the present call. Proposals are sought that address but are not limited to themes outlined below, challenging the boundaries of disciplines and conventional (art) institutional discourse, and indicating creative strategies for overriding them. Proposals may consist of art projects, residencies, workshops, standalone conference papers, or group conference sessions. "While convergence and divergence are allied to epistemologies of continuity, transvergence is epistemologically closer to logics of incompleteness, to complexity, chaos, and catastrophe theories, dynamical systems, emergence, and artificial life. While convergence and divergence contain the hidden assumption that the true, in either a cultural or an objective sense, is a continuous land-mass, transvergence recognizes true statements to be islands in an alien archipelago, sometimes only accessible by leaps, flights, and voyages on vessels of artifice. "Central to transvergence is speciation. We want to draw proposals that constitute new species of effort and expression and that both enact and reflect on our construction of new species of cultural reality -- not by being merely novel mutations within known areas, but by boldly challenging known areas and yet being potentially viable to the point of becoming autonomous entities -- not dancing about architecture or architecture about dancing, for instance, but dancing architecture... or, better still, something else, as yet alien and unnamable, but alive and growing."--Marcos Novak ORGANIZATIONAL MODELS OFFERINGSETTINGS FOR TRANSVERGENCE Transvergence is conditioned by exodus and invention. New idioms of expression do not happen in isolation. Although creativity is a resource that works best when shared, there is no clear form of revenue or infrastructure for the practices of collaboration that characterize transvergence. Collaboration in this context does not arise from democratically disseminated, proportionally allocated property, but from the permanent re-appropriation of shared resources, and resultant re-territorialization of production, creation and artefacts. The models of the think-tank, media lab and research centre have shown their limits since the 80s and 90s, as have tactical media activism tied to the logic of events, and NGOs facing the donor system's arduous accountability requirements; university research is often encumbered by best-practice driven managerial culture, and "creative industries" clusters are subject to economies of scale and uneven divisions of labour. As a technics of expression immanent to media of communication, transvergence requires settings that instantiate structures of possibility. Such settings might derive from models offered by ecologies, fields and membranes, and from the emergent institutional forms of organized networks, whose constant configuring of relations between actors, information, practices, interests and socio-technical systems corresponds to the logic of transvergence. ISEA seeks new visions of organizational and participatory models as structures of possibility for transvergent practice. TRANSVERGENT ETHICS AND REDEFINTIONS OF ART Institutions which purportedly back new art practices are not always the bravest when it comes to work which challenges basic assumptions about what art is, what the artist is, what the relationship between artwork and audience might be, and what the outcome of an artwork might be. Counter intuitively, business corporations can be much quicker to support radically new ways for artist, artwork and audience to speak to each other: every time a viewer/player engages with an interactive creation, a kind of commerce occurs - a series of transactions, a litany of offers and purchases. Similarly, organizations devoted to healthcare, social well-being and political activism may more readily recognize exchanges that privilege the contingent yet compelling "we", and the urgency of the encounter. Art and cultural institutions remain reluctant to take on these new forms because they destabilize old views of the artist as a person making a proposition about the world and of the audience as consumer/ interpreter of this proposition, whereas transvergent work instates audiences as key f/actors in communication processes. This implies a shift in – but not necessary the demise of - the artist's role, and a change in the nature of artworks, formulated as public experiments raising questions as much to do with ethics, as with aesthetics and poetics. ISEA encourages proposals querying the role and relevance of art in public arenas that are being redefined by interactive, inclusive ambitions and tools BIO-TECH-BIOINFO-BIOART-ECOART Over the past 20 years, biotechnology has revolutionized the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries, and the fields of animal and human medicine. Biotechnology implementations direct areas such as food production and consumption, global trade agreements, human and animal reproduction, environmental concerns as well as biosecurity and biodefense. The Human Genome Project and stem cell research have stimulated the merging of computational research with areas of the life sciences. Disciplines such as bioinformatics and ecoinformatics currently enjoy broad public attention and funding. Although artists have long been engaged with depictions of "nature", BioArt, which includes the use of biological matters as part of artistic production and context creation, and EcoArt, where artists attempt to influence the ecologies in which we live, are relatively young areas demanding new exploratory and creative strategies. ISEA is interested in projects engaging with the materials and broader ecology of life sciences, rather than simply their symbolic representation. TECHNOZOOSEMIOTICS AS AN EPISTEMOLOGICAL PLATFORM & PLAYGROUND Technozoosemiotics is the study of signs elaborated by all natural or artificial living species to communicate in intra- or extra-specific ways (zoe = life). Humans and their more-or-less intelligent artefacts ignore the quality and singularity of information elaborated and emitted through the myriad channels and networks which traverse terrestrial, celestial, marine and intergalactic spaces. As art forms migrate from institutional sanctuaries to other areas of experience – the everyday, public, intimate/private, the biosphere, the universe – they must tune to the diverse communications that animate the technozoosphere. This means inventing interfaces that favour interactions of like and unlike kinds of intelligence, and emergence of new species of conversational agents. It means creating epistemological platforms and playgrounds for the transduction and translation of codes that open up novel ways of thinking and domains of knowledge. ISEA is soliciting art that extends beyond human-centred design, to questions of living systems and new species of cultural reality. TRANSVERGENCE CALL COMMITTEE: Chair, Sally Jane Norman, Louis Bec, Andy Cameron, Beatriz da Costa, Bojana Kunst, Maja Kuzmanovic, Anne Nigten, Marcos Novak, Ned Rossiter Timeframe: Announcement August 1, 2005 Submissions due October 3, 2005 Jurying due December 1, 2005 Accepted proposals announced December 15, 2005 http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/transvergence/index.html If you have questions contact transvergence at yproductions.com Sign up for the ISEA2006 mailing list: http://cadre.sjsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/isea2006 -- Steve Dietz Director, ZeroOne: The Network Director, ISEA2006 Symposium + ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge http://isea2006.sjsu.edu : August 5-13, 2006 stevedietz[at]yproductions[dot]com http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/index.html From marisaso at gmail.com Sun Aug 14 05:13:18 2005 From: marisaso at gmail.com (Marisa S. Olson) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 16:43:18 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] CFP: CAA New Media Caucus Panel on Autonomy & Relationality Message-ID: <23e24a26050813164333e81150@mail.gmail.com> please forward widely... CALL FOR PAPERS The New Media Caucus panel at the College Art Association's 93rd annual conference Panel title: "From database and place to bio-tech and bots: Relationality vs autonomy in media art" Conference Dates: February 22-25, 2006 Boston, Massachusetts DEADLINE: Proposals must be e-mailed to by Friday, September 16, 2005. NOTE: Panelists are NOT REQUIRED to be members of CAA. Panel Chair: Marisa S. Olson, Artist; Editor and Curator at Large, Rhizome.org; UC Berkeley, Rhetoric/Film Studies. Panel Description: Two predominant theories have emerged in the discourse surrounding new media: autonomy and relationality. On the outset, these notions seem to contradict each other. The theory of autonomy focuses attention on the discrete elements involved: individual pieces of information, individual artists or viewers, and separate components/artworks. Relationality puts the emphasis on interconnectedness: data, artwork, artists, and viewers are inextricably intertwined, without a single predominant object or viewpoint and no fixed, absolute form. While these theories may seem to be contradictory, contemporary media art relies on a notion of autonomy and, yet, suggests that no information is autonomous—while discrete variables exist, nothing can be separate and complete in itself. The same is true of the relationships between viewers, artists, and their work constructed in the context of media art. While the topics of autonomy and relationality have long lineages in art history, this panel will discuss their contemporary status from the perspective of media art practice and theory. Papers can address a range of topics including but not limited to: hacktivism and parasitic media, appropriation/sampling/remixing, open source theory and culture, locational media, biotechnology, video games, narrative, net art, software art, networked performance, video, sound art, and VJ/DJ practice. Consideration will be given to more "traditional" academic papers as well as artist talks that introduce artistic work and practices that contribute to the discussion of autonomy and relationality in media art. PROPOSAL FORMAT: Please email the following to by Friday, September 16, 2005: * Proposed paper title * An abstract of 300-500 words * A note on presentational format: will you present a "traditional" paper, will you emphasize visual materials, and what—if any—audio/visual equipment will you need? (Please minimize.) * Confirmation of ability to attend the CAA conference, Feb 22-25, 2006, in Boston * A current CV with full contact information From rebornpop at yahoo.co.uk Sat Aug 13 18:56:54 2005 From: rebornpop at yahoo.co.uk (Reborn Radio) Date: Sat, 13 Aug 2005 14:26:54 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] African Hip Hop And R&B Radio Station Message-ID: Greeting to all Africans Home and Away Reborn Radio – No 1 For African Hip Hop And R&B for the Pan African Diaspora community. We are a community radio station that providing the best music, news, interviews, and reviews on everything from African Hip Hop and R&B. Reborn Radio is the one stop African community radio station for the Pan African Diaspora community and we are looking for the best and brightest to join the team. To that end, we are seeking to recruit individuals who have knowledge about Africa and her Diaspora communities worldwide. We are especially interested in students who are majoring in Journalism and Communication Studies and current freelance journalists that have written and write African Entertainment related articles. The positions currently available include Writers, Section Editors, Photographers, Desktop Publishing Specialists, Illustrators, and Research Assistants. These are unpaid positions and are especially suited to individuals that are interested in gaining experience, getting their works published and being part of the Reborn Radio team. Student Interns will also have an opportunity to interview celebrities within their geographic area for Reborn Radio Online and Reborn Radio Syndicated. Other incentives include free CD’s, DVDs and t-shirts, free access to Reborn Radio Entertainment events, and discounted entrance to Reborn Radio partner events. Please also share this information with your fellow students and friends that might be interested in the opportunity. Should you require further information I can be reached at address below Kind regard Emma Kone _____ To unsubscribe or change your preferences goto the Mailing List Management Centre at the following address:- http://www.rebornradio.com/RebornNewsletter/mailing_list/default.asp?ema il=reader%2Dlist%40sarai%2Enet _____ Reborn Radio Manager Reborn Radio - No 1 For African Hip Hop And Rnb Studio Tel: +44 (0) 78 41 74 4043 Mob: +44 (0) 78 41 74 40 43 Email: info at rebornradio.com Web: http://www.Rebornradio.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050813/c620828b/attachment.html From mohaiemen at yahoo.com Mon Aug 15 20:58:57 2005 From: mohaiemen at yahoo.com (Naeem) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 08:28:57 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] 30 years later, Waiting For Mujib Message-ID: <20050815152858.30923.qmail@web50304.mail.yahoo.com> Helo to Sarai I met the Sarai team in Stuttgart where we were both presenting our work and I was blown away by their depth of analysis and art. I've been a lurker on Sarai since then. I have a few projects: Shobak.org: Outsider Muslim Voices DisappearedInAmerica.org: on post 9/11 civil liberties crisis MuslimsOrHeretics.org: on persecution of Ahmadiya Muslims in Bangladesh & Pakistan (I'm Sunni myself, and see this as part of a larger civil war within Islam) Also, a mailing list for political news: SHOBAK-- details on shobak.org ===== This essay of mine was published today on the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Bangladesh's first Prime Minister. -Naeem, Shobak.org =========================== On August 15 1975, a group of army officers burst into the residence of independent Bangladesh's first Prime Minister Sheikh Mujib. After killing Mujib, the army officers proceeded to massacre his entire family, including his 4 year old grandson Sheikh Russell. The 1975 coup ushered in an era of instability in Bangladesh-- repeated coups and counter-coups, two military dicatorships, and a fragile democracy today has left Bangladesh in a vulnerable state. Although Bangladesh was formed in rejection of the Islamic state of Pakistan, "secularism" was removed from the constitution and Islam was named the "state religion" during the military juntas of, respectively, Zia and Ershad. 30 years on, the debate over Mujib's legacy is bitter and partisan. On the ocassion of the 30th anniversary, THE DAILY STAR asked members of the "new generation" to talk about what Mujib means to them. Below are my essay, an essay by my colleague Asif Saleh and a piece by Tasneem Khalil. Tasneem's piece also contains a partial response to my essay (his penultimate paragraph talks about my statement that Mujib "won the war but lost the peace."). This is followed by Part 1 of Lawrence Lifschultz's report, containing the explosive allegation that the US knew and may have supported the 1975 coup. -Naeem, Shobak.org 1.Naeem Mohaiemen: Waiting for Mujib 2.Asif Saleh: Connecting with the Founder 3.Tasneem Khalil: Mujib was our Allende & Mosaddegh 4.Laurence Lifschultz: US hand behind 1975 coup? 5.Nation mourns Bangabandhu today DAILY STAR SPECIAL Banga Bandhu Sheikh Mujib & the New Generation August 15, 2005 Waiting for Mujib By Naeem Mohaiemen Although born in 1969, I am technically part of the "post-71 generation." The struggles, debates and emotions that animated and divided our parents are an abstraction and learned memory for us. At the same time, we are the first generation that has benefited from those struggles without having to go through sacrifices. At the same time, because of our distance and lack of personal involvement in the watershed years, we are perhaps best placed to start engaging in an open debate and analysis of our founding myths. The fissures and divisions that are core to our history are most apparent in the controversy over the meaning of Sheikh Mujib. To some, he is Bongo Bandhu, Father of the Nation, the great national leader, an unassailable demi-god without flaws. To critics, he is a signifier for everything that went wrong at the outset-- an autocrat who ruthlessly crushed political dissent, and an inept administrator who failed to rebuild a war-ravaged nation. To the more academic or "neutral" observers, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is a textbook case of the failure of Third World Charisma. Developing nations seem particularly prone to throwing up leaders who are brilliant at raising emotions and bringing the masses together in moments of crisis, but are inept at the arduous task of running a country's day-to-day operations. About Mujib, the simplest summation can be that he won the war, but lost the peace. Of course Mujib's failure as a leader can never be used to justify the grisly murders of August 15. Those rogue military officers who carried out the coups were murderers and destroyers of democracy. No matter how much revisionist historians may deconstruct Mujib's flaws, this can never be used to exonerate the coup plotters. In 1971, when the Pakistani army crackdown began, my father, an army doctor, had the bad luck of being posted in West Pakistan. As war raged on, Bengalis in West Pakistan were herded off to prison camp. My earliest memories are actually in Mondi Bahauddin camp. It wasn't until 1973 that the hundreds of Bengali families were repatriated to Bangladesh, as part of a prisoner exchange with the Pakistani POWs held inside India. We drove in my father's Volkswagen Beetle to the transition point, where we boarded German Fokker Friendships. I was very excited-- it was my first time on a plane. My mother, always prone to carsickness, was overcome by tension and threw up repeatedly along the side of the car. It was some kind of homecoming. In many ways, we missed all the emotional ups and downs of Bangladesh's early years. We spent the war trapped in Pakistan. Subsequently, we missed Mujib's joyful homecoming, when the country was united in support behind him. By the time we returned to Bangladesh, the rot had set and Mujib's stature was in freefall. Corruption and mismanagement was everywhere, flood and famine gripped the country. Whether Mujib was personally honest or not, he certainly tolerated the rampant corruption of his entourage. In this, he showed a quintessentially Bangla trait, a tolerance for "chatukars" or sycophants. In the mid 1970s, the Middle East started importing Bangla skilled labor, and my father was one of the first batches of doctors to be sent to Libya. It was while we were living in that hostile, desert nation that we received news of Mujib's assassination. My grandfather also passed away in that same period, and in my fractured memories, somehow the milad for my grandfather metamorphosed into a milad for Mujib. Salman Rushdie later satirized Mujib's gruesome end in "Shame": "Sheikh Bismillah, the architect of division, became chief of the junglees. Later, inevitably, they swarmed into his palace and shot him and his family full of holes. Sort of behavior one expects from types like that." Rushdie of course was very thoroughly on the Bengali side (he later gave Benazir a tongue-lashing for her attempt to criticize Mujib in "Daughter of The East"), but the "Shame" of the title could very well have been directed at the Bangali nation. Mujib made many mistakes, but he never deserved this dog's death on the steps of "Number 32"-- machine-gunned down by his own soldiers, who proceeded to slaughter the entire family, trying to wipe out any successors. Three decades have passed since summer 1975, but it is still difficult to have a rational discussion about Sheikh Mujib's legacy. Like all things in Bangladesh, opinions about him are trapped between two warring extremes. One side acknowledges no flaws, the other gives Mujib no credit. Some have gone as far as to erase the portion from Zia's independence speech where he says "on behalf of our great national leader Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman"-- as if that would obscure the fact of who won the 1970 election, and whose call first brought the Bengali masses to the streets. Personally, I am the first to criticize Mujib's faults. Beyond BKSAL, there are three events I count as his greatest political failures. The first is the massacre of JSD leaders who dared to assemble at Dhaka University TSC for the first public revolt against the new Mujib government. The second is his infamous challenge, "Where today is Shiraj Shikdar?" (after the Sharbahara Party leader had been killed while in police custody). And finally, there was his paternalistic advice to the Pahari tribals of Chittagong Hill Tracts, "From today you are all Bengalis"-- setting the stage for the ethnic cleansing of CHT and the 30-year guerilla war in that region. But while I can critique Mujib, I also acknowledge that without his leadership at a crucial time, there would be no Bangladesh, no Bangladeshi nationalism, no green Bangladesh passport, and while we are at it, no Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Elsewhere in the world, leaders have been re-evaluated without diminishing their achievements. Jinnah's legacy is now up for debate in India, with some Indians belatedly acknowledging his inaugural speech's promise of equal rights for minorities. Gandhi too is often debated-- some call him "Mahatma" and some don't, and that is permissible in that society's more open environment. In Western academia, starting from Jefferson and Washington's treatment of slaves, up to Churchill's divided legacy as a great wartime Prime Minister who was also a poisonous racist and beyond, anything is up for discussion. Most recently, new archives have revealed some of Lyndon B Johnson's private prejudices, but those same researchers have credited him for finally pushing through Civil Rights legislation to give African Americans dignity and rights (something the far more popular JFK failed to do). By looking at all aspects of history, these leaders' achievements are not diminished-- rather we get a more nuanced view of complex people and events. In my generation, there seems to be a total exhaustion with the whole Mujib vs. Zia, Awami League vs. BNP debates and the controversies over "who gave the announcement first?" But it would be a mistake to turn away from history because of this. History writing is not a nation-building project that papers over unsightly cracks, but rather a search for the fullest truth about ourselves. The past is always prologue to our future. We are still waiting for a historian who can construct a truly critical history of Bangladesh's founding years, which has to include a proper accounting of Sheikh Mujib. Instead of trapping him between the polarities of hosannas and hate, we need a new history that looks at his flaws in historical context, but also acknowledges his gift to the nation. ==== Naeem Mohaiemen is Editor of Shobak.Org and Director of MuslimsOrHeretics.org, a documentary about persecution of Ahmadiya Muslims. === Bangabandhu And The New Generation Connecting with the founder Asif Saleh A few days ago, in order to catch a live glimpse of Bangladesh vs Australia cricket match on the Internet, I logged on to a Bangladesh based website called bangladeshlive.net. While we were waiting for the game to start, the website showed a documentary on our liberation war. At one point of the documentary, I saw the March 7 speech of Bangabandhu -- the speech which is known as a big inspiration behind our liberation war. Suddenly I realised that I am 31 years old now and I had never before seen the actual video footage of this great part of our history. Unfortunately, such is the relationship between the Mujib and post-Mujib generation -- a relationship of disconnect. Most of the post-liberation generation grew up either not knowing anything about him or knowing wrong and fabricated information fed by the two political parties. After I grew up, the first time I ever saw Bangabandhu on television was when I was 16 -- after the fall of Ershad. Yes, it is hard to believe that in my formative years, I have never read about the founding father of my own country. Whenever, I heard his name mentioned, inevitably it would be in the context of some foolish comparison of him with Ziaur Rahman. As if to admire one of them, you have to hate the other. I grew up admiring Zia for his personal honesty and leadership. When I was seven, I watched from the roof of our house the grief of hundreds and thousands of people who came for his funeral on Manik Mia avenue. I shed tears like others as well. That created a lasting impression. I grew up watching the anti-autocratic movement against Ershad and admired the principled stand of BNP leader Khaleda Zia. Yes, I was termed as a BNP sympathiser because of that. Without really thinking about any ideology, I thought as a "Young Turk," Zia's party was always something I could relate to while Mujib's party always refer to this man who I have never seen or can connect to. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, to me, was a passing thought. He was a leader whose picture I have seen but whose story I have never read. I only heard about him from my parents and when the forty-something Awami League leaders mentioned him in their speeches in a vague language. Why am I saying all this? Because that is how me, my friends, and most of the younger generation formed opinion about Bangabandhu in the post-liberation Bangladesh. Lack of information compounded with fierce and bitter fight over the comparative greatness of Mujib and Zia created a permanent block on knowing the truth about him. The more each party tried to portray their version of the history, the more historical facts became the casualty. And the more the young ones like us became distant, bitter, and eventually indifferent about it. In fact, the progressive forces had a lot to lose here because they did not have the state machinery working for them. However, instead of being empathetic with them, the young generation grew more distant from them. Why? Firstly Awami League brought Bangabandhu down to the level of a petty partisan leader instead of keeping his status as the undisputed father of the nation. Secondly, instead of a progressive and intellectual fight back, they resorted to mindless unquestionable worshiping of Bangabandhu. It became a mantra where if you believed in our liberation war, you had to accept Bangabandhu's greatness -- unquestionably. Any question that the young, curious, and uninformed mind may have, they will be termed as a neo-razakar. A few years ago, in a related Internet newsgroup, I proposed that AL, instead of blaming others, needed to do serious soul-searching on why they lost in so many elections after the restoration of democracy in 1991. Immediately, I was kicked out of the group moderated by a fierce fan of AL. To him, any criticism of AL was tantamount to blasphemy and therefore it could not be allowed. It goes without mentioning that such arrogance and idol-worshiping of a party and its leader is the last thing you want to do when you are in the business of winning new minds. The biggest harm this brain-dead fundamentalism had caused was that it made Bangabandhu a distant and untouchable figure from the perspective of the young generation. For example, we often hear that AL has to realise the dream of the Shonar Bangla that Bangabandhu dreamt, but as someone who was brought up during the Mujib black out chapter of our history, how am I supposed to know what his ideas truly meant? No one talks about the very four core principles of the constitution that founded Bangladesh. Maybe they talk about it in political slogans and vague speeches. But no one talks about it in a language we can understand -- in the context of Bangladesh of today. Ask these unpopular questions, you will be in the black book of Mujib worshipers just like I was. Such fundamentalist supporters, unfortunately, are the biggest liability for the legacy of Mujib. I have an organisation that is built of young Bangladeshis worldwide. Originally people from all sections were part of it but now I have changed focus and am building the organisation entirely of the young. Partly because it is a lot easier to get an objective and fresh approach from a young mind and partly because their unclouded minds are more focused on implementing an idea rather than just talking about it. Recently, we did a project on creating website on the bomb blasts in Bangladesh -- the backgrounds, the investigations or lack of it, etc. The principle motivation for this was not letting the facts surrounding these blasts become a causality before it is too late in the midst of blame and counter blames -- like so many other matters of importance in our history. We focused on just documenting the facts and let people make up their minds about it. Can we find a similar study on Bangabandhu? In any historical matter of importance, finding a objective resource for historical study is a rarity in Bangladesh -- an objective study of Bangabandhu's career is no exception. As we are targeting to start an internship program, I am looking to compile a reading material for on the history of Bangladesh for the 2nd generation Bangladeshis. I know it will be a long struggle to come up with something authentic and objective on Bangabandhu. Speaking of objectivity, I refer back to the footage of the leader of the nation on March 7 that I started watching on bangladeshlive.net. I admire his speech. Thanks to those twenty-something organisers of the website, I see him unfiltered and unadulterated. As I have grown up now, I have access to more information about him. I gathered a fond interest towards the history of our nation. Now that I think about him, I think of him as a great leader who led a political struggle effectively, but who was a failure as an administrator and a visionary. Now as I have read up a little more on him, I can connect with him a little bit more. I connect with the four principles of the constitution that he led to create. Such a progressive constitution still makes me proud to be a Bangladeshi. It is time for our younger generation to connect with Bangabandhu like this and be similarly proud of him. It is high time that we rescue him from all the mudslingings of the politics. It is time Awami League brings him down to earth from the unreachable pedestal they have placed him on. It is time BNP stops manufacturing histories about him. Our politicians will do this man a favour by not abusing his name in speeches and on agendas. They need to realise that only by bringing out the real Bangabandhu will they be appreciated by the public and most importantly by the younger generation. We need to evaluate him and his position in history objectively -- not for personality worshiping but for understanding what we should expect from our political leaders. We need to create the seeds for the next Bangabandhu from this new generation who will learn from his mistakes and be inspired from his accomplishments. We owe it to our nation and to our future generations. Asif Saleh is the Founder and Executive Director of diaspora human rights organisation Drishtipat.org. === Mullahism, military and Mujib Tasneem Khalil Since its birth, Pakistan has been said to be ruled by mullahism, the military, and the might of the US. Even today, years after the independence of "East Pakistan," endless sectarian riots in Karachi confirm the murky influence of religion in Pakistani politics. And when Condoleezza Rice -- the American Secretary of State -- flies in from Washington to Islamabad to meet the President, she is greeted by a man in khaki. Policies that govern the modern day Pakistan are, one way or the other, observers argue, set by the adherents of mullahism or imperialism, and accordingly enforced by the military junta. That is Pakistan in 2005 and that was Pakistan in 1971. Little has changed, that too in a negative direction. But, in 1971, one finger that rose in admonishment of these entrenched powers was of the Sheikh. Throughout February-March, East Pakistan was virtually ruled by a leader with seven million people rallied behind him. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman emerged as a dot of difference on the world map. In March, 1971, (sceptics please reread your history books) no bank transaction was cleared and not a single wheel moved without Sheikh Mujib's nod, while politicians in Jinnah caps, the army and diplomats were driven out of the scene, at least for the month of rebellion. Nine months of struggle for liberation, somewhat symbolically led by the Sheikh, gave birth to Bangladesh -- a secular, democratic, and non-aligned state. It took about four more years for the combined powers that had been defeated in the liberation war to cook a plot, and hit back. On a bleak August morning thirty years ago, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was brutally assassinated. And in the following years, religion, military, and imperialism took the driving seat of Bangladeshi politics once again. Bangladesh, post-Mujib, took a bumpy flight away from its secular, socialist, democratic promises. A country that earned its freedom fighting a fallacious notion of religious nationhood, soon became a country with a constitution proclaiming its faith in the Almighty. The Military dictators who succeeded Mujib have made sure that religion plays a key role in Bangladeshi politics. Islam was to become the state religion and houses of worship became the Friday offices of a President. In the recent past, we have even witnessed how headscarves can be used as election tools. As I am writing this, religious extremism and sectarian persecution are building to new heights with Jihadist outfits mushrooming around the country. Bangladesh, post-Mujib, became a helpless population ruled for decades by the generals in khaki. Military rules that succeeded the Sheik's assassination forced the country backwards and turned Bangladesh into a replica of Pakistan under Ayub or Yahiya. They were to lay the foundations for the nation to be perceived as "the most corrupted country" in the world. And they were to curtail freedom of press in its totality. Our days spent with the military rule can be labeled as our days of disgust and despair. And then, there are ambassadors and high-commissioners who somehow manage to act like modern day viceroys in Bangladesh. Post-Mujib, Bangladesh was to become hostage at the hands of imperialist designs. Diplomats from Gulshan are now puppet-masters, while the Secretariat and Minto Road dances to their tune. Sheikh was Allende (Chile), Mossadegh (Iran), and at the same time, as many of us keep on arguing, he was "a failed statesman" and "a leader who won the war but lost the peace." As if post-Sheikh Bangladesh has been blessed with a parade of successful statesmen. Post-Sheikh, name one leader who outsized or outgrew or out-performed him. Anyone? None. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the icon of Bangladesh's fight against mullahism, military dictatorship, and imperialism. On that fateful August morning this convergence of powerful interests struck back and brutally assassinated Mujib. They successfully took their revenge but one thing that is for sure -- Mujib will outlive his assassins. Tasneem Khalil is a freelance writer and documentary film-maker. === The past is never dead The long shadow of the August 1975 coup Lawrence Lifschultz Was the assassination of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members on August 15, 1975 merely the result of personal malice and an act out of sudden fury of some army officers? Long investigation by veteran US journalist Lawrence Lifschultz has made it clear that there was a deep-rooted conspiracy behind the dark episode of August 15. Lifschultz in a number of investigative reports published in newspapers made it clear that Khandaker Moshtaque and a quarter of US embassy officials in Dhaka were closely involved with the small section of army officers in the August 15 coup. At long last, Lifschultz disclosed the name of his "very reliable source", the then US ambassador in Dhaka Eugene Booster with whom he has maintained close communication for the 30 years. Booster repeatedly objected to the conspiracy leading to the August 15 assassination, even issued written instruction in this regard, but failed to prevent the then station chief Philip Cherry of US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Dhaka office from doing the conspiracy. Lifschultz's plan to publish an interview of Eugene Booster in this regard remained unfulfilled as Booster passed away on July 7 last. The new-born Bangladesh could not save herself from the wrath of then foreign secretary Henry Kissinger who could never forget that Bangladesh was born in opposition to his suggestion. Along with Salvador Allende of Chile and Taiyoo of Vietnam, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was in Kissinger's political vendetta. What USA started during the Liberation War in 1971 with attempt to split the Awami League using Khandaker Moshtaque and his accomplices continued after the independence following a direct US instigation, resulting in the carnage on August 15, 1975. On basis of his 30 years' investigation that included interviews with the US sources, Moshtaque and others concerned, Lifschultz has written a series of that tale. The first part of his four reports is published today. The 30th anniversary of the August 15th military coup in Bangladesh powerfully illustrates the dictum of William Faulkner that the past is never dead, it is not even past. For those of us who lived through the years of Bangladesh's 'War of Independence' and the decade of the 1970s, we remember these dates as milestones of an era. They are markers on a road we traveled to a destination many did not reach. After thirty years Bangladesh still lives with the legacy of the violent night of August 15th. Just over four years from that dark March night in 1971 when Pakistani Army troops rolled their tanks and armoured vehicles through the streets of Dhaka slaughtering their fellow countrymen instead of accepting the outcome of national elections they had agreed to accept, a small unit of the new Bangladesh Army invoking the sordid tradition of Pakistan Army staged a traditional military putsch. Within hours, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, symbol for many of an ideal of liberation, was dead in a military coup d'etat that had run amok in a frenzy of killing. Mujib and almost his entire family were slaughtered including his wife and sons, the youngest only twelve. On that deadly night groups of soldiers broke into squads and traveled around the city killing relatives of Mujib's family. The pregnant wife of one relation who attempted to intercede to save her husband's life was herself killed for her efforts. Mujib's two daughters were abroad and they survived with Sheikh Hasina years later becoming Prime Minister. Yet, only a year ago, she too was nearly assassinated in broad daylight by a hit squad that still "eludes" capture, demonstrating yet again Faulkner's insightthe past is not even past. It is very much present. The political configuration that exists today is a direct descendant of August 15, 1975. The current Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia, was the wife of the late General Ziaur Rahman, the Deputy Chief of Army Staff in 1975, who played a crucial behind scenes role in the plotting that preceded the coup and in the events which followed. At the American Embassy that night political and intelligence officers tried to monitor the unfolding events. But, there was one figure at the Embassy in the days that followed the coup who was particularly unsettled. A small knot had settled in his stomach. The events were an echo of what he had feared might happen months earlier and which he had made strenuous efforts to prevent. I would meet this man in Washington three years later. He became a critical source for me and clearly hoped the information that he provided would one day lead to uncomfortable truths being revealed and those responsible being held accountable. For the first time in nearly thirty years I can identify this individual. I have been freed from a restraint of confidentiality that I have adhered to for almost three decades. But, be patient, with me a bit longer while I explain how and why I came to meet this individual. I was one among many foreign correspondents covering the coup. Yet, I was the only journalist reporting these events for a major publication who had actually lived in Bangladesh as a journalist. I was the Dhaka correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong) in 1974. The following year I moved to New Delhi and took up a new position as South Asia Correspondent for the Review. The violent death of Mujib would draw me into an inquiry that I could never have anticipated would, again and again, hold me in its sway at different stages of my life. My unusual source who worked at the American Embassy that night would encourage me forward by his own honesty and quality of integrity. He was one of those unusual individuals one occasionally finds inhabiting an official bureaucracy. He was deeply distressed about the coup and the subsequent killings. He was a man with a conscience. Unlike the rest of us he knew something others did not and that knowledge tore at his conscience. It was this sense of ethical responsibility that brought us face-to-face in one of the more memorable encounters I had as young reporter. After the coup against Mujib the official story put about by the successor regime and its minions in the Bangladesh press disturbed me. It didn't hold together. Moreover, the cracks began to reveal rather curious links and antecedents. The version of events which emerged at the time was that six junior officers, with three hundred men under their command, had acted exclusively on their own in overthrowing Mujib. The motives for the coup were attributed to a combination of personal grudges held by certain of the officers against Mujib and his associates, together with a general mood of frustration at the widespread corruption that had come to characterize certain elements of Mujib's regime. In short, according to this view of events the coup was an ad hoc affair not a thought out plan a year or more in the making. The morning Mujib and his family were killed, the figure installed by the young majors as President was Khandakar Mustaque Ahmed, generally considered to be the representative of a rightist faction within Mujib's own party, the Awami League. After the putsch, Mustaque remained impeccably reticent about any part he personally might have played in Mujib's downfall. He neither confirmed nor denied his prior involvement. He simply avoided any public discussion of the question and desperately attempted to stabilize his regime. A year following the coup, after he had himself been toppled from power and before his own arrest on corruption charges, Mustaque denied to me in an interview at his home in the "Old City" of Dhaka that he had any prior knowledge of the coup plan or piror meetings with the army majors, who carried out the action. However, the majors who staged the military part of the coup and were forced into exile within four months by upheavals within the Bangladesh Army began to tell a different tale. In interviews with journalists in Bangkok and elsewhere, bitter at their abandonment by their erstwhile sponsors and allies, the majors began to talk out of school. They confirmed prior meetings with Mustaque and his associates. A story began to emerge that Mustaque and his political friends had been involved for more than a year in a web of secret planning that would lead to the overthrow and death of Mujib. A few months after the coup, a mid-level official at the U.S. Embassy told me that he was aware of serious tensions within the U.S. Embassy over what had happened in August. He said that there were stories circulating inside the Embassy that the CIA's Station Chief, Philip Cherry, had somehow been involved in the coup and that there was specific tension between Cherry and Eugene Boster, the American Ambassador. He had no specific details about the nature of this "tension" only that there were problems. "I understand," he said, "something happened that should not have happened." He urged me to dig further. American involvement in the coup didn't make sense to me. In the United States, two Congressional Committees were gearing up to investigate illegal covert actions of the Central Intelligence Agency. The so-called Church and Pike Committee hearings in Washington on CIA assassinations of foreign leaders had begun. The committee hearings were having their own impact within the American diplomatic and intelligence bureaucracies creating great nervousness and anxiety. The American press was openly speculating that senior American intelligence officials might face imprisonment for illegal clandestine action in Chile and elsewhere. It was the summer when citizens of the United States first heard acronyms like MONGOOSE, COINTELPRO, AM/LASH and elaborate details of assassination plots against Lumumba in the Congo, Castro in Cuba and Allende in Chile. The covert hand of American power had touched far and wide. Now the tip of the iceberg was publicly emerging so that for the first time Americans could take a clear look. Yet, all that was happening far away in Washington, in a muggy heat as sultry as any South Asian monsoon. In India, Indira Gandhi, speaking of the tragedy of Mujib's death, spoke of the sure hand of foreign involvement. As usual, Mrs. Gandhi was graphically lacking in details or specifics. However, her avid supporters during those first nuptial days of India's Emergency, the pro-Moscow Communist Party of India (C.P.I.) were more explicit: the CIA said the CPI was behind the coup. I dismissed this as propaganda based on no specific evidence. Yet, how had the coup happened? There were still huge gaps in my knowledge of how specific actors had traveled through the various mazes they had constructed to disguise their movements yet which ultimately led to August 15th. I was living in England nearly three years after the coup when I decided to make a trip to Washington to visit a colleague of mine, Kai Bird, who was then an editor with The Nation magazine, published from New York. Today he is a prominent American author. Lawrence Lifschultz was South Asia Correspondent of the Far Eastern Economic Review (Hong Kong). He has written extensively on European and Asian affairs for The Guardian (London), Le Monde Diplomatique, The Nation (New York), and the BBC among numerous other journals and publications. Lifschultz is editor and author of several books including Why Bosnia? (with Rabia Ali) and Hiroshima's Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History & The Smithsonian Controversy (with Kai Bird). He is currently at work on a book concerning Kashmir. === Nation mourns Bangabandhu today Staff Correspondent The nation today pays tribute to Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the founding father of the nation, amid a lingering uncertainty over the trial of his killers. At the crack of dawn on August 15, 1975, Bangabandhu and his family members, excepting two daughters -- Sheikh Hasina and Sheikh Rehana --who were fortunately abroad at the time, were massacred by a group splintered off the country's armed forces. The August 1975 assassinations were followed by the killings in prison of four national leaders three months later. In November 1998, the trial court sentenced to death 15 people for the August 15 killings, but the High Court later spared three of them. Since then, the case is pending with the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court, which is two judges shy of a three-member division bench required to hear the leave to appeal petition. The government can correct the situation by appointing two judges to the Appellate Division on ad hoc basis. But, according to informed quarters, such a move is highly improbable. The case is unlikely to resume before March 2007, when the present chief justice will retire making way for a new judge to be appointed in the Appellate Division. A taskforce to bring the convicted killers back from abroad was set up during the previous AL regime. But it was dissolved after the BNP-led coalition came to office in 2001. Even councillors of the case have been terminated, starting from December 19, 2002. For 21 long years, the trial of Bangabandhu's killers had been barred by Indemnity Ordinance, which was later legalised through parliament. The infamous ordinance was finally repealed in 1996, allowing holding trial of the case. The murder case was filed on October 2, 1996. Sheikh Mujib, the architect of independent Bangladesh, was born on March 17, 1920 in Tungipara of Gopalganj district. His highly emotive final call on March 7, 1971 -- 'Ebarer songram - amader muktir songram; ebarer songram - swadhinotar songram' (The struggle this time is for emancipation! The struggle this time is for independence!) -- inspired and united the entire nation for the Liberation War. The way he turned a non-violent non-co-operation movement of unarmed masses into an armed struggle, liberating the nation from Pakistani occupation and oppression, and creating a new state in barely nine months, will remain a wonder of history. He was born in a middle class Bangalee family and his political ideals arose out of the aims and aspirations of the commoners. He was inseparably linked with the hopes and aspirations, the joys and sorrows, the travails and triumphs of these ordinary people. He spoke their language. He gave voice to their hopes and aspirations. Year after year he spent the best days of his youth behind bars. THE VICTIMS Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and the following members of his family were assassinated in three separate attacks: his wife Begum Fazilatunnessa, sons Sheikh Kamal, Sheikh Jamal and nine-year-old Sheikh Russel, daughters-in-law Sultana Kamal, Parveen Jamal, Bangabandhu's brother Sheikh Naser, brother-in-law Abdur Rab Serniabat, 13-year-old Baby Serniabat, Serniabat's son Arif, four-year-old grand son Babu, a visiting nephew, three guests, four servants, Sheikh Fazlul Huq Moni, a nephew of Bangabandhu, his wife Begum Arju Moni, and Bangabandhu's security chief Colonel Jamil Uddin Ahmed. PROGRAMMES Today the national and the party flags will be flown at half-mast at all offices of the AL and its front organisations. The party will also hoist black flags everywhere in observance of the day, which used to be a national mourning day during the AL's stay in power from 1996 to 2001. But the BNP-led coalition government, after coming to power in October 2001, scrapped the day's official status. AL President Sheikh Hasina, also the leader of the opposition in parliament, along with her party colleagues will place wreaths at Bangabandhu's portrait at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in Dhanmondi at 12:15pm. From there, they will go to Banani graveyard and offer Fatiha. Similar programmes will be held at Bangabandhu's grave in Tungipara. The AL, its front organisations and various socio-cultural organisations will hold milad mahfil, destitute feeding, blood donation and mourning processions. Hasina will go to Tungipara tomorrow to attend a programme there. Besides AL, different political parties excepting the components of ruling four-party alliance have taken up different programmes to mark the death anniversary of Bangabandhu. THE GRUESOME KILLING The deafening sound of gunshots broke the stillness of dawn on August 15, 1971 on road No 32 of Dhanmondi residential area. In less than an hour, the darkest chapter in the political history of Bangladesh was written on that fateful morning. A group of disgruntled army officers in conjunction with some fiercely ambitious political elements led the attack to usurp power by killing Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Without provocation, they opened fire on the private household of the late president. With army jeeps, tanks, and heavy trucks they ensured that the sudden attack and the element of surprise smother all resistance. Another group of killers went to the residence of Mujib's nephew Sheikh Fazlul Haque Moni. They attacked from all directions the sleeping household situated about two hundred meters off Dhanmondi Road No 32. They killed Sheikh Moni and did not spare even Begum Arju Moni, who was in the advanced stage of pregnancy. A third group of the assassins rushed to the residence of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's brother-in-law Abdur Rab Serniabat. Armed with automatic weapons, they broke into the house, dragged the frightened inmates to the drawing room, and shot dead nine people. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From grade at vsnl.com Mon Aug 15 23:23:14 2005 From: grade at vsnl.com (Rakesh) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 23:23:14 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] FDI-Gurgaon Take off Message-ID: <001401c5a1c2$4b344010$9c0d130a@user378> Good Investment Climate Rakhe ka chahi ! According to reports coming in, a visibly rattled China ordered the immediate execution of a hundred dissenting trade union leaders in the Shanghai region to attract Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). South Africa ordered the immediate suspension of the right to organise, while Tanzania went a step further and suspended all fundamental rights. Russia declared that agreements of foreign companies with mafiosi to prevent the formation of trade unions were valid legal contracts and no civil or criminal liability could be attached to the parties. These extreme, but necessary in national interest steps were precipitated by events in Gurgaon or Jaggery-Village in far-off India. In a dramatic U-turn the Japanese Ambassador claiming that he had been misquoted clarified that infact Japanese investment was rushing in tsunami-like waves for Destination India. Given the clamour of the English, German and French companies at Gateway of India to get in, the King from Nepal pointing out that all rights had already been suspended in the country, personally conveyed a message seeking 'most-favoured' treatment for investment from the Royal Treasury. A visibly pleased World Bank President declared that the events in Gurgaon have sent a very clear message to investors. Elaborating he stated that the fact that the entire administration from the humble constable to the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and the Chief Minister (CM) took a clear and unequivocal stand in favour of the management in the industrial dispute has been very reassuring. The Chairman of the International Chamber of Trade and Commerce confessed that frankly due to certain clauses in the Constitution of India pertaining to anti-social activities like organsising and right to speech and expression, there had been doubts in certain quarters as to the advisability of investing in the land of Budha and Gandhi. However, the visual images of the police-worker engagement in Gurgaon have removed all doubt and demonstrated the commitment of the Government to creating favourable conditions for investment. A beaming Commerce and Home Minister appeared hand in hand and proclaimed that the two ministries worked in tandem. Regardless of low wages, severe harassment and harsh working conditions, drawing inspiration from the spirit of self-sacrifice of this sacred land, the policy of channelising the grievances of workers against management into anger and protest against the police and administration has been a time-tested one and will continue to be followed. Meanwhile, Padmashri KPS Gill, recently convicted for offences of moral turpitude by the apex court, seeking appointment as Advisor to Haryana Governement said his 'boys' in Punjab were more adept and faster at throwing back grenades lobbed by terrorists than the Gurgaon 'boys' were at hurling simple stones at ordinary workers. A Bhartiya Janta Party spokesperson said that these problems had arisen due to repeal of POTA. The hurling back of stones by the Gurgaon boys amounted to supply of arms and ammunition to anti-nationals and constituted a security threat. The proper course of action would have been to collect the stones so that they could be used for the construction of a grand temple at Ayodhya which would solve the nations problems. Similarly, the grenades should have been collected for use in demolition of the mosque at the birthplace of Krishna in Mathura. The Government received unexpected support, as striking a positive note and pulling up the BJP for raising pseudo-secular issues, the Sangh declared "Athiti devo bhav" - Guests are God and Bharat has a rich cultural tradition of welcoming, honouring and protecting the interests of guests like Mitsubishi, Honda and Posco. Rakesh Shukla Advocate Supreme Court 66, Lawyers Chambers Supreme Court New Delhi 110 001. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050815/8200f222/attachment.html From postbodhi at yahoo.co.in Mon Aug 15 17:41:08 2005 From: postbodhi at yahoo.co.in (Bodhisattva Kar) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 13:11:08 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?Posting_2=2E_=93The_Purloined_Lette?= =?iso-8859-1?q?r=3A_Quotidian_Family_Functions_and_the_Mess-Houses?= =?iso-8859-1?q?=94?= Message-ID: <20050815121109.60417.qmail@web8308.mail.in.yahoo.com> Till today, the most popular vernacular commentary on the everyday lives in the Calcutta mess-houses is the Uttam-Suchitra hit Sare Chuattar ("Deeply Personal"). The movie is set in an all-male Calcutta boarding house where a distressed bhadralok family of three comes to stay for a few days. In spite of initial disagreements among the boarders, the family is allowed to temporarily reside in one room in the mess-house. The appearance of the beautiful young woman of the family (played by Suchitra Sen) creates some ripples in the all-male atmosphere, and all male residents secretly try to win her attention. Suchitra, however, falls in love with Uttam, a young resident whom she in the beginning has found to be most difficult. Secret meetings and emotional letters followed, with a little help from the servant in the mess. Jealous fellow-residents manage to steal one such letter, read it and agonize over Uttam's success. The angry crowd boisterously voices its concerns over the "moral decay" in the mess-house, and even threatens the aged owner-cum-manager with boycotting such non-bhadralok places. The old man is already quite disturbed about his dried-up married life and in the hurry of going home tries to calm the mess-residents by saying that he would look into the matter after coming back from home. Of course, en route he forgets about the stolen love letter - enveloped as "Deeply Personal" and given to him as an irrefutable proof of the moral turpitude - and his middle-aged wife secretly discovers it in his pocket and becomes sure that her husband is madly in love with another woman. While the old man goes back to Calcutta after spending the weekend at village home, he tries to mend the situation by arranging the unsurpassable moral fix: marriage of the offenders. The marriage, interestingly, is scheduled to take place in the mess-house, and as the chief organizer, the manager becomes increasingly entangled in these matters, which severely restricts his visits to village home. This only has the effect of making his wife more firmly believe that he is no more interested in her. Having tried anger, seduction, and even prescriptions of witchdoctors, the frustrated wife finally decides to travel to Calcutta with her children to disrupt - what she presumed to be - her husband's second marriage. The funny end of the movie - where along with the newly married couple the old man and his wife rediscover their love for each other through hilarious misunderstandings - distinctly shores up "the family values". At one stroke, the jealous contenders of love suddenly become younger brothers. The peeping elders of the mess-houses instantly become respectable hosts of the marriage party. The till-now invisible neighborhood families participate enthusiastically in the ceremony. The mess-house community saves its bhadralok reputation by showing itself to lie well within the familial folds. It is this family function of the mess-houses - the hierarchies, the legalities and the publicly encircled privacies - that makes the institution acceptable and even popular in the dominant theater of cultural production. Family, as the film clearly tells us, must be the model of the ways in which a bunch of unrelated people should form a new community in the anonymous urban space. This everyday family function of the mess-houses, which Sare Chuattar so vividly captures, is indeed Poe's Purloined Letter: it is the "unperceived", as Blanchot says, "in the sense that one has always looked past it the everyday is what we never see for a first time, but only see again, having always already seen it by an illusion that is, as it happens, constitutive of the everyday." The whole idea of "home away from home", as we found written on the dusty board of a Calcutta mess-house during the course of research, was based on a firm conviction of the necessary reproducibility of the family form on these quotidian plateaus. Age, caste and money mattered, and mattered violently. But we are going to come back to this issue in the posting no. 4. --------------------------------- Check out Yahoo! India Rakhi Special for Rakhi shopping, contests and lots more. http://in.promos.yahoo.com/rakhi/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050815/a00d2025/attachment.html From postbodhi at yahoo.co.in Mon Aug 15 17:43:19 2005 From: postbodhi at yahoo.co.in (Bodhisattva Kar) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 13:13:19 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?Posting_3=2E_=93Jashoda=92s_Househo?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ld=3A_Marxism_and_Family_Function_of_the_Mess-House?= =?iso-8859-1?q?s=94?= Message-ID: <20050815121319.12716.qmail@web8309.mail.in.yahoo.com> In Shahartali ["Suburbia"], one of his early novels published in 1940-41, Manik Bandyopadhyay tells the story of Jashoda, an extraordinary middle-aged woman who lives on the rents from two houses in an industrial suburb. Jashoda lets out one of her houses to small income group families and reserves the other for the single migrant males. The first one is "a zoo", says Jashoda, and the second "a homely mess", thus clearly indicating her lack of sympathy for the familial hanky-panky. What we find really interesting in the novel is how Manik purposely takes the idea of an urban mess-house out of its usual bhadralok context and pushes it to a different life-history in the suburban slums. Jashoda is explicitly insistent on the "non-bhadralok" character of her "homely mess". As an assemblage of browbeaten wage slaves, desperate jobseekers and dispirited unemployed, Jashoda's mess positively refuses to grow into a family (quite a popular ideal among the bhadralok mess-dwellers at that time). This is not to say that emotive bonds are not at stake in Jashoda's household, or that libidinal investments are not made. On the contrary, as a very unconventional attempt to resist the deodorization of the family function, the narrative of Jashoda's household develops a new politics of the affective. Jashoda's constant attention to the happiness and comforts of her defaulting mess-dwellers is irreducible to 'motherly' care and affection, as it is always cut across by her recurrent "forgetting" of her own womanhood. In failing to recognize herself as a "woman", Jashoda succeeds in framing her little community outside familial categories. Her discourtesy, her matter-of-fact ways of dealing with indiscipline in the mess, her guarded emotions, and her sheer bodily strength: these work towards destabilizing the established mother figure, the sentimental keystone of the patriarchal institution called bhadralok family. In the difficult years of the early forties, a non-familial solidarity in the suburban slum household emerges as the Marxist counter-imagination of urban community. Necessarily, the geography of neighborhood also undergoes a radical change. Instead of remaining an isolated identity hub on the margins of mainstream city life, Jashoda's non-bhadralok mess develops into a thriving center of industrial unrests. Conflicts with the industrialists begin; the community faces desertion and defection; new friends are discovered in the neighborhood; but the imagination of the community refuses to die. We strain this remarkable text against its own grains and those of the checkered history of the "party communes" in the forties and fifties. Did Manik's depiction presage the lives lived in these communes? Could the communes, organized by the undivided Communist Party of India in different locations of Calcutta, really grow out of the family function of mess-houses? Or was the strong Marxist utopia of non-familial camaraderie forced to strike a compromise with bhadralok familialism to ensure a smooth running of the communes? Were the mess-houses inflecting the shared universal dream with its distinct colonial urban history of uneven belongingness? Our interviews with commune-residents indicate towards the latter possibility. But now we must move to another perspective on urban politics. --------------------------------- Check out Yahoo! India Rakhi Special for Rakhi shopping, contests and lots more. http://in.promos.yahoo.com/rakhi/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050815/cfa9d2a5/attachment.html From raviv at sarai.net Tue Aug 16 11:17:06 2005 From: raviv at sarai.net (Ravi S. Vasudevan) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 11:17:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Fw: south asia politics at U of Washington Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20050816111630.04f675d0@mail.sarai.net> >The University of Washington's Jackson School of International Studies and >Department of Political Science invite applications for a tenure track >assistant professor position in Comparative Politics with a specialty in >South Asian politics, beginning Fall 2006. The topical and theoretical >specializations are open, but candidates should have an excellent research >agenda, knowledge of a South Asian language, and teaching interests in >South Asian politics, comparative politics, or international studies. >Candidates should have their Ph.D. prior to the starting date of >appointment or be ABD. Preference will be given to applications received >prior to October 14, 2005. The University of Washington is building a >culturally diverse faculty and strongly encourages applications from >female and minority candidates; the institution is an equal >opportunity/affirmative action employer. To apply, applicants must submit >a letter, current C.V., samples of writing including a dissertation >abstract where applicable, evidence of teaching effectiveness, and three >letters of recommendation to: > >Comparative Politics Search Committee >Department of Political Science >101 Gowen Hall, Box 353530 >University of Washington >Seattle WA 98195-353530 ** >_________________________________________________________ >Kalyanakrishnan (Shivi) Sivaramakrishnan >Director, South Asia Center University of Washington, Denny Hall, Box 353100 >Seattle, WA 98195 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050816/8e0775df/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in Tue Aug 16 01:32:59 2005 From: zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in (khalid jamal) Date: Mon, 15 Aug 2005 21:02:59 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] New Work Vs McWork. Message-ID: <20050815200259.220.qmail@web8601.mail.in.yahoo.com> New Work is something that we want to do, something that we are passionate about and something that enables us to explore “it” at the deepest levels. It is an effort to re-use technology so that it isn’t simply used to speed up the work and churn out merely “quantities”. Under New Work, the purpose of technology should be to make machines to do work, which is boring, tedious and repetitive. And then humans can do the creative, imaginative and uplifting work. New Work offers flexi hours, training through videos, formation of teams where information is shared freely , where chain of command called Hierarchy is rather porous, where communication style is informal, where workplace is “your” place and you can keep your family snaps there, and where appearance is crucial yet personal. As a fast food worker, I always wondered if my work is a “New Work”? I had flexi-hours, was trained with videos demonstrating the work that I was supposed to do on the floors, the chain of command was porous , spoke to several mangers and addressed them by their first name and So on. Despite all the research, I have yet to find this answer.. At times I feel it is indeed a New Work; where practical training with innovative ways is given, where my time and space is given to perform and it allows me to work with people of my age who I identify with. But at other times, with all the standardization being followed so strictly, in terms of production of food, serving them, re-producing them and re-serving them all in a pre-decided uniform way, I wondered if I am a creative user of the gadgets which are used for production , or I am merely a “human” component of this whole machinery which is involved in mass production of food stuff, across the world?? Notwithstanding this dilemma, there are certain unique things that I recognized as a worker of these glittering urban spaces. One, work has multiple interpretations. Number of hours are same, job profile is same, working conditions are same and work culture is same yet the motivation behind work is so diverse. Some work only to get some extra money, other see a long-term career with hotel management degrees while others work just because they think that this work is “hep” as you are under air-conditions all the time, speak and learn English, gain confidence and prepare yourself for “ better” jobs outside this industry. Reasons are several for such diversity. One of them is the fact that a good chunk of this work force come from small towns of UP, Bihar and other states, and settle in big cities , to “earn-money” and have different backgrounds. Second observation is that fast food chains offer “low” wages yet, one can find deep aspirations to excel in work, no mater what the motivation –to-work is. Every one wants to be the-Employee- of-the –Month and be the-Rising-Star. Third, it is apparent to find workers working as team to produce goods, say burger. From order taking to delivering, the whole work is cut into pieces and delegated. There are also pre-shift meetings, huddles and post- shift brain storming sessions, which are all characteristics of a Teamwork, a collective effort. Yet there are no unions. In other words, the collective bargaining seems to be missing when it comes to the demand of the rights of workers. This is strategically discouraged, prevented or controlled. Fourth, more than the “work” per se, it is the “time factor” involved in work which is more crucial. In fact one of the most important determinants of the “quality” of work is time, which refers to the Intensity of work. Call-time, order taking time, delivery time processing time and time to re-confirm an order is pre-decided in the meticulously designed work culture curriculum. To quote an example, if a pizza is delivered in 171/2 min. in pizza hut, then it’s a good pizza no matter how it is cooked. And if it is delivered in more than the given time, it’s bad. The logic is simple: If the pizza is badly cooked, we will deliver another one as a complementary, so at all times “Hurry-up culture” will have to be followed. Also the regimentation in fast food restaurants gives managers’ enormous amount of power over their employees. In fact, it’s the Manual which is followed like a bible, whether it is time-factor as mentioned earlier or the product dimensions (burgers are always to be placed in a row of 6 and French fries are always to be 0.28 inches thick..) So when management determines exactly how every task is to be performed and can impose its own rule about pace, output, quality and technique, its makes workers increasingly interchangeable .So now management does not have to consider the talents and skills of its workers- those things are built into the operating systems and machines. Jobs that have been deskilled can be filled cheaply. The need to retain any individual worker is grossly diminished by the ease with which he or she can be replaced. This brings in the mobility-bias and gender –preferences, being widely practiced by the mangers, into picture. Workers fluent in English and with “open” body language is often seen at the service station while others who not so glib-English speakers are put into delivery or kitchen i.e. BOH (Back of House). So now when we go to any of the fast food joints, we pull open the glass door.. feel the rush of cool air and bright neon lights.. Visually appealing walls, tables and chairs walk-in .get-in the line read the well-lit menu right above the counter space place our orders....pay the money .and watch a “pleasant” teenager in uniform punching-in some thing into the machine and in few moments popping up to extend a plastic tray full of food wrapped in colored paper and cardboard. And we are done!! “Anyting else,Sir??” Fast food chains have not only quick-fixed the way workers work and perform but, has also, in several ways, fixed our dining-out experience and hence making us, the customers, part of the sub-culture, which is formed beyond the boundaries of work-place but originating from its very own work-culture. ONE LIFE. ONE SHOT. Happiness, Health & Peace, Syed Khalid Jamal --------------------------------- Check out Yahoo! India Rakhi Special for Rakhi shopping, contests and lots more. http://in.promos.yahoo.com/rakhi/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050815/6ade3203/attachment.html From mailbox at typedown.com Tue Aug 16 16:56:18 2005 From: mailbox at typedown.com (Benjamin Fischer) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:26:18 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] MONDO CANNIBALE: 19. Stuttgarter Filmwinter | Call for Entries, Deadline: September 1, 2005 Message-ID: <70da871235e522725b54a804d855b0fd@d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e.TYPO3> German version see below - Sorry for crossposting! - MONDO CANNIBALE: 19th Stuttgart Filmwinter | Call for Entries, Deadline: September 1, 2005 - Wand 5 (Link: http://www.wand5.de), an association promoting film and media culture, invites artists to present their work at the 19th Stuttgart Filmwinter. We are interested in media- and film works for children, either. The exhibition of the media installations and the contributions in the field of new media take place in cooperation with the Württembergische Kunstverein. Contributions may be submitted via our entry form (Link: http://www.filmwinter.de/index.php?id=929&L=3) until the 1st of September 2005. - MONDO CANNIBALE: 19. Stuttgarter Filmwinter | Ausschreibung, Deadline 1. September 2005 - Wand 5 e.V. (Link: http://www.wand5.de), der Verein zur Förderung der Film- und Medienkultur lädt KünstlerInnen ein, ihre Arbeiten auf dem 19. Stuttgarter Filmwinter zu präsentieren. Wir sind ebenfalls an Medien- und Filmkultur für Kinder interessiert. Die Ausstellung der Medieninstallationen und der Beiträge im Bereich Neue Medien findet im und in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Württembergischen Kunstverein statt. Wettbewerbsbeiträge können bis zum 1. September 2005 über das Anmelde-Formular (Link: http://www.filmwinter.de/index.php?id=929&L=2) eingereicht werden Gruss / Best regards, Benjamin Fischer -- Benjamin Fischer | http://www.typedown.com From maheshsarma at rediffmail.com Tue Aug 16 23:31:31 2005 From: maheshsarma at rediffmail.com (mahesh sarma) Date: 16 Aug 2005 18:01:31 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] The role of civil society organisations in CNG Message-ID: <20050816180131.24131.qmail@webmail8.rediffmail.com>   The role of civil society organisations in CNG With out getting into a value judgements with respect to whether CNG is an appropriate solution, one issue which strikes an informed observer is the fact that, the entire debate about air pollution in Delhi, has been dominated by civil society organisations and it appears that, they have set frame of reference and hence an informed debate about air pollution in totality has never been part of the public consciousness. Though the problem of air pollution in Delhi, was brought forth by the environmentalist advocate M.C.Metha, with respect to vehicular air pollution, it was Centre of Science and Environment (CSE), which played a crucial role. CSE, with its publication of the book on delhi’s air pollution ‘Slow murder’ identified “diesel vehicles’ as the main culprit and and related that to most visible effects of pollution namely health and went on to mount a massive campaign (which we shall examine in detail in the subsequent posts) against the same. From 1997, when its book was published to 2002, when the conversion completed, CSE, played a crucial role in communicating to the public the ill effects o diesel and, went to argue that CNG, is the most effective solution available. On the other hand there were opponents to CNG too. The first major challenger to CNG, was TERI, which argued for a fuel neutral, emission standards based approach to reduction of air pollution, but it pitched its argument in favour of Extra low sulphur diesel, which was castigated by CSE, as supporting the diesel lobby. The other major contender was The TRIPPS of IIT, led by Prof. Dinesh Mohan, who argued for reorganisation of traffic patterns and introduction of high capacity buses. But CSE, alone succeeded in achieving its mission and hence requires a deeper look. The state (both legislature and executive) which slept throughout the better part of 1990s woke during 2001 and sep a committee to provide national fuel policy, which sided with the idea advanced by TERI, but was wrapped in the knuckles by the supreme court, which makes the role of CSE that more exciting to examine. mahesh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050816/34685f66/attachment.html From maheshsarma at rediffmail.com Tue Aug 16 23:45:59 2005 From: maheshsarma at rediffmail.com (mahesh sarma) Date: 16 Aug 2005 18:15:59 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] CSE science and communication in CNG story Message-ID: <20050816181559.23025.qmail@webmail30.rediffmail.com>   CSE science and communication in CNG story All CSOs involved in the transport policy debate, have used their own domestic research based findings aided and buttressed by previously conducted international research findings to influence policymaking. CSE commissioned a comparative study of pollution levels generated by both modes of fuels viz, CNG and diesel, and proved that CNG has lower pollution levels (A claim contested by TERI and IIT_ TRIPPS, but failed to convince the courts). The strategy of all CSOs, normally is to publish the findings and use the media to sensitise the public and policy makers. Petitioning and corresponding with state authorities is another preferred mode of activity. Filing Public Interest Litigation is emerging as new form of intervention. In the transport policy debate only CSE went further and actively and consistently engaged with general public in a sustained manner. Though it too began with a the publication of the book ‘Slow Murder’ using vehicular pollution data to deadly effect, it went further. (Though the attribution of all vehicular pollution to public transport may be farfetched, but being an NGO, with success in mind, it did do that effectively). Having identified the right cause (health problems due to pollution) and linked it scientifically to increased pollution, CSE mounted an intensive, multi pronged and sustained campaign (It even used emotion by way of the deteriorating health of its charismatic founder Anil Agarwal), organized public hearings, mounted debates on national television channels, unleashed academic reports. It also found places in the right government and court appointed committees to influence policy changes from within the state structure. Few hypotheses could be advanced about the nature and content of the change that was brought about the campaign in larger context. One is that the due to the liberalisation process, the livability issues have begun to dominate public discourse though an upper class bias is distinctly visible. An increasing number of internationally connected civil society organizations, powered by competing claims based on science have been successful in forcing changes in national level policy making. Yet anther factor is that the civil society got increasingly engaged due to the explosion of electronic media, which brought about a sense of immediacy to remote problems into the drawing rooms of homes and there by involved citizens in a manner which the state was not able to foresee and hence was forced to be reactive. mahesh B.Mahesh Sarma, Researcher Centre for Studies in Science Policy Jawaharlal Nehru University New Delhi. 110 067 Mobile:00-91-9868090468 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050816/a6d070c8/attachment.html From sartajbedi at hotmail.com Wed Aug 17 03:08:51 2005 From: sartajbedi at hotmail.com (sartajbedi) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 03:08:51 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fast food chains:Pizza hut Bible!! Message-ID: Hi Khalid Read your note on fats food. Found it interesting. Wanted to know what your back ground is Cheers Sartaj -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050817/6adad66c/attachment.html From magiclantern.foundation at gmail.com Tue Aug 16 13:00:23 2005 From: magiclantern.foundation at gmail.com (Magic Lantern Foundation) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:00:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Magic Lantern's Distribution Initiative Message-ID: Dear Friends, We are happy to announce the launch of our initiative to distribute independent films. Called Under Construction, the first phase of the initiative will concentrate on distributing films in India. And we will go to the second phase depending on the relations we establish with the individual filmmakers. The first set of 20,000 mailers, with catalogue, went out .earlier this year. We had 34 films and 15 filmmakers (11 Indian and 4 foreign) on board. We are now getting ready for the second issue for this year and so we write to invite you to join us. Those of you who are interested to find out more about our plans please read details of the initiative on our website: http://www.magiclanternfoundation.org under Distribution. If you need more details or clarification please write to us directly at underconstruction at magiclanternfoundation.org or magiclantern.foundation at gmail.com PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS ADDRESS. Further, I want to clarify that by 'exclusive rights', we mean the right to DISTRIBUTE ONLY. All rights for participating in film festivals, awards, international distribution, screenings, presentations in seminars, workshops, dissemination and advocacy will REMAIN with the filmmaker. The filmmaker will also retain rights to personally sell copies of the film, send prints or copies for participation in festivals/ seminars/ conferences/ screenings/ meeting/ etc, exchange copies of the film in return for copies of films from other filmmakers etc. The filmmaker may, or may not, SHARE some of these rights with Magic Lantern. Let me end by inviting all of you to participate in this endeavour and thereby helping us to create a national distribution centre. With best wishes, Gargi Sen -- Magic Lantern Foundation I 1768 Basement, Chittaranjan Park, New Delhi 110019 Ph: +91 11 51605239, 26273244 and 30937942 Email: magiclf at vsnl.com, Web: http://www.magiclanternfoundation.org -- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shivamvij at gmail.com Tue Aug 16 14:00:07 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 14:00:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] New issue of INSIGHT In-Reply-To: <20050815163739.6415.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> References: <20050815163739.6415.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Insight Magazine Date: 15 Aug 2005 16:37:39 -0000 Subject: New issue of INSIGHT Dear Friends, Jai Bheem The new issue of INSIGHT on "Castes and your Caste" will be available on 18th this month. This is 9th issue(Jul/Aug) of INSIGHT. Due to summer vacation we did not publish the May-june issue. So this issue is in continuity with the last issue that was on Caste and Gender (march/april). The net version of this issue will be available on http://www.sammaditthi.com/INSIGHT/insight_home.asp from 20th August onward. In this new issue on "Castes and your Caste" we have included articles in which author writes about his/her caste and also put forward his views on the existing caste discourse generated due to Dalit Movement. We have included articles from both Dalit and nondalit background belonging to various regions from India. Beside articles on Caste we have all our regular columns- Our Icon, our Achievers, Voices, Navayana, Letters This issue also includes 3 commentaries. This Issue is a TRIBUTE TO GREAT "AYYANKALI", a Revolutionary from Kerala, who is OUR ICON in this issue. Friends, His Birthday falls on 28th this month. It is a shame that such revolutionary is relegated to margins of history by so called Mainstream Scholars. Dalit movement has great responsibility to dig out the truth and make tremendous efforts so that Great personality like Ayyankali gets their due space in Indian History. Our NEXT issue will be again on CASTE AND GENDER. We will be providing details of this issue regarding invitation for articles, interview etc on the next week. regards EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE INSIGHT,JNU NEW DELHI insightjnu at gmail.com From stopragging at gmail.com Wed Aug 17 18:31:17 2005 From: stopragging at gmail.com (Stop Ragging Campaign) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 18:31:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Ragging/Representation Message-ID: See this: http://www.imsindia.com/nrrane_trust/images/ragging_tearshi.jpg It's a poster brought out jointly by two organisations with the aim of appealing to seniors not to rag. It is emotional rather than rational in nature. "Everyone gets ragged. Not everyone survives," it reads along with a photograph that focuses on an eye filled with tears brimming over. The contours of the skin around the eye are clearly visible. The person who visualised the poster must have thought an actual photograph portraying trauma and suffering is important, rather than a graphic. "Tease. Humiliate. Assault. Torture. Kill." The trajectory is graphically presented so as to drive home the point that one leads to another. "Everyone gets ragged. Not everyone survives." How many meanings can you tease out of that statement? Everyone doesn't survive ragging: but surely, most people do? So who survives ragging, and who commits suicide? The Stop Ragging Campaign regularly gets hate mail (or comments on the blog-website) saying things such as, "Only sissies and pansies have problems with ragging. You guys are a bunch of them." And: "Those who committed suicide must have been so weak that they wouldn't have survived the big, bad world anyway." This becomes worrying when the police talks in the same vein about a victim. So when Anoop Kapoor committed suicide [ http://stop-ragging.blogspot.com/2005/04/anoop-kapoor-kanpurlucknow-12.html ], a Times of India report said: "The officials said that Anoop was not a lone case and hundreds of students were subjected to ragging every year and nobody committed suicide so easily. "They said that their intention was not to defend the seniors and justify the ragging. But since the boy took such an extreme step, the matter needed a thorough investigation. There could be a possibility that the boy was hyper-sensitive or was suffering from depression, they said." The guilty were not identified, not punished. Neither does Uttar Pradesh have an anti-ragging law. What is happening here, without doubt, is victim blaming. Dig deeper into the facts of the Anoop Kapoor case, and you will find that he was The Only fresher in the hostel, and therefore singled out as the burden of the "tradition" that hundreds of seniors thought they need to continue. The above poster, therefore, represents Anoop Kapoor. Who even the police, which didn't get around to punishing those who drove him to suicide, thinks was hypersensitive. But Who Will Represent the Abuser? See also this photograph published in The Hindu: http://www.hindu.com/edu/2005/01/31/images/2005013100660101.jpg It shows a poster brought out by the Hyderabad police. "Stretching the joke too far may be fatal," it says. The hype against ragging has given rise to a new phenomenon: the forbidden is desired. So particularly in day-scholar ragging (in places like Delhi University), you find freshers telling newspapers and TV channels they wanted to get ragged but have been disappointed, that they have been going to other colleges to see if someone wants to rag them. The statement "I want to get ragged", is heard in hostels by only one kind of fresher: him who hails from a boarding school where he has had enough time to internalise the discourse of fagging and hierarchical ritual abuse. "I want to get ragged" is an expression of masculinity: the fresher is desperately trying to say 'I am not a sissy'. Now posters like the two I have given links to, what do they achieve? They only perpetuate the myth that the fresher who commits suicide was neurotic. However, I have found that in all cases of suicides and drop-outs caused by ragging, the fresher had in some way been singled out, and thus abused more than others. Furthermore, psychoanalytic theory tells us that everyone is equally 'normal' - or abnormal. The popular film /Munnabhai MBBS/ (2001) represents hostel ragging in just one scene. The macho Sanjay Dutt ('Munnabhai') is shown as having no 'problem' in dancing to the orders of the seniors. But his roommate, a thin, bespectacled sorry figure - the sort that would typify a 'sissy', is shown shivering. I have only one question to ask the makers of the movie, who are planning a sequel: why is it that Sanjay Dutt takes off only his shirt but the jeans is intact, whereas the other freshers are shown dancing is merely their underwears? Did Dutt refuse to dance in an underwear like the 'extras' and his roommate? Did he say his 'modesty' would be 'outraged'? If yes, then doesn't it make a farce of the portrayal of the character of Munnabhai (a criminal-turned-medical student) who actually enjoys ragging, in contrast to the 'sissies' who are pissing in their pants? -- www.stopragging.org | info at stopragging.org From zero at rawbw.com Tue Aug 16 20:55:02 2005 From: zero at rawbw.com (Zee Roe) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 16:25:02 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [FoRK] More on outsourcing Message-ID: It seems like you shouldn't give the keys to the proverbial kingdom to someone you pay $2/hr. (if that?) Especially somewhere like India, which (from my experience, and from what I have read) tends not to have the same baseline biz ethics. From berkeleysanjay at planet-save.com Wed Aug 17 20:13:34 2005 From: berkeleysanjay at planet-save.com (berkeleysanjay at planet-save.com) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 07:43:34 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] State of Anti-Nuclear Activism in India Message-ID: <49768.70.35.60.153.1124289814.squirrel@planet-save.com> Greetings All, I was reading Manmohan Singhs procalamation of ushering an Era of Nuclear Energy in India. I was wondering if anybody in the group happened to know of things happening to challenge this dangerous move by the Indian Govt. Is the Anti-Nuclear movement limited to opposing Bombs and not to Nuclear Power Plants? Of course, if anybody in the group thinks that this is good for India. Please feel free to share your valuable insight. thanks Berkeley _______________________________________________________________ Save rainforest for free with a Planet-Save.com e-mail account: http://www.planet-save.com From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Tue Aug 16 21:49:23 2005 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 17:19:23 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] this is the mail in its entirety Message-ID: Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 07:02:24 -0700 (PDT) From: Zee Roe To: fork at xent.com Subject: [FoRK] More on outsourcing X-BeenThere: fork at xent.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , It seems like you shouldn't give the keys to the proverbial kingdom to someone you pay $2/hr. (if that?) Especially somewhere like India, which (from my experience, and from what I have read) tends not to have the same baseline biz ethics. From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Tue Aug 16 21:51:23 2005 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Tue, 16 Aug 2005 17:21:23 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] this is the mail in its entirety (2) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 07:02:24 -0700 (PDT) From: Zee Roe To: fork at xent.com Subject: [FoRK] More on outsourcing X-BeenThere: fork at xent.com X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.4 List-Id: Friends of Rohit Khare List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200508/s1437366.htm August 15, 2005 Tens of thousands of Australians are at risk of computer fraud because their personal information is being made available illegally by workers inside call centres based in India. Tonight's Four Corners program reveals a black market in information held by Indian call centres. The program was able to get hold of personal details through a journalist who is working undercover and cannot be identified. "We were absolutely amazed at how easy it was to buy data. And secondly, the free flow of data was just astonishing," the journalist said. "A good analogy would be paedophile or child porn sites on the Internet. If you're one of them, you swap your pictures with their pictures, that's how the trade carries on." The undercover journalist was also behind the recent sting operation by Britain's Sun newspaper, which bought the bank details of 1,000 British people for just $7 each. "You can't go to these people and ask for 10 names. The minimum, it seems to us, the minimum quantity they will deal with is 1,000 names," the journalist said. The Australian names requested by Four Corners had a price tag of $10 each. It was offered ATM numbers, passport numbers and credit card details - enough information for hackers to assume the identity of Australians online. The program did not go ahead with the purchase but a sample of identifications included the personal details of Diane and Keith Poole. Ms Poole says the revelation leaves her feeling vulnerable. "I'm mortified because it leaves us fairly open, doesn't it?" she said. Mr Poole says a call centre operator working for Australian company Switch Mobile, asked him an unusual question. "They asked did I have a passport. I said, 'Yes I have a passport' but I said I wasn't prepared to give the number on that," he said. Switch Mobile spokesman Damien Kay says passport information is not needed. "The issue of personal information being sold goes way outside of our authorisation in the contracts that we have," he said. He says Switch is devastated that privacy laws are being flouted by its representative and has since terminated the contract it had with its telemarketing company. Cyber crime is described by former World Bank cyber intelligence expert Tom Kellerman as the most pervasive crime on the planet. "Organised crime has created a business model around hacking," he said. The threat of financial loss to a victim of identity fraud is bad in itself, but there is an even darker side to the crime. Personal details on any number of databases can be accessed and used for terrorist activities, which could include getting passports issued, establishing lines of credit or arranging fake IDs for people working undercover. _______________________________________________ FoRK mailing list http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork comment of zee: It seems like you shouldn't give the keys to the proverbial kingdom to someone you pay $2/hr. (if that?) Especially somewhere like India, which (from my experience, and from what I have read) tends not to have the same baseline biz ethics. -- http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/listpublish.php?q_mm=rob From postbodhi at yahoo.co.in Wed Aug 17 17:15:26 2005 From: postbodhi at yahoo.co.in (Bodhisattva Kar) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 12:45:26 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Posting No. 5: "Running a Mess, Running into a Mess: Extract from an Interview" Message-ID: <20050817114526.4050.qmail@web8307.mail.in.yahoo.com> After his wife's premature death, Satya Ranjan Chakraborty, a professional private tutor with some political past, decided to move out of his large joint family household in 1953 with his eight-year old boy. For the next twenty years a mess-house in central Calcutta (near Santosh Mitra Square) became the permanent address for this little unit, until Satya Ranjan's son, having passed the MA examination from Calcutta University, got a lecturer's job in a government district college. Satya Ranjan, however, continued to stay in the mess-house and left it only in 1986 when his son, Subhash Ranjan, managed to build his own house in the city. Satya Ranjan has passed away in the late eighties. We had a long and very useful conversation with Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty, who now teaches history in Presidency College. As someone who has spent twenty years of his early life in a mess-house, Chakraborty generously shared with us different details of the mess-life. We thought it would be better to give a small sample from the interview, focusing mainly on the management of the mess-house. How by the nineteen seventies the problems of running a mess were becoming intense emerge obliquely from the conversation. But it speaks also directly to the concerns of everyday management and organization of the mess-houses. . Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: "And, all of them [the residents] were not necessarily from the same region? I mean, we know that usually people from a particular district would prefer to band together in a particular mess-house " Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "I think, that is much more applicable to the people coming from East Bengal. As far as I know, this mess-house was built during the [second World] War. It was a large four-storied building. The landlord was R. B. Das who owned a big store of musical instruments. Everybody was leaving Calcutta at that time [for the fear of the Japanese Bomb]. Now there was this homeopathic doctor from Bongaon, who procured the house as a lessee. A permanent seat used to be kept reserved for the doctor and he would come once a week. Most probably he also used to get a monthly commission of 5 or 10 rupees. The total house rent was something like 120 or 130 rupees. And when I left the mess [after twenty years], the rent was raised only to 160 rupees. At that time, the house owners very much wanted to drive away the mess-people [as it became quite unprofitable]. But when the mess was started, they could hardly raise that amount of money from this house in any other way." . Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "When we were in this mess-house, the Aguris [a rich middle caste] used to dominate. They were mainly from some villages of Birbhum, near Bolpur, and Burdwan. But it was not exclusively so. There were people from other areas also. There was a sizeable group from Kalna." Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: "Do you think the caste question affected the everyday running of the mess?" Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "No, no " Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: "In no way?" Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "In no way. The politics was visible in a different way. For example, somebody is getting an extra fish to eat, or somebody is taking his food to his own floor [and probably taking more] thanks to an [informal] arrangement with the cook. Things like these " Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: "Would everybody usually sit together during the meal?" Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "Yes. Together. There was a dining hall. People would sit together." Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: "Would they sit on the floor?" Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "Yes. Some would start from 8 o'clock in the morning." . Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: "How were the defaulters dealt with?" Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "Oh, there use to be a lot of problems with the defaulters. Some of them would fail to pay for months after months. There were demands that their meals should be stopped. In fact, on this issue the mess-meetings were full of shouting and commotion. Some people would leave the mess without paying their bills. Some would slowly pay. Usual problem, as you would experience in a hostel." Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: "But were they ever thrown out of the mess? How strict was the control?" Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "It is not possible to throw somebody physically. I don't remember any instance where things led up to courts or police stations. But I think that attempts were made to persuade the defaulters. And a policy of 'no food without money' used to be followed. But in that case, it depended greatly on the personal relation between the cook and the defaulter. Nothing could be done if the cook was kind to the man. But officially the food was stopped." . Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: "Would you say the management of the mess-house was democratic? Were the decisions collectively taken in the meetings?" Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "More or less democratic. But what usually happens in these cases, you see, most people don't want to get involved in problems. So those who were enthusiastic would of course be active in its management. I don't know if these people had any monetary interest in it. I was too young to understand it. I was not very involved in this process. But I have seen that mostly members of a particular group would want to, and would become, managers. So a kind of group-rivalry was always there. And in the democratic system, this is (smiles) " Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: " everywhere." Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "Everywhere." Bodhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy: "But if we could strain your memory a little more, would you say that regional bonds, or other kinds of bonds, previous acquaintance, for example, were important in forging these groups?" Subhash Ranjan Chakraborty: "Surely. As far as I remember, it is exactly what used to happen. For instance, there were these two brothers from a family. One had left. And the other was the Works Manager of a firm. He was in a good post, used to go to office by a car, although he stayed in a mess. For family reasons - for good education of his children - he later decided to hire a whole house. Their eldest brother also used to stay in the same mess. He was the General Manager of the same firm. These people had a definite authority in the mess-house. This was strongly resented by the people who joined the community later. And the power of this group afterward began to eclipse, and another group - mainly a group of young people from Birbhum - took over. But it was not solely a regional group." --------------------------------- Check out Yahoo! India Rakhi Special for Rakhi shopping, contests and lots more. http://in.promos.yahoo.com/rakhi/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050817/8a316d94/attachment.html From raviv at sarai.net Thu Aug 18 10:29:35 2005 From: raviv at sarai.net (Ravi S. Vasudevan) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 10:29:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Fwd: Faculty openings at IIT Kharagpur Message-ID: <6.1.1.1.0.20050818102830.0302eda8@mail.sarai.net> >There are faculty openings in English at the level of Assistant Professor >at IIT Kharagpur. Applications must be submitted in the next two >weeks Details are available on >www.iitkgp.ernet.in >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around >http://mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050818/7d8d0c10/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From monica.mody at gmail.com Wed Aug 17 16:42:19 2005 From: monica.mody at gmail.com (Monica Mody) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 16:42:19 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Call for Entries: TRI Continental Film Festival 2006 Message-ID: <4badad3b050817041221d9b5c6@mail.gmail.com> TRI Continental Film Festival INDIA 2006 CALL FOR ENTRIES DEADLINE NOV 10, 2005 The TRI Continental Film Festival returns to India for a second time. A showcase of outstanding cinema from the transglobal South, the festival seeks to raise social and political consciousness through narrative, documentary, feature and short length films from the 3 continents of Latin America, Africa and Asia. The festival was started in 2002 by the Movimiento de Documentalistas, a group of independent filmmakers based in Argentina, and then taken to South Africa the next year by Uhuru Productions and Lawyers for Human Rights. In India, it made its debut in December 2004 with screenings in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Since then, films have been screened at several cultural venues and educational institutions not only in these 3 cities but also in Bangalore, Pune, Guwahati and Kanpur. Everywhere, they have sparked discussions, debates and conversations around the critical issues of our times. This year's festival will again explore issues of human rights and social justice including in particular stories of woman and children. Uhuru Productions hosts the film festival in Johannesburg and Cape Town in September, and the Movimiento de Documentalistas, in Caracas, Venezuela, in November. The Indian leg of the festival will run in late January and February 2006 in the five cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. While the culture of militarism and greed seek to dominate our political-economic landscape, the TRI Continental Film Festival challenges filmmakers of the global South and those committed to telling stories from embattled communities in the Americas, Africa and Asia to present us with alternative windows to a different kind of world. It is committed to promoting a human rights culture in India that respects the equal rights of all regardless of religion, gender, class, caste, sexual orientation, age and disability. For those interested in submitting films for this year's festival, please visit the Breakthrough website at www.breakthrough.tv for entry forms and rules & regulations. Breakthrough is an international human rights organization that uses media, education and popular culture to promote values of dignity, equality and justice. For further information, contact: Monica Mody or Alika Khosla Breakthrough: building human rights culture A 1/133, Safdarjung Enclave, New Delhi 110029 Tel: 011 26967040; Fax: 011 26967039 Email: tri-cff at breakthrough.tv _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From anupamajayaraman at gmail.com Wed Aug 17 11:53:01 2005 From: anupamajayaraman at gmail.com (Anu pama) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 11:53:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Impact of globalisation on the Fishing Communities: Talk on Aug 19 Message-ID: <3d572e5005081623231dfdea04@mail.gmail.com> Impact of globalisation on the Fishing Communities Many communities of the marginalised have already started active protests against globalisation in India. Development has already affected the lives of fishing communities in a negative manner. It appears that all evils of development finally reach the sea. Ultimately, the fishing communities in India have to bear with the impact of urbanisation, pollution, nuclearisation, deforestation, tourism, sand mining. The fishing communities have opposed globalisation through struggles against joint ventures, tourism, sand mining and mega projects like Sethu Samudram Canal Project, which threatens the marine wealth, coastal ecology and lives of fishing communities. When moves are being made to privatise water resources in india, soon the middle class in Bangalore will have to share common platforms with the protests against globalisation of the marginalised communities. Hence the need to support and strengthen such struggles is becoming more and more significant even from a middle class perspective. In this context, we are pleased to invite you to attend a meeting addressed by the following prominent representatives of the fisherpeople's movement. - T. Peter, President, Kerala Swatantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation and Secretary, National Fishworkers Forum will speak about `the impact of globalisation on the fishing communities' - Anton Gomez, Secretary, National Fishworkers Union will speak about the current struggle against the `Sethu Samudram Canal Project' - Vincent Benedict, Director, MJM Centre will speak about Coastal Regulation Zone - Magline Peter, Convener, Theeradesha Mahila Vedi, will speak about the present problems related to tsunami action in Kerala. Venue: Mythic Society, Opp. Reserve Bank of India, Nrupathunga Road, Bangalore – 2 Time : 5.00 pm Date: Friday, August 19, 2005 In Solidarity, Ullas -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From iram at sarai.net Thu Aug 18 10:52:55 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 07:22:55 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Fwd: Screening of Amu Message-ID: <21f6cf94f1066a4412c95d889f5e3010@sarai.net> ------ Original Message ------ Subject: Forward of moderated message To: reader-list at sarai.net From: faizan ahmed Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 07:15:01 +0200 Dear all Society for Social Research Invites to you to the screening of "amu" Directed by Shonali Bose Venue: Ramjas College Auditorium University of Delhi, Delhi Date: 18th August 2005 (Thursday) Time: 12.30 pm The screening will be followed by a discussion by the director herself The film is based on 1984 genocide --------------------------------- Check out Yahoo! India Rakhi Special for Rakhi shopping, contests and lots more. http://in.promos.yahoo.com/rakhi/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: faizan ahmed Subject: Invitation Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 16:49:09 +0100 (BST) Size: 11241 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050818/7caa9bee/attachment.mht -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com Thu Aug 18 11:56:17 2005 From: mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Wed, 17 Aug 2005 23:26:17 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Hi delhi fellows, Is the term end workshop on? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20050818062617.1780.qmail@web80904.mail.scd.yahoo.com> Yes...what is the update on the workshops please... wrote: > Hi friends, > Vijender here, > Any idea about this i-fellow workshop that is > suppose to be held frm > 24th ? Is it still on? Didn't hear anything from > fellows. Didn't see > many abstracts at list either. Vivek didn't respond > the mail. I only > hope all is well at sarai. What do you say? Please > reply if you hv > any information > > Jai Hind > Vijender > > _________________________________________________________________ > Post FREE Classifieds. > http://www.sulekha.com/classifieds/cllist.aspx?nma=IN&ref=msn > Reach out to > over a million NRIs. > > ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From chauhan.vijender at gmail.com Thu Aug 18 22:36:38 2005 From: chauhan.vijender at gmail.com (Vijender chauhan) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 22:36:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Abstract of Presentation on Beeti Vibhavri Jaag Ri : Dilli ke Cityscape mein Dik wa Kaal Message-ID: <8bdde4540508181006762f774f@mail.gmail.com> Abstract of Presentation on Beeti Vibhavri Jaag Ri : Dilli ke Cityscape mein Dik wa Kaal By (Dr) VIJENDER SINGH CHAUHAN Duration - 20 Minutes Media - It will be a video presentation after a brief theoretical introduction. Medium - Hindi यह देखो यादों का एक चौराहा लेकिन रुको इस रास्‍ते से उस पर न दौड़ो किसी और याद से जा टकराओगे और याद का याद से टकराना दुर्घटना भर नहीं है यह बिग-बैंग है यहीं से शुरु हुआ ब्रह्मांड और समय माफ करना आंइस्‍टीन तुम्‍हें कविता में घसीटना अच्‍छा तो नहीं लगता/पर मुझे तुम ही सबसे विश्‍वसनीय गवाह दीख पड़ते हो बताओ इन्‍हें कि तुम 'याद' भर हो हर सत्‍य 'याद' भर है और यह शहर है यादों का जखीरा This work is a literary construct of pre-dawn Delhi as city. Its not 'real' Delhi nor it is 'beautiful' Delhi. It is imagined reality of 'dark' Delhi. A dead migrant from Purvanchal narrates it from mortuary. Images of memory, imagination, dreams and experiences in Delhi' cityscape are not essentially in plane and straight geometry. From the perspective of time Delhi's cityscape is an inverted pyramid whose present weighs heavily on its past. Methodology includes poetic observations and documentation of pre-dawn Delhi. Images, Imagination, Memory and Experiences were major tools used. Interviews of migrants, locals and visitors were conducted. Touch, smell and sounds of city were also included in the works though with not much success. From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Thu Aug 18 14:32:10 2005 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 10:02:10 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] INDEPENDENCE - The '10 Years of Futuresonic' theme Message-ID: From: Drew Hemment FUTURESONIC 2006 10 years of Futuresonic International festival of electronic music and media arts Venues across Manchester July 2006 INDEPENDENCE - The '10 Years of Futuresonic' theme Futuresonic 2006 will explore the state of independence today, and showcase independent music, arts and technologies that are open, emergent, collaborative and ad-hoc. Celebrating collaborative cultures and independence movements - from independent labels to peer-to-peer culture, from free parties to free networks, from locative media to local food. Deadline for initial expressions of interest - Wednesday 5 October 2005. To learn more visit http://www.futuresonic.com. Futuresonic 2006 will also host the final exhibition and conference of PLAN - The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network. Further information available soon via http://www.open-plan.org. -- http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/listpublish.php?q_mm=rob From abshi at vsnl.com Fri Aug 19 16:20:43 2005 From: abshi at vsnl.com (abshi at vsnl.com) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 15:50:43 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] A Public Hearing: Bar Dancers Speak on 20 August 2005 Message-ID: Majlis, Point of View, and PUKAR Gender & Space project invite you to worker performer citizen BAR DANCERS SPEAK a public hearing Saturday 20 August 5 pm KC College Auditorium KC College, next to Oxford Bookstore Near All India Radio and MLA hostel Churchgate The bill banning dancers from performing in bars across Mumbai came into effect this week, leaving thousands of bar dancers without jobs or livelihood opportunities. We have all heard what the Maharashtra government, which passed this law, feels about this issue. We have also heard what bar owners, who opposed this law, feel about this issue. But have we heard what bar dancers - who are the most-affected - have to say about this legislation, and related issues of performance, work, dignity and citizenship? On Saturday 20 August, bar dancers who are members of the Bharatiya Bar Girls Union will present their case before a distinguished panel consisting of academicians, filmmakers, performers, writers, journalists and trade unionists. This panel includes filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, writer Kiran Nagarkar, ad filmmaker Prahlad Kakkar, poet Arundhathi Subramaniam, academicians Lakshmi Lingam, Shereen Ratnagar and Nandini Sardesai, theatre personality Dolly Thakore, journalist Naresh Fernandes, and trade unionist Sanjay Singhvi. The panel will deliberate on this issue and respond. Please come and support these bar dancers in their struggle for work, dignity and livelihood. Please come and hear BAR DANCERS SPEAK. Hope to see you there, Madhusree Dutta, Majlis Bishakha Datta, Point of View Shilpa Phadke, PUKAR Gender & Space project From sabitha_tp at yahoo.co.uk Fri Aug 19 20:59:39 2005 From: sabitha_tp at yahoo.co.uk (sabitha t p) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:29:39 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Ideal Femininity and the Debate on Education in Women's Magazines: posting 3 Message-ID: <20050819152939.67936.qmail@web25405.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Women and the Issue of Education in Magazines up to 1920: Part I I spent the months of May and June in Kerala collecting my archival material. These included visits to six archives: The Kerala Sahitya Academy library and their magazine archives housed in Appan Thampuran memorial library in Trichur, the Ulloor Smaraka Granthasala in Trivandrum, the Kerala Studies archives in the Kerala University library in Trivandrum, the private collection of Dr. J. Devika housed in Sakhi Women’s Resource Centre, and the Kerala Centre for Historical Research archives, also in Trivandrum. From these six centres I collected photocopies of several issues of women’s magazines dating from 1892 to 1930. After going through hundreds of issues of women’s magazines (and essays relating to women’s issues in other magazines) up to 1920, I have been trying to grapple with this vast archival material methodologically. Finally, I suppose, all of us find our own methods of working with unwieldy archives. And so did I. The way I worked after categorising groups of essays on varying issues – such as education, sexuality, hygiene, child-rearing and the reproductive economy – was to take up each of these and further classify them within each category using deductive logic, thus establishing certain philosophical and ideological links between these categories, and finally to come to a mere two large categories characteristic of modernity to which these arguments belong. I present here the debate on education (which in fact mobilises a variety of arguments in support of ideal femininities as well as includes within it issues such as health, hygiene, motherhood, and sexual desire) as a case in point. In the case of the debate on education these categories are the various kinds of arguments presented in support of or against educating women. The categories are not mutually exclusive and, more often than not, they co-exist in one essay. Also to be noted is the fact that these categories often apply to essays that support education as well as to essays that oppose them. I will indicate these arguments through illustrations from the essays first and then come to the categories. This mirrors the sequence in which I worked on these essays. In the article titled “Women’s Education” by N.R.V. that appeared in Vidyavinodini (a general magazine) in Nov-Dec, 1897, we find that the author begins by supporting women’s education. However the question here really is what is the ideal kind of education that he advocates and what notions of ideal femininity arise from this. He (only men used acronyms for their names) lists out what education for women entails in this period: a) oral advice, b) education with the help of books, and c) stitching, painting and physical activities or, put another way, a) advice, b) knowledge of the letters and c) physical education. N. R. V. argues that among these, knowledge of the letters is not of any use to women since it is only useful to those engaged in administrative activities. Since women are naturally the weaker sex - since a part of their blood goes out every month – one cannot expect them to undertake physically strenuous activities such as political administration. Since knowledge of world affairs is only useful if you take up an administrative job and because this knowledge will divest women of their natural shame and make them promiscuous, women should not learn such things. He also warns progressive husbands against appointing male tutors for their wives since educated women will be inclined towards adultery and liberty. Since the domain of women is the domestic space and her primary duties are taking care of the husband and children and running the household, N.R.V. advocates that women may only be given an oral and physical education. This essay employs various kinds of arguments to restrict women’s education to the management of the domestic space. Primary among these are the moral and the essentialist modes of arguments: what a woman IS and what it is good for her to do. N. A. Amma’s article titled “A Refutation of the Demerits of Education” that appeared in Vidyavinodini in the Aug-Sep 1898 issue is in reply to the article by N.R.V. Her essay begins like this: “A pundit is of the opinion that an uneducated human being is just a kind of animal. It is clear to us from experience that it is true.” Immediately we recognise a shift of register here in asserting the difference between humans and animals primarily as that of rationality. She counters N.R.V.’s essay point by point. “It is said that the knowledge of letters is useful only in managing affairs of the State.” She counters this pragmatically expressed protest with her own pragmatic points: a) half the educated men in this country are not involved in managing the State, therefore it must follow that education is useful even otherwise, b) Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria etc. have been proven to be better administrators than even men, and c) even to manage domestic affairs efficiently you need intelligence and education. About the assertion that women are the weaker sex due to blood-loss every month, N.A. Amma argues that this process in fact cleanses a woman’s body of impurities. This helps their bodies remain well and minds grow. Her reply to the moral argument about women becoming licentious is that since men are merely called ignorant if they indulge in promiscuity, it cannot be different for women. Therefore women as well as men require knowledge to teach them discretion and virtuous behaviour. In this essay we notice how a pragmatic argument can be employed to counter a pragmatic point and how a moral argument can be deployed to counter another moral argument. Amma uses the same vocabulary of morality when it comes to sexuality, but to make a contrary point. She also seems to suggest that indeed if the role of women is in the domestic sphere, even to manage that realm well, she requires an education. However the central difference between the two essays is the near absence of essentialism in Amma’s argument. She seems to adopt a rational humanist position to apply the same yardstick to men and women based on the faculty they share: rational intelligence. In the essay by P.Kavamma that I had translated earlier, we see some of these arguments repeated even though her essay is written fifteen years after N.A. Amma’s (in 1913). Kavamma’s essay shows an awareness of the historical inevitability of learning English when she says that everything around us is becoming English. She argues too, that if a woman were to travel she would need to know English even to understand the names of places as seen on signboards because Varanasi has become Benares and Mayyazhi has become Mahe with Anglisication. She takes the rational humanist position of N.A.Amma further by saying that all of us, as citizens, have certain duties to perform towards themselves and the community and these can be carried out only if you are educated. The humanist argument metamorphoses here into an argument that recognises women as belonging to a common civil space as men do. In the essay titled “The Education that Women Need,” that appeared in the June-July issue of Sarada, K. Padmavati Amma first counters the point by V. Narayani Amma in an earlier article that women cannot aspire to higher education because even men find it difficult to pass the Bachelor examinations. Padmavati Amma retorts that there are no easy ways of acquiring a degree and if Narayani Amma thinks it is impossible for women to do that, she is mistaken since two Tamil Brahmin women have just finished a B.A. degree successfully. She then goes on a tirade against indigenous education. She says that if one has studied under a native teacher, one would not know if the region of Kerala was to India’s north or south. Even the word “India” would be unfamiliar to them and they would say that the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea are the same. So much for geography. As for History, they would think that Hyder Ali was Tipu’s son and that Aurangzeb and Queen Victoria lived in the same age. Padmavati Amma argues that such an education would be useless for women. She cautiously adds that she does mean that women should be educated because it is useful for jobs but because scholars are respected everywhere. Her argument then can be characterised as an idealist argument, which advocates the acquisition of knowledge for the sake of knowledge itself. The fashioning of the woman, we find is not done through a moral, humanist, idealist or pragmatic discourse alone. In the next part I will demonstrate, with illustrations, how the subjectivity of woman in early modern Kerala is shaped by other modes of arguments as well as the ones listed above and how these modes of constructing a gendered subjectivity arise from certain historical and cultural conditions. Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com From sabitha_tp at yahoo.co.uk Fri Aug 19 21:02:45 2005 From: sabitha_tp at yahoo.co.uk (sabitha t p) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 16:32:45 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Historical and Cultural Conditions: The Agenda of Women's Education, posting 4 Message-ID: <20050819153245.59520.qmail@web25403.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Women and the Issue of Education in Women’s Magazines up to 1920: Part II In the essay titled “Malayali Women and Education” that appeared in the Aug-Sep 1907 issue of Sarada, Vasudevan Moosath advocates a knowledge of literature, particularly in Sanskrit, as essential to a woman’s education. He cites the example of mythical women such as Gargi and Maitreyi to suggest that women should become learned (references to mythical women scholars abound in many essays). “What they mainly need is an education in the puranas, poetry, drama, figures of speech etc., particularly in Malayalam and a little in English. In any case, the language that women need to learn the most is Sanskrit The source of all the books that can refine the intellect and are particularly pleasing to women is the Sanskrit language Therefore it is my belief that all women who naturally aspire to the honour of a rasika (aesthete) will agree with my opinion.” In other essays too is os often stated that an ideal education for women should include the learning of music and embroidery. Women, even respectable housewives, should now aspire to a degree of refinement earlier thought to be the realm of the veshya. This kind of argument is deployed by women too in support of education, that when a woman can hold her own in conversation with her educated husband, there will be marital harmony and this will keep both parties from straying away from the marriage. In the context of the polyandrous and/or serially monogamous Nair women of Kerala this becomes an important tool to curtail her sexual freedom and regulate her sexuality within an institution such as marriage. This is also the time that the proposed Nair Marriage Bill (which legalised Nair marriages and thus legally sanctioned monogamy which was alien to Nairs till now) is being hotly debated in the public sphere. The regulation of the woman’s desire figures vastly in the debate on education as much as in essays directly concerning the Nair Marriage Bill. In essays concerning Mohini Attam dancers, one gets a sense of the reformist need to condemn a certain mode of aestheticising the female body and an aestheticised representation of desire. A project for an interior aestheticising of the woman replaces the exterior aestheticising in reformist literature just as cleanliness and refinement replace excessive use of jewellery and make-up as markers of the woman’s attractiveness in essays dealing with physical appearance. The woman’s role as mother too comes in for considerable scrutiny in the reformist agenda of education. She becomes the primary tutor of her children and therefore must needs be educated herself. Padmavati Amma, in an essay in Sarada in 1905 argues in favour of a woman’s education by pointing out the need for it in order for the woman to be a companionable wife and an efficient mother even as she protests that “men are of the opinion that women are meant only for reproduction.” The role of motherhood demands that the woman be educated in matters of healthcare, hygiene and medicine. In the essay titled “The Role of Women in Education” in the 1913 Sep-Oct issue of Lakshmibhai, K. Chinnamma writes about child-care, “Their (children’s) food and clothes should be regulated so that they will be able-bodied and healthy. They should be given food that is good for their brains and that increases their intelligence rather than slows it down. It is very essential that there be cleanliness in their clothing.” Chinnamma goes on to advocate special food for children, thereby bringing a quasi-scientific argument to recognise childhood as a separate state of being from adulthood and to recognise the educated woman’s role in child-care. There are numerous essays pointing out the advantages of women being given a scientific education. In these essays we also see a moral argument coming up because it is repeatedly stated that only an educated mother will have the necessary value-system to impart to her children and make them capable of always choosing the path of righteousness, for their own sake and for the sake of the community they live in. With the beginning of the nationalist movement we see the emergence of new discourses shaping ideal femininity. The essay I had translated earlier by Puthelath Govinda Menon in Lakshmibhai in 1930 titled “Two Words to our Girl children,” warns women that English education was introduced in India to create go-betweens for the British administrative system and that even men find it very hard to subsist with what they earn as clerks and lawyers. At the end of the essay he exhorts women to take up spinning and weaving, “an activity you can easily undertake and that will enlighten the whole country”. Govinda Menon concludes, “May the sacred clothes that your pure hands weave spread throughout Kerala.” Here we see a new public role imagined for women that does not disrupt the essentialist gendered division of space into the public and the domestic. However, this use of the nationalist discourse to keep women away from a modern education seems to have been anticipated by K. Padmavati Amma as early as in 1918. In the essay titled “Do Our Women Need English Education?” in the Aug-Sep issue of Lakshmibhai – a curious essay that presents the opposite case satirically – she says that the retrogressive Panchu Menon and Pangassa Menon (two humorous characters from early reformist Malayalam novels, Indulekha and Meenakshi, both of which advocate modern education for women) seem to have woken up again to protest against the changes that are happening due to women’s education. They ascribe these changes to a “bhramam” (craze) brought on by English education. She lists the various complaint that they have against women educated in the Western manner: that they wake up late, expect maidservants to serve them breakfast in bed, do not care for the household or the well-being of the husband, insist on wearing a blouse, do not wear jewellery that so attracts men and thus lack sringara, read novels, play the fiddle and sing Hindustani songs. She adds that since everyone is in the grip of ‘Swadeshi’ and ‘Home Rule’ now, this is an opportune time to ask women to give up English and everything associated with it. She ends her essay with a wake-up call to women, “Respectable sisters! You should not be disheartened by such gossip and malice or be frightened by the likes of Panchu Menon and Pangassa Menon. Instead, you should put all your effort into acquiring a relevant English education and fulfilling your obligations arising from such an education.” Like in the earlier essay by P.Kavamma, Padmavati Amma too recognises the colonial inevitability of an English education and seems to delink English education from servility to the English. Instead she associates English education with access to the radicalism of European liberal thought. What I have attempted to demonstrate here are the numerous kinds of arguments mobilised in the debate on women’s education and how they discursively construct certain notions regarding femininity. I will take these arguments up again in the course of my presentation and will attempt to contextualise it further in the exciting public sphere of late nineteenth-early twentieth century Kerala. Send instant messages to your online friends http://in.messenger.yahoo.com From askshetty at rediffmail.com Thu Aug 18 12:44:31 2005 From: askshetty at rediffmail.com (prasad shetty) Date: 18 Aug 2005 07:14:31 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Stories of Entrepreneurship Message-ID: <20050818071431.27696.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com> Dear All, A draft of my full paper for the CSDS-Sarai Independent Fellowship Programme, 'Stories of Entrepreneurship' is available at:  http://www.crit.org.in/members/prasad/Stories%20of%20Entrepreneurship.pdf/download Parts of this would be presented in the workshop next week. I would appreciate comments on the paper. Thanks, Prasad Prasad Shetty Residence: 501, Marigold, Opposite Shakti Motors, New Link Road, Malad (W), Mumbai 400 064 INDIA Phone: +91-9820912744 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050818/00119394/attachment.html From kaiwanmehta at gmail.com Sat Aug 20 08:17:17 2005 From: kaiwanmehta at gmail.com (kaiwan mehta) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 08:17:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Note on Presentation Message-ID: <2482459d0508191947755b5d4@mail.gmail.com> Hi I am sending the abstract for my presentation. Thanking you, Reagrds, Kaiwan *A History of Everyday* * * History searches for the heroic in the everyday. Conceptually the everyday subverts the heroic. Quoting Blanchot, "the everyday has this essential trait: it allows no hold. It escapes. It belongs to insignificance, and the insignificant is without truth, without reality, without secret, but perhaps also the site of all possible signification(s)." As I have worked on this project, my negotiation with the everyday has become more and more apparent. This project has toyed with various ideas and exercises, much like a rag picker! One has struggled with History, Urban Communities and Representations. One has walked and held innumerable conversations and the power of observation is the greatest tool. As I mentioned once earlier too, it feels like Alice, one is swimming through reality sights and story weavers continuously. This paper will narrate some experiences during this passage. It will try an attempt a single narrative to connect some experiences and observations that came up on the way. I will also attempt at a summary of some ideas like *communities and neighbourhoods - representing the locality and writing histories*. The presentation will contain a power point slide show with images only. I will carry a CD of this and it may also be on my laptop. I will try and contain the presentation within 20 mins. -- Kaiwan Mehta Architect and Urban Reseracher 11/4, Kassinath Bldg. No. 2, Kassinath St., Tardeo, Mumbai 400034 022-2-494 3259 / 91-98205 56436 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050820/a62f79ca/attachment.html From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Thu Aug 18 14:49:06 2005 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 10:19:06 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Notions on policy in Eastern Asia-Europe media spaces In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Notions on policy in Eastern Asia-Europe media spaces after: http://www.commonroom.info/bcfnma/artcamp2005/ What can we learn? One of the most intriguing aspects of Bauhaus is that the most successful unit, - the unit coming 'closest to Bauhaus intentions', as Gropius stated, the pottery workshop - was located 25 kilometers from Weimar, in Dornburg. It was hard to reach by train, and hard to reach by car. The workshop master Max Krehan owned the workshop, so there was a business interest from the start. The relationship with Marcks , the Master of Form, was not contaminated with formalized roundtable discussions, but was a productive twoway (abstract-concrete) interrelationship. "More important still, in terms of what Gropius hoped for the entire Bauhaus, was the way in which the pottery workshop operated in close co-operation with the local community in which it found itself. It made pots for the community and the town of Dornburg leased the workshop a plot of land which the students used for vegetables and on which, it was hoped, they would build." So what can we learn from this? That we must not aim to define, alter or transform practices, processes, places or people. The aim should be to define a vision. A vision that should be able to inspire and empower young people in their concrete experience of agency in this seemingly undesignerly new ambient world, towards a humanistic and optimistic positive attitude in the role, function and leadership of the creative individual in her capability to make sense, to work within an uncertain framework of unforeseen consequences, unintended uses, and procedural breakdown. What can we do? So what does this mean for new media, emergent technologies and cultural policy departments and funding strategies? In terms of new media and policy there is very little clear and good practice and this is very logical as the visual metaphors of digitisation for artistic purpose began only (with the exception of an it/virtual reality driven trend) thirtheen years ago with the launching of the browser. Rasa Smite from RIXC claims that the reason why she and other public domain driven artists in Latvia liked new media immediately was that there was no advantage for any one in any country as it was just as new for everybody. No one could claim a history that was uniquely theirs, every country had its own equally important story. Shuddhabrata Genupta from Sarai relates how Bulgaria for example developed the highest expediency in software viruses as it had been assigned software production from Comecon. At the ASEF-Commonroom Bandung organized and produced Third Asia-Europe Art Camp this very fundamental insight to the basic ingredients that make up new media was highlighted in the student presentations from a range as varied from Germany, Indonesia, Norway, Estonia, Myanmar, Japan and France. (see url). The diversity was shattering, yet it would be very hard to categorize presentations in terms of level of conceptualisation, expertise or creativity. All presentations are a necessary node in and on the modes of connectivity that makes up what we call new media. There are a few common threads though. One is risktaking. As ASEF itself has taken a risk on focussing on emergent and not established practices, through showing a clear interest in hardwiring the future designers of our mediascapes through theoretical lectures, local assignments, a view of new media spaces in Bandung and interviews with the founders, and last not least and most important, giving every participant a clear insight into her own daily praxis, ways of working, strategies of communication and the level of digital saturization. This brings us to the second point. As Annabelle Felise Aw (Singapore) states the issue is about Space, yes, but perhaps more importantly about Pace. This is a term that describes the various ways in which the digital context that informs everyday practices is matched by a level of conceptualisation that allows innovation. The third common denominator lies in the basic irrelevance the participants assign to terminology. For them being called or labelled an artist, designer, creator of original ideas is only relevant when it comes to issues of funding. The fourth is the belief that it is both extremely necessary to have a physical place where people can meet as well as a space that might also be thought of as a method, a format, a way of looking at the world that you have in common with a few or a group of other people. This space can and should be supported by as much digital connectivity as possible ( web, mail, gps, roaming). What can we do from a cultural policy point of view? I. Place We do not fund beginning places. De Waag and V2 are our Dutch most successful labs. In less than 10 years they have grown into academic nodes on the SURFNET network, the Dutch academic network. This is unprecedented. Never before has a group of autonomous, critical individuals been able to get their ideas, narrative, theories and projects accepted as credible in terms of the existing academic discourse in such a short time span. How was this possible? Because of the liberal climate in the eighties and early nineties in the Netherlands that did allow for bottom-up creative initiatives. De Waag grew out of the non profit Digital City that was supposed to last for six weeks, the first Digital City in Amsterdam in 1993. Young idealists, hackers, 'hippies from hell' as they are called in Ine Poppe's documentary, provided free email and started the digital revolution with their internet provider xs4all. We are only eleven years later and the analogue world is becoming more hybrid as we speak with digital connectivity. Xs4all has become a part of corporate KPN. V2 was the name of a squat building in Den Bosch, the Director Alex Adriaansens was there in 1981. He is still Director now in 2004. V2 participates in numerous European networks, is focussing on their own kind of R&D that is rapidly drawing attention from the regular and corporate research labs, hosts its own V2 publishing and V2 Archive. The young people that started these digital connectivities in spaces and actual places were concerned for more then their own particular work, products or living, their concern was for the public domain; xs4all. As in Bandung, Delhi, Amsterdam, Riga, Minsk there was no government funding in the creation of the place. You deal with highly idealistic persons who care for public access and domains. Labs that come from abroad unchanged go bust (Medialab Dublin). Labs that are dependent on one particular line of money can switch directions any time (Merging of IVREA with Domus) Strategy of the place: bypassing (see Bauhaus story) Strategy of funders: co-find the satellites (ITB-Common Room for example) and fund specific projects. Question: When do you decide that the proposed alliances are going to do something no one else is going to do? In Holland: In the Ministery of Education, Cultuurnota, individuals took risks. They funded through the visual arts budget (film/video/painting) a number of places that all have delivered quite something else. Instead of Visual Art the Waag is making socio-cultural applications (www.verhalentafel.org) that turn out to be very good for dementia. None of this was in the original research proposal. (This also shows that academic institutes need common rooms as much as they need them for asking questions that are not being deemed relevant within specific frameworks). Because of this risktaking and trust in young idealistic professionals ( who in new media could be making much more money working for regular companies) Holland now has an extremely rich and densely saturated network of new media institutions that themselves now are becoming experts in fields that are economically viable: documentation, heritage, media formats, entertainment. II. Triangle: arts, technology and business: creative industries A clear difference between Europe and Asia is the lack of funding even after the initial phase of a place. Places in Asia describe themselves as for profit. In Europe it is the other way around. These two positions are coming closer though. De Waag has set up a business structure to sell de Verhalentafel to the US. Policy focus in new media interfacing with Ministeries of Economy, Education, Tourism: creative industries New media is about the soft side of innovation (ways of brainstorming, visualization techniques, mapping, designing trust for users in digital environments, didactic models). Proposal: Meeting with Europe-Asia culture officials, companies (telecoms, media) that are very eager to work with new media artists and designers but need very good reason, arguments and a theoretical framework for doing so. III. A possible focus for 2005-2010 projects: urban studies: living in the digital city. As the Sarai Reader list so poignantly shows, people are beginning to map, debate, discover ways of writing and ways of publicizing their everyday lives in cities. As much as counter-research it is the emergence itself of a new kind of research that will have more repercussions for the academic research tradition then for the media places. Eventually it will become the default. As with new media itself, the uses of blogs, email, email lists, websites, mobile phones, play out fundamental changes on the news information mediascapes all over the world. Upstreaming says that the first pictures about incidents are now blogged before they are published. All over the world dominant paradigms of dispersing data and information will have to change or go bust. From a policy point of view: Who would you rather help or fund? People who will show onesided information? Or idealistic young professionals with a heart for the truth and the heart of the matter? A focus on urban digital realities (cctv, microphones, rfid, active sensors) will hopefully (as has happened with de Waag) spawn off community enhancing project (see i3 website/Lime) instead of the use of digital technology for ubiquitous control. Again, in this respect there is no Europe-Asia gap. But the tables have turned. Here in Bandung you can say that Dutch Art Deco architecture mapped its way through an intuitive walking that has since embraced the map. This walking is now walked in our cities in Europe. Speaking only of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Den Haag we encounter the creole at home. Over half of the young population has Dutch nationality but is from foreign descent. The mix, the creole is the future and our cities are very much in need of the Asian expertise in not running-running them. -- http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/listpublish.php?q_mm=rob -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050818/f27dc315/attachment.html From kumartalkies at rediffmail.com Fri Aug 19 11:24:00 2005 From: kumartalkies at rediffmail.com (pankaj r kumar) Date: 19 Aug 2005 05:54:00 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Hi delhi fellows, Is the term end workshop on? Message-ID: <20050819055400.29166.qmail@webmail36.rediffmail.com>   Dear Vij I share the same sentiment with you... no rersponse to any of my mails either... pankaj On Thu, 18 Aug 2005 mahmood farooqui wrote : > >Yes...what is the update on the workshops please... > >wrote: > > > Hi friends, > > Vijender here, > > Any idea about this i-fellow workshop that is > > suppose to be held frm > > 24th ? Is it still on? Didn't hear anything from > > fellows. Didn't see > > many abstracts at list either. Vivek didn't respond > > the mail. I only > > hope all is well at sarai. What do you say? Please > > reply if you hv > > any information > > > > Jai Hind > > Vijender > > > > >_________________________________________________________________ > > Post FREE Classifieds. > > >http://www.sulekha.com/classifieds/cllist.aspx?nma=IN&ref=msn > > Reach out to > > over a million NRIs. > > > > > > > > >____________________________________________________ >Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page >http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs > >_________________________________________ >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: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050819/97f4f371/attachment.html From postbodhi at yahoo.co.in Thu Aug 18 13:55:42 2005 From: postbodhi at yahoo.co.in (Bodhisattva Kar) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 09:25:42 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Posting No. 6: "'Do We Stay Inside the Mess?': Ventriloquism of the Speaking Domestics in the Mess-Houses" Message-ID: <20050818082542.64879.qmail@web8306.mail.in.yahoo.com> One can hardly forget Madan the mess-attendant in the film Sare Chuattar. Even if we put the inimitably stylized performance of Nabadwip Haldar in that seriocomic role behind us, the dazzling articulacy of the character - Madan's sheer eloquence - is absolutely unforgettable. Having quite a nose for the gossips and awkward details of the personal lives of the mess-residents, Madan proudly declares to the newcomers, "If Madan is dysfunctional, the mess is dysfunctional." He can, and does, enter everybody's room, even Suchitra Sen's. He tactfully mediates between the quarrelling parties in the mess. He passes news from one to another; in fact, he being the original matchmaker, without him, Rampriti (Uttam) could hardly send love letters to his fiancé (Suchitra). This centrality of the domestics in the mess-life can again be found in the characters of Rambhuj and Banowari, in the stories of Ghanada, written by Premendra Mitra. All the Ghanada fictions - consisting of 65 short stories, 4 novels, 1 play and even a rhyme - are narrated in an imagined mess-house of 72 Banamali Naskar Lane of central Calcutta. Be it the regular fight between the four boarders of that mess, or their concerted conspiracy against the pleasurable defaulter, Ghanada, the cook Rambhuj and the attendant Banowari are always seen as the unavoidable, even necessary, kingpin in everyday strategies of the vibrant community life. Without Rambhuj's delicacies or Banowari's crucial mediations, the stories cannot proceed. They are quite central and internal to the mess-life in that sense. And although we always recognized this to be a part of the bhadralok strategy of representation of urban community life, our experience as interviewers really shook our residual expectations. There are still two mess-houses in 35/5 and 35/6 Beniatola Lane in central Calcutta, quite closely visually resembling the Sare Chuattar or the Ghanada stories' description. As we managed to wrest an interview with the sixty-two years old cook Madhu Das and the seventy years old attendant Natabar Das in the large kitchen of 35/5 Beniatola Lane, we discovered that the gaps between the mess seats and the kitchen was much wider than we could imagine. It was our very first interview for the project and we felt almost posing like colonial interrogators, with our usual dose of Spivakian guilt. The disturbing realization that we are not ethically entitled to crush their unstated resistance to our superficial questionnaire made us nervous in the course of conversation, we guess. Later, while talking to other domestics in other mess-houses, we actually gathered quite some 'materials', gleaned some important 'facts' and even exchanged cigarettes or had cups of tea together. But we think it is best to put on record our failures to make them speak about their intimate details, i.e., their success in laughing at our stupidity and superficiality. Extracts from the interviews follow. First, with Madhu Das and then with Natabar Das. .... Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "For how many years are you serving in 35/5?" Madhu Das: "Twenty-five years" Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Where are you from?" Madhu Das: "From Orissa" Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Which area of Orissa?" Madhu Das: "Baleswar" Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "What did you do in Baleswar? Did you have land there?" Madhu Das: "Some agricultural work. We have very little land." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "How did you arrive here?" Madhu Das: "For hardship, what else?" Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Was this job your first employment in Calcutta? Or were you engaged somewhere else before?" Madhu Das: "I was in a household. One doesn't get the first job in a mess-house. One has to learn the work. I learned the work at a household." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Who gave you the contact of this mess-house?" Madhu Das: "There are so many country people in this area. I got the information in an [Oriya] adda." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "What is your daily job here?" Madhu Das: "Cooking two meals a day." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "And going to the bazaar?" Madhu Das: "Yes, occasionally." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Do you sense any change over these twenty-five years? For example, the people who used to stay in this mess-house, the earlier generation " Madhu Das: "They have left." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Exactly. And now there are new people, the young generation. Is there a difference, or is it the same?" Madhu Das: "How would I know?" Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Who would know better than you?" Madhu Das: "Do we stay inside the mess? How can we say about that world?" Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Still " Madhu Das: (Remains silent) Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "You go to the bazaar, to the shop. Aren't people changing there?" Madhu Das: "Everywhere people are changing. Does it remain the same?" Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Yes. But how are they changing? If you could tell us a little about that." Madhu Das: "Nothing much to say about that. In the mess, some people are good, and some people are bad." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "But that must have been the case earlier as well." Madhu Das: "Exactly." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Has the neighborhood changed?" Madhu Das: "Not really. It's the same shop and the same shop-owner." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Your friends in the locality " Madhu Das: "Friends? I work in a mess-house. I know some people here. But they are not from my area [desh]. There is no need to make friendship with them." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "What do you do when you are through with your work?" Madhu Das: "I sleep." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Do you watch TV?" Madhu Das: "Yes, at times, these days." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "What would you prefer? - Working in the mess, or going back to the village [desh]?" Madhu Das: "It is only for hardship that we are here. This is a dirty job. To wash other people's soiled dishes is not a preferable job. But for hardship we have to do this. Nobody honors the dish-washer. There is no land in the village [desh]. Had we have any land, we wouldn't have come. So you understand what our situation is." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Who else are there in your family?" Madhu Das: "Two sons and two daughters." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "What are your sons doing?" Madhu Das: "They are working in the Bombay port." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Daughters?" Madhu Das: "Stay at home. They're married." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "So what is your plan? Are you going to go back home? How many more years here?" Madhu Das: "No. I am going back. My days here are over." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Yes, now that your sons have become self-reliant " Madhu Das: "Once I am back home, I don't work much. I lie down and relax." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "How much has your salary increased in these twenty-five years?" Madhu Das: "When I joined this mess, I used to get 100 rupees per month. Now it is 700 rupees." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Hasn't really increased much. Does it cause some row with the mess-residents?" Madhu Das: "That of course happens. We shall always ask them to raise the money. They will do according to their ability." .... Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Where are you from?" Natabar Das: "Puri district, Orissa." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "When did you join the mess?" Natabar Das: "About forty years ago." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "This same mess?" Natabar Das: "Yes." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "How did you get this job?" Natabar Das: "I was working in the Khidirpur Ward, in the 'Assam' ship. The cook of that ship told me that this job was available." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "What was your joining salary?" Natabar Das: "Fifteen rupees a month." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "And now?" Natabar Das: "Madhu told you, seven hundred" Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "As I was asking him [Madhu], do you sense any change in these forty years?" Natabar Das: "Calcutta was not like this forty years before. Number of people has greatly increased." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Of course. But there's been no increase in the number of seats in this mess." Natabar Das: "No. That is true." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Any other change? In the neighborhood? (After a pause) Increase of shops, for instance?" Natabar Das: "Yes. Bookshops have increased [in this area adjacent to College Street]. Earlier there were not so many bookshops. Otherwise it is the same." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "People's attitude? Behavior? Has it changed from the earlier generation? Or is it the same?" Natabar Das: "Remains the same. If I abuse you, you will abuse me in turn." Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar: "Do you do any other work apart from this mess-work?" Natabar Das: "No. How can I? In the evening, I've to work here from six o'clock to twelve in the night, and in the morning it is again six to twelve. It's heavy workload." --------------------------------- Check out Yahoo! India Rakhi Special for Rakhi shopping, contests and lots more. http://in.promos.yahoo.com/rakhi/index.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050818/c1c4465f/attachment.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Aug 20 02:23:36 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 02:23:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Why Do We Need Rites of Passage? Message-ID: Hi, If ragging is a 'rite of passage', a ritual, we must ask: do we need it? I did some google searching on whether we need rites of passage, and came up with the article pasted below. It talks about rites of passage from childhood to puberty and puberty to adulthood - it does not directly talk about ragging or hazing. We need to ponder: do we really need ragging as a rite of passage? Does it serve tangible social functions that would suffer without ragging? As for what exactly is ragging a rite of passage to, see http://stop-ragging.blogspot.com/2005/05/hostel-ragging-and-pyotr-ilyich.html As that article points out, there is a book on hazing named 'Wrongs of Passage' by the eminent anti-hazing activist Hank Nuwer. I look forward to your comments. Shivam o o o o Why Do We Need Rites of Passage? By Jan Holmes http://www.dtmms.org/rites-of-passage/why-need-rites.htm A newborn child in the care and nurturing of its parents and other image makers is like a block of stone or wood in the hands of a sculptor. A great sculptor will not impose his will upon the wood or stone nor does he predetermine the form he is going to sculpt. He simply communicates with it, sees the spirit of what truly exists, and then cuts away everything that is hiding that spirit to reveal its aliveness. Most adults, unfortunately, are not great sculptors. They have preconceived ideas of how a young child, particularly their child, should develop and ultimately turn out to be. Their own insecurities and wounding blind them to the true nature spirit within a child. Therefore, we grow up armoring against the pain of becoming something we are not in order to fit in, belong and conform to family, peer group, and society in general. We lose our connection not only to our own true nature spirit, but also to the greater Spirit from which we came. This is a form of violence. Violence is usually associated with such things as war, rape, murder, or destruction of property. Violence to the spirit, however, is perhaps the most destructive and insidious kind of violence, for it often goes undetected as it works on our inner self. Like criminal defacing of a beautiful sculpure or work of art, it is spiritual graffitti, vandalism of the soul. The loss of the rites of passage might be considered a violent disruption of our maturational cycles. Early peoples living close to nature and the earth experienced our cyclical journeys akin to the cycles, rhythms and seasons of the earth and the heavens. In losing the connection with nature, we also lose our connection to our inner self. We become deaf and blind to the spirit of the plants, the animals, the water and wind spirits, and the Earth herself. Perhaps it can be said that we project our rage and pain outward and wage violence against her -- polluting her waters and air, denuding her forestlands, and turning once fertile lands into fallow ground and deserts. Does not our molding, sculpting, and armoring accomplish a similar inner landscape? Thunder Strikes has shared that in his years of study and work in many fields, including shamanic medicine and psychology, he has seen two primary contributors to violence, particularly its escalation among young people. They are the loss of the rites of passage and the sexual repression perpetrated by religions and religious image makers. Using dogma and blind faith, they seduce people into sacrificing their individual autonomous freedom. One of religion's most potent tools is the guilt, blame, and shame perpetrated around our sexuality. This is a form of violence because our sexual catalyst energy is what sparks all other aspects of ourselves. Our sexuality is a natural expression of who we are; it is our soul force. It gives us our identity as human beings. A baby, in its seventh month in the womb, starts to pleasure itself in order to rotate so it can move down the birth canal properly. At birth it will play with its genitals to soothe its body. But when its parents slap its hands or remove them from its genitals, the child armors. It is like metal plating, a heaviness brought about as a reaction to pain -- physical and spiritual pain -- that slows it down and makes it dysfunctional. Tribal Dancers in Rites of Passage (44 Kb) At puberty our sexual energy reawakens and we enter a new arena of experience. Earth peoples have always had a rite of passage to allow that to take place in a way that honors the sacredness of their life force energy. They learned to respect and honor that within themselves. The rites of passage were critical ceremonies acknowledging the young man and woman for their beauty, talent and uniqueness. They signaled the young person's spiritual and sexual awakening and welcomed them with celebration into young adulthood as responsible members of community. And the rites of passage helped the individual to answer a very important question -- "Who am I?" Our basic human nature yearns for rites of passage, to be initiated into a group, to be recognized and to be accepted for who we are. Because society fails to preserve and maintain the rites of passage, young people often create their own. The drama, initiation and structure of street gangs, for example, are a form of rites of passage ritual. As destructive as they may be, they provide a way for an individual to transition from childhood into young adulthood. They receive recognition here and feel that they are "somebody". It is a way of announcing themselves to the world in the absence of honoring by the adults in their lives. Violent behavior not only provides an edge; violence often is the proving ground of manhood, and increasingly, womanhood. Other forms of initiation include belly piercing, Sweet 16's, drinking alcohol or sampling a variety of drugs. Absence of some form of honoring ceremonies and recognition of our transitions often creates pathology that can erupt in so many ways: externally, in the form of criminal activity and violence against others; internally, by the repression of our spirit and soul force - our measure of self-worth plummets. The rage and pain of that often surfaces in disease and sickness. A number of years ago Thunder Strikes developed a self defense and rape awareness program for women which was the product of his background in the martial arts and other defense systems as well as an extensive study of the psychological profile of the rapist. Upon interviewing over one hundred incarcerated rapists, he discovered that, without exception, the common element in each of their backgrounds was related to their sexuality: either they were raised in very sexually repressed households where they were severely punished for pleasuring themselves, reading anything with sexual content, or were themselves sexually abused. We watch films that explicitly display sexuality, daytime television steams the screen, and we delude ourselves into thinking that we live in a sexually relaxed and free society. Underneath that facade is a deep fear of sexuality. So we project this fear onto our young people, trying to instill in them a denial of this reawakening aspect of themselves. On the one hand, we tell them it is "dirty", sinful, given to us for procreation, talked about in hushed tones so they can't hear us. On the other hand, sex is exploited to sell everything from cars to copy machines. It is another convoluted and confused message. Advertising is an image maker that works overtime to answer the question "Who am I?" Unfortunately, it carries the message "You're not okay the way you are." We are measured with external yardsticks and seduced into believing that the images projected at us are really who we should be. What! You don't have a _______? You can "get" okay, if you buy the right kind of car, wear the right kind of designer jeans and the right brand of makeup, live in the right style of house, hang out at the right places. And so it goes. Rape of the psyche. Violation of the spirit. This is destructive at any age but particularly devastating for a young person trying to discover their own uniqueness and measure of self-worth. These cannot be externally determined for us by others, nor can our magickal mysterious character be carved out of the substance of our being by others. We must become our own sculptor. The rites of passage provide the means for us to do that. They also help to keep us on course and to navigate through the "white water rapids" that often accompany the critical transition times. They help us to know who we are and to anticipate our becoming. We must be willing to listen to our young people, to see the light of their true spirit shining within. We must be willing to nurture that spirit with respect and allow it to blossom and express itself creatively. And we must reinstate the rites of passage that usher young people through puberty into young adulthood to celebrate and honor them. -- We are protean. We can become anything. www.shivamvij.com (Blog) | mail at shivamvij.com (Email & MSN) From stopragging at gmail.com Sat Aug 20 03:10:48 2005 From: stopragging at gmail.com (Stop Ragging Campaign) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 03:10:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The law is an ass. Or is it? Message-ID: The legalities and illegalities that shape the discourse of ragging in a hostel community: Why the law is not an ass Having banned "dance bars", Maharashtra's deputy chief minister RR Patil wants to plant Intelligence Bureau spies in college hostels across Maharashtra's college hostels. Such an extreme step is likely to result in a complex mix of power equations that is sure to backfire. Consider the number of 'authorities' that would be involved in such a scenario: the 'senior', the 'seniors' (signifying the entire hostel community), the hostel resident-cum-IB agent, the warden and principal, the local police (with whom an FIR would have to be lodged in any eventuality, even if the crime is investigated by the state IB), the district administration, the intelligence sleuths, local politicians, the ministry of education and finally, Shri RR Patil. Wait, in extreme cases, even the University Grants Commission, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the Union of India's Ministry of Human Resource Development could also step in. And then of course there are the courts. Of course, many of these will come into play only when there is a high-profile case that grabs media attention. The thought that his resentment against ragging could become a news story is very unnerving for a fresher, and also for the senior. On the other hand, many freshers are not aware of their legal rights and feel helpless. If the college authorities do not take the initiative of reaching out to freshers and asking them about ragging and encouraging them to speak up against it, freshers keep mum. The hostel space has increasingly come under strict surveillance to curb ragging. In West Bengal, legal activist Tapas Bhanja has been filing successful PIL's not just against ragging but also against alcoholism and the circulation of pornography and drugs in hostels. If this continues like this, someone may soon come up with the idea of another RAF - the Ragging Action Force! There is perhaps little need for so much panic. If hostel authorities want to curb ragging, they can easily do it. In all cases where a fresher may have filed an FIR or left the college or committed suicide - in ALL of these cases, I have found that the hostel authorities have been lacking in their duty of curbing ragging as defined by the Supreme Court order of 2001. The SC order says that all senior students and their parents be made to sign an undertaking that the student will not indulge in ragging. Even Delhi University hostels are not following this. So you can imagine how much it is being followed in the rest of the country. If the remedial measures recommended by the Supreme Court were applied in letter and spirit, there would be no ragging at all. This includes the setting-up of an anti-ragging cell comprising students, teachers and the local police officials. Another suggestion is to give out the warden's contact details in the prospectus. Yet another proposal is to hold such 'cultural' events that would bring seniors and freshers close to each other. Complaint mechanism - The problem with the Supreme Court judgement arises when it says that a fresher has to complain to the college warden / dean / principal *in writing*. If he does this and the college does not set-up an enquiry and punish the guilty, the college authorities can be hauled up by the University Grants Commission or the AICTE or the Ministry of HRD or the courts. However, freshers often want to complain anonymously. Or at least in confidence. So a verbal complaint with a request to maintain the fresher's anonymity should do the trick. However, if college authorities do not act upon it, the fresher cannot claim justice as he had not complained in writing. Even in anonymous complaints, the small world of a hostel space cannot hide secrets. The result is ostracisation and persistent harassment and bullying of the fresher, who may as well continue denying having 'sneaked'. Even in an anonymous complaint, if a fresher names senior(s) who have been indulging in ragging, he gets identified as soon as disciplinary action is taken against the named seniors. The seniors know who they had ragged that harshly to evoke a complain, or which fresher was not being a sport while being ragged. Freshers therefore often don't want to name particular seniors - it is in any case ridiculous to target a few seniors as the number of those indulging in ragging is always very large. College authorities, however, insist that the fresher name a few seniors, and describe who did what. Suspending a few from the college and kicking them out of the hostel is the only way college authorities know of curbing ragging. They hesitate even to do that as the seniors get together and pressurise the college administration by ways such as a strike. The medical directorate of the Andhra Pradesh government has found a novel solution to the problem: an online form to complaint against ragging. It is worth a look [link: http://gistnic.ap.nic.in/cgi-bin/gen1/genuph.cgi/?up=heal/dmerag.html ]. This effort has resulted in several successful complaints [link: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040824/asp/nation/story_3666700.asp ] Whenever they receive a complaint, they inform the college authorities and swift action is taken. The Stop Ragging Campaign aims at a similar online redressal approach. We have so far solved three cases wherein a fresher approached us and we wrote to his college without naming him, and the college administration pulled up its socks. In IIT Kanpur in 2002, a fresher went outside the campus to shoot an anonymous email to the IIT Director. He did not want to use the Institute's computer as he could have been traced by his IP address. He created an email ID called voiceoffresher at rediffmail.com and wrote that the Director's claims about the Institute being world class were bogus as he found the same culture of expletives and abuse in IIT as he did in the rest of Kanpur. Describing the prevalent ragging scene, he told the Director that he was completely disappointed by IIT. The Director forwarded to email to the entire staff and students of IIT, sending a shiver down the spines of all raggers. Ragging declined immediately and the 'Voice of Fresher' was ridiculed in a skit later on. Nobody could ever identify the complainant It's that simple, curbing ragging. And RR Patil wants the Intelligence Bureau to turn students into spies! Evidence - The Supreme Court order says that ragging complaints should be handled, so far as possible, within the college, by the college authorities. This makes it much easier for college authorities to act against erring seniors, because the legal requirements of 'evidence' do not have to be fulfilled. In some cases token disciplinary action is taken merely on the basis of a complaint. When harsh action such as suspension for the entire academic year or permanent expulsion from the hostel is to be taken, college authorities ask freshers to give their complaint in writing, setup an enquiry committee which hurriedly concurs, and swift disciplinary action is taken. If the matter goes to the police, the police often urges the college to settle it by itself. In a landmark judgement, the Kerala high court upheld the right of the Principal of a college to expel four students who had been found guilty of ragging by a college enquiry committee [link: http://stop-ragging.blogspot.com/2005/04/principal-vs-ps-anoop-ors-in-kerala.html ]. Accused students often cry foul about having become victims of a conspiracy, and conspiracy theories are readily provided. However, it is truly very difficult to provide evidence for the crime of ragging - evidence that could stand up in court. Often ragging does not involve even 'physical abuse' as we understand it: if a senior asks a fresher tom "strip", and the fresher does it, can you legally blame the senior? The fresher did it because he was threatened with violence and sexual abuse (albeit in vague terms, such as 'I'll f*** your happiness'.) The threat may be implicit. But the senior did not actually come forward and took off the fresher's clothes. The newspapers merely say the fresher was "forced to strip". Even in cases where a ragging murder has take place (such as Pon. Navarasu's murder allegedly by John David at the Annamalai university in 1996), the accused has been able to go scot free for want of evidence in the court: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/2001/10/09/stories/0409223w.htm It is arguable, therefore, that colleges should have the autonomy to punish for ragging, as the Kerala high court has held. Surveilance and privacy in the hostel space - Hostel authorities are compelled to implement pro-active surveillance of the hostel and even have 'spies' amongst students to know what is going on by way of ragging. Kirori Mal College in Delhi has over two dozen close circuit TV cameras to curb ragging! The Stop Ragging Campaign's endorsement of the law of the land as an answer to ragging has many critics. Our critics have two problems: one, that law-enforcement agencies are themselves not above-board. One person wrote in asking how we could use the Supreme Court judgement considering what she called the SC's lop-sided orders in cases like Narmada and the Arundhati Roy contempt of court case. Our answer to this is that we could have problems with the law, but we cannot altogether do away with the law. The rule of law is a basic prerequisite of a civilized society where individual liberty is to be safeguarded - which is exactly what ragging is not. -- www.stopragging.org | info at stopragging.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050820/e81d17e5/attachment.html From basaksenova at yahoo.co.uk Thu Aug 18 13:52:45 2005 From: basaksenova at yahoo.co.uk (basak senova) Date: Thu, 18 Aug 2005 13:52:45 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] NOMAD presents: ctrl_alt_del - sound-art festival, istanbul 2005 Message-ID: |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ctrl_alt_del newsletter #1 NOMAD presents: ctrl_alt_del - sound-art festival, istanbul 2005 ctrl_alt_del was the first sound-art festival realized in Turkey, in September 2003. It was a collaboration between NOMAD, Marres, Hedah, and Istanbul Technical University Center for Advanced Musical Studies (MIAM). All through the month of September 2003, several events were realized in two cities, Istanbul and Maastricht: (i) an introductory presentation, a CD launch, performances by two artists from the Netherlands and Turkey in Marres (Maastricht); (ii) a panel and workshop series at Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Architecture and MIAM; (iii) a series of performances in Babylon, Istanbul during the opening of the 8th International Istanbul Biennial; (iv) a panel, and performance series at Marres.; (v) an exhibition at Marres; (vi) an audio CD which was distributed in Europe through Lowlands, and the international distribution of the CD-ROM was carried out by NOMAD. ctrl_alt_del aimed at introducing Turkey to sound-art via sound-art's pioneering names, together with panels and workshops. More then 30 people from 16 different countries contributed to the project in 2003. ctrl_alt_del will take place in the "positionings" section of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial. The project will launch on September 16th, 2005 with an opening night performance in the city at Balans Musichall, then will continue on the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, Istanbul Technical University's MIAM studios, laboratories, library and concert hall till September 22nd. The 2005 programme for the ctrl_alt_del project has been developed by Bas¸ak S¸enova, Emre Erkal, Pieter Snapper, Erhan Muratoglu and Paul Devens. The festival's three-folded conceptual frame - "the city", "noise" and "open source"- will be worked into performances, a boat tour, sonic mapping, workshops, and presentations The project has received support from NOMAD Project Channel, Istanbul Technical University MIAM (Center for Advanced Musical Studies), Goethe Institut, Istanbul, Mondriaan Foundation, Consulate-General of the Netherlands, MOAB Foundation, Amsterdam, Radio Helsinki, Graz, EKW 14.90, Israel National Lottery Council for the Arts, Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, STEIM, Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music, Interspace-Sofia, Sabreen Studio, Ford Foundation, Middle East and North Africa, Kadir Has University, REC Magazine, Bant Magazine, e-tasaržm and Senkron Publishing. ctrl_alt_del's 2005 participants are: Sakir Oguz Büyükberber (NL), DJ Selim Cenkel (TR), Banu Cenntoglu (TR), Eyal Danon (IL), Paul Devens (NL), every kid on speed - Antonio Dimitrov (MK), Galia Dimitrova (BG), Emre Erkal (TR), Tal Hadad (FR), Boris Hegenbart (DE), Robert van Heuman (NL). Petko Dourmana (BG), Can Karadogan (TR), Uri Katzenstein (IL), Sarp Keskiner (TR), REC (TR), Reuben De Lautour (NZ), MIAM: Kerem Aksoy, Deniz Arat, Barkin Engin, Erdem Helvacioglu, Burak Tamer, Tolga Tuzun, Murat Yakin (TR), Phillip Misselwitz (DE), Wissam Murad (Palestine), Erhan Muratoglu (TR), DJ Negma (TR), Klaus Obermeyer (DE), Matthieu Prat (FR), Wassim Qassis (Palestine), REC: Orçun Bastürk, Liz Fando, Tonguç Gökalp, Randiman Kakara, Saska (TR), Binya Reches (IL), Sabreen Studio (Filistin), SFR (Zafer Aracagök) (TR), Ran Slavin (IL), Basak Senova (TR), Pieter Snapper (US/TR), Can Turkinan (TR) and open call: Muni Monde, Özdemir Bayrak, Kerem Güzel, Koray Kantarcioglu and Solar Duo. http://project-ctrl-alt-del.com blog- http://www.nomad-tv.net/ctrl_alt_del http://www.nomad-tv.net |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From pukar at pukar.org.in Fri Aug 19 12:13:17 2005 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Fri, 19 Aug 2005 12:13:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] Date correction:20th August: BAR DANCERS SPEAK Message-ID: <002201c5a489$52665480$1ed0c0cb@freeda> Majlis, Point of View, and PUKAR Gender & Space project invite you to worker performer citizen BAR DANCERS SPEAK a public hearing Saturday 20 August 5 pm KC College Auditorium KC College, next to Oxford Bookstore Near All India Radio and MLA hostel Churchgate The bill banning dancers from performing in bars across Mumbai came into effect this week, leaving thousands of bar dancers without jobs or livelihood opportunities. We have all heard what the Maharashtra government, which passed this law, feels about this issue. We have also heard what bar owners, who opposed this law, feel about this issue. But have we heard what bar dancers - who are the most-affected - have to say about this legislation, and related issues of performance, work, dignity and citizenship? On Saturday 20 August, bar dancers who are members of the Bharatiya Bar Girls Union will present their case before a distinguished panel consisting of academicians, filmmakers, performers, writers, journalists and trade unionists. This panel includes filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, writer Kiran Nagarkar, ad filmmaker Prahlad Kakkar, poet Arundhathi Subramaniam, academicians Lakshmi Lingam, Shereen Ratnagar and Nandini Sardesai, theatre personality Dolly Thakore, journalist Naresh Fernandes, and trade unionist Sanjay Singhvi. The panel will deliberate on this issue and respond. Please come and support these bar dancers in their struggle for work, dignity and livelihood. Please come and hear BAR DANCERS SPEAK. Hope to see you there, Madhusree Dutta, Majlis Bishakha Datta, Point of View Shilpa Phadke, PUKAR Gender & Space project PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research) Mumbai Address:: 1-4, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Sir P. M. Road, Fort, Mumbai 400 001 Telephone:: +91 (022) 5574 8152 / +91 (0) 98204 04010 Email:: pukar at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050819/49a2d0bf/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From sabitha_tp at yahoo.co.uk Sat Aug 20 18:53:54 2005 From: sabitha_tp at yahoo.co.uk (sabitha t p) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 14:23:54 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Feminine Forms: Ideal Womanhood and Early Women's Magazines in Kerala Message-ID: <20050820132354.35498.qmail@web25407.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Feminine Forms: Ideal Womanhood and Early Women's Magazines in Kerala Abstract My work for the Sarai project has been on women’s magazines in Kerala from 1886 to1926 and the ways in which different kinds of femininities (sometimes contrary to each other) are discursively produced, circulated and determined in this period. 1886 is the year in which the first magazine – Keraliya Sugunana Bodhini – that is primarily intended for women readers comes out. I have chosen to end my study in 1926 because that is the year of publication of Vanitakusumam, the first overtly political women’s magazine that addresses the question of women’s “rights”, thus taking it into a different discursive realm from the earlier magazines which are mainly engaged in an educative and moral agenda (similar to that of conduct magazines in Britain). In my presentation I will concentrate on two aspects of my work, viz., the logical and ideological types of arguments that are mobilised in order to advocate or oppose certain modes of education for women, which then further endorse or construct certain notions concerning ideal femininity that are themselves culturally and historically determined. Some of these argumentative forms are: the idealist, the rational humanist, the rational-scientific, the pragmatic, the moral and the aesthetic. After dwelling on these kinds of arguments and their various intersections, I will look at the ends to which they are employed. I then intend to trace the chronological changes in these arguments and look at the points at which they metamorphose into related, but discursively different modes of arguments. In the last part of my presentation I will attempt to identify the indigenous and colonial sites from which these seem to originate, thus trying to understand the location of gender in a larger framework of colonial modernity that is specific to Kerala. ____________________________________________________ Send a rakhi to your brother, buy gifts and win attractive prizes. Log on to http://in.promos.yahoo.com/rakhi/index.html From river_side1 at hotmail.com Sat Aug 20 20:27:07 2005 From: river_side1 at hotmail.com (River .) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 14:57:07 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN Poetry Communities Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050820/375b7eab/attachment.html From river_side1 at hotmail.com Sat Aug 20 20:36:21 2005 From: river_side1 at hotmail.com (River .) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 15:06:21 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN Poetry Communities Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050820/921519fc/attachment.html From river_side1 at hotmail.com Sat Aug 20 21:38:13 2005 From: river_side1 at hotmail.com (River .) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 16:08:13 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Presentation Abstract. Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN Poetry Communities. Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050820/763975fa/attachment.html From mukeshtewatia at gmail.com Sun Aug 21 14:28:23 2005 From: mukeshtewatia at gmail.com (mukesh tewatia) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 14:28:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] SC : ON sHARIAT COURTS Message-ID: <3c799c6b050821015875b1b09e@mail.gmail.com> I generally try to read, if not read at least go through, all reader list mails of sarai and generally do not respond to them. But this time I am forced to respnod as so for so long there are no comments on the recent PIL accepted in Supreme court regarding the legal status of the Fatwas and Shariat Courts. Where are all vedavatis and anti vedavatis. The most disturbing aspect is there is no mention , in that PIL , of status of the rulings of the Caste Panchayat, the decisions of which at times are no less than Fatwas. BYE. From cswara at hotmail.com Mon Aug 22 01:12:02 2005 From: cswara at hotmail.com (Swara Bhaskar) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 19:42:02 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Abstract- pl note change of title. Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050821/76cb43d5/attachment.html From abhi1200 at yahoo.co.uk Sun Aug 21 11:51:29 2005 From: abhi1200 at yahoo.co.uk (Abhishek Sharma) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 07:21:29 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Re: four urgent requests Message-ID: <20050821062129.79529.qmail@web25007.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Note: forwarded message attached. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050821/74353d51/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Abhishek Sharma Subject: Re: four urgent requests Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 07:17:22 +0100 (BST) Size: 13511 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050821/74353d51/attachment.mht From arshad.mcrc at gmail.com Sun Aug 21 21:48:59 2005 From: arshad.mcrc at gmail.com (mohd arshad) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 08:18:59 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Aijaz Gul on the Cinema in Pakistan:History, PresentScenarioandFutureProspects Message-ID: <2076f31d050821091836bd1be0@mail.gmail.com> *Aijaz Gul on the Cinema in Pakistan:History,PresentScenarioandFutureProspects* * * Hailing from a family of film exhibitors, Aijaz Gul is the leading film critic and historian of Pakistan.He has been writing on films for last eighteen years in the Pakistani as well as foreign media and has three books on Cinema to his credit. The last Managing Director of the now defunct government-run National Film Development Corporation of Pakistan, AIjaz Gul spoke to Arshad Amanullah on the sidelines of the recently concluded Osian-Cinefan Film Festival. 1.Why Lollywood,Pakistan's once thriving film industry,is now in terminal decline? Answer: Well,that's true that Pakistani film industry has enjoyed a boom after Independence.The fact is that the film industry in Lahore didn't come into inception in 1947.Lahore was a thriving capital of films,especially Punjabi films and many notable filmmakers were working there before 1947.Pakistan's first film *'Teri Yaad'* actually started before Independence but it was released in 1948.It was diredted by Dawood.It was a very bad film but it made the beginning.There were so many people who sacrificed their glowing careers in Mumbai in late 40s and migrated to Pakistan.Some of the notable people who came from Mumbai to Lahore were: Noorjahan,Shaukat Hussain Rizvi,Sohan Lata,Nazeer and Nisar Bazmi.Likewise,many people left Lahore for Mumbai.So,that was the evantuality of Partition.After the Independence of Bangladesh in1971,cinemas which were in that part what we used to call East Pakistan,are of course not with us any more.Cinemas in Pakistan,at least in metros, are located at the very choicest places.So with the passage of years, the value of property has increased.And with alternative leisures like cables,DVDs,CDs,and amusemenet parks,people now have other options.Sothe cinema-going has faced a crisis.The number of cinemas which we have now is about more than 500 and almost half of them are not working regularly.Piracy has no limits.Indianfilms are some times availanble here even prior to their release in India.You know,today's Hindi is very closed to Urdu.So when you have this new film in a language even which is spoken in Pakistan,Urdu films have suffered.But,interestingly,25 Pashto films have been produced last year while there was a time when about 10-12 films were produced.And may be the reason is that India(..laughs...) has not produced Pashto films.There is a saying that if Americans spoke Spanish,Britain would have a film industry and I say: if India spoke Persian,Pakistan would have a film industry. 2.Why does Lollywood,in terms of technology and expertise,lag behind Bollywood? Answer: When the times were good,people invested in film related activities.Now when we are facing a lean time,obviously the people who are in the film trade, have shied away.The tragic part is that all those people who took the industry across decades after the Independence, have passed away. So when the production rate is not very high and the box-office ratio is very poor then of course there is no investment in equipments 3.But where is the new generation? Answer: The new generation is definitly there but I just want to mention some of the very notable directors like Anwar Kamal Pasha who was the total filmmaker.Hewas the first filmmaker in early 50s who directed,produced and scripted films like *Do Aansu*,*Gumnam*,*Qatil*,and *Anarkali*.He was in a way the first Pakistani director.There were rebellious filmmakers like Riaz Shahid and Khalil Qaisar who made films against the British Imperialism. 4.Rebellious in what sense? Answer: Khalil Qaisar was rebellious because he was against the currupt system,whether it was British Raj or the Pakistani Government. Riaz Shahid was a writer and also became the director but essentially he was collaborating with director Khalil Qaisar.They took Tanveer Naqvi as their lyricist,used Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poetry,used Rasheed Attre as composer.So it was the whole team.Riaz Shahid kept on writing against the vices of the system and the curruption in the establishment. 5..They used different countries as the background of their films? Answer: Yes.They took the subject of Palestine,Andalus,Kashmir. *Shaheed* deals with the British curruption in the Middle East.Khalil Qaisar did not live long.Hemade *Shaheed*,*Farangi*,*Naga*n,*Havel*i,and about two or three more films and passed away in a very tragic way.So,Riaz Shahid took over and he did continue with his revolutionary scripts and films.His film '*Zarqa*' dealt with the independence of Palestine,'*Gharnata*' dealt with Muslims in Spain and *'Yeh Amn'* dealt with Kashmir.He died in 1972.As he had to face very serious problems with the censor board,many people think that he died becaue of the system. His son Shaan,who is now playing in films as a leading man,says:"*Mere baap ko cancer ne nahin,censor ne maara*" .. . 6.It means that they wanted to glorify the Muslim past? Answer: In a way,yes.Riaz Shahid wanted to do that time and again.But he also made films like '*Gunahgaar*' which takes place in Pakistan.It deals with treason and has corruption at its centrestage. 7.How did he deal with the ordinary people.,i.e.the masses of Pakistan? Answer: Well.*'Clerk'* would be a good example of dealing with the poverty of an ordinary clerk who would not subscribe to curruption,to bribe and palm greasing and who lives by his own rules.But he is consistently bugged by his wife who wants more and more material goods and eventually he catches TB.Sothat was a good subject.But it didn't do very well at the box-office because it was very sad and very grim.. 8. How did the ban on the Hindi films in Pakistan affect Lollywood? Answer: There was a time when over hundred films were produced in Pakistan and they were doing very well.Indian films were being released every month.Cinemas in Pakistan were enjoying the boom in the 60s. Shortly after the second Indo-Pak war,Indian films were banned in Pakistan.Cinema owners didn't raise their voices against the ban because they benifitted economically and Pakistani films were doing very well then.All the original filmmakers who had laid the foundation of Pakistani cinema and their patrons have now passed away,the number of films have reduced and the quality has gone down.Only 25 Urdu and Pujabi films were produced last year.So the cinemas are falling short of films.Thus, the exhibitors are right in asking to lift the ban.I think umbrella protection has had its ill-effects. 9.There is tremendous demand of Indian films in Pakistan.So why does the Governmet of Pakistan not lift the ban ? Answer: You do know that filmmaking is not just art and technology.It's also a big business.The Government of Pakistan knows this and it wants to make it as a part of trade or may be it is waiting for still better times when people would still get even more closer. 10.Is there any chance of collaboration between Bollywood and Lollywood? Answer: The PM of Pakistan met the members of the film industry on June 13 and said that he was all for collaboration between India,Pakistan,Bangladesh,Iran,Nepal, Sri Lanka.I think India and Pakistan are joining hands indirectly.Some of the good films which had been produced in recent years, have collaborated with India for their production and post-production.They have used Indian singers: Udit Narayan,Kumar Shaanu and Kavita Krishnamurthy.Forchoreography, Indian art directors have been hired.So I think co-production,i.e.collaboration is already taking place. 11 What similarity do you find in cinemas of India and Pakistan? Answer: In India, there are Hindi films and there are regional films. I've been enjoying Art films by directors like Shyam Benegal and Satyajit Ray.Butfilms which are being produced today in Mumbai,many of them are banal:they lack subtlety and common sense,they are weak in script,imagination and aesthetic values.An educated and intelligent person looks for these things in a good film.However,Bollywood movies are rich in music, production values,cinematography and editing.They are big in terms of budgeting and casting.because super stars have their own appeal.The average viewer is carried away by all these gimmicks.He does not go into *script ki baarikiyaan which is * not there in most of the films.He just enjoys the music,the actresses and the witty dialogues and like to forget each and every thing for those two and half hours.Interestingly,Bollywood flicks are more popular in Pakistan than Lollywood productions because Hindi films are technically superior to their Lollywood counterparts.Another reason is that cinemas of both countties have the same ingredients of dance and song sequence, comedy,marriages,parents, the system and police.So like an Indian viewer,an average Pakistani also gets his kicks from these highly melodramatic contents. 12..How will the exchange of artists shape film industry of both countries? Answer: There is fear in Pakistan that if the Pakistani artists go to work in Bollywood,they will be swallowed by the industry and will lose their indentity and star values,and hence,their bargaining power.But I don't subscribe to the opinion, because for one thing, its true that Sawan kumar gave a very small role to Talat Hussain in *Sautan Ki Beti*.Likewise, Manoj Kumar invited Zeba and Muhammad Ali to Mumbai to work in his production *Clerk* ,and their roles were very brief.But these are petty matters and we should not be talking about them.Myhat is off to Mahesh Bhatt because Meera is seen in *Nazar* from beginning to the end.I would say (..laughs..): Mahesh Bhatt should have reduced her.However,it's a very average film and the subject is not very original.I think nobody should worry about small roles or insignificant contribution.Let's start and make a beginning. 13.How Lahore has reacted to anti-Pakistan films churned out by Bollywood? Answer: Well,this reminds me of President Musharraf who, in one of his interactions with journalists from India and Pakistan,said(laughs):'No more entire Pakistani films.I expect that you would not make those films anymore'.But India,as an independent country, has the right to make the kind of films the filmmakers want to make.However,they should care about their customers and audiences in Pakistan, and they should start making films differently from what they have shown in *LOC*, *Ghadar* , *Maa Tujhe Salam * etc.Pakistanhas also played its negative role in films like *Tere Pyar Mein*, *Ghar Kab Aaoge*, and *Ladki Punjaban*.Neighbouring country bashing might momentarily get cheap claps from the front-benchers but it's friendship and going together which helps in long run.We have to live together as the former Prime Minister Vajpayee said that you can change the friends but you cann't change the neighbours.So, we must work together into the future 14.What are the stereotypes the Pakistani cinema generally plays on? Answer: There are many hackneyed characters.There are sterotype mothers,fathers and dialogues which are also in Indian films like:'Ye shaadi nahin ho sakti'.There are stereotype situations,i.e.formula situations.There are stereotype lawyers,judges and courts.I was nailed by Yash Chopra in *Veer Zara* .I applaud three cheers for Mr.Yash Chopra for making this film which is a right move at right time but there were certain things,especially the climax sequence which unfolds in the court,could have been done differently. 15.Does Lollywood have stereotypes along ethnic lines? Answer: Yes,speaking of North West Frontier Province,there is an actor called Badar Muneer who has been working in films since 1970 and he just could not step out what he has been doing for last 35 years.Sometimes he is brought into Urdu films as a Pathan who is speaking Urdu and, of course,with his own accent and delivery.So we have those stereotypes. 16.To what extent,the Kara International Film Festival which has already seen its four successful years,can contribute in creating a quality film culture in Pakistan? Answer: There are upcoming filmmakers who are making their films on digitals.:Hassan Zaidi,Bilal Minto,Faisal Rehman and Mehjabeen Jabbar are just four or five names.Their works *Javed Champu*,*Raat Chali Jhum Ke* ,*Beauty Parlour* etc stand testimony to the fact that these new filmmakers,are a future asset of Pakistan.Inspite of having budget restraints, they are doing good job.KaraFilm Festival which is being held in every December for last four years,has been providing them a platform to show their work, and let me tell you that Kara Film Festival has been making maximum efforts to bring Bollywood celebrities.In future,it would be a joint launching pad for Indian and Pakistani filmmakers. 17.Do you have magazines that publish serious stuff about the showbiz? Answer: Yes,we have specific film magazines and we also have film editions in very distinguished national dailies.Dawn,News and Nation have weekly film supplements. All major Urdu dailies like Nawa-e-Waqt and Jung, and then weeklies like Akhbar-e-Jahan,have film sections. Noor Jahan and Nigar,both from Karachi and Filmi Parcha edited by Tariq Lodhi from Lahore are weekly magazines and they exclusively deal with films.But serious film criticism is lacking and we need to work on that. Anyone who has earned a degree in journalism,is not qualified to write on films.I think you should be thoroughly trained in the film history and in film appreciation and only then you should write on films. 18.What concerted efforts are being made to promote a vibrant film culture in Pakistan? Answer: Well,in last three years there has been a revolution in the media.New TV channels and radio stations are coming up in the private sector.There is a mass communication department in Fatima Jinnah University which is for women.These young ladies are making short films on very challeging subjects as part of their curriculum.Geo Television of Jung Group,National College of Arts and many other institutes are coming up with courses in films Lahore and Karachi.So the beginning has already been madeStudents are already making films with a very very modest budget.Hopefully,in two or three years,they will be in the market as well as they will be shown in the festivals. (For the whole interview contact :arshad.mcrc at gamil.com) >>>>Mr.Aijaz Gul may be contacted on: Aijaz Gul Shabistan Cinema Murree Road, Rawalpindi Tel/Fax: 2278245 aijazgul at hotmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050821/4f78815b/attachment.html From askshetty at rediffmail.com Sun Aug 21 11:15:13 2005 From: askshetty at rediffmail.com (prasad shetty) Date: 21 Aug 2005 05:45:13 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Abstract-Stories of Entrepreneurship Message-ID: <20050821054513.17989.qmail@webmail52.rediffmail.com> Abstract STORIES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP Contemporary reconfigurations in city economy are most evident when one finds classified government documents or bank cheques being produced in a neighbourhood slum. The rising demand for cheap labour and state’s embracement of global restructurings have significantly contributed towards these reconfigurations, which began with a systematic dismantling of the formal industry and labour subsequently giving birth and nurturing a new breed – the entrepreneur agents. Their tasks included: organising material and labour and give the cheapest bid for production like the Pepsi bottle cap manufacturer or the bank cheque printer; creating demand and selling, like the Amway Agents; felicitating resources and managing crises, like the computer-wallas, or even chit fund operators who arrange quick finances; and brokering knowledge and skills like training people in computer handling, public speaking etc. In this paper, through a documentation of forty such entrepreneur agents, I aim to construct the context for imagining the contemporary city as a city of entrepreneur agents. The full paper is available at: http://www.crit.org.in/members/prasad/Stories%20of%20Entrepreneurship.pdf Prasad Shetty Residence: 501, Marigold, Opposite Shakti Motors, New Link Road, Malad (W), Mumbai 400 064 INDIA Phone: +91-9820912744 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050821/708bfa28/attachment.html From shai at filterindia.com Sat Aug 20 11:28:52 2005 From: shai at filterindia.com (Shai Heredia) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 11:28:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Experimenta 2006 Call for Entries Message-ID: CALL FOR ENTRIES - EXPERIMENTA 2006 Filter India invites submissions for EXPERIMENTA 2006 - The 4th international festival for experimental film in India EXPERIMENTA 2006 seeks films from any country that challenge popular and conventional modes of cinema. Abstract to obscure compositions from any genre produced on the margins of contemporary screen-culture are welcome. Innovative, cutting edge and non-traditional work that attempts to aesthetically extend the parameters of the mediums of film and video is encouraged. Preview copies must be submitted for selection purposes. All lengths of film are considered. Submissions are reviewed on a rolling basis until the final selection is complete. Filmmakers are encouraged to submit their package as soon as possible. To type in and print out a submission form, visit: http://www.filterindia.com/callexp06.htm For information on Filter India, visit: http://www.filterindia.com EXPERIMENTA is a curated film festival and is a Filter India project in collaboration with No.w.here UK and British Council India;UK. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From nisar at keshvani.com Sat Aug 20 16:23:48 2005 From: nisar at keshvani.com (nisar keshvani) Date: Sat, 20 Aug 2005 03:53:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] CFP - Futuresonic 2006 Message-ID: <11877711.1124535228657.JavaMail.root@m11> FUTURESONIC 2006 10 years of Futuresonic International festival of electronic music and media arts Venues across Manchester July 2006 INDEPENDENCE - The '10 Years of Futuresonic' theme Futuresonic 2006 will explore the state of independence today, and showcase independent music, arts and technologies that are open, emergent, collaborative and ad-hoc. Celebrating collaborative cultures and independence movements - from independent labels to peer-to-peer culture, from free parties to free networks, from locative media to local food. Deadline for initial expressions of interest - Wednesday 5 October 2005. To learn more visit http://www.futuresonic.com. Futuresonic 2006 will also host the final exhibition and conference of PLAN - The Pervasive and Locative Arts Network. Further information available soon via http://www.open-plan.org. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050820/fdc9c7b1/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From soudhamini_1 at lycos.com Sun Aug 21 06:36:35 2005 From: soudhamini_1 at lycos.com (sou dhamini) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 07:06:35 +0600 Subject: [Reader-list] Abstract Message-ID: <20050821010635.52F893384B@ws7-3.us4.outblaze.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050821/b55c9023/attachment.pl -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050821/b55c9023/attachment.html From tanyam88 at rediffmail.com Sat Aug 20 23:02:03 2005 From: tanyam88 at rediffmail.com (tanya m) Date: 20 Aug 2005 17:32:03 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] The Olympics as Nationalist Theater Message-ID: <20050820173203.16024.qmail@webmail45.rediffmail.com>     hi isaac.. umm, read your post on "the olympics as a nationalist theatre" and found your views interesting... i have a debate in 4 days, the topic is "In the opinion of the house, international sport is warfare without weapons", and i will be speaking for the topic. i was actually wondering if you could help me find more info on this. i will obviously quote you if i make references to any information that you may pass on to me. pls feel free to contact me at tanyam88 at rediffmail.com.. thanking you, ~tanya~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050820/cf272273/attachment.html From zulfisindh at yahoo.com Mon Aug 22 03:57:47 2005 From: zulfisindh at yahoo.com (Zulfiqar Shah) Date: Sun, 21 Aug 2005 15:27:47 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Indus Delta: A River Ran Through It Message-ID: <20050821222747.22951.qmail@web30710.mail.mud.yahoo.com> A River Ran Through It Zulfiqar Shah The delta that supported a thriving population is threatened by water scarcity and salinity Noise erupted in the still, foggy morning as the captain revved the boat-engine, signalling the beginning of our voyage to the Indus delta at Ibrahim Hyderi, a coastal town near Karachi. After half an hour, the fog had dissipated with the rising sun and we found ourselves between two tiny islands covered with dense mangrove forests as numerous eagles hovered in the sky above. The Indus delta is a fan shaped network of seventeen major and numerous minor creeks covering about 30,000 square kilometres. It was formed in an arid climate under conditions of high river discharge – 4 billion tons of sediment per year. It experiences the highest wave energy of any river in the world; during the monsoon season, the delta front receives more wave energy in a single day than the Mississippi delta receives in the entire year. By noon, we had sailed past Korangi, Phitti, Paityani and Khudi and entered the channels of Khai creek, the most beautiful landscape of the Indus delta channels. Two channels intersect at one point, creating a waterway with lush green mangroves on the banks. As the crew began to fish for lunch, I discovered that the water is actually transparent, though it had appeared green because of the reflection of the mangroves. A big green turtle, an endangered species, lay dead among the roots. The Indus delta mangrove ecosystem spans an area of about 600,000 hectares between Karachi and Sir Creek. Dense mangroves grow in numerous areas such as Korangi and Khudi in the north, and Pakar and Sir Creek in the south. Medium level mangroves are widely scattered across the Indus delta, forming about 35 per cent of the total vegetation. Studies indicate that from 1985 to 2000, the mangrove cover decreased from 228,812 to 73,001 hectares. Large swathes of dense mangrove forest have thinned, while sparsely covered islands and creeks have become entirely bare. The situation has had adverse effects on the livelihoods of the people of the region – both fishery resources and livestock levels have been depleted. The diverse habitat the delta had provided for many birds, including herons, vultures, kingfishers and larks – as well as reptiles and fish – is under threat. There is also the threat of cyclones as the Sindh coast comes within the proximity of tsunami waves in the Indian Ocean; mangroves play an important role in creating resistance to such waves. The disappearance of the mangrove cover also exposes soil that is easily eroded by the river water, in due course causing submerged soft-mud flats. The main reason for the problem is the absence of Indus river water in the delta, which has lead to the landward inclination of seawater from the Arabian Sea, resulting in increased salinity levels and a reduction in sediments and soil nutrients. By the evening, trailed by two dolphins that had been following us for an hour, we reached Ishaq Dablo, a village of the Keti Bandar tehsil consisting of a cluster of islands with a few wooden huts on each one. Inhabitants of the islands in the delta, particularly women, are often isolated from the mainland. They live in wooden huts, usually with a communal gathering hut per village. Generally, two or more islands form one village, mostly representing the same tribe. Visiting Keti Bandar, an active port town during the British Raj, the destruction caused by the sea’s intrusion is agonisingly visible. According to Mohammad Ali Shah, chairperson of the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum, “rice was the main crop and most of it was exported to the coastal regions of India and the Gulf. The harbours of Keti Bandar and Shah Bandar were full of boats from Muscat and the Persian Gulf ports. Populations of these delta ports were well over 15,000.” Today, Keti Bandar is an island surviving sea occupation through a safety bund, a stone-pitched mud wall resisting the sea from all directions. Freshwater pushes seawater back, while mangrove forests provide natural fences for the coastal plains saving them from destructive waves. Reduction in downstream water discharge in the Indus River has allowed the sea to take over the coastal plains and reduce the mangrove cover, thus allowing erosion and the high tide occupation of coastal plains. Consequently, 1,220,360 [1.22 million] acres of fertile land in the Thatta and Badin districts were under seawater by 2002. Today, the figure is 2.2 million acres, causing billion rupee losses to the agricultural economy. Tehsil Keti Bandar is comprised of 43 dehs with an area of 144,083 acres, out of which 28 dehs have been submerged by the sea while 14 dehs have been damaged partially. The road from Keti Bandar to the riverbank of the Indus near Kharo Chhan town is either surrounded by sea or barren tracts. During three hours of travel, we encountered only one orchard of palm trees, comprising barely 200 acres. Red rice, a prized crop once cultivated in the area, has long since been abandoned. According to the revenue department, 86 per cent of the 235,485 acres of fertile land in Kharo Chhan tehsil have been intruded upon by the sea. The people of this region work mainly as fishermen, with some subsistence farmers. Gradually, they are moving on as their livelihoods disappear. In the last decade, the population of the town has decreased from nearly 15,000 to just 5,000. We anchored at Kharo Chhan after hiring a boat at the pattan [bank] of the Indus River. A small waterway used to flow through the heart of Kharo Chhan, an island between two distributaries of the Indus. The town and its curved bazaar were built on its banks. People from the suburbs, ferrying to the bazaar, anchored their boats and purchased whatever they needed. Though the dried waterway has become a pedestrian’s track, the bazaar remains a source for everyday needs. Kharo Chhan was a port town, exporting thousands of tons of cereals, fruits and other agricultural products. Adding to their woes, a great proportion of the population of the region face diseases such as malaria, typhoid, tuberculosis and measles. Doctors blame malnutrition and water impurity for the illnesses. Villagers generally lack vitamin C, calcium and vitamin B12. The deltaic areas in Kharo Chhan and Keti Bandar face acute shortages of drinking water. Fishermen still travel to nearby towns to purchase water, while water tankers are sold at prices ranging from Rs 700-1,200. A majority of the deltaic population depends on fisheries, which also indirectly provide the basis of other minor trades and occupations. In 1999, the Indus delta contributed 333,047 of Pakistan’s overall marine fish production of 474,665 metric tons. A drastic reduction in the catch of fish has been observed in recent years. For example the palla, a species of marine fish that swims from the sea through the Indus River for hundreds of miles up to Sukkur Barrage and back to the sea, has been severely depleted by declines in the Indus water flow in the deltaic region. Palla previously accounted for 70 per cent of the total catch in the past; today that figure has dwindled to just 15 per cent. Production in 1980 was 1,859 metric tons; this fell to only 265 metric tons in 1995 and just 222 metric tons 1999. Livestock has faced similar losses. According to the Provincial Directorate of Animal Husbandry, animal populations suffered the following declines between 1991 and 2000: 38 per cent of cattle, 45 per cent ofbuffaloes, 40 per cent of sheep, 37 per cent of goats, 40 per cent of camels, 57 per cent of horses and 35 per cent of donkeys. Back at Kharo Chhan, where four distributaries of the Indus River take their paths, our boat sailed on a much-awaited journey to Sokhi Bandar, the ruins of a port city near the Indus’s meeting point with sea. Sokhi Bandar was initially colonised by the Portuguese in the early 19th century, before falling under British India after Charles Napier’s conquest and it became prosperous in the early 1920s. The island was well established, with rice mills, a bazaar, firebrick homes and a rest house for British officers, a mosque and a temple. The architecture and number of remaining buildings bear witness to the civic planning and wealth of the port under British rule. Ali Patni, an elderly resident of Kharo Chhan, told me that in the 1930s, Sokhi Bandar was populated by more than 20,000 people, mostly traders, shopkeepers and fishermen. Silk, rice, wood and large boats were exported to Arab countries. According to a study conducted by the Institute of Chemical Studies at Sindh University, the flora in the riverbed below Sijawal Bridge is completely of marine origin. The report indicates that fertile agricultural land on the bank of the Indus near the village Sunda, a town near Hyderabad, changed into barren land (with salt contents 10 to 20 times higher than the riverbank bed) due to the use of Indus water with high salt contents. The backflow of seawater is also affecting underground water in the delta region. The fishing village along the left bank was using underground water with total dissolved solids (TDS) up to 4,300 ppm (parts per million). The World Health Organisation’s maximum permissible limit for human consumption is 1,500 ppm. Moving towards the deltaic strip between Kori and Sir Creek at the Runn of Kuchh in Badin district, a 14-hour drive from Kharo Chhan tehsil, we crossed the historic city of Thatta, once the capital city of the Sindhi kingdom. It was termed the Waterloo of Alexander the Great when, after wars in Afghanistan and northwest India, Alexander decided to travel back via Sindh and experienced a tough time. HT Lambrick, a former commissioner of Sindh, wrote that “there was a subtle power in Sindh which created the will to resist the foreigner.” The hamlets and villages of the deltaic districts of Thatta and Badin form a fragile rural society. Settled inland near the coast, agrarian communities comprise mainly sharecroppers, animal owners and herders. They carry the general features of Sindhi rural society. Villages are mainly based on one or two castes. Inter-family marriage is a common phenomenon. If a village has electricity, television provides the only and favourite source of entertainment. We next drove to adjoining areas bordering Gujrat, near the tomb of King Dodo Soomro. The area is particularly vulnerable to floods due to an ill-designed Left Bank Outfall Drainage (LBOD) project which, despite emptying into sea, inundates the villages and land in coastal Badin. In Shadman Lund, a village in Sindh’s part of the Runn of Kutchh, we met the elderly Sufi Natho Faqeer, embodying a living history of the area. He complained that local people were not consulted before the foundations of the LBOD were laid. According to him, with their knowledge of the delta’s tide, villagers could have suggested many amendments to the designs of the LBOD and other drains. The castes of rural Sindh, including the deltaic areas, had specific occupations: Syeds were engaged in agriculture, Memons in trade and Jats in camel rearing. Due to land degradation, migration and decreased livestock there has been little socio-economic development of rural society. The majority of the people of all the three castes had to adopt fishing as a profession. This has ultimately increased the pressure on fisheries’ resources. Sindhi is the majority language. However, some Punjabi settlers, who were awarded agricultural lands after the construction of the Sukkur Barrage, live in Badin’s coastal talukas . A recent study conducted by the Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum points out that the ecological degradation process of the Indus delta began with the development of mega irrigation infrastructures on the Indus River during the pre-partition era. This process began in the 1890s, when the British developed the Punjab irrigation system, followed by the development of the Sukkur Barrage in 1932, the construction of the Kotri Barrage in 1955 and the Guddu Barrage in 1962. Subsequently, two huge dams were constructed, the Mangla and Tarbela dams in 1967 and 1974 respectively. There are now 19 barrages and 43 canal systems with 48 off-takes on the river system in Pakistan, creating the world’s largest contiguous man made system of 61,000 km of canals and 105,000 water courses, irrigating 35 million acres of land. Three storage reservoirs – Mangla on the River Jehlum and Tarbela and Chashma on the Indus River – were built, with a total storage capacity of 20 MAF (million-acre feet). As a result the Indus River freshwater discharge in the deltaic region has been reduced to one-fifth of its natural flow and the river has been confined to a single channel almost down to the coastal area. According to ecological studies undertaken by the IUCN (world conservation union), today the delta needs 35 MAF of water a year to maintain the ecological balance necessary for the continued existence of the delta and its communities. The oil-rich Badin people live in horrendous conditions. We left the salt-white flat plains of Sindh’s Runn of Kuchh in the full moonlight, as music echoed from the huts of the gypsies bidding us farewell. I couldn’t help but think of the Indus River, then and now. According to the myth popular in the region, the Indus is the ‘lion river.’ Mythology tells us that the Brahmaputra emerged from the mouth of a horse. Its waters are cold, and any one drinking them will become as sturdy as a horse. But the waters of the Indus are warm, and the person who drinks from it will become as strong as a lion. Today, sadly, both the Indus delta and river are threatened from both sides: upstream, the water is being sucked away, and downstream, the sea continues its relentless advance. Weekly, The Friday Times, Lahore --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050821/bb5ac150/attachment.html From uddipandutta at rediffmail.com Sat Aug 20 16:39:19 2005 From: uddipandutta at rediffmail.com (uddipan dutta) Date: 20 Aug 2005 11:09:19 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Abstract Message-ID: <20050820110919.8040.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> The Growth of Print Nationalism, Politics of Language and Dialect, Fear of the Outsiders and the Formation of Assamese Identity in the Pages of Two Early Assamese Magazines- Arunodoi and Jonaki By: Uddipan Dutta “A language is a dialect which has an army and a navy” commonly told in the linguistics classroom as there is no linguistic parameter to differentiate a language from a dialect except the power relationship. But language- dialect difference is often invoked in the imagination of a nation. The advent of print has the most significant influence upon the arbitrariness of the concept of language as well as nation. Speakers of the huge varieties of a ‘single language’ might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper. Print has taken the role of selecting, codifying and finally making a particular variety the standard variety in many of the world’s languages, and thereby enabling the people to imagine to be the members of a particular speech community and later on to assert its identity in a geographical space. The processes of standardization of language, growth of nationalism and the development of the print culture go in parallel and operate through a rather complex dynamics. The issue “whether Assamese is a ‘language’ or a ‘dialect’” and the advent of printing press to influence this issue was quite important for the growth of Assamese nationalism within the British India and later within the Indian Union. Arunodoi, the first Asssamese magazine/ newspaper was published in 1846 from the Mission press Sibsagar by the American Baptist Missionaries. Jonaki, on the other hand was the journal brought out in Calcutta in the year 1889 by Ax omiâ Bhâxa Unnati Xâdhini Xobhâ , the students’ body with an ideological slant for a linguistic nationalism. It is the endeavour undertaken by the native middle class grown up with English education. The embryonic form of Print Nationalism founded in the pages of Arunodoi gets matured in the pages of Jonaki. The present study is an attempt to recount this journey from the unconscious to the conscious by reading through the pages of these two magazines. Another important aspect of Assamese nationalism is fear of and hatred for the outsiders in the collective unconsciousness of the people. We can trace this fear and trauma to the massive migration leading to a drastic alteration of the demography of the region in a period of not more than 150 years. We can also see how well this massive migration was prognosticated in the pages of Jonaki. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050820/7df71e64/attachment.html From anannyaleh at yahoo.com Mon Aug 22 13:36:00 2005 From: anannyaleh at yahoo.com (Anannya Mehtta) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 01:06:00 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] presentation abstract - A ethnographic study of film viewing cultures in Delhi. Message-ID: <20050822080600.15456.qmail@web51110.mail.yahoo.com> Abstract – For the independent fellowship project with Sarai I researched film viewing cultures in Delhi. The title of my work is –A ethnographic study of film viewing cultures in Delhi Over the last few months – spoke to many regular watchers of non-commercial films in Delhi –interviewing them and as a result also making friends with many of them. I had started out by asking myself why do people come for these film screenings? If the motivation behind these regular visits to film societies is more than just the watching of the film itself? What is it that people take back? Finally what is role of these places within the life of the city? In an attempt to understand these question I also asked myself if there was theoretical, context through which I could make sense of this culture? If these sites by which I mean the film centers and film clubs construct a politics of its own? My presentation at Sarai will be divided into small parts – I will share my answers to the questions asked above. While doing this I will also re –tell a memory based history of film viewing from the 1970’s to the present. In the presentation I shall share very briefly from a dairy I kept during these months, along with my own diary entries I will share some biographies of those who come to watch non-commercial films. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050822/e3bcc037/attachment.html From uddipandutta at rediffmail.com Sat Aug 20 16:39:27 2005 From: uddipandutta at rediffmail.com (uddipan dutta) Date: 20 Aug 2005 11:09:27 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Abstract Message-ID: <20050820110927.8127.qmail@webmail29.rediffmail.com> The Growth of Print Nationalism, Politics of Language and Dialect, Fear of the Outsiders and the Formation of Assamese Identity in the Pages of Two Early Assamese Magazines- Arunodoi and Jonaki By: Uddipan Dutta “A language is a dialect which has an army and a navy” commonly told in the linguistics classroom as there is no linguistic parameter to differentiate a language from a dialect except the power relationship. But language- dialect difference is often invoked in the imagination of a nation. The advent of print has the most significant influence upon the arbitrariness of the concept of language as well as nation. Speakers of the huge varieties of a ‘single language’ might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper. Print has taken the role of selecting, codifying and finally making a particular variety the standard variety in many of the world’s languages, and thereby enabling the people to imagine to be the members of a particular speech community and later on to assert its identity in a geographical space. The processes of standardization of language, growth of nationalism and the development of the print culture go in parallel and operate through a rather complex dynamics. The issue “whether Assamese is a ‘language’ or a ‘dialect’” and the advent of printing press to influence this issue was quite important for the growth of Assamese nationalism within the British India and later within the Indian Union. Arunodoi, the first Asssamese magazine/ newspaper was published in 1846 from the Mission press Sibsagar by the American Baptist Missionaries. Jonaki, on the other hand was the journal brought out in Calcutta in the year 1889 by Ax omiâ Bhâxa Unnati Xâdhini Xobhâ , the students’ body with an ideological slant for a linguistic nationalism. It is the endeavour undertaken by the native middle class grown up with English education. The embryonic form of Print Nationalism founded in the pages of Arunodoi gets matured in the pages of Jonaki. The present study is an attempt to recount this journey from the unconscious to the conscious by reading through the pages of these two magazines. Another important aspect of Assamese nationalism is fear of and hatred for the outsiders in the collective unconsciousness of the people. We can trace this fear and trauma to the massive migration leading to a drastic alteration of the demography of the region in a period of not more than 150 years. We can also see how well this massive migration was prognosticated in the pages of Jonaki. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050820/5f2ed96f/attachment.html From mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com Mon Aug 22 13:55:16 2005 From: mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 01:25:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Dastangoi-abstract of presentation Message-ID: <20050822082517.73210.qmail@web80910.mail.scd.yahoo.com> THE LOST ART OF STORYTELLING-DASTANGOI AND THE DASTAN-E AMIR HAMZA The Dastan-e Amir Hamzah published by the Nawal Kishore Press, Kanpur between 1880 and 1910 in forty-six huge volumes is the most outstanding achievement of Urdu prose. The printed versions of this Dastan emerged from a centuries old tradition of oral narration, Dastangoi. Unlike folk-storytelling, Dastangoi was considered a high profession. Since the times of Akbar the dastango had been inducted into the court. They were included among the retainers of nobility; and poets and writers consulted them as lexical authorities. As listening to dastan recitals became a popular pastime for all classes, from Ghalib's soirees to the streets of Jama Masjid, the dastango acquired a mass audience before it got printed. That it came at a time when Urdu fiction was still in its infancy and that the fact that it was anti-novel in its intention and effect has caused it to be criminally marginalised in criticism and discussion within the world of Urdu letters itself. My presentation will include a demonstration of the Art of Dastangoi, as I grope my way around the methods of those masterly performers, from the Tilism-e Hoshruba as well as a very brief talk about the extract that I have chosen to recite. A separate full length paper would be circulated alongside a glossary of the characters. ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From announcer at crit.org.in Mon Aug 22 13:54:33 2005 From: announcer at crit.org.in (CRIT Announcer) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 13:54:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Open Access to Maps and Public Geo-Data Message-ID: <6F5FDF8B-9032-447A-B9F4-364FADE42829@crit.org.in> Dear All: In the wake of the massive floods since 26 July in Mumbai and Maharashtra, a crisis of civic infrastructure and public health has emerged in the city and state, in which the right of citizens to information about their environments is of crucial public importance. Very few citizens of India enjoy open access to maps, satellite imagery, and other geographic information. Collected and brokered by national mapping and space imaging agencies, this geo-data is an essential for understanding civic issues such as planning, housing, infrastructure. Open access to this information can provide a platform for public action, reducing costs and promoting innovation by facilitating citizens' engagement with their local environments and authorities. The Open Knowledge Foundation is hosting a forum at http://okfn.org/ geo/manifesto.php about Open Access to State-Collected Geo-Spatial Data. * All government-collected maps, geographic information and spatial data are public property, and should be open; that is, available for free distribution and re-use under a share-alike license. * Online mapping projects creating freely re-usable geo-data should offer a compatible open license. * Common, standard formats for describing and exchanging geo-data should be adopted internationally. * Ultimately, all state-collected information should be freely available in the public domain, in a structured machine-readable format and in an open standard. Please read the manifesto and, if you agree with the statements it contains, sign up to support it at http://okfn.org/geo/ manifesto.php#signup For more information on the changing policies on maps and geo-data in India, see the 19 May 2005 release of the Press Information Bureau of the Government of India on http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp? relid=9388 _____ http://www.crit.org.in http://www.freemap.in http://www.mappinghacks.com _____ CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust) Announcements List announcer at crit.org.in http://lists.crit.org.in/mailman/listinfo/announcer From announcer at crit.org.in Mon Aug 22 13:54:33 2005 From: announcer at crit.org.in (CRIT Announcer) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 13:54:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Open Access to Maps and Public Geo-Data Message-ID: <6F5FDF8B-9032-447A-B9F4-364FADE42829@crit.org.in> Dear All: In the wake of the massive floods since 26 July in Mumbai and Maharashtra, a crisis of civic infrastructure and public health has emerged in the city and state, in which the right of citizens to information about their environments is of crucial public importance. Very few citizens of India enjoy open access to maps, satellite imagery, and other geographic information. Collected and brokered by national mapping and space imaging agencies, this geo-data is an essential for understanding civic issues such as planning, housing, infrastructure. Open access to this information can provide a platform for public action, reducing costs and promoting innovation by facilitating citizens' engagement with their local environments and authorities. The Open Knowledge Foundation is hosting a forum at http://okfn.org/ geo/manifesto.php about Open Access to State-Collected Geo-Spatial Data. * All government-collected maps, geographic information and spatial data are public property, and should be open; that is, available for free distribution and re-use under a share-alike license. * Online mapping projects creating freely re-usable geo-data should offer a compatible open license. * Common, standard formats for describing and exchanging geo-data should be adopted internationally. * Ultimately, all state-collected information should be freely available in the public domain, in a structured machine-readable format and in an open standard. Please read the manifesto and, if you agree with the statements it contains, sign up to support it at http://okfn.org/geo/ manifesto.php#signup For more information on the changing policies on maps and geo-data in India, see the 19 May 2005 release of the Press Information Bureau of the Government of India on http://pib.nic.in/release/release.asp? relid=9388 _____ http://www.crit.org.in http://www.freemap.in http://www.mappinghacks.com _____ CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust) Announcements List announcer at crit.org.in http://lists.crit.org.in/mailman/listinfo/announcer _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From iram at sarai.net Mon Aug 22 14:29:37 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 10:59:37 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Fwd: Sarai- CSDS Independent Fellowship Workshop Message-ID: <04fa537ff7fb473e474ab5f29338d3e9@sarai.net> ------ Original Message ------ Subject: Sarai- CSDS Independent Fellowship Workshop (Wednesday throuigh Saturday) To: announcemnts at sarai.net From: vivek at sarai.net Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 10:09:23 +0200 PROGRAMME FOR THE SARAI-CSDS INDEPENDENT FELLOWSHIP WORKSHOP, August 24-27, 2005 Wednesday, 24 August 9.00-9.30 Tea and registration 9.30-10.00 Opening Statements: Shuddhabrata Sengupta / Vivek Narayanan 10.00-11.30 The Grid, the Relay, and the Reality Karen Coelho, "Tapping In: Urban Water Conflicts as Citizenship Claims in Chennai" Muthatha Ramanathan, "Tracing Spatial Technology in the Rural Development Landscape of South India" B. Mahesh Sarma, "Contending Techno-Paradigms of Contested Public Space: The Politics of CNG" 11.30-11.40 Refreshment Break 11.40-1.10 Re-imagined Communities Nitoo Das, "Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN Poetry Communities" Kiran Jonnalagadda, "An Investigation of how Form Affects Discussion and Community in Online Discussion Spaces" Anannya Mehta, "The Viewership of Non-Commercial and Independent Film in Delhi" 1.10-2.10 Lunch 2.10-3.40 Stardust Histories T. Vishnu Vardhan, "The Impact of Mythologicals in Telugu Cinema" Abhishek Sharma, "The Colorisation of Mughal-e-Azam" Prashant Pandey,"Documenting the Contemporary History of the Making of the Hindi Film Song" 3.40-3.55 Refreshment Break 3.55-5.25 Performing the Local Archana Jha, "Nautanki Shahar mein: Audyogik Nagri Kanpur mein Lok Manch Kala ke Vikas wa Patan ka Anveshan" (Nautanki in the Industrial City of Kanpur: A Historical Study) Sunil Kumar, "Aa Mata Tujhe Dil ne Pukara: Khani Dilli ki Jagaran Partiyon ki" (Jagaran Tales in Delhi) S.M. Irfan, "Awazein FM Radio ki" (Voices of FM Radio) 5.25-5.45 Refreshment Break 5.45-6.15 Lecture-demonstration: Urmila Bhirdikar, "The Relationship between the Production and Consumption of Thumri and Allied Forms: The Female Impersonator - Bal Gandharva" **************************************** Thursday, 25 August 10.00-11.30 Plotting Economic Geographies Vandana Swami, "An Allegorical, Historical Journey into the Archives of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway" S. Ananth, "The Culture of Business: The Informal Sector and Finance Business in Vijaywada" Prasad Shetty, "Stories of New Entrepreneurship" Faraaz Mehmood, "A Study of Changing Banking Practices in Udaipur" 11.30-11.45 Refreshment Break 11.45-12.45 Imprinting Identities - 1 Uddipan Dutta, "The Growth of Print Nationalism and Assamese Identity in Two Early Assamese Magazines" T.P. Sabitha, "Early Women's Magazines in Kerala and the Construction of Femininity" 12.45-1.45 Lunch 1.45-3.15 Imprinting Identities - 2 Himanshu Ranjan, "Hindi-Urdu Kshetra ke Ek Sanskritik Kendra ke Roop mein Ilahabad ka Vikas aur Hastakshep" (The Development of Allahabad and its Intervention as a Cultural Centre of the Hindi-Urdu Belt) Jitendra Srivastava, "Ek Shahar ke Roop mein Gorakhpur ki Pehchan mein Gita Press aur Kalyan ki Bhoomika" (Role of Gita Press and Kalyan in the Making of Gorakhpur's Identity) Anurag, "Laghu Patrika Andolan: Abhivyakti ke Naye Aayam, Ek Padtal" (Little Magazine Movement: New Dimensions of Expression) 3.15-3.30 Refreshment Break 3.30-5.30 Assembling the Textured Narrative Rochelle Pinto, "Manuel in the City: A Semi-Fictionalised Illustrated Book on the Arrival and Absorption of Goan Migrants to Mumbai" Vasudha Joshi, "History and Storytelling about Kolkata and Howrah: Integrating Narratives and Database" Soudhamini, "Madurai: Mythical City - Representations Old and New" Vijender Singh Chauhan, "Beeti Vibhavari Jaag Ri: Dilli ke City-scape mein Dikwa Kaal" (Time and Space in the Cityscape of Delhi) 5.30-5.50 Break 5.50-6.20 Lecture Demonstration: Sumangala Damodaran, "Protest Through Music: A Documentation and Analysis of the Structure, Content and Context of the Musical Tradition of the IPTA" **************************************** Friday, 26 August 10.00-11.30 Anatomy of Urban Fantasies - 1 Sovan Tarafder, "A Brief History of New Urban Leisure in Kolkata" Lakshmi Kutty, "High Rise Hygiene: Narrativising Mumbai's New Urban Culture" Prayas Abhinav, "Publicity Promises in the Public Space in Ahmedabad" 11.30-1.45 Refreshment Break 11.45-12.45 Anatomy of Urban Fantasies - 2 Mario Rodrigues, "The Political Sociology of Golf in South Asia" Pankaj Rishi Kumar, "Ponytails-Rings-Punches: Female Boxers in India" 12.45-1.45 Lunch 1.45-3.15 Trajectories of Work and Experience Nagarik Mancha, "Factory Closures, Plight of Workers and Urban Space" Syed Khalid Jamal, "Work Culture in Fast Food Chains" Kuldeep Kaur, "The Hospital Labour Room as a Space for Unheard Voices" 3.15-3.30 Refreshment Break 3.30-5.00 The City and its Strangers Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar, "Messing with the Bhadraloks: Towards a Social History of the Mess Houses in Calcutta, 1890s-1990s" Abdus Salam, "Strangers in the City: the Lives and Longings of Bangladeshi Immigrants in Guwahati" Debkamal Ganguly, "The Culture of Crime Pulp Fiction in Bengal" 5.00-5.30 Break 5.30-6.00 Presentation / Performance: Mahmood U. R. Farooqui, "Tale Tellers: Dastangoyee - The Culture of Story Telling in Urdu" ************************************************ Saturday, 27 August 10.30-12.30 Affects and Effects of Neighbourhoods Meera Pillai, "Foodcourts and Footbridges: Conceptualising Space in Vijaywada Railway Station" Sudeshna Chatterjee, "Children's Friendship with Place: Investigating Environmental Child Friendliness for Children in New Delhi" Madhavi Desai, "Women and their Spatial Narratives in the City of Ahmedabad" Kaiwan Mehta, "Reading Histories - Migration and Culture: The Politics of Mapping and Representation of Urban Communities" 12.30-1.30 Lunch 1.30-3.00 Tracing the Margins Tasneem, Fatima and Marya, "Death and the Bazaar: A Look at the Death Care Industry" Prem Kumar Tiwari, "Dilli ka ek Pravasi Gaon: Sahipur, Shalimarbagh" (Sahipur: A Migrant Village in Delhi) Sabir Haque, Nidhi Bal Singh, and Leena Rani Narzary, "The Eastern Yamuna River Bed: Ecological Imbalance and Future Implications" 3.00-3.15 Refreshment Break 3.15-5.15 Contextualising Trauma Shivam Vij, "The Nature of Ragging in Hostels" Swara Bhaskar and Moyukh Chatterjee, "Of Riots and Ruins: Space and Violence in Vatva, Ahmedabad" Syed Bismillah Geelani, "The Kashmiri Encounter in Delhi" Hilal Bhat, "Shrine as an Anodyne in Strife-Torn Kashmir" 5.15-5.30 Refreshment Break 5.30-6.30 pm Interactive Feedback / Critique Session on the Independent Fellows Programme -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Vivek Narayanan Subject: Sarai-CSDS Independent Fellowship Workshop (Wednesday through Saturday) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 11:37:23 +0530 Size: 7653 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050822/d40ce937/attachment.mht -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shivamvij at gmail.com Mon Aug 22 15:58:56 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 15:58:56 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 'Case for classification of dailies based on content' Message-ID: Case for classification of dailies based on content New Delhi, (PTI) http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/aug182005/update1238432005818.asp Supreme Court today issued notices to the Centre, Press Council of India, the news agencies and major dailies on a PIL seeking classification of newspapers on the basis of their content to denote whether these were fit to be read universally or by adults only. Should newspapers be classified on the basis of sexually explicit material contained in them similar to censor board categorising films for viewers? The PIL raising this question was today taken up for hearing by the Supreme Court. A Bench comprising Chief Justice R C Lahoti, Justice G P Mathur and Justice P K Balasubramanyan issued notices to the Centre, Press Council of India, news agencies - PTI and UNI, and leading dailies 'Times of India' and 'Hindustan Times'. The PIL filed by one Ajay Goswami stated that with the advent of commercialism and the competition among newspapers to increase their circulation, "numerous attempts are being made to cater to purient interest of the public at large". "The newspapers are publishing titillating material in the form of SMS jokes, articles on pronography, sex education (which at times is more pornography than education), comments on porn magazines or movies in addition to semi-nude photographs," the petitioner said and pleaded that there was an urgent need to protect the minors from their bad influence. While supporting the the right to freedom of speech and expression enjoyed by the media, the petitioner said there was an urgent need to frame rules and regulations to shield minors from these pornographic literature circulated by newspapers. "The Union of India and the Press Council of India have failed to frame any rules and regulations on this aspect," it said and sought a direction for framing of appropriate Rules and Regulations in this regard. The PIL also requested the apex Court to direct the Centre to constitute an expert Committee to look into the problem of unwanted exposure of sexually explicit material to the minor through the media and lay down rules and regulations for the same. It said that it was the duty of the Government to protect the minors from such exposure to unwanted material circulated through media as it was a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989 and Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Both the charters had got a pledge from the countries to protect the vulnerable minors from abuse, exploitation and harmful effects of "such experssion" by media, the PIL said. "The compelling interest is to protect the physical and psychological well-being of minors from the influence of literature, which is not obscene from the adult point of view," the PIL stated. It said though the Press Council of India came into existence 27 years ago, it had not even thought of framing rules and regulations for improving the standards of newspapers and news agencies. "The PCI has laid down from time to time principles and ethics to be observed by the journalists, which are directive in nature, incomplete and even otherwise do not deal with the issue of protecting minors," it said. -- We are protean. We can become anything. www.shivamvij.com (Blog) | mail at shivamvij.com (Email & MSN) From shivamvij at gmail.com Mon Aug 22 18:08:27 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (Shivam Vij) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:08:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Nature of Ragging in Hostels: ABSTRACT Message-ID: Any discussion on ragging concentrates on the individual fresher who is being ragged. "For some it may be fun but for others it may not be okay." This approach to ragging inevitably leads to victim-blaming. My research has sought to shift the focus on the ragger, or rather the ragging community: what does ragging achieve in the hostel space? What are the codes of the hostel community? Why is it important for the community that the fresher accept the discourse of ragging? Sociological analyses of ragging, on the other hand, sees ragging as either resulting from social conditions (sexual repression, school discipline, etc) or as performing social functions. Such an approach sees ragging as merely a "rite of passage", and becomes indifferent to the sheer violence of ragging. The functionalist approach seems to explain away the phenomenon. My paper, on the other hand, seeks to shift the focus to the reactionary ideals of the ragging community. To be presented at the I-Fellows workshop on Saturday, 27 August 2005. From sudeshna.kca at gmail.com Mon Aug 22 18:20:15 2005 From: sudeshna.kca at gmail.com (Sudeshna Chatterjee) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:20:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Abstract: Nizamuddin Basti in the Lives of its Children In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <3ef603b70508220550185cffd5@mail.gmail.com> Nizamuddin Basti in the Lives of its Children A Socio-Spatial Study of Environmental Child Friendliness in a Contested Low-Income Delhi Neighborhood. (working title for presentation) Sudeshna Chatterjee Abstract The central objective of this empirical study was to understand under what conditions children come to think of places in their living environment as "friendly". A firm believer in the Einsteinian dictum: "Thinking without the positing of categories and concepts in general would be as impossible as breathing in vacuum" (Einstein, 1949), I had developed a theoretical framework in a peer-reviewed paper titled "Children's Friendship with Place: A Conceptual Inquiry" (Chatterjee 2005). In this paper, I had argued that in order for child-friendly cities to have any real meaning for children we need to explore the conceptual possibilities of place friendship in the tradition of similar studies in place attachment and place identity in childhood After reviewing the literature on friendship, I developed a framework for envisioning child-friendly places by deconstructing six essential conditions of friendship (Doll 1996): mutual affection and personal regard; shared interests and activities; commitment; loyalty; self-disclosure and mutual understanding; and horizontality. These concepts, when translated into environmental terms with the help of literature from the fields of environment-behavior, environmental psychology and children's geography, help to define a child-friendly place from a socio-physical perspective (Chatterjee 2005). I conducted my fieldwork, in Nizamuddin Basti, a low-income historic settlement in central New Delhi with a large child population, to understand how children develop place friendship. My eclectic ethnographic strategies included an initial semi-structured interview with a carefully constructed sample of thirty-one 11 and 12 year old Muslim children from different forms of families, and backgrounds (Bihari-, Bengali-, Bangladeshi migrants, older settlers from UP and Punjab, and some native Nizamuddin villagers). This interview was designed to get nominations from children about places in their local area, which allow them to fulfill the dimensions of place friendship. As there were six dimensions to place friendship that I wanted to explore, the first six questions probed if there were places in the children's everyday environment that 1) demonstrated environmental care and provided space for them to participate in the caring of the environment, 2) offered opportunities to the child to engage with the environment on an everyday basis, 3) allowed the child to learn and gain competence by engaging with the environment, 4) allowed the child to control the environment in any given time on his/her own terms, 5) facilitated creation and nurturing of secret places, and 6) allowed the child to freely explore and express herself/himself in the environment. I further probed the meaning of each of these interactions under each category of friendly places, and went on field trips with children to record their on-site narratives describing their feelings about places. Though this is a work in progress with considerable hanging out still happening every week in the basti, my data suggests that Nizamuddin basti inspite of being a contested urban settlement that has accumulated several different negative stereotypes related to poor Muslims, and environmental degradation typical of Indian slums, provide a sustainable habitat for poor Muslim families, and a culturally rich socio-physical environment that children find friendly at many levels. My presentation at Sarai, will give a flavor of the findings through a powerpoint presentation, and touch upon the analysis of two dimensions of friendly places. In my analysis I adopted a postmodernist culture studies approach to the study of Delhi as a child friendly city. From souweine at hawaii.edu Tue Aug 23 04:39:57 2005 From: souweine at hawaii.edu (Isaac D W Souweine) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 19:09:57 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] The Olympics as Nationalist Theater Message-ID: <104f7be1052c34.1052c34104f7be@hawaii.edu> Not sure how much I can help. . .Orwell has a great and famous article on the subject that you can find online (and is probably the inspiration for your debate title). . . If you can get a copy of Leni Riefensthal's (sp?) movie about the '36 games, that is a priceless thing to view. . .soccer is probably the most violent of the international sports (especially in terms of fan injuries), so you could focus on that. . .other than that, I just did a lot of trolling through web sites to see what I could find . . .Good luck with the debate. . . and be prepared for the "cricket is a bridge of peace between Pakistan and India" -- that's a real crowd pleaser. Yours, Isaac Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="MIMEStream=_0+247857_47071972912401_3247875704" --MIMEStream=_0+247857_47071972912401_3247875704 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline =A0 =A0 hi isaac.. umm, read your post on "the olympics as a nationalist theatre" and found yo= ur views interesting...=20=20 i have a debate in 4 days, the topic is "In the opinion of the house, inte= rnational sport is warfare without weapons", and i will be speaking for the= topic. i was actually wondering if you could help me find more info on this. i wi= ll obviously quote you if i make references to any information that you may= pass on to me. pls feel free to contact me at tanyam88 at rediffmail.com.. thanking you, ~tanya~ --MIMEStream=_0+247857_47071972912401_3247875704 Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline

 
 
hi isaac..
umm, read your post on "the olympics as a nationalist theatre" an= d found your views interesting... 
i have a debate in 4 days,  the topic is "In the opinion of the h= ouse, international sport is warfare without weapons", and i will be s= peaking for the topic.
i was actually wondering if you could help me find more info on this. i wi= ll obviously quote you if i make references to any information that you may= pass on to me.
pls feel free to contact me at tanyam88 at rediffmail.com..
thanking you,
~tanya~



--MIMEStream=_0+247857_47071972912401_3247875704-- -------------- next part -------------- _________________________________________ 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 prayas.abhinav at gmail.com Tue Aug 23 13:21:36 2005 From: prayas.abhinav at gmail.com (Prayas Abhinav) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 13:21:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ABSTRACT: Advertisements in Ahmedabad Message-ID: <825bb7b0050823005131ca60d4@mail.gmail.com> Advertisements in the Public Space of Ahmedabad (ABSTRACT) ---- The objective behind my project was to study the advertisements in Ahmedabad's Public spaces. Do a visual and literary interplay involving the hoardings in Ahmedabad and how we are pulled/romanced constantly by them. I tell a personal story of living in a city in confusion, query and irony. The multi-media approach to this project reflects on my wish to create a richer, fuller experience of this story. There are elements of recording, memory, commentary and romance in these works. I have used the language and stance of the rational-commercial interest in developing the city and of the popular opinions and criticisms of the advertising industry. My voice in this process talks of the experience – of constantly facing the hoardings, being wooed, rationalizing their existence, and at the same time feeling irritated, resentful and uncomfortable. My story is this complex and confusing experience and I hope the narrative which emerges from my work conveys this. ----<<>> To be presented at the I-Fellows workshop on Saturday, 26 August 2005. From vivek at sarai.net Tue Aug 23 15:13:56 2005 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 15:13:56 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ifellows: participants and presentation abstracts Message-ID: <430AEFDC.5010601@sarai.net> Apologies for the long length of this document! Those in Delhi are most welcome... Vivek PARTICIPANTS AND PRESENTATIONS IN THE SARAI-CSDS INDEPENDENT FELLOWSHIP WORKSHOP, August 24-27, 2005 Wednesday, 24 August 10.00-11.30 The Grid, the Relay, and the Reality 1. Karen Coelho, “Tapping In: Urban Water Conflicts as Citizenship Claims in Chennai” Karen Coelho is an urban anthropologist who received her Ph.D from the University of Arizona, Tucson, in November 2004, and now works as an independent scholar in Chennai. Her work continues to focus on understanding neoliberal reform of the state through ethnographic approaches. The invisible grids that undergird urban infrastructure services remain largely mysterious, imagined through a combination of scientific extrapolation, guesswork, narrative histories and popular knowledge. Yet they provide powerful frameworks for defining the orders through which slum communities are conceived and located in municipal services. This presentation juxtaposes the mythologies of grid-like orders against the contentious and politically negotiated realities through which the urban poor access water in Chennai. 2. Muthatha Ramanathan, “Tracing Spatial Technology in the Rural Development Landscape of South India” Muthatha Ramanathan is currently at the University of Washington, Seattle pursuing a PhD. In Geography. The Sarai independent fellowship has funded the early stages of her dissertation fieldwork. She has a B.Sc and M.Sc in Geography and during the course of her education has dabbled in political ecology, cartography, geographic information systems and digital image processing. The purpose of my research is to develop a critical understanding of the increasing use of remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies in the natural resource management based rural development sector in India. Using theoretical insights from Science and Technology Studies and Development Studies, and the case of an NGO employing these technologies for planning in a few villages in interior dry Karnataka, I proposed to ask the following two questions: 1) What are the NGO’s motivations for employing these technologies? 2) How has the employment of these technologies altered practices of knowledge production, and undertake a detailed participant observation of the planning phase. My report and presentation will comprise a set of learnings about the following inter-related aspects: 1) NGO’s motivations for employing these technologies, which I will attempt to situate with findings of other studies that have focused on similar issues. My purpose here is to develop an understanding of different assumptions about these technologies and their use for planning/development related work. 2) Details about the content of the technology, i.e. Concepts embodied in the database software commissioned by this NGO and details of the NGO’s approach to rural development. 3) Some insights from having attempted a participant observation of the daily use of these technologies. I will also share reflections on my methods. 3. B. Mahesh Sarma, “Contending Techno-Paradigms of Contested Public Space: The Politics of CNG” Mahesh Sarma is a researcher and Phd fellow at the Centre for studies in science policy, JNU. His PhD projects aims to interrogate india's developmental project by examining its innovation trajectories. CNG conversion in delhi, is a signpost for a changing city. The process in a way is a beginning and an end. It is the beginning of a new sensibilities, a beginning of a new way of doing things. It also marks the beginning of the end of the messy, cumbersome democratic process and its replacement with neat clean technocratic solutions. If this reflects a new sensibility, wherein techno-solutions inconvenience some millions, it can’t be helped. My research began with some questions. Why did Delhi, pick up CNG, was it a clean fuel, who constructed and sold it as a clean fuel? What role did civil society organisations play? And, in this decision making maze, where does legislature and executive lie? My research has barely scratched the surface. I can observe that CSE fully plugged for CNG; it was a beautiful campaign, neatly executed. I have documented, the failure of the legislature and executive. I am in the process of documenting the role of the media. I have observed conflicts between normative and real positions. And have now more questions than i have started with. 11.40-1.10 Re-imagined Communities 1. Nitoo Das, “Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN Poetry Communities” Nitoo Das teaches English in Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi. Her Ph.D. from JNU was on "Fabrication of History: Construction of the Assamese Identity under British Colonialism (1826-1920)". Her recent research interests include gangster rap, online poetry and blog culture. For my independent fellowship with Sarai, I worked on a project entitled, “Hypertextual Poetry: A Study of MSN Poetry Communities”. In these months of working on the hypertextual nature of poetry posted on certain online sites run by MSN, I have tried to understand why so many people feel the desire to write poetry. I had started off by asking myself questions like: Why were they doing it? What allowed them the freedom to use words with such abandon? What was the mechanism that permitted them to flow with their feelings? My first questions were also about the disguising and the opening up the self. About a simultaneous masking and an unmasking. The other compelling reason was the need to know whether poetry on a computer screen read differently from poetry on a page. My research attempted to come to grips with some of these issues. My presentation will be divided into two portions. I will begin by looking at the hypertextual aspects of the poetry in these groups. Ideas like recurrence, simultaneity, annotative links etc, which I have talked of at length in my postings, will be investigated. In the second half of my paper, I will focus on examples of the actual running of these sites. These examples will look at: (i) The readers playing with posted poetic texts, (ii) The questioning of the poetic voice, (iii) The construction of a sense of community through re-enactments of real-time rituals and (iv) The architecture of the sites to see how the poetic text may replicate the structure of the medium within which it resides. 2. Kiran Jonnalagadda, “An Investigation of how Form Affects Discussion and Community in Online Discussion Spaces” 3. Anannya Mehta, “The Viewership of Non-Commercial and Independent Film in Delhi” Over the last few months – spoke to many regular watchers of non-commercial films in Delhi –interviewing them and as a result also making friends with many of them. I had started out by asking myself why do people come for these film screenings? If the motivation behind these regular visits to film societies is more than just the watching of the film itself? What is it that people take back? Finally what is role of these places within the life of the city? In an attempt to understand these question I also asked myself if there was theoretical, context through which I could make sense of this culture? If these sites by which I mean the film centers and film clubs construct a politics of its own? My presentation at Sarai will be divided into small parts – I will share my answers to the questions asked above. While doing this I will also re –tell a memory based history of film viewing from the 1970’s to the present. In the presentation I shall share very briefly from a dairy I kept during these months, along with my own diary entries I will share some biographies of those who come to watch non-commercial films. 2.10-3.40 Stardust Histories 1. T. Vishnu Vardhan, “The Impact of Mythologicals in Telugu Cinema” T. Vishnu Vardhan is a research student in the University of Ulster, Ireland & CSCS, Bangalore, Comparative Film Studies Programme. He did his Master’s from CIEFL, Hyderabad. He is also working as a Research Associate in the CSCS EIP programme and is also Coordinator of the MA (Online) Cultural Studies.T. Vishnu Vardhan (thvishnu_viva at yahoo.com) is a research student in the University of Ulster, Ireland & CSCS, Bangalore, Comparative Film Studies Programme. He did his Master’s from CIEFL, Hyderabad. He is also working as a Research Associate in the CSCS EIP programme and is also Coordinator of the MA (Online) Cultural Studies. In my postings I took readers through various aspects of Telugu mythologicals which surfaced in my research. I posted about the importance of language in mythologicals, viewers’ expectation from mythologicals (in terms of language), the aspect of nativity in Telugu cinema, mythologicals and genre, changing role of mythologicals from 1930s to 1980s. In my presentation I will reflect on the question: Why did mythologicals die in Telugu cinema by 1970s? This is the same question which, I asked few people from the industry and also Telugu cinema viewers. Nobody has an exact answer for the question. But these are the few popular responses. 1) A certain package of filmmakers and actors (like K.V. Reddy, Kamalakara Kameshwara Rao, N.T. Rama Rao, Savithri, S.V. Ranga Rao, Gummadi, etc) who were known for their mythologicals, passed away/came of age/stopped acting. And nobody can replace these people either on the screen or off the screen. 2) The production of mythologicals is very expensive and the industry was not in a position to spend such a huge amount on these films and thus by the 1980s they die. 3) The plots of mythologicals were exhausted and there is nothing new to show to the spectators. 4) The tastes of the viewers have changed. They cant take-in anymore the same plots culled out from Ramayana and Mahabaratha. Also the language of the mythologicals is too high for the audience and they do not any more enjoy the long padhyalu (kind of poems). Either stating one or more of the above reasons most of my respondents became nostalgic about the age of mythologicals, especially those made between 50s and 80s. And this period is also considered as the golden age of Telugu cinema both by the industry and the ‘cinema going public’. Further, this is the period during which a kind of star system emerges (which is different from an ordinary film star). A star system, which can mobilize people beyond the film theatre and can determine capital in the industry. N.T. Rama Rao, who is the first star to enjoy such star system in Telugu, apparently became the first non-congress Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh. Coming back to the question of WHY DID MYTHOLOGICALS DIE, what I am going to present is a bit controversial and is unsaid till now. The mythological died because of the new star system. How this is so is what I will be presenting at the conference in SARAI. 2. Abhishek Sharma, “The Colorisation of Mughal-e-Azam” Abhishek Sharma, a graduate of NSD, is an Independent filmmaker and project Developer. [Filmography : Light Wala ( 2003 ) : a documentary film based on the work & life of Light designers in India . Produced by NSD as a part of research project ; 9/11 - The Last Fall ( 2003 ) : a short - fiction film based on 9/11. It is the first Indian film on this subject & has been selected by Central Library of Washington as part of the new emerging Cinema in India .Produced by Fourth Wall Productions .] The Colorization of Mughal-E-Aazam traces the following aspects of the revamped classic- a) Origin of the Idea- How did the Idea of colorizing this film originate? As the legend goes, it was K.Asif himself who wanted to make this film in color. Mr. Deepesh Salgia of Sterling Investments, finally gave shape to that dream by spending over 2 years and over Rs. 5 Crores in the restoration and olorization works. b) Restoration- For Iris interactive, it was the most challenging job to work on the 44 year old Negative. They cleaned each and every frame (around 300,000 in total!), getting rid of fungus, scratches and dust particles, in order to make it look as fresh as new. c) Colorization- The Indian Academy of Arts and Animation developed an Indigenous software to colorize for the first time in the history of cinema, a vintage film, for a 35mm theatrical release. The process used Key Frames in every sequence to inject natural colors corresponding to the hues generated by original black, white and grays. d) Digital Sound- Mr.Uttam singh under the supervision of Naushaad Sahab, digitally re-recorded the Soundtrack of the entire film. For the first time a classic was recorded in Dolby 6.1. The process gave birth to a powerful soundtrack with surround sound facility. It is a feather in the cap of Indian cinema. e) Second coming- The story of Mughal-E-Aazam has a tragic end but the film itself is used to happy endings. Once again it rocked the nation. Youngsters loved it and old folks went nostalgic. The colorized version scored an impressive 13% return on investment. It was also acclaimed by critics all over the world. 3. Prashant Pandey,”Documenting the Contemporary History of the Making of the Hindi Film Song” An alumnus of AJKMCRC Jamia, Prashant Pandey travelled to Bombay to pursue this independent fellowship right after his M.A. course in mass communication came to an end. Prashant is passionate about hindi film music and a sometime lyricist himself. 3.55-5.25 Performing the Local 1. Archana Jha, “Nautanki Shahar mein: Audyogik Nagri Kanpur mein Lok Manch Kala ke Vikas wa Patan ka Anveshan” (Nautanki in the Industrial City of Kanpur: A Historical Study) 2. Sunil Kumar, “Aa Mata Tujhe Dil ne Pukara: Khani Dilli ki Jagaran Partiyon ki” (Jagaran Tales in Delhi) Sunil Kumar works as a teacher in Delhi. In this study I wish to underline how an ethnomusical event changes into a so-called global celebration, and what its practitioners have to face during that change. I have observed a gender- and class- struggle behind this event. I also wish to raise the question of the forces that are trying to shape these expressions and their directions for their own needs. 3. S.M. Irfan, “Awazein FM Radio ki” (Voices of FM Radio) Based in Delhi, Syed Mohd Irfan is commonly known as Irfan. He is an independent writer-producer-broadcaster. He had never worked for any goverment office or for any media house on the pay roll. He was born and brought up in eastern UP(Gurma Markundi,Distt Mirzapur). After completing his post-graduation from the University Of Allahabad, he started pursuing an alternate media future. Travelling and meeting people are his most passionate activities. While presenting various edutainment radio shows on AIR’s FM Gold 106.4 MegaHz, he is also lending his voice for many stage shows,radio and TV programmes, including on the National Geographic Channel, the History channel and Discovery. He is busy building an archive of rare folk songs (those that were played and sung by 60s and 70s youth in UP and up to some extent in Bihar), which are available on legacy format i.e. gramophone records of various sizes. In 2003, Delhi had its first encounter with Commercial FM broadcasting. Until then there were only two FM Radios run by All India Radio. Though this new idiom of broadcasting had already added a lot in listeners experience, soon after the new FM players came it simply revolutionized the listening practices. A new breed of voices came in and the packaging and whole idea of communication changed. For now this was not meant for greater common good. It was and is for making profit. In the "come-what-may" style they talk in, there are no ‘moral’ boundaries to the programming. To attract their listeners they are ready to go up to any limit(lessness).These three commercial fms are owned by three big media houses: 91 FM Radio City belongs to Star TV, Saadhe Tiranve Red FM 93.5 is owned by India Today Group and Radio Mirchi (98.3FM) is being run under the flagship of The Times Of India. Two more FM radios are on air, one is serving IGNOU’s educational stuff and another one is doing programmes for Jamia Millia Islamia. Barring these two, the rest of the five Fms are almost 24x7. The oldest FM can be tuned 102.6 MegaHz(AIR’s Rainbow) and AIR’s other classic channel is FM Gold 106.4MegaHz. There are around a dozen of FM radio players currently in queue and people shall soon be deluged by MUSIC, gossip and non-stop chatting. AWAZEIN FM Radio KEE is an effort to look into the lives, liking and disliking of Radio Jockeys. >From some 200 hours of recordings I’ll be presenting an edited and digitally mixed and mastered SOUND COLLAGE. 5.45-6.15 Lecture-demonstration: Urmila Bhirdikar, “The Relationship between the Production and Consumption of Thumri and Allied Forms: The Female Impersonator – Bal Gandharva” Urmila Bhirdikar teaches English at The Mahindra United World College of India, Pune. She is a student of music, and her research areas are music and female impersonation. In my paper I introduce the Marathi Sangit Natak in the late 19th and early 20th century as simultaneously embedded in the tradition of theatre and music and searching for respectability and ‘modernity’. I propose music as the prime location from which some of the implications of these contestations can be looked at. I discuss the practice of music composition in this theatre as the point of entry and lead it into understanding the eclecticism of this theatre in tune selections and the forms of citations it produces through this. In the second section I introduce the production and circulation of thumri and allied forms through early gramophone records and the expansion of the field of citation of new tunes for the music of Marathi plays. Through a detailed analysis of the songs of the women singers and Balgandharva’s songs I discuss the further implications of this for the development of the discourse of respectability as well as the representation of women through the practice of female impersonation. I also discuss along with this some effects of the popularity of the gramophone records on the musical practices in Maharashtra. In my presentation I will read part of the paper and play recordings of some of the women singers and Balgandharva and his contemporaries. Thursday, 25 August 10.00-11.30 Plotting Economic Geographies 1. Vandana Swami, “An Allegorical, Historical Journey into the Archives of the Great Indian Peninsular Railway” Vandana Swami is a graduate student in the Sociology Department, State University of New York, Binghamton. She is working on her Ph D thesis that explores the relationship between the construction of railways in colonial india and the transformation of the spatial ecology of the area, focussing on the district of Khandesh to discuss these changes. The arrival of modern industrial railway technology in a predominantly agrarian landscape under the sway of colonial power brought about many significant and deep-rooted changes in the area known as the ‘Bombay Deccan’ . In this paper, my central question pertains to a critical analysis of these changes in the context of railway construction in Khandesh during the mid to late 19th century. I wish to examine the complex nature of impacts that were experienced in Khandesh during this time-period through the lenses of environmental history of colonial India, arguably a severely under-researched and neglected field of history-writing in India. Based on the archival records I have located, I would focus on how the forests of Khandesh became one of the primary suppliers of timber logs for railway construction in this area. I would discuss the strategies through which forests of Khandesh became the target of colonial governmentality and through this, also talk about how the colonial state consolidated its own power and control over this region. Another important area of concern for me, even though it would figure only as an underlying concern in this particular paper is the question of ‘nature’. Steering clear from specialist definitions of ‘environment/ecology/nature’ and ‘environmental history/ecological history’, I wish to propose a dynamic understanding of categories of environment, ecology and nature . I argue that the current environmental crisis that our society finds itself in has historical roots that need to be examined. We need to ask ourselves the question: what has been the nature of human interaction with ‘nature’ over time? 2. S. Ananth, “The Culture of Business: The Informal Sector and Finance Business in Vijaywada” S.Ananth has been a lecturer at Andhra Loyola College, Vijayawada since 1993 and is concurrently engaged in his doctoral research. The first part of the paper traces nature, dynamics and cultural practices of the finance business in Vijayawada while the second part of the paper traces the origin, history and business practices of the largest unique, unofficial, illegal ‘stock exchange’ of Vijayawada, Andhra Pradesh – the Vijayawada Share Brokers Welfare Association which flourished during the early 1990’s. The paper analyses the functioning of the various types of finance business in the formal as well as the informal sphere. The paper argues that a large number of practices in Vijayawada (many of which may not be considered to be strictly legal within the ambit of the law) are considered to be everyday practices and their acceptability by people of the region is historically rooted. These perceptions are especially visible in field of borrowing lending practices (finance sector) and in the stock market culture of the region. This paper attempts to fill the gaps in the existing literature on the practices in urban finance businesses. It borrows concepts from cultural studies and attempts to reinterpret business practices. 3. Prasad Shetty, “Stories of New Entrepreneurship” Prasad Shetty studied architecture and specialised in urban management. He has taught at the KRV Institute of Architecture in Mumbai where he also coordinated the research and consultancy wing. He presently works as a researcher and an urban development consultant and is also a member of the Collective Research Initiatives Trust (CRIT). Contemporary reconfigurations in city economy are most evident when one finds classified government documents or bank cheques being produced in a neighbourhood slum. The rising demand for cheap labour and state’s embracement of global restructurings have significantly contributed towards these reconfigurations, which began with a systematic dismantling of the formal industry and labour subsequently giving birth and nurturing a new breed – the entrepreneur agents. Their tasks included: organising material and labour and give the cheapest bid for production like the Pepsi bottle cap manufacturer or the bank cheque printer; creating demand and selling, like the Amway Agents; felicitating resources and managing crises, like the computer-wallas, or even chit fund operators who arrange quick finances; and brokering knowledge and skills like training people in computer handling, public speaking etc. In this paper, through a documentation of forty such entrepreneur agents, I aim to construct the context for imagining the contemporary city as a city of entrepreneur agents. The full paper is available at: http://www.crit.org.in/members/prasad/Stories%20of%20Entrepreneurship.pdf 4. Faraaz Mehmood, “A Study of Changing Banking Practices in Udaipur” Faraaz Mehmood is an MBA from Udaipur,Rajasthan. He is interested in economic journalism, and is currently treating an unnamed private sector bank as a transit lounge. 11.45-12.45 Imprinting Identities – 1 1. Uddipan Dutta, “The Growth of Print Nationalism and Assamese Identity in Two Early Assamese Magazines” Uddipan Dutta did his M.A (linguistics)from Delhi University in the year 2001. After that, he has been engaged in various research projects in North East India. He currently works as a Research Fellow in Omeo Kumar Das Institute of Social Change and Development, Guwahati. “A language is a dialect which has an army and a navy” is commonly heard in the linguistics classroom as there is no linguistic parameter to differentiate a language from a dialect except the power relationship. But language- dialect difference is often invoked in the imagination of a nation. The advent of print has the most significant influence upon the arbitrariness of the concept of language as well as nation. Speakers of the huge varieties of a ‘single language’ might find it difficult or even impossible to understand one another in conversation became capable of comprehending one another via print and paper. Print has taken the role of selecting, codifying and finally making a particular variety the standard variety in many of the world’s languages, and thereby enabling the people to imagine to be the members of a particular speech community and later on to assert its identity in a geographical space. The processes of standardization of language, growth of nationalism and the development of the print culture go in parallel and operate through a rather complex dynamics. The issue “whether Assamese is a ‘language’ or a ‘dialect’” and the advent of printing press to influence this issue was quite important for the growth of Assamese nationalism within the British India and later within the Indian Union. Arunodoi, the first Asssamese magazine/ newspaper was published in 1846 from the Mission press Sibsagar by the American Baptist Missionaries. Jonaki, on the other hand was the journal brought out in Calcutta in the year 1889 by Ax1omiā Bhāxa Unnati Xādhini Xobhā2, the students’ body with an ideological slant for a linguistic nationalism. It is the endeavour undertaken by the native middle class grown up with English education. The embryonic form of Print Nationalism founded in the pages of Arunodoi gets matured in the pages of Jonaki. The present study is an attempt to recount this journey from the unconscious to the conscious by reading through the pages of these two magazines. Another important aspect of Assamese nationalism is fear of and hatred for the outsiders in the collective unconsciousness of the people. We can trace this fear and trauma to the massive migration leading to a drastic alteration of the demography of the region in a period of not more than 150 years. We can also see how well this massive migration was prognosticated in the pages of Jonaki. 2. T.P. Sabitha, “Early Women’s Magazines in Kerala and the Construction of Femininity” Sabitha T. P. is a lecturer in English at Hansraj College, Delhi University, a translator, and a poet in Malayalam. ("FEMININE FORMS: IDEAL WOMANHOOD AND EARLY WOMEN'S MAGAZINES IN KERALA") My work for the Sarai project has been on women’s magazines in Kerala from 1886 to1926 and the ways in which different kinds of femininities (sometimes contrary to each other) are discursively produced, circulated and determined in this period. 1886 is the year in which the first magazine – Keraliya Sugunana Bodhini – that is primarily intended for women readers comes out. I have chosen to end my study in 1926 because that is the year of publication of Vanitakusumam, the first overtly political women’s magazine that addresses the question of women’s “rights”, thus taking it into a different discursive realm from the earlier magazines which are mainly engaged in an educative and moral agenda (similar to that of conduct magazines in Britain). In my presentation I will concentrate on two aspects of my work, viz., the logical and ideological types of arguments that are mobilised in order to advocate or oppose certain modes of education for women, which then further endorse or construct certain notions concerning ideal femininity that are themselves culturally and historically determined. Some of these argumentative forms are: the idealist, the rational humanist, the rational-scientific, the pragmatic, the moral and the aesthetic. After dwelling on these kinds of arguments and their various intersections, I will look at the ends to which they are employed. I then intend to trace the chronological changes in these arguments and look at the points at which they metamorphose into related, but discursively different modes of arguments. In the last part of my presentation I will attempt to identify the indigenous and colonial sites from which these seem to originate, thus trying to understand the location of gender in a larger framework of colonial modernity that is specific to Kerala. 1.45-3.15 Imprinting Identities – 2 1. Himanshu Ranjan, “Hindi-Urdu Kshetra ke Ek Sanskritik Kendra ke Roop mein Ilahabad ka Vikas aur Hastakshep” (The Development of Allahabad and its Intervention as a Cultural Centre of the Hindi-Urdu Belt) Himanshu Ranjan is at present a freelance journalist. He was previously attached with the Hindi daily "Amrit Prabhat" and worked there in different capacities-- as magazine editor, assistant editor etc. From his university days, he has been involved in socio political and cultural activities, on and off the campus. The centrality that Allahabad possessed in any sphere of the national perspective is an established fact, politics and culture being specifically the two. Renaissana and Nationalism in the husk culture of the United Provinces (i.e. Hindi-Urdu belt) were delayed ones and the same can be attributed to the emergence of Allahabad as a cultural centre which projected itself as the most burning platform for nationalism as well, comparatively late in the twentieth century. Due to historical reasons and compulsions together with the orientalist-colonial manoeuvres the elite politics of India in the mid-nineteenth century took a communal turn first of all in this very belt that polarised the entire plurality of the country into two religious communities of the Hindus and the Muslims. Consequently, the communal divide expressed itself in the congruence of the religious and linguistic primary fervours of nationalism. Muslim separatism manifested itself through the Aligarh Movement which fought for the Muslim cause and, to begin with, that of the Urdu language also. Benaras and Allahabad happened to be two of the most ancient centres of Hinduism which, as priviledged constituencies, organised and promoted the Nagari and Cow-protection movements to the end of the nineteenth Century. Being the safer and exclusive constituency for Hindu religious activities patronised by the Raja of Benaras, excluded from the administrative engagements of both the Mugal period and the colonial one and having less impact of the composite culture of the two religious communities, Benaras superceded, in the first instance, in carrying out the aforesaid movements. Literary magazines and vernacular newspapers supporting the movements were being published from both the centres and also from smaller centres and towns like Kanpur, Mirzapur, Lucknow (the biggest centre of Muslim culture and Urdu after Aligarh movement-wise) etc. But a good number of litterateurs, journalists and literary institutions were there in Benaras only. Madan Mohan Malviya, one of the giant personalities of the movements belonged to Allahabad, and being the most efficient activist and organiser played leading role in both the centres and made a link between the two. Malviya won the Nagari battle and in the very dawn of the twentieth century he managed to shift the business partly to Allahabad, his own home city, in an elaborated form, keeping in reserve a greater cause for Benaras of establishing the Hindu University there in the second decade. With the rapid growth of literacy, education and press, Allahabad developed a variety of means and ways to promote the causes of national language, national culture and national movement. Newspapers, in Hindi and English both, journals and literary magazines were launched. The Indian Press started the publication of the most reputed Hindi literary magazine the 'Saraswati' in 1900 which proved to be a launching pad for the new generation of Hindi litterateurs under the editorship of Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi who took charge in 1903 and served on the post upto 1921. Dwivedi is said to be the maker of modern Hindi. He standardised the language and through the writings of his own on various subjects and encouraging the new writers for the same, he contributed to the cause of national awakening. Besides, with publications on different subjects and disciplines in Hindi, English and Bengali, the Indian Press made its contribution in expansion of education and learning. It was the first publisher of Tagore's books, and returned its copyrights to him without taking any money when he was arranging the same on a larger scale for a greater cause of establishing Shantiniketan. But the HIndi movement of Malviya, in its true sense, was advanced through Hindi Sahitya Sammelan, established by Malviya himself in 1910. It was the further extention of the work done through Nagari Pracharini Sabha of Benaras. Purushottam Das Tondon, another pioneer of the Hindi movement, assisted Malviya in establishing and running the institution. Annual conventions for the promotion of Rastrabhasa Hindi and publications of further researches in Hindi were its main business. The difference between the approaches of the Sammelan and the Indian Press is noteworthy. The former worked strictly on the Hindu-Hindi plank of Malviya and the Benaras school, while the latter was a bit liberal Dwivedi himself was a straunch Rastrabhasa promoter but had a tolerent attitude towards Urdu. In principle he advocated for the promotion of all the provincial languages and worked partly on the same line which was further explored and advanced by Gandhi just after his exit. Gandhi was a different man. He had nothing to do with the Hindi-movement, and not the least with the Hindu-Hindi agenda. Rastrabhasa was not his sole concern.He was the architect of Indian nationalism in its true sense and appeared on the scene when diverse undercurrents were conglomerating but not finding the way out. He did nothing but led them all towards mass-movement. Congress gained the real ground and under his leadership it became the umbrella encompassing the various nationalist ideologies and men of different orientations. But Gandhi himself was a make of his own. With his peculiar moral vision he had a 'national-popular' appeal. Rastrabhasa Hindi (later Hindustani) became the vehicle of nationalism, which beyond its local and regional roots and stem, acquired an All India character and role as a link language for the entire population of different languages and cultures of the country. In Gandhi's vision, this Rastrabhasa never thought of ruling the people, but represented the people's revolt against the ruling imperial language English. He tried his best to control the sectarian and communal tendencies of the Sammelan but ultimately failed. The spatial expansion of Hindi on national scale inflicted a feeling of intense ambition not only in the Sammelan men like Tondon and co., but also in academic scholars. The oriental-revivalist trends had already helped in creating a grand myth of the Hindu civilization. The two scholars - Dhirendra Verma and Rahul Sankrityayan - represented the spatial and temporal dimentions of the restructured 'Akshayavat' of Hindi. Verma's book 'Madhyadesh' still stands and provides the ground for advocating 'Hindi Pradesh'. Ram Bilas Sharma, a straunch marxist, picked it up and submerged it in his nationality-discourse. Rahul was also a marxist and a man of mass movement, but his orientalist scholarly investigations left little room for realistic accommodation with the present state of affairs. He had great many right deviations in his thought and action, walking on the foot-steps of his party CPI which, through its crude and mechanical nationality-discourse, endorsed the two-nation theory of the Muslim League and paved the way for the partition of the country. But the historic contribution of Rahul lies on a different plane. It was he who first of all and possibly the last one, till today, advocated the case of the so-called regional dialects of Hindi and their right to grow freely on nationality-line. Hindi has been claiming for the entire territorial space of the Hindi-Urdu belt and its historicity as well, for itself. About two dozen languages, many of them having great literary traditions, are doomed to be treated as mere dialects of Hindi and to submerge their identities in the so-called 'national' interest. Gandhi also advised for the same kind of sacrifice. Rahul developed his thesis on Russian line of nationality - discourse for languages which could not be mechanically applied in the Indian context, particularly on that very historic stage. After all the centrality of the emerging nation-state was also a hard historic reality. Being the headquarter of the Congress and the centre of nationalist movement for decades, Allahabad witnessed all such developments in the arena of culture also. Besides, Allahabad has also in its credit the growth of Hindi literature from Dwivedi-yug to Nai Kavita, through different literary movements. This growth was not beyond the aforesaid development line of Hindi language. The composite impact of modernity, secularism and that of socialism also, was an intrinsic undercurrent which did litle on its own, but controlled the entire phenomenon and checked the deviations and deformations to be worse. 2. Jitendra Srivastava, “Ek Shahar ke Roop mein Gorakhpur ki Pehchan mein Gita Press aur Kalyan ki Bhoomika” (Role of Gita Press and Kalyan in the Making of Gorakhpur’s Identity) 3. Anurag, “Laghu Patrika Andolan: Abhivyakti ke Naye Aayam, Ek Padtal” (Little Magazine Movement: New Dimensions of Expression) 3.30-5.30 Assembling the Textured Narrative 1. Rochelle Pinto, “Manuel in the City: A Semi-Fictionalised Illustrated Book on the Arrival and Absorption of Goan Migrants to Mumbai” Rochelle Pinto is Associate Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society in Bangalore. She completed her PhD. thesis, 'The Formation of a Divided Public: Print, Language, and Literature in colonial Goa', from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, in 2003. ("ENCOUNTERING THE CITY THROUGH PRINT") This project has emerged from two impetuses linked to research that I did for my PhD thesis on Goa. The first is the realisation that it is impossible to tell a history of nineteenth and twentieth century Goa, without recounting a history of migration. The second was the realisation that very little of my research was accessible outside of a non-academic audience. Neither within standard literary histories, nor within popular representations among Goans in India, is the experience of migration recorded. The encoding of migration through nostalgia, and through the retrieval of oral history has largely been the preserve of Goans outside the nation. For those who live within India but outside of Goa, links to Goa are still alive, and often negate the need for a historicising of migration, except in familial contexts. There are aspects of migration and the inhabitation of urban space, however, that indicate that the existence of a migrant community outside of Goa enabled interventions within Goan politics, and the development of new relations towards Goa and its history. One of the most striking features of the milieu of migrant Goans, is the degree to which their existence in the city of Bombay was threaded through with print. The print market of Bombay allowed a class other than the Goan elite access to print. The migration of elite and non-elite groups to Bombay had changed the terms of their encounter. Within Konkani newsprint, non-elite Goans had expressed their disappointment with the Goan bourgeoisie who, outside the sphere of benevolent feudalism that bound both into close dependent relations of landlord and tenant, had completely abandoned any economic responsibility towards them. The notoriously more systematic British colonial state also provided a socio-political grid which formed the ground for a hostile encounter between both classes. Elite Goans began to accept and contribute to the criminalised representations of non-elite, especially working class Goans, in reports of the police, medical, and municipal establishments under the British colonial state. This presentation attempts to communicate the nature of print and of urban experience that was a source for the construction of a fictional narrative. 2. Vasudha Joshi, “History and Storytelling about Kolkata and Howrah: Integrating Narratives and Database” Vasudha Joshi is a former TV journalist turned independent documentary filmmaker. 3. Soudhamini, “Madurai: Mythical City – Representations Old and New” Soudhamini is a film-maker from Chennai who has always worked in the field of culture, and in the cusp between non-fiction and fiction. She has an M.A. in English and is a graduate in Film Direction from FTII, Pune. Her best known work to date is Pitru Chayya, inspired by the music of Carnatic maestro M.D.Ramanathan. (including 6-minute video excerpt) Insights gained and introduction to the video material being submitted to the sarai archives. 1. Culture as shoring up – against natural calamities and against the gradual erosion of time. 2. What does one store – the essentials. history and personal emotion. History + emotion = culture. 3. Night vision – looking at the chaos of the contemporary (all contemporary is by definition chaotic, being in-process) without imposing inherited structures. The prehensile – seize the night. 4. Between points b. and c. a rupture. 5. The researcher as sensor not censor. Mythic speech not mythic structure. 4. Vijender Singh Chauhan, “Beeti Vibhavari Jaag Ri: Dilli ke City-scape mein Dik wa Kaal” (Time and Space in the Cityscape of Delhi) chauhan. यह देखो यादों का एक चौराहा लेकिन रुको इस रास्‍ते से उस पर न दौड़ो किसी और याद से जा टकराओगे और याद का याद से टकराना दुर्घटना भर नहीं है यह बिग-बैंग है यहीं से शुरु हुआ ब्रह्मांड और समय माफ करना आंइस्‍टीन तुम्‍हें कविता में घसीटना अच्‍छा तो नहीं लगता/पर मुझे तुम ही सबसे विश्‍वसनीय गवाह दीख पड़ते हो बताओ इन्‍हें कि तुम 'याद' भर हो हर सत्‍य 'याद' भर है और यह शहर है यादों का जखीरा This work is a literary construct of pre-dawn Delhi as city. Its not 'real' Delhi nor it is 'beautiful' Delhi. It is imagined reality of 'dark' Delhi. A dead migrant from Purvanchal narrates it from mortuary. Images of memory, imagination, dreams and experiences in Delhi' cityscape are not essentially in plane and straight geometry. From the perspective of time Delhi's cityscape is an inverted pyramid whose present weighs heavily on its past. Methodology includes poetic observations and documentation of pre-dawn Delhi. Images, Imagination, Memory and Experiences were major tools used. Interviews of migrants, locals and visitors were conducted. Touch, smell and sounds of city were also included in the works though with not much success. 5.50-6.20 Lecture Demonstration: Sumangala Damodaran, “Protest Through Music: A Documentation and Analysis of the Structure, Content and Context of the Musical Tradition of the IPTA” Sumangala Damodaran is a teacher of Economics at Lady Shri Ram College for Women, University of Delhi. She has been involved with the protest music tradition in Delhi since the early 1980s as a singer and used to belong to a group called Parcham that was based in Delhi and performed in various parts of the country for about two decades. I have documented many of the songs that were written and sung as part of the repertoire of the IPTA in Hindi and Bengali in the 1940s and some part of the 1950s. I have done this through collecting old recordings, wherever available and also requesting some of the singers of the time to sing some of the songs for me briefly, to get a sense of the tunes and manner of singing. I will present my research through an oral presentation of the major genres as I have been able to categorise the music into, with recordings to illustrate them. I will also attempt to address some major questions that constituted the starting point for this research project. These questions essentially have to do with the relative importance of form and content in the songwriting of the time, on whether the music that was created experimented with different forms and broke/challenged canonical traditions or not, and so on. While a more elaborate analysis of the questions can be done only with further research, particularly in other languages as well, my presentation will only briefly address the questions. Friday, 26 August 10.00-11.30 Anatomy of Urban Fantasies – 1 1. Sovan Tarafder, “A Brief History of New Urban Leisure in Kolkata” Sovan Tarafder is a journalist working in ABP's editorial section and his area of interest is visual culture. He is specially intrigued by the space of the urban and is doing his Ph.D on the interlinks between Bangla film and the city-space of Kolkata. The buzzword in the present socio-politico-economic space in Kolkata is Development. This has virtually emerged as the concept that has followers cutting across the rival political camps. While the city of Kolkata has been mesmerized by the tune of developmentality, the contemporary city-space has strategically been placed onto a future perfect that promises wealth and glory. Now being developed means in effect being more modern and more urban in accordance with the paradigm of development followed by no other than Jawaharlal Nehru. His statement – We want to urbanize the village, not take away the people from village to towns” – would fit nicely into the lips of Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the present Chief Minister of West Bengal. The new urban leisure is engaged with development in terms of new displacement. The essence of development according to the Human development Reports of UNDP is the ‘enlargement of people’s choices’. The entertainment sector in Kolkata has developed visibly in terms of the enlargement of choices. However, the discourse of development / urbanization / modernization here has gained a self-validating authority that is predicated on the logos of development and that visibly steamrolls all the counter-discourse that seeks to problematize the project. The urban appropriates the rural, and then simulates the rural within its own space only to defamiliarise the urban to its inhabitants. In the process, it gets itself reinforced. 2. Lakshmi Kutty, “High Rise Hygiene: Narrativising Mumbai’s New Urban Culture” 3. Prayas Abhinav, “Publicity Promises in the Public Space in Ahmedabad” Prayas Abhinav is a writer and artist living in Ahmedabad. He works in health communications and is presently with CHETNA (Centre for Health Education Training and Nutrition Awareness) in Ahmedabad. He has written a cute script for a short-film and is now searching for a producer. The objective behind my project was to study the advertisements in Ahmedabad’s Public spaces. Do a visual and literary interplay involving the hoardings in Ahmedabad and how we are pulled/romanced constantly by them. This work tells a personal story of living in a city in confusion, query and irony. The multi-media approach to this project reflects on my wish to create a richer, fuller experience of this story. There are elements of recording, memory, commentary and romance in these works. I have used the language and stance of the rational-commercial interest in developing the city and of the popular opinions and criticisms of the advertising industry. My voice in this process talks of the experience – of constantly facing the hoardings, being wooed, rationalizing their existence, and at the same time feeling irritated, resentful and uncomfortable. My story is this complex and confusing experience and I hope the narrative which emerges from my work conveys this. 11.45-12.45 Anatomy of Urban Fantasies – 2 1. Mario Rodrigues, “The Political Sociology of Golf in South Asia” Mario Rodrigues is Special Correspondent of The Statesman based in Mumbai and is in journalism for nearly 25 years. He has contributed to a few books and is also the author of the controversial “Batting for the Empire – A Political Biography of Ranjitsinhji” (Viking Penguin). • The first point: why golf? Because it is more than a game today. It has become a multi-million dollar industry and a driver of economies impacting on business, politics, diplomacy, military matters, lifestyle, real estate and tourism. • Focus on India: The golf boom in recent times is intrinsically linked to the liberalisation and globalisation of the economy which has opened the country up for investment by global and domestic capital. • Golf & Militarism: Spread on the wings of British imperialism, golf became the favourite sport of despots and military juntas all over the world. This is true especially in the Asian context, especially in Pakistan, Burma and the former military dictatorships of Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines. In India too the sport is dominated by the military which controls over 70 per cent of the golf courses. • Excesses and illegalities of golf projects: Over the last decade golf has also become a much reviled four letter-word connected with excesses and illegalities concerning illegal acquisition of large tracts of land, forcible displacement of tribals and traditional residents, desecration or alternation of the natural environment, excessive use of pesticides and depletion of water resources. The Global Anti-Golf Movement was formed in 1993 to oppose golf projects in South-East Asia especially. Such excesses and illegalities have been replicated in India at controversial golf projects in Srinagar, Chandigarh, Gurgaon, Lonavla and Mumbai. • Finally, a look at the plight of caddies and a exposition on the theme of golf being positioned as a gentleman’s game: Do Indian CEOs cheat at golf? 2. Pankaj Rishi Kumar, “Ponytails-Rings-Punches: Female Boxers in India” Pankaj Rishi Kumar a is a documentary filmmmaker. A graduate from FTII with a specialisation in Film Editing, he started making his own films in 97. His films have been screened at festivals all over the world: KUMAR TALKIES (98), Pather Chujaeri (2001) MAT (2003) 3 Men and a Bulb (2005). His current film on women boxing is a work in progress. (video presentation) The female boxers in India operate from isolated and invisible pockets. The objective of the film is to document the voice and journey of a community of female boxers towards self-articulation of their hopes, dreams, desires and struggles. This would be reinforced by a realisation that it is ‘ normal ‘ to be strong, physical and athletically talented. 1.45-3.15 Trajectories of Work and Experience 1. Nagarik Mancha, “Factory Closures, Plight of Workers and Urban Space” 2. Syed Khalid Jamal, “Work Culture in Fast Food Chains” A new work can be seen in the work cuture of fast food joints. It intends to blur the line between work and leisure.This culture is informal, youthful and is both, aggressive and pro-active in its presentation. The ingredients of this culture are: English, preferably with an accent, positive body language,"attitude", use of technology and use of mass media. The motto of this culture is to MAKE THINGS HAPPEN. My research broadly studied: Smile. Relationships Mobility. I will read out, in bits and parts, from training manuals, in house publications,test papers,and newspaper clippings to demonstrate the work culture in fast food chains. 3. Kuldeep Kaur, “The Hospital Labour Room as a Space for Unheard Voices” 3.30-5.00 The City and its Strangers 1. Subhalakshmi Roy and Bodhisattva Kar, “Messing with the Bhadraloks: Towards a Social History of the Mess Houses in Calcutta, 1890s-1990s” Subhalakshmi Roy teaches Bengali literature in Prafulla Chandra College, Calcutta. Bodhisattva Kar is a Ph D student at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. The two got married during the course of their Sarai-CSDS Independent Research Project! 2. Abdus Salam, “Strangers in the City: the Lives and Longings of Bangladeshi Immigrants in Guwahati” 3. Debkamal Ganguly, “The Culture of Crime Pulp Fiction in Bengal” Deb Kamal Ganguly graduated from the Satyajit Ray Film & TV Institute, Kolkata. He is a TV professional and has worked in internationally acclaimed short films and documentaries as editor, associate director, script writer. Apart from his Sarai project, he is presently working on silent Indian cinema as a fellowship project from the National Film Archive of India. In the presentation I would like to highlight the central theme of my research i.e. the juvenile crime fictions of a pulp writer in Bengal, Swapankumar. He has written extensively in the post-independent period, and I would like to show that his stories are a part of an ‘alternative’ historiography considering the general historiography of crime narratives in Bangla. Moreover these stories work as an inverse thesis to the dominant rhetoric of ‘clue-puzzle’ in Bangla crime tales. Some of the narrative characteristics of Swapankumar’s stories would be discussed and some relevant predecessors (mostly from colonial period) of Swapankumar, in terms of narrative strategies, would also be introduced. In this process, it would be intended to show how these crime fictions, starting from the indigenous popular tradition in Bat-tala publication in colonial Bengal up to the writings of Swapankumar in post-colonial period, cut across the dominant discourse of colonial/national ‘modernity’. Those distinct departures undertaken by the crime tales from the notions of ‘modernity’, have created a zone of ‘un-reason’ beyond the scope of instrumental rationality. 5.30-6.00 Presentation / Performance: Mahmood U. R. Farooqui, “Tale Tellers: Dastangoyee – The Culture of Story Telling in Urdu” Mahmood Farooqui is a Delhi based writer and performer and sometime historian. The Dastan-e Amir Hamzah published by the Nawal Kishore Press, Kanpur between 1880 and 1910 in forty-six huge volumes is the most outstanding achievement of Urdu prose. The printed versions of this Dastan emerged from a centuries old tradition of oral narration, Dastangoi. Unlike folk-storytelling, Dastangoi was considered a high profession. Since the times of Akbar the dastango had been inducted into the court. They were included among the retainers of nobility; and poets and writers consulted them as lexical authorities. As listening to dastan recitals became a popular pastime for all classes, from Ghalib’s soirees to the streets of Jama Masjid, the dastango acquired a mass audience before it got printed. That it came at a time when Urdu fiction was still in its infancy and that the fact that it was anti-novel in its intention and effect has caused it to be criminally marginalised in criticism and discussion within the world of Urdu letters itself. My presentation will include a demonstration of the Art of Dastangoi, as I grope my way around the methods of those masterly performers, from the Tilism-e Hoshruba as well as a very brief talk about the extract that I have chosen to recite. A separate full length paper would be circulated alongside a glossary of the characters. Saturday, 27 August 10.30-12.30 Affects and Effects of Neighbourhoods 1. Meera Pillai, “Foodcourts and Footbridges: Conceptualising Space in Vijaywada Railway Station” 2. Sudeshna Chatterjee, “Children’s Friendship with Place: Investigating Environmental Child Friendliness for Children in New Delhi” Sudeshna Chatterjee is an architect and urban researcher. She has worked with the Habitat International Coalition as an advocate of child rights to secure the human right to an adequate standard of living for children in South Asia. Sudeshna is a partner in the architectural practice Kaimal Chatterjee & Associates in New Delhi, and is pursuing a Phd in environmental design at N C State University in Raleigh, NC. She is a visiting faculty in the Department of Urban Design at School of Planning and Architecture, and mentors dissertations for advanced architecture students at the TVB School of Habitat Studies. Sudeshna’s research interests include humanizing cities, and understanding the processes involved in making cities friendly for children and youth in the developing world. ("NIZAMUDDIN BASTI IN THE LIVES OF ITS CHILDREN: A SOCIO-SPATIAL STUDY OF ENVIRONMENTAL CHILD FRIENDLINESS IN A CONTESTED LOW-INCOME DELHI NEIGHBOURHOOD") The central objective of this empirical study was to understand under what conditions children come to think of places in their living environment as “friendly”. A firm believer in the Einsteinian dictum: “Thinking without the positing of categories and concepts in general would be as impossible as breathing in vacuum” (Einstein, 1949), I had developed a theoretical framework in a peer-reviewed paper titled “Children’s Friendship with Place: A Conceptual Inquiry” (Chatterjee 2005). In this paper, I had argued that in order for child-friendly cities to have any real meaning for children we need to explore the conceptual possibilities of place friendship in the tradition of similar studies in place attachment and place identity in childhood After reviewing the literature on friendship, I developed a framework for envisioning child-friendly places by deconstructing six essential conditions of friendship (Doll 1996): mutual affection and personal regard; shared interests and activities; commitment; loyalty; self-disclosure and mutual understanding; and horizontality. These concepts, when translated into environmental terms with the help of literature from the fields of environment-behavior, environmental psychology and children’s geography, help to define a child-friendly place from a socio-physical perspective (Chatterjee 2005). I conducted my fieldwork, in Nizamuddin Basti, a low-income historic settlement in central New Delhi with a large child population, to understand how children develop place friendship. My eclectic ethnographic strategies included an initial semi-structured interview with a carefully constructed sample of thirty-one 11 and 12 year old Muslim children from different forms of families, and backgrounds (Bihari-, Bengali-, Bangladeshi migrants, older settlers from UP and Punjab, and some native Nizamuddin villagers). This interview was designed to get nominations from children about places in their local area, which allow them to fulfill the dimensions of place friendship. As there were six dimensions to place friendship that I wanted to explore, the first six questions probed if there were places in the children’s everyday environment that 1) demonstrated environmental care and provided space for them to participate in the caring of the environment, 2) offered opportunities to the child to engage with the environment on an everyday basis, 3) allowed the child to learn and gain competence by engaging with the environment, 4) allowed the child to control the environment in any given time on his/her own terms, 5) facilitated creation and nurturing of secret places, and 6) allowed the child to freely explore and express herself/himself in the environment. I further probed the meaning of each of these interactions under each category of friendly places, and went on field trips with children to record their on-site narratives describing their feelings about places. Though this is a work in progress with considerable hanging out still happening every week in the basti, my data suggests that Nizamuddin basti inspite of being a contested urban settlement that has accumulated several different negative stereotypes related to poor Muslims, and environmental degradation typical of Indian slums, provide a sustainable habitat for poor Muslim families, and a culturally rich socio-physical environment that children find friendly at many levels. My presentation at Sarai, will give a flavor of the findings through a powerpoint presentation, and touch upon the analysis of two dimensions of friendly places. In my analysis I adopted a postmodernist culture-studies approach to the study of Delhi as a child friendly city. 3. Madhavi Desai, “Women and their Spatial Narratives in the City of Ahmedabad” Madhavi Desai has an M. Arch from the University of Texas at Austin, USA. She is an adjunct faculty at the School of Architecture, CEPT, Ahmedabad, India since 1986. She has had earlier research fellowships from ICSSR, and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture in MIT, USA. She is the co-author of Architecture and Independence: The Search for Identity: India 1880 to 1980, Oxford University Press, New Delhi. She is also the author of Traditional Architecture: House Form of Bohras in Gujarat, English Edition, Mumbai, and the editor of Women and the Built Environment in India, Zubaan, New Delhi (both forthcoming). Currently she is engaged in researching for a book on Women Architects in India and Sri Lanka with Mary Woods from Cornell University. The city of Ahmedabad is used as a convenient setting for a test case of the study of this nature. The basic premise of the research project is that though the city is theoretically available to all citizens, women are not fully able to physically and culturally participate in it. After introducing the three major parts of the city, I will be focusing on the various issues studied by me. Basically I have looked at the two ends of the urban scales: the individual being (female) on one hand and the city planning process on the other. Focussing on the middle class, this research attempts to document the spatial activities and experiences of women in Ahmedabad in the traditional as well as the modern sections. The research methods used include observation, questionnaires/interviews and map interpretations as well as library research. One of my objectives was to look into women’s notions of what a city is in terms of their image and descriptions. I largely failed to achieve this. Somehow most women said they could not draw and were also unable to give detailed description of their urban image. Like Sudeshna’s concept of “child friendly city”, this work moots a “women friendly city”. There is hardly any literature available on the subject in the subcontinent context. I hope this study, however limited, will be useful to women’s groups, city municipality, designers and city planners. 4. Kaiwan Mehta, “Reading Histories – Migration and Culture: The Politics of Mapping and Representation of Urban Communities” Kaiwan Mehta has studied architecture, literature and Indian Aesthetics and is currently enrolled for a masters in Cultural Studies. He is a lecturer at the K Raheja Institute of Architecture, Mumbai and the Consulting Editor for Architecture – Time, Space and People, the official journal of the Council of Architecture, India. He has published work and presented papers on architectural documentation, representation and teaching history at national and international platforms. ("A HISTORY OF EVERYDAY") History searches for the heroic in the everyday. Conceptually the everyday subverts the heroic. Quoting Blanchot, “the everyday has this essential trait: it allows no hold. It escapes. It belongs to insignificance, and the insignificant is without truth, without reality, without secret, but perhaps also the site of all possible signification(s).” As I have worked on this project, my negotiation with the everyday has become more and more apparent. This project has toyed with various ideas and exercises, much like a rag picker! One has struggled with History, Urban Communities and Representations. One has walked and held innumerable conversations and the power of observation is the greatest tool. As I mentioned once earlier too, it feels like Alice, one is swimming through reality sights and story weavers continuously. This paper will narrate some experiences during this passage. It will try an attempt a single narrative to connect some experiences and observations that came up on the way. I will also attempt at a summary of some ideas like communities and neighbourhoods – representing the locality and writing histories. 1.30-3.00 Tracing the Margins 1. Tasneem, Fatima and Marya, “Death and the Bazaar: A Look at the Death Care Industry” 2. Prem Kumar Tiwari, “Dilli ka ek Pravasi Gaon: Sahipur, Shalimarbagh” (Sahipur: A Migrant Village in Delhi) 3. Sabir Haque, Nidhi Bal Singh, and Leena Rani Narzary, “The Eastern Yamuna River Bed: Ecological Imbalance and Future Implications” The research aims to study the new developments that are being planned in the Eastern Yamuna River bed and document the displacement of the peasants who are pushed to the fringes in the name of development, therefore The first part will consist video recording of interviews of farmers who were displaced from the Yamuna riverbed. They are the eyewitness to the changes that Yamuna has gone through over the years because of human interventions or so- called development along the eastern bank of the river. Meher Singh and Mahavir Singh Tomar are two victims of such development. They will unfold the stories of atrocities faced by them when they were forced to evcuate the land that they had spent their life on so that “ The Akshardham Temple” could take its shape. The second segment will revel the gradual process of changes that were made in the Master- Plan of Delhi by DDA that have led to the canalization of river Yamuna. For this we have a video recording of Mr. Dunu Roy, Director, Hazards Center who explains these changes in a chronological manner. We will also try and bring out what the constructions on the western banks have done to the river. In the third segment we conclude by providing a picture of how history is getting repeated on the eastern banks. DDA has plans for developing the eastern banks of the Yamuna. But are these plans actually for the betterment of the river? Are constructions like Akshardham Temple, Common Wealth Games Village or a Bio-Diversity Park developing the riverbed or constricting it to a narrow drain? 4. Gurminder Singh, “Samaj par Langar ka Arthik wa Samajik Prabhav: Ek Adhyayan” (A Study of the Langar and its Social and Economic Impact) Gurminder Singh was born in Hapur, Utter Pradesh, and educated at Delhi University and H. S. Gaur Vishwavidyalaya, Sagar, M. P. He has worked with the National Literacy Resource Centre, and the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration –Mussoorie. He now works with the National Basic Education Resource Centre, Bhopal, Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samithi, as a researcher. He is working with Dr. Jean Dreze. My research is in Delhi, within the area covered by the Sikh Gurdwara Act. The major Gurdwaras are almost all controlled directly by the Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee. Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee was the body set up by the Delhi Gurdwara Act of 1971 to manage Gurdwara and Gurdwara property within the union territory of Delhi. Delhi has around three hundred Gurdwaras but twelve of the Gurdwara in the Delhi are under the control of DSGPC, they are under the Local Singh Sabha. At the present time the media has begun to cover urdwaras; so there has been an increase in the visitors to langar. In Delhi's historical gurdwaras, there is no such thing as lunch hour and dinner hour. It’s always mealtime here. Food, stay, water, bathing in the Gurdwara are free of cost for everyday. In the Langar hall, men and women play an equal role. In Delhi more than 40 percent of Langar's takers are from a poor background. Many people come to Delhi for hospital treatment; they avail of the Langar. Delhi also has large numbers of homeless people; many people who eat at the Langar are physical handicapped. How the money for Langar is arranged: people give the donation-- “Dan.” Some gurdwaras receive more money than their expenditure but some gurdwaras have more expenditure but receive less money. On balance, the DSGPC receives more money than its spends, but Singh Sabha Gurdwaras experience a financial crunch because they only receive money for their programmes from their local constituencies. 3.15-5.15 Contextualising Trauma 1. Shivam Vij, “The Nature of Ragging in Hostels” Shivam Vij has another eight months before he graduates from St. Stephen's College and starts working as a journalist. He runs the popular ZEST mailing lists on Yahoo! Groups and is a co-initator of The Stop Ragging Campaign and its website, www.stopragging.org. Any discussion on ragging concentrates on the individual fresher who is being ragged. “For some it may be fun but for others it may not be okay.” This approach to ragging inevitably leads to victim-blaming. My research has sought to shift the focus on the ragger, or rather the ragging community: what does ragging achieve in the hostel space? What are the codes of the hostel community? Why is it important for the community that the fresher accept the discourse of ragging? Sociological analyses of ragging, on the other hand, sees ragging as either resulting from social conditions (sexual repression, school discipline, etc) or as performing social functions. Such an approach sees ragging as merely a “rite of passage”, and becomes indifferent to the sheer violence of ragging. The functionalist approach seems to explain away the phenomenon. My paper, on the other hand, seeks to shift the focus to the reactionary ideals of the ragging community. 2. Swara Bhaskar and Moyukh Chatterjee, “Of Riots and Ruins: Space and Violence in Vatva, Ahmedabad” Moyukh Chatterjee is doing his MA in Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics; Swara Bhaskar finished her MA at the Centre for the Study of Social Sciences at JNU. (SAINTS AND SAFFRONISATION: MEMORY, VIOLENCE AND INTER-COMMUNITY RELATIONS IN VATVA, AHMEDABAD") Our research in Ahmedabad is situated in an industrial area on the outskirts of the city called Vatva. This project emerged from our experiences in June 2002 as volunteers in the relief effort post the Gujarat Carnage of 2002. We worked in the Qutb-e-Alam Dargah Camp in Vatva. While writing our proposal for application to the fellowship we had planned to focus our research on 'Space and Violence'. The area we had proposed to study was one of the many sites of violence during the 2002 carnage and was now informed by a post-violence ‘compromised’ peace. We had planned to examine the manner in which the memory of violence is recorded in the physical transformations of space in a violence affected area. We proposed to study the communalisation of space or alternatively the construction of communal identity with the aid of spatial technologies – like 'ghetto-isation' and communal coding of built structures. Our proposal suggested a re-examination of the experience (of minority and majority communities) of 'shared spaces' and the fate of these shared spaces during and after a riot. With this plan we returned to Ahmedabad in 2005, looking for signs – of reconciliation between neighbours; of spatial practices that betrayed a memory of violence; of time-smoothed narratives of betrayal or hope that are made possible only by forgetting – instead we stumbled upon the memory of a ‘golden age’ of religious syncretism and communal harmony. Was this a classic example of nostalgic memories of an unproblematic past, helping the communities to deal with the declining relations of the present and the uncertain future? We discovered an oral history that revealed a 700 year old relationship between the residents of the colonies we were studying. It was a shared history that suggested a legacy of peaceful coexistence until recent times. We then traced the trajectory of these declining relations through the frame of Industrialisation and Urbanisation, trying to locate the link between these phenomena and the Communalisation of social relations. We also made an attempt to examine the role of external forces- political parties (Bajrang Dal mainly) and reform movements (Swadhyay Parivar) in shaping the relations between our three protagonist communities- Muslim, Bharwaad and Vaghri. As we explored this possibility of understanding the trajectory of declining relations between neighbours of different religions, our fieldwork encompassed four colonies Navapura, Saiyidvada, Vaghrivas and Bharwaadvas-located in what was once Vatva Gaam, now industrial wasteland. We conducted interviews, filmed the streets with the local cricket team, took photographs blanched and polarised by the dry summer sun, and approached not very forthcoming organs of the State for official information. We’ve pieced together from the memories of these three communities, living in contiguity with each other- a story of neighbourhoods transformed by borders; of old ties of the Panchayat and participation in each other’s religious festivals- uprooted by the anonymity of forced Industrialisation and Urbanisation; and, of the death of a shared past, with a certain common labour history, of struggling migrants – to the present state of ghettoised existence, the only thing that they now share. 3. Syed Bismillah Geelani, “The Kashmiri Encounter in Delhi” Syed Bismillah Geelani is a Kashmiri student studying in Delhi University. He has been in Delhi since 1996. It was in December 2001 when his brother was arrested and framed in the parliament attack case and he suddenly found his identity changed from Kashmiri student to a brother of a terrorist. Bismillah writes stories and also political features in Urdu and English. 4. Hilal Bhat, “Shrine as an Anodyne in Strife-Torn Kashmir” From postsalam at gmail.com Tue Aug 23 14:11:29 2005 From: postsalam at gmail.com (abdus salam) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 14:11:29 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Abstract of the Presentation- Strangers in the City: The lives and longings of Bagladeshi immigrants in Guwahati. Message-ID: <42fa655b0508230141e8349dd@mail.gmail.com> To understand certain meanings of immigration, of acceptance, of crossing the bridge from being an immigrant to a native, the researcher criss-crossed the length of Guwahati city looking at the clusters of Bengali-origin immigrants in Guwahati. While such clusters can be located all over, for the presentation three specific areas of major concentration- Six-Mile/Panjabari, Hatigaon and Dehan Garigaon/ Bidyanagar would be described in detail. The presentation would involve a decription of conversations the researcher had with representative samples from these aforementioned areas. The acceptance, resentment and co-existence of the 'ethnic Assamese' is also factored in. The researcher felt marrying the 'academic' and 'journalistic' perspectives made for a useful methodoligal device for the paper.The basic theoretical framework is thus derived from two seminal works on Assam by Sanjib Baruah and Sanjoy Hazarika. The researcher was able to lay hand on other related literature of an inflammatory hue that served as an interesting counterpoint and a register of the angst felt by the local community. The researcher initially thought of an expansive section on the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal) Act, to elucidate how Bengali-origin people have been held hostage to it, but with its scrapping by the SC, the section has been substantially pruned. The presentation would also make use of photographs the researcher took during the five-month-long project. A video-clip, illustrative of the 'Bengali' element creeping its way into regional visual media, would also be made use of, provided there is no system malfunction!! Abdus Salam. From basaksenova at yahoo.co.uk Wed Aug 24 02:06:56 2005 From: basaksenova at yahoo.co.uk (basak senova) Date: Tue, 23 Aug 2005 23:36:56 +0300 Subject: [Reader-list] ctrl_alt_del newsletter #2 Message-ID: apologies for any cross-posting.. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| ctrl_alt_del news letter #2 ctrl_alt_del launches on September 16th, 2005 Sound-art festival ctrl_alt_del, will take place in the “positionings” section of the 9th International Istanbul Biennial. The project will launch on September 16th, 2005 with an opening night performance in the city at Balans Music hall, then will continue on the Bosphorus, the Golden Horn, Istanbul Technical University’s MIAM studios, laboratories, library and concert hall till September 22nd. The festival’s three-folded conceptual frame - “the city”, “noise” and “open source”- will be worked into performances, a boat tour, sonic mapping, workshops, and presentations. For further information: http://project-ctrl-alt-del.com blog- http://www.nomad-tv.net/ctrl_alt_del http://www.nomad-tv.net ctrl_alt_del coordinates September 16th Opening Night Balans 22:00 Ran Slavin (IL) REC featuring every kid on speed (MK) Paul Devens (NL) DJ Negma (TR) DJ Selim Cenkel (TR) DJ Reuben De Lautour (NZ/TR) (entrance- Balans: 18 YTL = 10 Euro) September 17th Boat Tour Bosphorus and Golden Horn (for the boarding and landing spot please check a week in advance: http:// www.nomad-tv.net or http://www.nomad-tv.net/ctrl_alt_del ) 11:00 Guided tour of sonic mapping and Istanbul Compilation by MIAM Barkın Engin (TR) Erdem Helvacioğlu (TR) Burak Tamer (TR) Tolga Tuzun (TR) Performances at Golden Horn Boris Hegenbart (DE) - Kadir HasUniversitesi, Cibali Uri Katzenstein (IL) & Binya Reches (IL) - Bulgar Kilisesi, Balat (boat tour: 20 Euro – Reservations recommended via info at nomad-tv.net as the space is limited) September 19th-20th-21st Presentations ITU-MIAM, Macka Campus 19.09 -13:00 InterSpace presentation by Galia Dimitrova (BG) 19.09 -13:30 REC (TR) presentation 19.09 -16:00 Phillipp Misselwitz (DE) & Klaus Obermeyer (DE) presentation - (in the context of "under.ctrl" project) 19.09 -14:00 Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon (IL) presentation by Eyal Danon 20.09 -13:00 Sabreen (Palestine) presentation by Wissam Murad & Wassim Qassis 20.09 -13:30 NOMAD (TR) presentation by Basak Senova & Emre Erkal 20.09 -16:00 Florian Schneider (DE) presentation - (in the context of "under.ctrl" project) 21.09 -13:00 STEIM (NL) presentation by Robert van Heuman 21.09 -16:00 Banu Cennetoglu (TR) presentation - (in the context of "under.ctrl" project - closed session) September 19th-20th-21st Workshops ITU-MIAM, Macka Campus 19-20. 09 -14:00 MIAM Sound analysis and algorithmic composition environment: IRCAM software workshop by Tolga Tuzun (TR) 20.09 -14:00 NOMAD audio-visual workshop on animation by Erhan Muratoglu (TR) 19-20-21.09 -15:00 STEIM LiSa audio-visual workshop by Robert van Heuman (NL) - 3 days 19-20-21.09 -15:30 InterSpace open source workshop by Petko Dourmana (BG), - 3 days 19-20-21.09 -15:30 Bookstr & Global Heart Me ultra-localized radio broadcast and diffusion strategies workshop by Matthieu Prat (FR) & Tal Hadad (FR) 3 days September 19th-20th-21st Performances ITU-MIAM, Macka Campus Mustafa Kemal Anfisi 20:00 Kerem Aksoy (TR), Deniz Arat (TR), Sakir Oguz Buyukberber (TR/NL), Paul Devens (NL), Robert van Heuman (NL), Reuben de Lautour (NZ/TR), Wissam Murad (Palestine), Wassim Qassis (Palestine), SFR (Zafer Aracagök) (TR), Ran Slavin (IL), Pieter Snapper (US/TR), Can Turkinan (TR), Murat Yakin (TR), REC Compilation (TR) - Orçun Basturk, Liz Fando, Tonguc Gokalp, Randiman Kakara, Saska, and Open Call Compilation concerts: Muni Monde, Ozdemir Bayrak, Kerem Guzel, Koray Kantarcioğlu, Solar Duo. (All of the presentations, workshops and performances at ITU are free of charge) The 2005 programme for the ctrl_alt_del project has been developed by Başak Şenova, Emre Erkal, Pieter Snapper, Erhan Muratoglu and Paul Devens. Can Karadoğan is responsible for the logistics of ITU activities as the project coordinator and Nuşin Odelli is in charge of editing of the printed material. The project has received support from NOMAD Project Channel, Istanbul Technical University MIAM (Center for Advanced Musical Studies), Goethe Institut, Istanbul, Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, Consulate-General of the Netherlands, MOAB Foundation, Radio Helsinki, Graz , ekw 14.90, Israel National Lottery Council for the Arts, Israeli Center for Digital Art, Holon, STEIM ( Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music), InterSpace, Sofia, Sabreen Studio, Ford Foundation, Kadir Has University, REC Magazine, Balans, Bant Magazine, e-tasarım and Senkron Publishing. |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| From hight at 34n118w.net Wed Aug 24 14:29:07 2005 From: hight at 34n118w.net (hight at 34n118w.net) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 01:59:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] BINARY KATWALK LAUNCHES AUG 26 Message-ID: <2366.70.34.254.38.1124873947.squirrel@webmail.34n118w.net> Jeremy Hight and Sindee Nakatani are proud to announce the launch of the first edition of the new media exhibition "Binary Katwalk" on Friday August 26, 2005. The works selected were chosen from many strong submissions from around the world. The url will be posted upon launch. fibreculture-request at lists.myspinach.org From jace at pobox.com Wed Aug 24 23:46:34 2005 From: jace at pobox.com (Kiran Jonnalagadda) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 23:46:34 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] What ails the Sarai Reader List? Message-ID: <9A2F8C71-96E5-450F-B168-8A06C51BA78B@pobox.com> Hello all, The Independent Fellows are at Sarai in Delhi for the workshop. I made my presentation today on how form shapes online community. For the sake of illustration, I picked a familiar community, the reader list itself. From empirical evidence, I was aware that several readers have trouble keeping up with the volume of the list. I made a contrast with LiveJournal, another community system which manages to scale to a far higher volume of traffic before it becomes a burden, looking for things they do that the reader list could do with. Due to time constraints, I could not go into as much detail as I'd have liked to. Here are my slides: http://jace.seacrow.com/misc/sarai- rl-lj This has been a great opportunity and I thank everyone who was involved, especially those present today. This was the best response I've had to a presentation yet. I will continue exploring how form shapes community and post to the list as appropriate. -- Kiran Jonnalagadda http://www.pobox.com/~jace From river_side1 at hotmail.com Thu Aug 25 00:32:58 2005 From: river_side1 at hotmail.com (River .) Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2005 19:02:58 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] What ails the Sarai Reader List? In-Reply-To: <9A2F8C71-96E5-450F-B168-8A06C51BA78B@pobox.com> Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050824/be553023/attachment.html From punam.zutshi at gmail.com Thu Aug 25 01:11:03 2005 From: punam.zutshi at gmail.com (punam zutshi) Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 01:11:03 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] What ails the Sarai Reader List? In-Reply-To: <9A2F8C71-96E5-450F-B168-8A06C51BA78B@pobox.com> References: <9A2F8C71-96E5-450F-B168-8A06C51BA78B@pobox.com> Message-ID: <3b7bed85050824124164561745@mail.gmail.com> Greetings! I think the archival problem is an important one to highlight.The Search feature for locating authors and keywords in subject headings would be a real boon. I am not so sure that the question of identity ( supported with photos) bothers me. Call me old fashioned I also baulk at the listing of emotions and other such gambits.That's great for blogspots but a reader list????? What is the problem with a thousand peering while one responds? Yes, one selects the option of a direct response to a list mailer in any case. A quick glance at the slides of your presentation tell me that the form is important most certainly, but is it also the case that there genuinely is a lack of comprehension or interest in some rather than other mails? I respond to this mail of yours as it seems to do with Our List, but I was too mystified by your earlier postings! Is the list crumbling because people would rather lurk than respond or post? Is there a profile of Live Journal Readership as compared to the Sarai List? Yes, but your presentation achieves something very interesting : I am sure a lot of us will want to figure out a little more about what Live Journal is like!! Punam On 8/24/05, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > Hello all, > > The Independent Fellows are at Sarai in Delhi for the workshop. I > made my presentation today on how form shapes online community. For > the sake of illustration, I picked a familiar community, the reader > list itself. > > From empirical evidence, I was aware that several readers have > trouble keeping up with the volume of the list. I made a contrast > with LiveJournal, another community system which manages to scale to > a far higher volume of traffic before it becomes a burden, looking > for things they do that the reader list could do with. > > Due to time constraints, I could not go into as much detail as I'd > have liked to. Here are my slides: http://jace.seacrow.com/misc/sarai- > rl-lj > > This has been a great opportunity and I thank everyone who was > involved, especially those present today. This was the best response > I've had to a presentation yet. > > I will continue exploring how form shapes community and post to the > list as appropriate. > > -- > Kiran Jonnalagadda > http://www.pobox.com/~jace > > > _________________________________________ > 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 mohaiemen at yahoo.com Fri Aug 26 00:07:38 2005 From: mohaiemen at yahoo.com (Naeem) Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 11:37:38 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Leni Riefenstahl In-Reply-To: <20050823100005.C701628D73A@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20050825183738.26749.qmail@web50310.mail.yahoo.com> From: Isaac D W Souweine Leni Riefenstahl. The film is OLYMPIA. Was coupled with TRIUMPH OF THE WILL. Both glorified Nazism, explicitly with Nazi imagery, implicitly with fetishtiz focus on Aryan bodies. TOTW is a film totem, homages abound including the massed-troops scenes in both STAR WARS and STARSHIP TROOPERS. ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com Fri Aug 26 11:34:41 2005 From: mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 23:04:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Hindi little magazines Message-ID: <20050826060441.49191.qmail@web80904.mail.scd.yahoo.com> A piece I wrote on Hindi periodicals sometime ago-both a response and a substantiation of some things Anurag mentioned yesterday... ___________________ HER EDITOR’S VOICE- HINDI PERIODICALS How does it happen that a language supposedly spoken by some 40 crore people, with multi-edition newspapers that have readerships running into several millions, the language of Bollywood and of television, the ‘national language’ of this country in fact, cannot publish more than ten thousand copies of even a best-selling novel? How is it that India’s leading language does not even have a national magazine, commercial or otherwise, worth its name? How does it happen that another language, the one we use in our offices, clubs, media, home, schools, a language where our novelists have dominated virtually an entire decade of world literature does not have a single literary magazine to its credit? How does a literature emerge in the absence of a literary culture? Where are the critics, essayists, satirists, the pink and yellow English writers in India? Hindi, the language that lacks a magazine of any stature can yet support a number of literary periodicals with readerships running into several thousands. Some of them have been around for far longer than any review or magazine anywhere else in India. Hans prints eleven thousands copies every month, Samyantar from Delhi brings out five thousand copies, there is also Pahal, Tadbhav from Lucknow, Vasudha, Pratimaan and several others as well. Ditto for Urdu too. Shabkhoon from Allahabad has been in existence for some forty years, there is also Shaair, Zehen-e-Jadid, Asri Adab, Kitabnuma and so on. Their readers live in the unlikeliest of places, places that last saw glory during the independence movement and have since been falling off the map: cities like Balia, Gaya, Banaras, Gorakhpur, Jhansi. Many obituaries later, small town North India stubbornly lives on. If there are takers for such high brow magazines then there should be takers for serious literature as well? Yet no serious work of fiction or non-fiction in Hindi sells more than ten thousand copies. Partly because the serious Hindi writer/reader has easy access to English and, here it becomes circular, partly because there is little ‘serious’, that is academics/non-fiction etc, literature available in Hindi. And yet the success of the little magazines, the evident hunger with which people demand it, not merely in the mofussils but also in the metropolises, cries for an explanation. For a language that seemed to have been crippled by its mythical grievance against the government, the injustice of the Indian State against it, it is astonishing that independent ventures such as the above can subsist for so long and indeed, thrive. There was a time though, not too long ago, when magazines of many kinds ruled the world of Hindi literature, a time when their importance was scintillatingly evident. There were magazines such as Dharmyug (which sold more than four lakh copies), Saaptahik Hindustan, Dinmaan, Sarika, Kadambini, serious as well as literary reviews that commanded nationwide respect and stature. The revolution of the elite[r] subaltern castes in the sixties and the total (anti-English) revolution of the Lohiates, it seemed then, had propelled Hindi to that dominance that it had always openly craved. Most prominent leaders of the opposition were Hindiwallahs, Hindi academics and writers had access to the levers of power and it was the language of political gossip in the capital’s cafes. It was all symbolised by the glittering productions of National School of Drama under Ibrahim Alqazi, that great Saheb of Hindi theatre. To be published in Dharmyug then was considered the epitome of achievement for Hindi writers while its editor Dharmvir Bharti was the presiding and haughty deity who could make or mar careers at will. It was the first to serialise that tremendous milestone of Hindi and Indian theatre Aadhe Adhure as well as the first to publish Shivani, the grand old populist doyen who still commands prominent space at railway station bookshops. It was avidly read in places as far as Kerala and Bengal. Mostly middlebrow, they also provided space for poetry, criticism and for social and political comment. Within a space of twenty years that world has been wholly destroyed. Dharmyug, Saaptahik, Sarika have all folded up, there is no national Hindi magazine of any kind today and the only Hindi writers known to the ‘national’ press were all born aeons ago. True, they were commercial ventures brought out by big business houses, not independent little magazines, but precisely therefore, if one also remembers those astonishing circulation figures, their disappearance becomes even more inexplicable. Especially when the newspaper reading public is expanding exponentially with one particular newspaper claiming a readership of several crores. Reviews and periodicals such as the Blackwood’s Magazine, that inescapable presence in colonial libraries everywhere, or the Edinburgh Review virtually gestated modern literature. The Quarterly Review was the first, for instance, to review Emma and recognise Jane Austen while Byron’s satire against the Edinburgh Review, English Bards and Scott Reviewers (after the latter scathingly tore his second collection), has forever immortalised that publication for posterity. While literary periodicals had always been a one-man show, it was the growth of modernism in the twenties and thirties that catapulted them to the status of a movement, against conventional tastes and values. The writer-critic running the publication used it as a platform to intervene in ongoing debates of all kinds. The periodicals thus came with an agenda and were often used as surrogate political weapons. T S Eliot, founder and editor of The Criterion, F R Leavis, founder and editor of Scrutiny, The Athenaeum edited by Middleton Murray exemplify this trend. In Hindi, the little magazine rose to prominence in the thirties, just as the newly constructed language was hastily assembling a repertoire of fiction, criticism and essays. The canon of modern Hindi literature would be incomplete without two magazines, Saraswati and Hans that like the rest of the Hindi movement, began as platforms for Nationalist articulation against the British. They were anti-establishment and contained not just literary issues but also sociology, politics, history and current issues. Under Premchand, the founder of Hans, the magazine was renowned for its progressive and humanitarian overtones. For a decade or so after independence there was an air of entente between Hindi establishment and the establishment per se. The newspapers and periodicals that had been fervently anti-colonial and pro-Congress remained muted, but only for a while. The disillusionment with the independent state and its fruits was manifested first in Renu’s Maila Aanchal, the novel that redefined rural India. In its wake followed Raag Darbari that destroyed all illusions about governance, politics and democracy. This was the background from which middle-brow semi-literary magazines such as Dharmyug were born. Still they were, and remained, largely, mainstream. The deviant, experimental, angry voices of younger writers, those who wanted to break boundaries and grounds, to fuse the personal with the political felt constricted in this space. The floodgates opened with Ramesh Bakshi and his redoubtably titled little magazine Aavesh (fury/frustration) that heralded a new role for the dissatisfied writer, this time as editor. Akavita, Shanichar, Vasudha, Utkarsh, Pahal, the list was unending, the variety impressive. These weren’t just new periodicals, each reflected a movement of sorts with which writers in different parts of the country could identify. Concomitantly, they were brought out by committed writers, some of who became so engrossed with the job that their creativity went for a toss. Shorn of glamour and focused solely on content, periodicals like Pahal included not just literature but also tried to intervene in society. They concentrated therefore as much on non-fiction, essays, criticism and social thought, as on literature. Edited by Gyan Ranjan, the model of the selfless editor who even wrote subscribers’ addresses in his own hand, Pahal took the lead in raising the intellectual content of the periodicals. Many others like Vasudha, Pratimaan, Tadbhav followed that model, combining literature with activism . Ironically, their presence became more conspicuous against the backdrop of flourishing middlebrow commercials like Dinmaan and Dharmyug. Their contributions too stood out because they formed the vanguard, the trendsetters. Akavita (anti-poetry) for instance, the clarion call of many periodicals, eventually gained acceptance in the mainstream itself. The needs of the lay readers as well as the literati could thus be met. In lieu of that fertile and multi-layered world, the arena of Hindi literature has today shrunk to a handful of periodicals. The consolatory note of the last two decades is provided by a couple of periodicals, a couple of people really, who battle on, recklessly as it were. Hans revived publication in the early eighties and under Rajendra Yadav has come to be the most authoritative representative of the Hindi world. It publishes stories, comments, reviews but also discussions, debates and polemics about anything and everything. It champions the rights of the minorities, women, Dalits, Adivasis in many different ways, yet withal it tries to keep the ordinary reader, ignored by Pahal, in mind. Without any substantial backing, relying mostly on subscriptions, it yet prints more than ten thousand copies every month. Then there is Samyantar, a story in itself. Some years ago Pankaj Bisht, a Hindi writer of great distinction, chose to resign from his government job in order to bring out a periodical. It was a suicidal mission, as many warned him. He went ahead nevertheless, printing 500 copies of the first issue in the cheapest possible format. Restricted initially to fellow travelers, the five hundred or so people who make up the elite Hindi intelligentsia in the country, who contributed and consumed the journal, it today takes out 5000 copies every month, apart from several hefty annual numbers. Bisht puts half his pension into it every month while his household runs on his wife’s earnings. The periodical contains an average of 30 pages and unhesitatingly translates material from other world languages. A wide circle of sympathisers ensures the supply of serious, quality food for thought while its confrontation with patriarchy, orthodoxy and feudalism rages ahead. It has relied solely on subscriptions and has even managed to break even. Meanwhile the more exponentially the Hindi newspapers expand, the less space they leave for serious readers. Multi-editions ensure concentration either on local issues or on national ones and therefore even their reportage of news has declined greatly in quality. On the one hand are the novels, the books that do not sell more than 5-6000 copies, except for something like Raagdarbari or Premchand, and even then only because they have been prescribed in the course. The symbiotic relationship between publishers, text books and government (libraries, universities etc) has ensured a steady depletion of the status and visibility, the positioning in short, of the serious writer. On the other hand, there are apparently no takers for serious stuff. And still a Hindi newspaper can sell more than a crore copies. It would not be enough to blame the media, the television or the net for this. The struggle for survival of serious literature and the quarterlies, monthlies and weeklies, the competition and influence of cinema and television and the net, these are problems besetting serious literary production everywhere. They explain everything and nothing. Serious literature has never commanded a very wide audience, even TLS or New York Review of Books, read internationally, print only 70-8000 copies. The problem with Hindi is different, and acuter, in that its entire world is becoming more and more imitative as readers and writers are forced to communicate via English. The newspapers are shallower, if that is possible, versions of the mainstream English press, the two most prominent newsmagazines are not even original, merely ‘versions,’ there are no academic journals and, in most places, no bookshops even. To top it all, there is not even a mentionable cinema, television or sports magazine, let alone a literary one. Yet, for a long time to come, the number of Hindi readers will increase faster than English ones, no matter how many convents may come up, simply by virtue of demographics and poverty. In most places even university teachers barely understand English, even those who read the English papers are not necessarily able to comprehend a serious English text or article. Where do they go, what do they read, how do they read? The importance of a Samyantar or a Vasudha or a Hans therefore is not simply about those journals, worthy as they are, but about the survival of the mofussil(y) intelligentsia. This is the only supply of oxygen for many towns in the hinterland and the only access for the intellectuals to address a wider audience. In an era where the mainstream Hindi press has become deeply politicised and conservative, these periodicals remain the last bastion of free and fearless expression, the outstanding signs of protest and freedom. A literary periodical, eventually, is like writing a poem. For it to be heard, to make a difference, one needs much jigar chaaki and khoon afshaani. While the editors dip their fingers in blood a la Faiz, ki khoon-e-dil mein dubo li hain ungliyan maine, we could do worse than praise their poems. ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From hight at 34n118w.net Fri Aug 26 12:53:41 2005 From: hight at 34n118w.net (hight at 34n118w.net) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 00:23:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] binary katwalk exhibition has launched Message-ID: <1703.70.34.254.38.1125041021.squirrel@webmail.34n118w.net> BINARY KATWALK LAUNCHED Binarykatwalk.net Binarykatwalk announces the launch of its first edition. Binary Katwalk is an on-line New Media exhibition focusing on work that is experimental and would benefit from this non-traditional exhibition space. The goal of the site is to unify works over time into one expanding and unified exhibition as opposed to specific exhibitions that open and then close or go to a secondary archive. It is co-curated by Jeremy Hight and Sindee Nakatani. Come to Binary Katwalk to see the work of 5 strong artists from very different points in the spectrum of New Media. We are proud to present the work of : AGRICLOA DE COLOGNE OLIVER DYENS CATHY DAVIES LISA TAO BJORN WANGEN Screen shots available on request . From sunil at mahiti.org Fri Aug 26 15:14:35 2005 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:14:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] CALL FOR APPLICATIONS - Fellowships on Open Information Policy Message-ID: <20050826094435.A860D16CE4C@server.mahiti.org> The International Policy Fellowship Program (IPF) of the Open Society Institute has issued its annual call for fellowship proposals. Open Information Policy is one of the program's focal areas this year. Here are details concerning this area, taken from the IPF website at www.soros.org/initiatives/ipf : "Advanced by the internet, alternatives to long-standing intellectual property regimes have created an environment to re-assess the relationship between democracy, open society and new information technologies. The promise of open source technology with respect to civil society and the incalculable leaps in information production by means of open content and weblogs present a new platform for civic participation. Whether and in what form such promises can be realized lies at the basis of the research questions below. * Weblogs & Civic Discourse. How does the rapid expansion of weblogs alter news production and civic discourse? Can it counter ever-increasing concentration of ownership in the traditional mass media? How do traditional notions of editorial standards and journalistic professionalism apply to this new medium? Is the 'blogosphere' an enhancement of the public sphere, or does it threaten its disintegration? * Open Content & Sustainability. Open Access publishing is revolutionizing scientific publishing. New alternative licensing systems like Creative Commons support decentralized information production, by making it easier for creators to share and permit re-use and modification of their work, while retaining certain rights. What are the business models that are developing around these commons-based models of sharing freely online? These cases are by and large un-documented and seem to contrast starkly with well-established economic and legal norms that rest on notions of scarcity, exclusivity and controlled access. * Open Content & Standards. Wikipedia, a freely available encyclopedia, is a visible and widely cited example of collaborative, distributed knowledge production enabled by the Internet. Such models seem to have great promise for more equitable access to knowledge; yet they also run the risk of dispensing with editorial standards. How can quality standards emerge in a distributed environment? Are they robust enough to be relied upon? * Open Source: Ownership and Control of Communications Technology. Communications technology (both hardware and software, and the standards on which most communications networks are based) is a key part of today's infrastructure for civil society engagement. How do the different models of ownership and control of the knowledge underlying this infrastructure (expressed in technology standards and software, either open or proprietary) affect access and participation by civil society, in particular, civil society in developing countries? * Intellectual Property & Access to Knowledge: The case of Free Trade Agreements. Intellectual property laws are a powerful instrument for controlling access to knowledge, and in some cases to restrict free speech. New standards shaped by rich-country interests are now being globalized and imposed on poorer countries. In recent years, bilateral Free Trade Agreements have become an important part of this process. How do those free trade agreements undermine the rule of law and basic principles of democratic lawmaking in countries around the world that are signing these agreements?" *________________________________________________________________________* *CALL FOR PROPOSALS* *INTERNATIONAL POLICY FELLOWSHIPS, 2006-2007* *All applications must be submitted online by September 20, 2005 from_ __www.soros.org/initiatives/ipf_ * *________________________________________________________________________* The International Policy Fellowships (IPF) program is calling for applications for 2006-2007 fellowships. Launched in 1998 and affiliated with the Open Society Institute and the Center for Policy Studies (CPS) of the Central European University in Budapest, these fellowships support analytical policy research in pursuance of open society goals such as the rule of law, democratic elections, diverse and vigorous civil societies, and respect for minorities. Each year the IPF program invites research proposals that address critical issues in the development of open societies. Successful applicants will demonstrate originality, sound project design and the strong likelihood that their project may lead to significant impact on policy. The IPF program seeks to enhance the quality of policy research in the countries where the Soros Network operates, throughout Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Mongolia, as well as Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the Middle East. It places strong emphasis on independent research that is both rigorous and appreciative of practical implications. Analysis and evaluation of existing policy contexts should be based on explicit criteria and fellows should be able to communicate their ideas and findings in a variety of professional and public settings. *Applicants are encouraged to submit individual, practical and policy-oriented research proposals in the following subject areas. The product of each fellowship will be a detailed analysis of a major issue to be published in English and translated into other languages:* *2006-7 Fellowship Issue Areas: General Framework: New Frontiers of Democratic Politics* * *The Challenge of Wider Europe* * *Open Society Promotion in Predominantly Muslim Societies* * *Combating Open Society Threats* * *Combating the Resource Curse * * *Roma Exclusion * * *Open Information Policy * *Main Terms of the International Policy Fellowship Award* * Fellows receive supervision and support from a senior policy analyst * Fellows are invited to Budapest in April 2006 for initial orientation to the program * Optional specialized policy research and advocacy training courses in Budapest * Monthly stipends commensurate with local salaries * Budget for reasonable research, communications, travel, publication and advocacy costs * Discretionary funding for conference participation *How to Apply* Applicants should carefully complete the online application form found at www.soros.org/initiatives/ipf, which includes a project summary, research proposal (maximum 4 pages), and a resume/CV including a list of publications. Applicants may also include a letter of reference from an affiliated organization and a writing sample on the chosen topic. Those who have no possibility to access the Internet should send an e-mail to fellows at osi.hu to discuss alternate application solutions. Applications sent by mail, fax or e-mail will not be considered unless given prior approval from IPF staff. Applications must be submitted online by* September 20, 2005*. IPF does not consider late applications. From sunil at mahiti.org Fri Aug 26 18:13:13 2005 From: sunil at mahiti.org (Sunil Abraham) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 18:13:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] IOSN Microgrant: Fijian Spell Checker for Open Office Message-ID: <20050826124313.45D5E16CED6@server.mahiti.org> Greetings from the University of the South Pacific here in Suva, Fiji Islands! Some of the faculty members and students here have finished a project under an IOSN microgrant to develop a spelling dictionary for the Fijian language. Information from the proposal and the dictionary itself (which has been submitted to OpenOffice) can be found at the following link. http://www.iosn.net/Members/blanke_w/index_html/ Cheers Bill Blanke www.usp.ac.fj From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Fri Aug 26 04:55:22 2005 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 00:25:22 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] ZESTGlobal@yahoogroups.com M.B.A. Students Bypassing Wall Street for a Summer in India Message-ID: Date: 26 Aug 2005 20:34:53 -0000 From: ZESTGlobal at yahoogroups.com To: ZESTGlobal at yahoogroups.com Subject: [ZESTGlobal] Digest Number 237 Message: 1 Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 17:39:42 -0000 From: "Aman Malik" Subject: M.B.A. Students Bypassing Wall Street for a Summer in India M.B.A. Students Bypassing Wall Street for a Summer in India By SARITHA RAI The New York Times | August 10, 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/business/worldbusiness/10intern.html?pagewanted=print&oref=login BANGALORE, India, Aug. 9 - This summer, Omar Maldonado and Erik Simonsen, both students at the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University, did something different. Bypassing internship opportunities on Wall Street, just a subway ride away from their Greenwich Village campus, they went to India to spend the summer at an outsourcing company in Gurgaon, a suburb of New Delhi. "The India opportunity grabbed me," said Mr. Maldonado, a Boston native whose family is from the Dominican Republic. "I wanted to get a global feel for investment banking and not just a Wall Street perspective." He and Mr. Simonsen, both 27, are spending three months at Copal Partners, an outsourcing firm with 100 analysts. It produces merger and acquisition pitch books and provides equity and credit analysis and other research to global banks and consultant groups, including those on Wall Street. Mr. Maldonado and Mr. Simonsen, of Riverside, Calif., are part of a virtual invasion of India by American students. Graduate students from top schools in the United States, most from master of business administration programs, are vying for internships at India's biggest private companies. For many, outsourcing companies are the destinations of choice. India is not just a line on an American student's résumé, said Kiran Karnik, president of the outsourcing industry trade body, Nasscom, "but also culturally fulfilling." Many students travel while in India, giving them a view of the country and its long history, he said. Nasscom is now trying to track the ever-increasing numbers of foreign interns. Many are in India to study globalization firsthand, Mr. Karnik said; that is often not possible in China because, unlike India, English is not widely spoken there. Mr. Karnik said he had met more than a dozen interns from the Harvard Business School who were spending this summer in India. "I expect a bigger horde of students to arrive next year because the ones here said they had a great time and will go home to talk about it," he said. Elsewhere, too, the trend is on the rise. Four students from Fuqua School of Business at Duke University are interning in India, compared with only one last year and none in 2003. Of this year's interns, three are at Infosys Technologies, an outsourcing company in Bangalore, and the fourth is in Chennai at GlobalGiving, an organization based in Bethesda, Md., that helps support social, economic and environmental projects around the world. At Georgetown University, Stanley D. Nollen, a professor of international business at the Robert Emmett McDonough School of Business, said India was of growing interest to students. "No longer is India thought of as a land of snake charmers and bride burnings," he said. "Now India means the world's best software services, and increasingly, pharmaceuticals and auto parts." Professor Nollen directs the school's programs for M.B.A. students in India, which include "residencies" - academic courses that are centered on consulting projects for companies operating in India. A group of 49 students arrived this month and went to companies like Philips India Software and MindTree Consulting, both in Bangalore; the motorcycle-making unit of Eicher in Chennai; and the ICICI Bank in Mumbai. India can be a jolt to a first-time American visitor. In Gurgaon, a small town despite its tall office complexes and shiny new malls, Mr. Maldonado and Mr. Simonsen share an apartment where the power fails several times a day. Temperatures are regularly above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. The two men said they came prepared to find inadequate infrastructure, but were not prepared for the daily frustrations of Gurgaon. There is no mass transportation system, and shopping, even for something as basic as an umbrella, can take hours. They rumble to work in an auto rickshaw - a motorized three-wheeler that seats two and is a ubiquitous form of transport in Indian cities. But the sophistication of the work being done in Copal's Gurgaon office contrasts with the chaotic city outside. Mr. Simonsen said he was amazed. "I came expecting to see number-crunching and spreadsheet type of work; I didn't expect American banks to farm out intricate analytics," he said. The two students are working on a project that analyzes investment opportunities for clients across 23 countries. Infosys Technologies, the country's second-largest outsourcing firm after Tata Consultancy Services, discovered how popular India had become as an internship destination for Americans when the company began recruiting: for the 40 intern spots at its Bangalore headquarters, the company received 9,000 applications. Only those with a cumulative grade-point average of 3.6 or more made it to a short list, and then they were put through two rounds of interviews. The final 40, who cut a wide academic swathe from engineering schools like M.I.T. and Carnegie Mellon to business schools like Stanford, Wharton and Kellogg, have since arrived on campus for average stays of three months. The interns work in areas from marketing to technology. They live in a 500-room hotel complex on Infosys's expansive campus in the suburbs of Bangalore, exchanging coupons for meals at the food court and riding the company bus downtown to decompress at the many pubs and bars. Among the Infosys interns is Caton Burwell, 28, from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "India has come to symbolize globalization and I wanted to participate in the workings of the global economy," he said. "Besides, it would look great on my résumé." Mr. Burwell said that, since arriving in India, he had developed a better grasp of the workings of the global economy and the logic behind the choices companies and countries make. "Being here is a powerful experience; it is impossible not to think differently," he said. Also, his attitude toward outsourcing has changed since meeting Indian employees, who he said work very hard and care a great deal about the quality of their work. "To come here, meet these people, and to return home and turn your back on outsourcing is hard," he said. Jeffrey Anders, 29, from the Sloan School of Management at M.I.T., is similarly stirred. Mr. Anders is halfway through his internship at the business process outsourcing division of Hewlett-Packard India in Bangalore. "I can't help but feel that I am witnessing the creation of a new global economic order, a new reality that most people back home don't realize is coming," said Mr. Anders. After a meeting with the recruiting head of Hewlett-Packard India's back-office unit at a conference at M.I.T., Mr. Anders came to India to help build a group of Indian economists and statisticians to perform complex analytics and predictive modeling for Western multinationals. "These highly educated and qualified people are not stopping at call centers and back-office work," he said. "They are getting ready to compete for every job." Meanwhile, Indian companies are looking at summer internships as a way of building a diverse work culture. "Bringing investment bankers here provides our Indian team a perspective and context of Wall Street," said Joel Perlman, co-founder of Copal Partners, a company based in London that has four employees each in New York and London and another 100 or so in India. Other companies, and even the schools themselves, are looking at internships as a step toward attracting bright young Americans to work in India. Infosys, for instance, hired Joshua Bornstein, a former intern from Claremont McKenna College in California, nearly two years ago as its first American employee based in India. "In this increasingly global economy, we would expect to see India become an even greater source of employment for our students," Sheryle Dirks, director of the Career Management Center at Fuqua, said. Mr. Anders, from the Sloan school, works in a new Hewlett-Packard building, where he sometimes works out at the gym in the basement and eats at the cafeteria on the terrace. The employees work in open cubicles, similar to those in offices anywhere in the West. His team consists of four Indians, all with M.B.A.'s like him, and they operate globally, collaborating with teams in California and elsewhere. Interns like Mr. Anders are getting a close view of social changes that are happening in India. Outsourcing has created thousands of better-paying jobs and spawned communities of young people who can afford cars, apartments and iPods. "I thought the stipend was the down side," said Mr. Anders, "but coming here is a priceless experience." -- http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/listpublish.php?q_mm=rob From vivek at sarai.net Sat Aug 27 09:38:38 2005 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 09:38:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Fwd: The Enthusiast -- Britain's fastest growing non-literary literary magazine... ] Message-ID: <430FE746.7010603@sarai.net> just got bigger: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4158884.stm * * * >From BBC ONLINE: Thursday, 18 August 2005 IN PRAISE OF ENTHUSIASM By Denise Winterman, BBC News Magazine The first annual Enthusiast of the Year Award has been launched, but in a culture where enthusiasm is often viewed with suspicion, does anyone care? "Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm," wrote the American author, poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson. And according to Aldous Huxley, the secret of genius "is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm". High praise indeed for the trait, but enthusiasm is a quality that nowadays is underrated and often considered downright weird. Consider the words anorak or geek - modern-day euphemisms for enthusiast, but equally light-hearted terms of abuse. And when written in a school report, "enthusiastic" is usually code for "well done for trying but you're not very good". But in a bid to reclaim the word, The Enthusiast magazine has launched the first annual Enthusiast of the Year Award. The aim being to celebrate great enthusiasts of our time. "Nowadays enthusiasm is considered nerdy and implies amateurism, but we want to remind people that at different points in human culture it has been more highly regarded," says a spokesman for the magazine, which is produced in Northern Ireland. "At a time when the British public is repeatedly criticised for its apathy, we want to celebrate and applaud enthusiasm whenever and wherever we find it. The winner will get a certificate, gold cup, a huge pat on the back and the general high regard of the public at large." The list of people who have been nominated by the public so far is certainly eclectic and includes Jonathan Ross, Thierry Henry, Alan Titchmarsh, Sam Taylor-Wood, Mary J Blige and Amir Khan. Ordinary members of the public can be nominated too. Author Marcus Berkmann says he has made a career out of writing about his enthusiasms - quizzes and cricket. "I truly believe enthusiasm is the essence of happiness," he says. "It is often deemed uncool and we are all supposed to be nonchalant and not care about stuff, but being enthusiastic about something is the secret to a long, satisfying life. "Be it stamp collecting or football, enthusiasts are the happiest people I know. I am a fan of enthusiasm and not enamoured of cool." But philosopher Dr Julian Baggini says sometimes there is good reason to be suspicious of enthusiasts. "A real monomania can give someone a very blinkered view on life," he says. "Society has lost respect for the narrow enthusiast because we live in a have-it-all culture. "Most people don't understand why they want to devote most of their time to one thing. But that is a reflection on us now being a broader, shallower society, not a narrow and deep one." A shortlist of the nominees for the award will be published on The Enthusiast's website (see Internet links, right) in September and the winner announced at a later date. And if the nation continues its enthusiasm for voting for anything but a political party - be it the Greatest Briton, next Pop Idol or latest Big Brother winner - the vote count should be high. * * * Read this story on the BBC website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4158884.stm * * * Where can we go now?: http://www.theenthusiast.co.uk Plain Living and High Thinking From jace at pobox.com Sat Aug 27 11:58:37 2005 From: jace at pobox.com (Kiran Jonnalagadda) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 11:58:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] What ails the Sarai Reader List? In-Reply-To: <3b7bed85050824124164561745@mail.gmail.com> References: <9A2F8C71-96E5-450F-B168-8A06C51BA78B@pobox.com> <3b7bed85050824124164561745@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <8B93CD09-430D-4A22-868E-2A4DE9AD6BAE@pobox.com> Dear Punam, Thanks for writing back. Since some people commented my presentation appeared like a sales pitch for LiveJournal and that I was overemphasising form over other contributing factors, I'd like to clarify a few things: The LiveJournal statistics page [1] gives us some interesting information: 1. Of those users who declared their gender, 67.4% are female, with a peak age of 17 years. 2. Of those who declared their country, the US ranks first with 3,818,375 journals. I summed up the distribution-by-country from the directory [2], and the rest of the world has 1,233,298 journals. The US outnumbers the rest of the world 3:1. From this I suppose I can claim that the stereotypical LiveJournal user is an American female teenager. To put it in the uncharitable words of some others, hysterical teenage girls whining about their little worlds. (Unfortunately, I can't find the source of these sentiments, having seen them too often to bother keeping track.) [1] http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml [2] http://www.livejournal.com/directory.bml And yet, of my 300-odd LiveJournal correspondents in the indicated period, none of them fit this profile. My correspondents are predominantly Indian. In several years using LiveJournal, I've rarely encountered the stereotype. There is something deeper to LiveJournal than is apparent to the outsider. To dismiss LiveJournal as merely a blogging service provider with a better commenting system is to see all forest, no trees. I came to realise that LiveJournal with it's 8 million users works like one single large community where every user gets to see only the parts they want to see. It's much like living in a city of 8 million where you're not required to be familiar with everyone else, except there is no limitation of geography online. Just as a larger city battles crowding with better infrastructure, LiveJournal manages great volumes of traffic without completely crowding out the mind. LiveJournal has it's limitations, some of them serious, but what I'm interested in are the parts that are well done. This is where I think there are lessons to be learnt and applied to the Reader List to help manage it's growing traffic. This isn't a problem unique here -- it affects any email-based list. Let's look at the types of traffic this list has. Off the top of my head: Announcements, Independent Fellows postings, General discussions, and responses to all these. The independent fellows cover a large breadth of topics that not everyone is interested in. An individual already facing email overload may choose to follow only topics that are of particular interest to him or her. In this case, there is no option to ignore the rest. Even if you figure out who's discussing interesting topics and take to ignoring the rest, there is still effort involved in reading the names and deleting the unwanted posts. Sure, you could set email filters to discard all posts from certain individuals, but then you also miss their responses to topics of interest. On the other hand, if the list is split into several on the basis of topics, membership is also fragmented. List boundaries are "hard" boundaries. If you're not on a list, it's hard to check on that list's postings even occasionally. If you didn't receive a posting via email, you can't respond to it without breaking threading (both in the mail client and web archive), making it hard for others to follow your response. The interesting thing about LiveJournal is how it manages to define soft boundaries between its millions of sub-communities. Let me try to explain: At the core of it, LiveJournal provides personal journals. Every user on LJ has a journal that they may or may not choose to update. This journal has a hard boundary. It contains your posts and nothing else. Either people see your journal, or they don't see it. At the second level, LJ provides an aggregator (called the Friends list). You select other accounts that you're interested in, and the latest updates from all are shown in a single page. LJ now resembles an RSS aggregator or the linearity of the email client, except there are no unread flags. There's no count of messages left to be read, just the length of the scrollbar. This level also has the problem that you will not see postings from people you didn't choose to read -- there's no way to discover a newcomer. At the third level, LJ provides shared journals, called communities. For the sake of avoiding confusion, I'll refer to these as shared journals. The crucial thing about shared journals is, if you add one to your Friends list, you no longer control who posts to your Friends page (which in some sense is the community you defined for yourself). This has two effects: you discover new people via shared journals, and shared journals evolve policing systems to determine who or what topic is allowed there. Unlike the Friends list (where you silently add or remove people), shared journal policing tends to be a public spectacle, with moderators with approve, delete and ban powers who have trouble participating fairly in a heated discussion, and (sometimes) social processes for appointing moderators. Finally, at the fourth level, LJ allows threaded commenting on a post. Who comments? The intersection of people who have something to say and who saw the post. The latter is determined by the community of people who chose to read this person or shared journal, the "Friend Of" list. This too is a place to meet new people, more prominently than at the third level. This is also where representation of identity via the user picture becomes important. You may not track a particular person, but you may see them often because they comment in a journal you read. The picture serves as an important visual identity (as I've explained in another post, most people notice pictures, not user ids). People tend to use pictures to signify emotion, but this is not system enforced. This is a tendency of users and indicative of the atmosphere they've come to expect. Notice that we now have two areas with hard boundaries, the personal journal and the shared journal, and two with soft boundaries, the Friends list and the Friend Of list. The latter two are private to each user. They're soft because their contents, shared journals and comments, keep leading to new areas beyond their boundaries. You don't have to explore, but if you must, exploration is effortless. (I must credit here Nishant Shah at CSCS in Bangalore whose thesis is that the independence of sub-groups is important to the health of the larger group. He made me aware of the parallel between his research and my observations of LiveJournal.) So how can this help the Reader List? Migrating everyone to LiveJournal doesn't make sense. Communities rarely survive such transplantation, and there is no guarantee that the LiveJournal experience is suitable for the sort of discussion the Reader List aims to foster. What I think is necessary is to understand the abstracts that drive the LiveJournal experience and look at how they may be adapted to the Reader List. I'm not sure how this may be achieved, since the limitations of email are hard to transgress. This is what I'm currently engaged in understanding. Kiran On 25-Aug-05, at 1:11 AM, punam zutshi wrote: > Greetings! > > I think the archival problem is an important one to highlight.The > Search feature for locating authors and keywords in subject headings > would be a real boon. > > I am not so sure that the question of identity ( supported with > photos) bothers me. Call me old fashioned I also baulk at the listing > of emotions and other such gambits.That's great for blogspots but a > reader list????? > > What is the problem with a thousand peering while one responds? Yes, > one selects the option of a direct response to a list mailer in any > case. > > A quick glance at the slides of your presentation tell me that the > form is important most certainly, but is it also the case that there > genuinely is a lack of comprehension or interest in some rather than > other mails? I respond to this mail of yours as it seems to do with > Our List, but I was too mystified by your earlier postings! > > Is the list crumbling because people would rather lurk than respond > or post? Is there a profile of Live Journal Readership as compared to > the Sarai List? > > Yes, but your presentation achieves something very interesting : I am > sure a lot of us will want to figure out a little more about what > Live Journal is like!! > > Punam > > On 8/24/05, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > >> Hello all, >> >> The Independent Fellows are at Sarai in Delhi for the workshop. I >> made my presentation today on how form shapes online community. For >> the sake of illustration, I picked a familiar community, the reader >> list itself. >> >> From empirical evidence, I was aware that several readers have >> trouble keeping up with the volume of the list. I made a contrast >> with LiveJournal, another community system which manages to scale to >> a far higher volume of traffic before it becomes a burden, looking >> for things they do that the reader list could do with. >> >> Due to time constraints, I could not go into as much detail as I'd >> have liked to. Here are my slides: http://jace.seacrow.com/misc/ >> sarai- >> rl-lj >> >> This has been a great opportunity and I thank everyone who was >> involved, especially those present today. This was the best response >> I've had to a presentation yet. >> >> I will continue exploring how form shapes community and post to the >> list as appropriate. >> >> -- >> Kiran Jonnalagadda >> http://www.pobox.com/~jace >> >> >> _________________________________________ >> 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: >> >> > > -- Kiran Jonnalagadda http://www.pobox.com/~jace From jalvaer at yahoo.com Thu Aug 25 20:43:45 2005 From: jalvaer at yahoo.com (jesper alvaer) Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 08:13:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: PUBLISH AND DAMNED - NEOSAMIZDAT Message-ID: <20050825151345.43346.qmail@web34502.mail.mud.yahoo.com> DISPLAY and PAS – Production of Contemporary Activities In collaboration with UMùLEC magazine, cordially invite you to attend ____________________________________________________ PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED – NEOSAMIZDAT ____________________________________________________ An exhibition of self-published periodicals Exhibition opens on September 13 Continues until October 2 - Are you a publisher of a periodical, magazine, or poster that uses experimental editorial approaches, alternative distribution networks, and isn‘t represented at publishers‘ conventions? - Are you a label, musician or in a related field, that exposes artistic concepts or activities in any “self-publishing” manner? - Would you be interested in exhibiting your productions together with similar activities in England, Germany, Austria, Romania, Poland and Slovakia? - Please contact us at: tomas.vanek at cbox.cz And bring us, or send us your neo-samizdat to this adress: Display Bubenská 3 170 00 Praha 7 Czech Republic The material provided will be included in a collection of the traveling exhibition, PaBD, that after Prague will continue on to Utrecht - CASCO projects, or will be returned to publisher or owner according to arrangements made with PAS and DISPLAY *** PUBLISH AND BE DAMNED is a project of Emily Pethick and Kita Hammondse. This took place first in 2004 in London (Cubitt Gallery) and later moved on to Manchester, Norwich and Bristol. Additional information about this project is available at www.publishandbedamned.org The Central European version of Published And Be Damned is a project of Tomas Vanek, PAS (www.paspage.cz) and Display Gallery (www.display.cz). UMùLEC Magazine is main media partner. Publish and be Damned (14.9. – 2.10. 2006) Display – Space for Contemporary Art ------------------- Jesper James Alvaer Tel. +420 608302910 ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From punam.zutshi at gmail.com Sat Aug 27 15:13:20 2005 From: punam.zutshi at gmail.com (punam zutshi) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 15:13:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] What ails the Sarai Reader List? In-Reply-To: <8B93CD09-430D-4A22-868E-2A4DE9AD6BAE@pobox.com> References: <9A2F8C71-96E5-450F-B168-8A06C51BA78B@pobox.com> <3b7bed85050824124164561745@mail.gmail.com> <8B93CD09-430D-4A22-868E-2A4DE9AD6BAE@pobox.com> Message-ID: <3b7bed8505082702432c056ea9@mail.gmail.com> Dear Kiran, After composing this e mail, I recalled that the form argument you were making used the Sarai reader list as an example of a 'community' that the audience was familiar with.And in a sense, one is devoting more time to the 'ills' /'ailments' of the list as an end in itself, hoping that the questions of form and content will also be addressed in one's responses to you. I think some feedback from Sarai readers (and administrators) as to what they want may be helpful in attending to the question of helping improve an e mail based list.You said the list was crumbling and I wonder what the 'symptoms' of this are.Was it better than it is? I do not know, being relatively new to this list. I am sure the responses will be both about issues to which technical solutions have to be found/can be found and others would be about critical responses to say the lack of discussion, which was a grouse you certainly had.Would solving the latter problem be dependent entirely on rearranging the structural elements ? Sarai's own targets and agenda will also have to be taken into consideration. I think the qualitative differences between the Live Journal and the Reader List must be considered too.The first is primarily from your account of it, a bloggers network. I want to as a 'consumer' want to answer things of concern to me: Is the load of the Sarai Reader List too high? No. Does the flood of e mails by month end bother me? No. How does one deal with the list? Does one want it more orderly accessible fashion? I see little problem in the exercise of a degree of judgement and selection.Why should deletion of messages be a problem? I would like to receive whatever is posted and do the screening myself. Hard boundaries and Soft boundaries apart, I think the Reader needs to be included as a formal element in your analysis. I wish I understood the 'breaking of thread' technicalities a little better but I do feel that I would like greater options in searching the archive which is in principle a faithful chronicle but not an archive, a sequence and not a set of categories. Punam On 8/27/05, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > Dear Punam, > > Thanks for writing back. Since some people commented my presentation > appeared like a sales pitch for LiveJournal and that I was > overemphasising form over other contributing factors, I'd like to > clarify a few things: > > The LiveJournal statistics page [1] gives us some interesting > information: > > 1. Of those users who declared their gender, 67.4% are female, with a > peak age of 17 years. > > 2. Of those who declared their country, the US ranks first with > 3,818,375 journals. I summed up the distribution-by-country from the > directory [2], and the rest of the world has 1,233,298 journals. The > US outnumbers the rest of the world 3:1. > > From this I suppose I can claim that the stereotypical LiveJournal > user is an American female teenager. To put it in the uncharitable > words of some others, hysterical teenage girls whining about their > little worlds. (Unfortunately, I can't find the source of these > sentiments, having seen them too often to bother keeping track.) > > [1] http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml > [2] http://www.livejournal.com/directory.bml > > > And yet, of my 300-odd LiveJournal correspondents in the indicated > period, none of them fit this profile. My correspondents are > predominantly Indian. In several years using LiveJournal, I've rarely > encountered the stereotype. There is something deeper to LiveJournal > than is apparent to the outsider. To dismiss LiveJournal as merely a > blogging service provider with a better commenting system is to see > all forest, no trees. > > I came to realise that LiveJournal with it's 8 million users works > like one single large community where every user gets to see only the > parts they want to see. It's much like living in a city of 8 million > where you're not required to be familiar with everyone else, except > there is no limitation of geography online. Just as a larger city > battles crowding with better infrastructure, LiveJournal manages > great volumes of traffic without completely crowding out the mind. > LiveJournal has it's limitations, some of them serious, but what I'm > interested in are the parts that are well done. > > This is where I think there are lessons to be learnt and applied to > the Reader List to help manage it's growing traffic. This isn't a > problem unique here -- it affects any email-based list. > > Let's look at the types of traffic this list has. Off the top of my > head: > > Announcements, Independent Fellows postings, General discussions, and > responses to all these. > > The independent fellows cover a large breadth of topics that not > everyone is interested in. An individual already facing email > overload may choose to follow only topics that are of particular > interest to him or her. In this case, there is no option to ignore > the rest. Even if you figure out who's discussing interesting topics > and take to ignoring the rest, there is still effort involved in > reading the names and deleting the unwanted posts. Sure, you could > set email filters to discard all posts from certain individuals, but > then you also miss their responses to topics of interest. > > On the other hand, if the list is split into several on the basis of > topics, membership is also fragmented. List boundaries are "hard" > boundaries. If you're not on a list, it's hard to check on that > list's postings even occasionally. If you didn't receive a posting > via email, you can't respond to it without breaking threading (both > in the mail client and web archive), making it hard for others to > follow your response. > > The interesting thing about LiveJournal is how it manages to define > soft boundaries between its millions of sub-communities. Let me try > to explain: > > At the core of it, LiveJournal provides personal journals. Every user > on LJ has a journal that they may or may not choose to update. This > journal has a hard boundary. It contains your posts and nothing else. > Either people see your journal, or they don't see it. > > At the second level, LJ provides an aggregator (called the Friends > list). You select other accounts that you're interested in, and the > latest updates from all are shown in a single page. LJ now resembles > an RSS aggregator or the linearity of the email client, except there > are no unread flags. There's no count of messages left to be read, > just the length of the scrollbar. This level also has the problem > that you will not see postings from people you didn't choose to read > -- there's no way to discover a newcomer. > > At the third level, LJ provides shared journals, called communities. > For the sake of avoiding confusion, I'll refer to these as shared > journals. The crucial thing about shared journals is, if you add one > to your Friends list, you no longer control who posts to your Friends > page (which in some sense is the community you defined for yourself). > This has two effects: you discover new people via shared journals, > and shared journals evolve policing systems to determine who or what > topic is allowed there. Unlike the Friends list (where you silently > add or remove people), shared journal policing tends to be a public > spectacle, with moderators with approve, delete and ban powers who > have trouble participating fairly in a heated discussion, and > (sometimes) social processes for appointing moderators. > > Finally, at the fourth level, LJ allows threaded commenting on a > post. Who comments? The intersection of people who have something to > say and who saw the post. The latter is determined by the community > of people who chose to read this person or shared journal, the > "Friend Of" list. This too is a place to meet new people, more > prominently than at the third level. This is also where > representation of identity via the user picture becomes important. > You may not track a particular person, but you may see them often > because they comment in a journal you read. The picture serves as an > important visual identity (as I've explained in another post, most > people notice pictures, not user ids). People tend to use pictures to > signify emotion, but this is not system enforced. This is a tendency > of users and indicative of the atmosphere they've come to expect. > > Notice that we now have two areas with hard boundaries, the personal > journal and the shared journal, and two with soft boundaries, the > Friends list and the Friend Of list. The latter two are private to > each user. They're soft because their contents, shared journals and > comments, keep leading to new areas beyond their boundaries. You > don't have to explore, but if you must, exploration is effortless. > > (I must credit here Nishant Shah at CSCS in Bangalore whose thesis is > that the independence of sub-groups is important to the health of the > larger group. He made me aware of the parallel between his research > and my observations of LiveJournal.) > > So how can this help the Reader List? Migrating everyone to > LiveJournal doesn't make sense. Communities rarely survive such > transplantation, and there is no guarantee that the LiveJournal > experience is suitable for the sort of discussion the Reader List > aims to foster. > > What I think is necessary is to understand the abstracts that drive > the LiveJournal experience and look at how they may be adapted to the > Reader List. I'm not sure how this may be achieved, since the > limitations of email are hard to transgress. This is what I'm > currently engaged in understanding. > > > Kiran > > > On 25-Aug-05, at 1:11 AM, punam zutshi wrote: > > > Greetings! > > > > I think the archival problem is an important one to highlight.The > > Search feature for locating authors and keywords in subject headings > > would be a real boon. > > > > I am not so sure that the question of identity ( supported with > > photos) bothers me. Call me old fashioned I also baulk at the listing > > of emotions and other such gambits.That's great for blogspots but a > > reader list????? > > > > What is the problem with a thousand peering while one responds? Yes, > > one selects the option of a direct response to a list mailer in any > > case. > > > > A quick glance at the slides of your presentation tell me that the > > form is important most certainly, but is it also the case that there > > genuinely is a lack of comprehension or interest in some rather than > > other mails? I respond to this mail of yours as it seems to do with > > Our List, but I was too mystified by your earlier postings! > > > > Is the list crumbling because people would rather lurk than respond > > or post? Is there a profile of Live Journal Readership as compared to > > the Sarai List? > > > > Yes, but your presentation achieves something very interesting : I am > > sure a lot of us will want to figure out a little more about what > > Live Journal is like!! > > > > Punam > > > > On 8/24/05, Kiran Jonnalagadda wrote: > > > >> Hello all, > >> > >> The Independent Fellows are at Sarai in Delhi for the workshop. I > >> made my presentation today on how form shapes online community. For > >> the sake of illustration, I picked a familiar community, the reader > >> list itself. > >> > >> From empirical evidence, I was aware that several readers have > >> trouble keeping up with the volume of the list. I made a contrast > >> with LiveJournal, another community system which manages to scale to > >> a far higher volume of traffic before it becomes a burden, looking > >> for things they do that the reader list could do with. > >> > >> Due to time constraints, I could not go into as much detail as I'd > >> have liked to. Here are my slides: http://jace.seacrow.com/misc/ > >> sarai- > >> rl-lj > >> > >> This has been a great opportunity and I thank everyone who was > >> involved, especially those present today. This was the best response > >> I've had to a presentation yet. > >> > >> I will continue exploring how form shapes community and post to the > >> list as appropriate. > >> > >> -- > >> Kiran Jonnalagadda > >> http://www.pobox.com/~jace > >> > >> > >> _________________________________________ > >> 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: > >> > >> > > > > > > > -- > Kiran Jonnalagadda > http://www.pobox.com/~jace > > > From mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com Sat Aug 27 17:28:54 2005 From: mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 04:58:54 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Parsi Theatre's last exponent Message-ID: <20050827115854.10436.qmail@web80908.mail.scd.yahoo.com> Syed Anjum Husain Dehlavi, the last living exponent of Parsi Theatre will be giving a public performance today, that is Saturday the 27th August at the Alliance Francaise 6.30 to 8 pm. I will be interviewing him and getting him to demonstrate the salient aspects of Parsi Acting... Anyone who can make it is welcome... Mahmood ____________________________________________________ Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs From river_side1 at hotmail.com Sat Aug 27 22:37:21 2005 From: river_side1 at hotmail.com (River .) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 17:07:21 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] What ails the Sarai Reader List? Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050827/a583d4e9/attachment.html From river_side1 at hotmail.com Sat Aug 27 23:24:11 2005 From: river_side1 at hotmail.com (River .) Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 17:54:11 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] a thank you note! Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050827/0a681048/attachment.html From i-mad at riseup.net Sat Aug 27 02:38:57 2005 From: i-mad at riseup.net (I-Mad) Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 22:08:57 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [caravan99] invitation: PAW Message-ID: Hello all, Interesting initiative! despite the confusion with the upcoming conference, seems the PGA hallmarks are still inspiring people! Hope this will bring some fresh air and new faces into the PGA process! in solidarity, !-Mad ----------------------------------------- Peoples Against Walls paw(at)lists.riseup.net We invite you to take part in the following list, and to spread it to your friends and groups. Send us information, news, or raise a paw and join us in our actions! PAW! We want to make music, films, art and noise against walls. We want to research, document, and dig behind the goverments and companies making these walls a living nightmare. In short, we want to bring these walls down! PAW aims at a decentralised coordinated network of various peoples, groups and individuals active against WALLS! This list is to research and share information AGAINST Walls! It is an action network to coordinate and promote direct action against walls being built around the world further agravating oppression, discrimination, and control over peoples lives and rights. These walls represent the new world order of fortresses and we view them as nothing but larger collective prisons. The impact that they have on peoples´lives and the ecological systems are unbearable, for this we rose in one intention... THESE WALLS MUST FALL! So far we have our eyes on the Apartheid Wall built by Israel - the Wall of Shame built by Morrocco - the Walls of Cueta and Melilla built by the European Union and Spain - the walls built by the USA across the Mexican borders... and the list is still open! Where ever there is a Wall, there shall be PAW! This network is inspired by the sruggles of the peoples who have been facing the reprecussions of these walls, and the corresponding instigating governments, by their solid wills for years. This list will follow their steps and support their struggles for self-affirmation and determination. Within this network, we are inspired and spirited by the Peoples´Global Action (PGA) hallmarks that can be found on http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/pga/hallm.htm Send us an email to subscribe! One PAW till the last Wall falls! caravan99 at lists.riseup.net From chauhan.vijender at gmail.com Sun Aug 28 15:20:28 2005 From: chauhan.vijender at gmail.com (Vijender chauhan) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 15:20:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Caste Impersonation Message-ID: <8bdde454050828025057af4b83@mail.gmail.com> Hi All, It was really wonderful to be at i fellow workshop at sarai. Presentations were really thought provoking. To mention one - Subhalakshmi and Bodhisattva' presentation induced new thirst in me about an aspect of Modern Indian history- It is Issue of Cast Impersonation. I hope this issue is discussed somewhere. I am really interested. So I request you all - please suggest readings and links. Thanks Vijender From vivek at sarai.net Mon Aug 29 13:29:21 2005 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 13:29:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Eugene Presents--a collaborative publication Message-ID: <4312C059.8030905@sarai.net> -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Eugene Presents--a collaborative publication Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 12:00:16 -0400 From: Ranbir Sidhu To: Ranbir Sidhu Greetings, This is to let you know about and invite you to join a collaborative project/publication I'm involved in. Full details are below. To join in, contact Toby Lee at toby at yellowtrousers.net or me and I'll pass the info along. Please forward this to anyone or post it to a list you think might want to be involved. The editors are particularly looking for people who are overseas or who will be traveling, but to absolutely anyone who is willing to take the plunge, your involvement will be deeply appreciated. Best wishes, Ranbir eugene presents a collaborative publication of ³The Colossus of Long Island² a story by Ranbir Sidhu Eugene Presents is a unique collaborative publication that connects reader to text and author through the intimate art of handwriting. Participants are provided with identical notebooks and copies of the story and are to hand-copy the story into the notebooks over an extended period of time. Finished notebooks will be displayed as part of an installation for Eugene Presents, during Glowlab¹s Open Lab exhibition at Art Interactive in Cambridge, MA (Oct 14 ­ Dec 11). Eugene Presents aims to be a chronicle of dispersal, spatial and temporal. Distances ­ both great and small ­ are to be traveled and mapped out on the pages of these notebooks: impressed in coffee stains and scribbled phone numbers, illustrated through sketches and photographs, or inscribed in novel ways between the lines. We encourage the inclusion of photographs, doodles, drawings, ticket stubs, stickers ­ even your own writing, music or video stored on CDs or DVDs. In the end, as with any literary publication, there will be many copies of the same story, but each copy in a different hand, and thus many different stories. The finished notebooks, brought together in one place, will constitute a body of writing that maps some of the varieties of form that human movement can take‹a chronicle of the infinitely varied routes walked, run, biked, driven, flown, sailed, and pondered. Ranbir Sidhu¹s story was selected from a large pool of submissions for the quality of the writing and for its thematic concerns. Ranbir is a winner of the Pushcart Prize in fiction and his work has previously appeared in many journals and anthologies including The Georgia Review, The Missouri Review, Zyzzyva and Other Voices. In May 2005, he was one of three participants in NOVEL: a Living Installation, at Flux Factory in Queens, NY (www.fluxfactory.org/projects/novel.htm). Eugene Presents is the second installment of Eugene, a series of publications concerned with questions of media and mediation, the materiality of print and writing, and the experience of authorship. To participate: Eugene will mail you a notebook, instructions and a copy of the story, along with an addressed return envelope. Please send requests or questions to Toby at toby at yellowtrousers.net. For further information, please visit the following websites: www.glowlab.com www.artinteractive.org www.yellowtrousers.net From prayas.abhinav at gmail.com Tue Aug 30 10:34:43 2005 From: prayas.abhinav at gmail.com (Prayas Abhinav) Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 10:34:43 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ifellow workshop notes & filament2.com Message-ID: <825bb7b0050829220477ee1e5a@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, I had initiated an art project called - filament2.com a few months back. I am posting some info about it. Also, I have posed a draft of my summarized notes of the Independent Fellows workshop at http://filament2.blogspot.com/2005/08/summary-of-next-three-days-at-workshop.html and http://filament2.blogspot.com/2005/08/workshop-notes.html - do post corrections or additions as comments... --- FILAMENT2.COM ----- "Bounce statements off walls of all shades. You will play with words." The filament2 blogs are about exploring different shades of writing - personal, reviews, political, tech, social concern, journalistic. This exploration is being done in a "traveller's" vein. Like a "rahi" [1]. The travel is happening across servers hosted in different parts of the world. Servers having different national identities, at least. * so http://filament2.blogspot.com is at "blogger", owned by an American company (google.com). * http://filament2.blog.co.uk is at "blog.co.uk", having a British identity. * http://filament2.blogspirit.com is at "blogspirit", a strong European identity. * And http://filament2.civiblog.org/blog is at "civiblog", a Canadian free hosting provider for civil society activists. All the postings at these blogs are consolidated at filament2.com (here), a site with an Indian identity. Globalized "khichdi", a "filament" which lights up with collective globalized action. In India. The next few blogs might be in Africa, Asia, India, Russia, East Europe, Brasil... I might also do a blog at MSN, Salon, LiveJournal, Typepad, Squarespace in a corporate "filamentalizing" effort. I will be publishing periodic illustrated compilations of my postings at these blogs at my site. They will be downloadable (maybe freely). I am also allowing my blogs to transit through seasons. At present a few of these blogs are passing through a season of poems. ---- [1] rahi=traveller in hindi -- Prayas Abhinav From arshad.mcrc at gmail.com Mon Aug 29 11:25:32 2005 From: arshad.mcrc at gmail.com (mohd arshad) Date: Sun, 28 Aug 2005 21:55:32 -0800 Subject: [Reader-list] Aijaz Gul on the Cinema in Pakistan:History, PresentScenarioandFutureProspects Message-ID: <2076f31d050828225547db9266@mail.gmail.com> Aijaz Gul on the Cinema in Pakistan:History,PresentScenarioandFutureProspects Hailing from a family of film exhibitors, Aijaz Gul is the leading film critic and historian of Pakistan.He has been writing on films for last eighteen years in the Pakistani as well as foreign media and has three books on Cinema to his credit. The last Managing Director of the now defunct government-run National Film Development Corporation of Pakistan, AIjaz Gul spoke to Arshad Amanullah on the sidelines of the recently concluded Osian-Cinefan Film Festival. 1.Why Lollywood,Pakistan's once thriving film industry,is now in terminal decline? Answer: Well,that's true that Pakistani film industry has enjoyed a boom after Independence.The fact is that the film industry in Lahore didn't come into inception in 1947.Lahore was a thriving capital of films,especially Punjabi films and many notable filmmakers were working there before 1947.Pakistan's first film 'Teri Yaad' actually started before Independence but it was released in 1948.It was diredted by Dawood.It was a very bad film but it made the beginning.There were so many people who sacrificed their glowing careers in Mumbai in late 40s and migrated to Pakistan.Some of the notable people who came from Mumbai to Lahore were: Noorjahan,Shaukat Hussain Rizvi,Sohan Lata,Nazeer and Nisar Bazmi.Likewise,many people left Lahore for Mumbai.So,that was the evantuality of Partition.After the Independence of Bangladesh in1971,cinemas which were in that part what we used to call East Pakistan,are of course not with us any more.Cinemas in Pakistan,at least in metros, are located at the very choicest places.So with the passage of years, the value of property has increased.And with alternative leisures like cables,DVDs,CDs,and amusemenet parks,people now have other options.Sothe cinema-going has faced a crisis.The number of cinemas which we have now is about more than 500 and almost half of them are not working regularly.Piracy has no limits.Indianfilms are some times availanble here even prior to their release in India.You know,today's Hindi is very closed to Urdu.So when you have this new film in a language even which is spoken in Pakistan,Urdu films have suffered.But,interestingly,25 Pashto films have been produced last year while there was a time when about 10-12 films were produced.And may be the reason is that India(..laughs...) has not produced Pashto films.There is a saying that if Americans spoke Spanish,Britain would have a film industry and I say: if India spoke Persian,Pakistan would have a film industry. 2.Why does Lollywood,in terms of technology and expertise,lag behind Bollywood? Answer: When the times were good,people invested in film related activities.Now when we are facing a lean time,obviously the people who are in the film trade, have shied away.The tragic part is that all those people who took the industry across decades after the Independence, have passed away. So when the production rate is not very high and the box-office ratio is very poor then of course there is no investment in equipments 3.But where is the new generation? Answer: The new generation is definitly there but I just want to mention some of the very notable directors like Anwar Kamal Pasha who was the total filmmaker.Hewas the first filmmaker in early 50s who directed,produced and scripted films like Do Aansu,Gumnam,Qatil,and Anarkali.He was in a way the first Pakistani director.There were rebellious filmmakers like Riaz Shahid and Khalil Qaisar who made films against the British Imperialism. 4.Rebellious in what sense? Answer: Khalil Qaisar was rebellious because he was against the currupt system,whether it was British Raj or the Pakistani Government. Riaz Shahid was a writer and also became the director but essentially he was collaborating with director Khalil Qaisar.They took Tanveer Naqvi as their lyricist,used Faiz Ahmed Faiz's poetry,used Rasheed Attre as composer.So it was the whole team.Riaz Shahid kept on writing against the vices of the system and the curruption in the establishment. 5..They used different countries as the background of their films? Answer: Yes.They took the subject of Palestine,Andalus,Kashmir. Shaheed deals with the British curruption in the Middle East.Khalil Qaisar did not live long.Hemade Shaheed,Farangi,Nagan,Haveli,and about two or three more films and passed away in a very tragic way.So,Riaz Shahid took over and he did continue with his revolutionary scripts and films.His film 'Zarqa' dealt with the independence of Palestine,'Gharnata' dealt with Muslims in Spain and 'Yeh Amn' dealt with Kashmir.He died in 1972.As he had to face very serious problems with the censor board,many people think that he died becaue of the system. His son Shaan,who is now playing in films as a leading man,says:" Mere baap ko cancer ne nahin,censor ne maara" .. . 6.It means that they wanted to glorify the Muslim past? Answer: In a way,yes.Riaz Shahid wanted to do that time and again.But he also made films like 'Gunahgaar' which takes place in Pakistan.It deals with treason and has corruption at its centrestage. 7.How did he deal with the ordinary people.,i.e.the masses of Pakistan? Answer: Well.'Clerk' would be a good example of dealing with the poverty of an ordinary clerk who would not subscribe to curruption,to bribe and palm greasing and who lives by his own rules.But he is consistently bugged by his wife who wants more and more material goods and eventually he catches TB.Sothat was a good subject.But it didn't do very well at the box-office because it was very sad and very grim.. 8. How did the ban on the Hindi films in Pakistan affect Lollywood? Answer: There was a time when over hundred films were produced in Pakistan and they were doing very well.Indian films were being released every month.Cinemas in Pakistan were enjoying the boom in the 60s. Shortly after the second Indo-Pak war,Indian films were banned in Pakistan.Cinema owners didn't raise their voices against the ban because they benifittedeconomically and Pakistani films were doing very well then.All the original filmmakers who had laid the foundation of Pakistani cinema and their patrons have now passed away,the number of films have reduced and the quality has gone down.Only 25 Urdu and Pujabi films were produced last year.So the cinemas are falling short of films.Thus, the exhibitors are right in asking to lift the ban.I think umbrella protection has had its ill-effects. 9.There is tremendous demand of Indian films in Pakistan.So why does the Governmet of Pakistan not lift the ban ? Answer: You do know that filmmaking is not just art and technology.It's also a big business.The Government of Pakistan knows this and it wants to make it as a part of trade or may be it is waiting for still better times when people would still get even more closer. 10.Is there any chance of collaboration between Bollywood and Lollywood? Answer: The PM of Pakistan met the members of the film industry on June 13 and said that he was all for collaboration between India,Pakistan,Bangladesh,Iran,Nepal, Sri Lanka.I think India and Pakistan are joining hands indirectly.Some of the good films which had been produced in recent years, have collaborated with India for their production and post-production.They have used Indian singers: Udit Narayan,Kumar Shaanu and Kavita Krishnamurthy.For choreography, Indian art directors have been hired.So I think co-production,i.e.collaboration is already taking place. 11 What similarity do you find in cinemas of India and Pakistan? Answer: In India, there are Hindi films and there are regional films. I've been enjoying Art films by directors like Shyam Benegal and Satyajit Ray.Butfilms which are being produced today in Mumbai,many of them are banal:they lack subtlety and common sense,they are weak in script,imagination and aesthetic values.An educated and intelligent person looks for these things in a good film.However,Bollywood movies are rich in music, production values,cinematography and editing.They are big in terms of budgeting and casting.because super stars have their own appeal.The average viewer is carried away by all these gimmicks.He does not go into script ki baarikiyaan which is not there in most of the films.He just enjoys the music,the actresses and the witty dialogues and like to forget each and every thing for those two and half hours.Interestingly,Bollywood flicks are more popular in Pakistan than Lollywood productions because Hindi films are technically superior to their Lollywood counterparts.Another reason is that cinemas of both countties have the same ingredients of dance and song sequence, comedy,marriages,parents, the system and police.So like an Indian viewer,an average Pakistani also gets his kicks from these highly melodramatic contents. 12..How will the exchange of artists shape film industry of both countries? Answer: There is fear in Pakistan that if the Pakistani artists go to work in Bollywood,they will be swallowed by the industry and will lose their indentity and star values,and hence,their bargaining power.But I don't subscribe to the opinion, because for one thing, its true that Sawan kumar gave a very small role to Talat Hussain in Sautan Ki Beti.Likewise, Manoj Kumar invited Zeba and Muhammad Ali to Mumbai to work in his production Clerk ,and their roles were very brief.But these are petty matters and we should not be talking about them.My hat is off to Mahesh Bhatt because Meera is seen in Nazar from beginning to the end.I would say (..laughs..): Mahesh Bhatt should have reduced her.However,it's a very average film and the subject is not very original.I think nobody should worry about small roles or insignificant contribution.Let's start and make a beginning. 13.How Lahore has reacted to anti-Pakistan films churned out by Bollywood? Answer: Well,this reminds me of President Musharraf who, in one of his interactions with journalists from India and Pakistan,said(laughs):'No more entire Pakistani films.I expect that you would not make those films anymore'.But India,as an independent country, has the right to make the kind of films the filmmakers want to make.However,they should care about their customers and audiences in Pakistan, and they should start making films differently from what they have shown in LOC, Ghadar , Maa Tujhe Salam etc.Pakistan has also played its negative role in films like Tere Pyar Mein, Ghar Kab Aaoge , and Ladki Punjaban.Neighbouring country bashing might momentarily get cheap claps from the front-benchers but it's friendship and going together which helps in long run.We have to live together as the former Prime Minister Vajpayee said that you can change the friends but you cann't change the neighbours.So, we must work together into the future 14.What are the stereotypes the Pakistani cinema generally plays on? Answer: There are many hackneyed characters.There are sterotype mothers,fathers and dialogues which are also in Indian films like:'Ye shaadi nahin ho sakti'.There are stereotype situations, i.e.formula situations.There are stereotype lawyers,judges and courts.I was nailed by Yash Chopra in Veer Zara .I applaud three cheers for Mr.Yash Chopra for making this film which is a right move at right time but there were certain things,especially the climax sequence which unfolds in the court,could have been done differently. 15.Does Lollywood have stereotypes along ethnic lines? Answer: Yes,speaking of North West Frontier Province,there is an actor called Badar Muneer who has been working in films since 1970 and he just could not step out what he has been doing for last 35 years.Sometimes he is brought into Urdu films as a Pathan who is speaking Urdu and, of course,with his own accent and delivery.So we have those stereotypes. 16.To what extent,the Kara International Film Festival which has already seen its four successful years,can contribute in creating a quality film culture in Pakistan? Answer: There are upcoming filmmakers who are making their films on digitals.:Hassan Zaidi,Bilal Minto,Faisal Rehman and Mehjabeen Jabbar are just four or five names.Their works Javed Champu,Raat Chali Jhum Ke ,Beauty Parlour etc stand testimony to the fact that these new filmmakers,are a future asset of Pakistan.Inspite of having budget restraints, they are doing good job.KaraFilm Festival which is being held in every December for last four years,has been providing them a platform to show their work, and let me tell you that Kara Film Festival has been making maximum efforts to bring Bollywood celebrities.In future,it would be a joint launching pad for Indian and Pakistani filmmakers. 17.Do you have magazines that publish serious stuff about the showbiz? Answer: Yes,we have specific film magazines and we also have film editions in very distinguished national dailies.Dawn,News and Nation have weekly film supplements. All major Urdu dailies like Nawa-e-Waqt and Jung, and then weeklies like Akhbar-e-Jahan,have film sections. Noor Jahan and Nigar,both from Karachi and Filmi Parcha edited by Tariq Lodhi from Lahore are weekly magazines and they exclusively deal with films.But serious film criticism is lacking and we need to work on that. Anyone who has earned a degree in journalism,is not qualified to write on films.I think you should be thoroughly trained in the film history and in film appreciation and only then you should write on films. 18.What concerted efforts are being made to promote a vibrant film culture in Pakistan? Answer: Well,in last three years there has been a revolution in the media.New TV channels and radio stations are coming up in the private sector.There is a mass communication department in Fatima Jinnah University which is for women.These young ladies are making short films on very challeging subjects as part of their curriculum.Geo Television of Jung Group,National College of Arts and many other institutes are coming up with courses in films Lahore and Karachi.So the beginning has already been madeStudents are already making films with a very very modest budget.Hopefully,in two or three years,they will be in the market as well as they will be shown in the festivals. (For the whole interview contact :arshad.mcrc at gamil.com) arshad amanullah 35,masihgarh, jamia nagar new delhi-25 >>>>Mr.Aijaz Gul may be contacted on: Aijaz Gul Shabistan Cinema Murree Road, Rawalpindi Tel/Fax: 2278245 aijazgul at hotmail.com -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050828/14783433/attachment.html From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Aug 30 15:02:42 2005 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 15:02:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Literary culture in Baghdad from Salon.com Message-ID: <431427BA.8070409@ranadasgupta.com> The death of Al Mutanabbi Street Iraqi culture was reborn when Saddam fell, only to die again. A report from Baghdad's fear-haunted literary cafes. - - - - - - - - - - - - By Phillip Robertson Aug. 26, 2005 | BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The sea has swallowed the honey And love turned to ashes in the roads. -- Hamid Mokhtar, "The Rabble" Near the old Jewish quarter of Baghdad, at Al Rasheed Street, there is a meandering alley named after the Iraqi poet Al Mutanabbi. The poet's street branches away from Al Rasheed and heads down through a tissue of dilapidated buildings with thin columns that hold up warped balconies. Bookstores of every description occupy the street-level spaces, selling technical manuals, ornate copies of the Quran and a nice selection of pirated software. Al Mutanabbi then runs downhill toward the mud-brown bend of the Tigris until veering west at a covered market and the high walls of an old mosque school. Right at the bend in the road is Baghdad's legendary literary cafe, the Shabandar, where for decades writers and intellectuals have come to drink tea and smoke tobacco from water pipes. The place is smoke-scarred and dirty. When there is electricity, which is almost never, the fans do not cool the air at all. Literary men in their shirt-sleeves sit and smoke. On Tuesday, Aug. 2, walking carefully under the white-hot sun, a man carried a bag down Al Mutanabbi Street and walked into Hajji Qais Anni's stationery store, stayed for a short time, then left without his package. When the package exploded a short time later, the blast killed Hajji Qais, who was sitting near the door where he kept watch over his shop. The bomb set fire to his place, and it is now a blackened shell on bookseller's row. Hajji Qais had been on Al Mutanabbi street for 10 years and the vendors all knew him. He sold greeting cards for births and anniversaries along with Christmas and Easter gifts, cologne and pens. He wore a beard and was also known as a devout Sunni who had no problem hiring Shia workers or spending time with Christian colleagues. Aside from stocking a few items related to Christian holidays, there was nothing unusual in his shop. He wasn't a known member of any political party, and he was, according to his neighbors on Al Mutanabbi Street, a generous man who often gave money to the poor. No one in the district will speak openly about who killed him, including his own son. Ahmed Dulaimi, a young guitarist for Iraq's only heavy metal band, told a story that has been going around Baghdad these last few weeks. There was an ice seller selling ice from a small shop on the sidewalk in the Dora neighborhood. One hot day, a man came up to him with a gun and said, "You shouldn't be selling ice because the Prophet Mohammed didn't have ice in his time." Then the gunman shot the ice seller dead. This story terrifies Iraqis but they often laugh when they recount it, because it is absurd that anyone would get killed for selling ice or shaving a beard. It is also true that the ice-seller anecdote follows a pattern of killings around the capital where Islamic militants have regularly assassinated Iraqis for violating strict, and utterly random, codes of behavior. The point of the ice-seller story is that now, anyone in Iraq can be killed for any reason at all. After Hajji Qais was killed, more than one person mentioned these spontaneous assassinations, and they spoke about them the way they'd describe a sandstorm, an all-encompassing thing that no one can stop. Baghdad's literary neighborhood has a long history of dissent and a well-practiced tolerance of other ideas. Under Saddam, Al Mutanabbi Street was a center for small anti-regime cells who published illegal copies of their tracts, under fake names. Because the place was known for intellectual resistance to the regime and as a center for liberal ideas, the government hated it. In the manic days after the fall of Baghdad, a flood of Western journalists came to Al Mutanabbi Street to meet dissident Iraqi writers, and in the cafes and shops there was always the excited roar of conversation. Men clinked their tea glasses on small cups, they gestured, hatched their schemes. English translation was a hot commodity in those early days. I was at the Shabandar cafe in May 2003 when Amir Sayegh, an Iraqi Christian, came over and told me how he worshiped Sidney Sheldon over Joyce and Faulkner as the greatest writer to ever write in English; he had no use for the literary canon, but he took writers in and made them part of the neighborhood. Amir hatched a million schemes for post-Saddam Iraq. He wrote long advisory letters to President Bush, and he wanted to start an English instruction school for adults, which was reasonable and nearly succeeded. Amir explained to any captive listener that he was working on a manuscript that tracked Baghdad's exploding inventory of graffiti. "Saddam is coming back," he had copied down from a dust-colored wall in the old city right after Baghdad fell. Beneath it was the response, "Yes, but he's coming back through your ass." By June of last year, he had more than 3,000 quotations from the street and he was carefully adding new quotes to his archive. The same walls were rewritten, edited by anonymous authors, the graffiti turning against the U.S. When I left in September 2004, he was kind enough to give me a copy. Amir, compulsive chatterer, couldn't stop talking because he had years of unborn commentary stored for the exact moment when the regime collapsed. When the time had finally come, it was almost more than he could bear. It was Amir, Socratic in his ugliness, ex-radar technician, dissident spokesman, who believed Iraq could survive the occupation to scatter the ashes of the dictatorship. "This is the real parliament of Iraq," a Shabandar dweller exhorted after the invasion. "This is where the real discussions take place." If the Shabandar was Iraq's parliament, then al-Sayegh was its prime minister. If you were a writer in Baghdad, it did not matter where you came from, you ended up at the Shabandar, because the cafe and the book district received everyone. Amir would find you there. If you were a thief, then your stoop was in Bab Al Sharji. For literary types, it was Al Mutanabbi Street. There happens to be a great symmetry in Arabic that binds the words for "writer" and "book" in a single sound. Book is "kitab," writer, "katib," and the difference is little more than a shift in stress when the words are spoken. Today, the street where books and writers coexist has become a street of ghosts. After I returned to Iraq in late May this year, I learned that Amir Sayegh had fled to Canada. Iraqis still shop in the book district, but most of the intellectuals who felt free to say what they thought in public are either in hiding or have fallen silent out of fear that spies for various armed groups will target them for assassination. Iraqi writers are starting to head underground, retreating to protected offices. Because literary culture is so bound to a particular neighborhood of Baghdad, an attack on Al Mutanabbi Street is an attack on Iraqi culture itself. This is a culture once so vibrant that a famous slogan in the Arab world ran, "Cairo writes, Beirut publishes, Baghdad reads." A mere two and a half years after I met Amir, not a trace of his optimism remains, and in the district where they were once welcomed, many Iraqis shun foreigners. It is extremely dangerous to openly associate with Westerners, particularly Americans, since doing so can lead one to be denounced as a traitor by an insurgent group. No one wants to be the ice seller. Other Iraqis, who have had family members killed in the uprisings that spread across the country, have moved toward the insurgents or joined them. Those left in the middle, those who have no bad feelings about foreigners, are in a vanishing minority. Trust, always hard to find in Iraq, is extremely rare. This is a sea change, a shift evident in the hard looks and hesitant hand-shakes when we meet people in passing. Foreigners in Iraq experience this social breakdown in a direct way, but Iraqis suffer on a far more intense level. They face exactly the same threats, the evaporation of trust, the ever-present danger of kidnapping and assassination, but they do not have the option of going home to another country. The old ties that bound Iraqis to each other are coming apart. In the intervening time since the fall of Baghdad, a vast thieves' market of looted machinery, drugs and other illegal business has swallowed Al Rasheed Street, the long once-elegant old boulevard that runs along the Tigris, sending tentacles down into the busy book district. Al Rasheed Street has a long colonnaded stretch that is now closed to traffic while lookouts for armed groups keep a close eye on strangers in the market. Everyone is suspicious and everyone is monitored. NewsWhen I first heard about Hajji Qais' death, I was searching for a friend I made in the early days of the occupation, an Iraqi writer named Hamid Mokhtar, who spends a great deal of time on Al Mutanabbi Street. Ahmed Dulaimi went looking for him on Friday the 5th of August but there was no sign of Mokhtar and he found only nervous booksellers and the Shabandar cafe shuttered. The Shabandar is always open, even during Ramadan, and this was another bad sign. What started as a search for a writer became a search for a neighborhood. A few days later, when I finally met Mokhtar at the Iraqi Writer's Union and told him about the bombing on the bookseller's row, he was not surprised. He had already heard the news and said without any hesitation, "We are all targets for assassination now." Mokhtar, who is well known in Iraq for spending eight years in Abu Ghraib during Saddam's regime, knows the feeling well. While other writers cooperated with the previous government, Mokhtar was one of a small number of intellectuals who continued to work without producing the obligatory paeans for the dictator. Eventually, security men came to his house and arrested his typewriter, and finding that unsatisfactory, eventually returned for the man himself. These days, rail-thin but looking much healthier than he did after his release from prison, the soft-spoken Mokhtar argues for religious tolerance and national unity. In Iraq, now a crucible for at two distinct fundamentalist movements, the act of publicly advocating these principles in Baghdad is flat-out heroic. "When I appear on television and in magazines, that brings me to the attention of these [armed] groups. Many of my friends have been killed, even my colleagues from prison have been targeted. Before, we were suffering under Saddam, but now there are many Saddams." In the aftermath of the occupation, those loyal to any one of the numerous armed politico-religious gangs are indistinguishable from anyone else in Iraq. The threat is invisible. Mokhtar is finding himself, along with the other writers who experienced a sudden shock of freedom, under some of the same unpleasant pressures he felt under the regime. Writers and intellectuals are being driven back underground or, at the very least, stymied by the uncertainty and fear of reprisals for advocating forbidden ideas, and an idea acceptable to one faction is heresy to another. Sayegh and Mokhtar's longtime enemy has returned not as a single tyrant, but instead as a creature the occupation has atomized into thousands of gunmen amped on pure hatred and fundamentalist Islam. "In Saddam's time I only had one enemy, the dictator; now it is not very clear. He's disappeared. Saddam has become a ghost, he could be anywhere, " Mokhtar explained with a shrug. "Mutanabbi Street is the place where we express our ideas. We don't have any other place to go and many of the famous Iraqi writers have fled the country. The only way to communicate with them is through the Internet. The others are afraid and they are hiding. I've been advised not to go out in public." Mokhtar said that his old car was easily spotted on the road, so he got a new one that doesn't stand out quite as much. On the following Wednesday, five days after I met Mokhtar at his office, I took Ahmed down to Al Mutanabbi Street. We found the Shabandar open. There were a few younger men sitting on the benches keeping an eye on the clientele and they had beards, a new development for the Shabandar. These are newcomers, who come to keep watch on the smokers and tea drinkers. Out in front of the great windows, sitting behind Hajji Mohammed, the owner of the place, is a scribe for those who need to write official letters but do not know how to write. The old man is curled over an ancient Arabic typewriter with a piece of yellowed paper wound through the platen. It looks like he's been there for a hundred years. In the Shabandar, Ahmed was sitting next to me trying to figure out what he was supposed to do. "You want me to go ask the owner, Hajji Mohammed, about the bombing?" "No." "OK. What do you want to do?" "I don't want to do anything." Ahmed waited for more information. He was wearing a black T-shirt that said, "Hate the Game, not the Player." "I just want to sit here and let these guys get used to us for a minute." There were warning signs. No one spoke in the cafe, and most of the customers were smoking in silence; if they did speak, they kept their voices low so they wouldn't be overheard. Men sitting on benches across the cafe looked away when we glanced in their direction. People were monitoring us, a few were waiting to see what would happen, keeping an iron in the fire with respect to possible future events. When we'd come in, I had seen a man in his 30s wearing a particular kind of beard that the jihadis favor. He was reading a paper and made a show of not looking up. Fighters in the Mahdi Army wear this beard. It also didn't have to mean anything, although those beards were not common two years ago. We sat down next to him. "Ahmed, look at this guy next to us." "Sure, man, I see him, no problem." Ahmed speaks in perfect American movie English. "Ask him about the bombing on Tuesday that killed Hajji Qais." So Ahmed turned to the man and asked him. "I know you guys are from the press," the man with the beard whispered. "You are asking very sensitive questions. If you ask Hajji Mohammed about it he might suspect you of something." The man with the beard didn't feel like talking about the bombing. We went to the front of the cafe and found Hajji Mohammed, who is slightly grizzled and irritable, stuck behind his small desk where he rings up the customers. When we asked him about the bombing he said that he couldn't remember a time when people were killed for absolutely no reason. Hajji Mohammed went on to speak wistfully about the old monarchy, saying Iraq had its best days under the king. We asked him why he'd closed the cafe last Friday on its busiest day of the week. "Fridays I lose so much money because people buy a tea and sit all day and when it comes time to pay, they come to me and lie about how many teas they had. So I closed the cafe. We also had generator problems," Hajji Mohammed said. It was a massive lie, which he did not expect us to believe. Fridays are the busiest day for the Shabandar, the day that writers from all over the city come to discuss, translate and work on manuscripts; business booms. Mokhtar also makes a point of being at the Shabandar on Friday where he holds court. The real reason Hajji Mohammed closed the cafe, which everyone on the street knows, is that he has been receiving threats from insurgent groups who don't like his clients and their politics. Mokhtar is likely one of the reasons, and there are other dissident groups as well. We would find one such semi-clandestine organization two days later and they would confirm that the Shabandar was receiving threats, but they couldn't say who was behind them. The men never show themselves. We left the Shabandar and found a man around the corner who said that Hajji Qais' son was not killed in the bombing, and only found out about his father's death on television. He said that Ahmed Qais was working around the corner in another small stationery store, called the Nadeem. The bookseller said we could talk to him if we were interested. Hajji Qais' son, Ahmed Qais, is in his early 30s, a well-educated Sunni engineer. He's clean-shaven and polite, not an extremist. Ahmed Qais is a little heavy-set from consuming sugary tea and bread. He's well-spoken in Arabic, and he understood a great deal of spoken English, often responding before the translation came in. For a man whose father had been killed a few days before, Ahmed Qais was pretty calm and focused. It took a little while to convince him to talk to a reporter but he relented after a few minutes. We found a room in the back of the stationery store where we could talk. "Who do you think killed your father?" I asked him. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. "Everything is suspected. He worked all day and all night, so there's no way he could be involved in something. The police came and conducted a short investigation and then left, but in a destroyed country like this, they can't investigate anything. There are also some strange people here who think that my father was selling valuables or Easter gifts and some people think that might be the wrong thing to do." Ahmed Qais talked for an hour about how it was important for his family to move on with their lives, which seemed like an odd comment to make so soon after the killing. Ahmed Qais didn't back any particular theory of the crime. In fact, he stayed away from saying anything specific and wouldn't name anyone he thought was involved. He was obviously extremely frightened and thought that talking about the assassination of his father would only bring him problems. Ahmed Qais asked if I heard what happened to the ice seller in Dora and we said yes, that story was going around and we knew it. I asked him about threats his father might have received and he said that there weren't any, that his father didn't have enemies on the street. Just as I was leaving, I handed him a piece of paper with my contact information on it. He said, "Even if I had some information, I would keep it to myself." Ahmed Qais told me that he had two families to support and that it was a big responsibility. "We should just forget it," he said. I was stunned. "Forget the killing?" "Yes." Hajji Qais Anni had only been dead for six days. His blackened store is a monument to the assassination and also a warning to other Al Mutanabbi Street vendors. On Sunday, three days before I met his son, another man selling cassette tapes of the Quran was assassinated by gunmen. He worked in a store a block away from Hajji Qais' place. Two days later, on Friday, in the faint hope of finding the Shabandar open, we went back to Al Mutanabbi Street to meet Hamid Mokhtar, but the cafe was shuttered. The street was filled with booksellers and book buyers. At 10 in the morning, it was 115 degrees, while street vendors yelled out, "Drinks! Cold! Drinks! Pepsi! Miranda!" It was hard to move in the crowd. There were hundreds of men in the street shopping for books spread out on carpets, buying religious tracts, technical manuals. Copies of pirated software were placed respectfully by ornately bound Qurans. We found Mokhtar waiting in front of the Shabandar. He said, "We can't stay here." So we walked to a bookstore called Adnan's Library where we drank tea, while Mokhtar scouted for a safe place. He led us through winding streets below Al Rasheed Street, small alleys that branched off Al Mutanabbi, narrow canyons whose walls were white in the sun. Mokhtar was worried that we would be attacked; he'd taken this route many times before, trying to ditch the Mukhabarat (secret police) men in the old regime days. On Rasheed Street, there is a dark pit of a place called Hassan the Foreigner. Men who couldn't get into the Shabandar were there drinking tea and smoking. Students worked at a nearby table taking careful notes. It was impossible to see what they were working on. The place was ancient, unimprovable and collapsing down into itself in slow motion. A faint rectangle of light came through the windows and died long before the back wall where we found a free bench. "I discovered that a girl I knew from college was writing reports on me [for the secret police]. I was surprised but this gave me an idea for a new book." I asked him if he was able to write these days. Mokhtar got upset with the question. "No, I can't write under these conditions, I have to calm down. I need some time to think. It's too soon." Like all other Iraqis, Mokhtar has been pushed into the rapidly splintering future without time to cope with the past. As he was talking, other middle-aged men gathered around us very quietly and sat down after long ritual greetings. They were all poets and former political prisoners; they were all Mokhtar's friends. All the prison men are the same. They talk about prison, how they survived, and they carry pictures of those days like wedding photos. In the photos, taken on the special occasions when their families were allowed to visit, they are hunched in groups and hollow-eyed. Prisoners form tight-knit groups and the photographs showed the circle of men whom Mokhtar trusted. It is a special honor to see these pictures. Mokhtar carries them with him. We were being allowed inside Mokhtar's cell. One of Mokhtar's friends, a poet, leaned over and said to me, "I have some information. The Shabandar is closed because it got a threat." "From who?" "Nobody knows." The man was going slowly blind from cataracts. He wanted to know where he could go for treatment. "I am a writer. Without my eyes, what can I do?" he asked. We talked and drank tea until a loud man sidled up from nowhere. I never even saw him coming. He was a loud Arab-American from Indiana in a business-casual shirt who said he worked with the International Republican Institute. (IRI states that no one fitting that description has ever worked with its organization.) We got into a conversation about what he was doing, none of which made a great deal of sense, and then he explained I couldn't write any of his information because he doesn't want to be targeted by the resistance. The Indiana man also said all these things at the top of his lungs in English in the depths of a cafe that the insurgents control or at least monitor. It was a terrible mistake in Hassan the Foreigner and there was nothing you could tell him. Mokhtar looked over at me with suffering eyes and left for another appointment. Minka Nijhuis, a brilliant Dutch journalist, was sitting next to me and said we should go look for some people who she thought might know more about the bombing and the threats to the cafe. It was also safer to keep moving. We walked out into the crucible sun and found the bookseller street deserted, the vendors packing up. A dwarf passed by us pushing a handcart full of empty boxes. Minka's contacts were members of a secular pro-democracy group called the Cultural Gathering. We walked to the end of Al Mutanabbi. Next to a covered market stood a large building with a courtyard. Inside the courtyard were men selling books and pamphlets on tables. The second floor had piles of dead copiers, a graveyard for dead office equipment. We walked to the gates, where Minka spoke to a man who asked us to wait for a moment. That was when we realized that the group was using observers, who made sure that no one who didn't belong there could get through the gates. If there was a problem, one of the men would run to the group and tell them to scatter. The office is deep off the courtyard, so controlling the gates is not difficult. Men on the street selling cigarettes, soft drink salesmen, and other people who stay in one place for long periods of time often work as lookouts for underground groups in Iraq. You see it everywhere. The Cultural Gathering was worried about being attacked by insurgents and they had their eyes open. The leader of the Iraqi Cultural Gathering emerged from the courtyard to greet us, blinking in the harsh light. His name was Mohammed Shakir Mahmoud, and he was happy to see journalists because he wanted to talk about his work and there weren't any foreigners coming around to listen. In a small, dusty office with a computer and a few chairs, Mahmoud said, "We have the idea that every aspect of Iraqi culture was damaged by the dictatorship, that's why we should rebuild the culture and bring attention back to Iraqi civilization. In the past there was a great deal of damage. We were isolated and alienated from each other. That's why we created this organization." The organization puts out a journal of essays on democracy and Iraqi civilization, where they promote the values of a secular unified country. Mahmoud was not enthusiastic about religion as the basis of government; he thought the federalism expressed in the draft of the constitution was a simple power grab by armed factions. Four other men quietly came into the room to join the discussion, sat down on the chairs and listened while Mahmoud, who works as a newspaper editor, explained what they were trying to do. "We organized meetings in the Shabandar of writers who had been forced to leave Iraq during Saddam's time. Our basic idea is that Iraqis should understand themselves." Mahmoud's haven in the Shabandar lasted for two meetings and that was it. After that, Hajji Mohammed told them they weren't welcome, that they were causing trouble because he'd been getting threats from insurgent groups. Mahmoud, whose group has about 120 unofficial members, discussed the Iraqi national identity over tea with his friends. Islam and its effect on civilization was the topic of the second, a subject that may have pushed Hajji Mohammed at the Shabandar over the edge. Thinkers who advocate a secular Iraq are being driven slowly underground because their ideas are a threat to the religious fundamentalists in each armed group. Jarrar Hassan, a forthright middle-aged man who was sitting next to Mahmoud, said, "Hajji Mohammed thinks the threats have something to do with our meetings. I spoke to him and he told me what happened because we have a good relationship. He said, 'If you guys came on Fridays then someone will drop off a bomb and kill all of you. So I closed the cafe.'" Minka said, "So you are the troublemakers." "We are honored to be so," Mahmoud laughed. "We are still a small organization. We can't do much. We have no public membership lists and we have not been threatened individually, but as a group we have been accused of being spies for the U.S. and accused of apostasy. In the newspaper, people printed direct threats against us." As we were leaving, Mahmoud gave us a copy of the Iraqi Cultural Gathering Journal to take with us. It was difficult to leave the men there. They looked stranded and uncertain about the future. We started to make our way out. In the hall, we passed the carefully stationed lookouts, and as we walked by, each serious young man joined the group and walked with us down to the street. Not one of them carried a gun. This story has been corrected since it was originally published. - - - - - - - - - - - - About the writer Phillip Robertson is reporting from Iraq for Salon. From announcer at crit.org.in Wed Aug 31 10:36:07 2005 From: announcer at crit.org.in (Concerned Citizens Commission) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 10:36:07 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Enquiry into the Mumbai Floods 2005 Message-ID: Dear Fellow Citizens of Mumbai: We were deeply shocked by the events that led to the tragic floods in Maharashtra which led to the deaths of several hundreds of citizens in Mumbai and Maharashtra. The formation of the Concerned Citizens' Commission (CCC): An Enquiry into the Mumbai Floods 2005, was announced at a press conference on 16 August 16 2005 (please refer press note below). The initiative is being actively supported by over 30 organisations. In brief, the CCC is a fact finding mission that will look into the disaster that befell large parts of Mumbai city on July 26 and in the following days. The Commission consists of an eminent Panel of nine members. They will be assisted by NGOs and those who have been involved in the relief efforts at the grass roots level, as well as others with knowledge of disaster management, urban planning, administration, ecology and other relevant fields. Through a series of public hearings and depositions from common Mumbaikars, urban planning experts, government officials and others, the Panel will piece together the events leading up to the tragedy, identify and hold accountable those responsible for inaction and mismanagement and make a set of recommendations. The CCC will look into the causes of the flooding, the response from government and other agencies and how our future urban planning can ensure that the damage from future 'natural disasters', compounded by human factors, can be mitigated. We aim to release the Commission's finding in the form of a report by 31 October 2005. As one can imagine, this is no easy task logistically. Fund raising for the CCC is currently underway. On behalf of the CCC, we urge your organisation to make a donation of whatever amount possible. Cheques in favour of Conservation Action Trust can be sent to CAT, B 502 Glengate, Hiranandani Gardens, Powai. Mumbai 400076. (Please note we are still waiting for our S. 80G approval – please make your cheques “A/C Payee Only” – Thanks) CONCERNED CITIZEN'S COMMISSION (CCC): An Enquiry into the Mumbai Floods 2005 Few Mumbaikars were left untouched or unaffected by the devastating floods that hit the city from July 26 onwards. After the grief and shock has come an overwhelming sense of anger and the urgent need to know what actually happened, why civic life remained disrupted for so many days and what lessons can be learned, so that a repeat catastrophe is avoided. With this in mind, a coalition of citizen's groups from across the length and breadth of the city announce the formation of the Concerned Citizens' Commission: An Enquiry into the Mumbai Floods 2005. The Commission consists of an eminent Panel of nine members. They will be assisted by NGOs and those who have been involved in the relief efforts at the grass roots level, as well as others with knowledge of disaster management, urban planning, administration, ecology and other relevant fields. Through a series of public hearings and depositions from common Mumbaikars, urban planning experts, government officials and others, the Panel will piece together the events leading up to the tragedy, identify and hold accountable those responsible for inaction and mismanagement and make a set of recommendations. The CCC will also look into the causes of the flooding, the response from government and other agencies and how our future urban planning can ensure that the damage from future 'natural disasters', compounded by human factors, can be mitigated. The Panel will consist of: 1. Justice P.B. Sawant (Retired Supreme Court Judge) 2. Ms. Teesta Seetalvad (Citizens for Justice and Peace) 3. Mr. Shyam Chainani (Bombay Environmental Action Group) 4. Mr. Sharad Kale (Former Municipal Commissioner of Mumbai) 5. Mr. Nasser Munjee (Expert on Urban Infrastructure) 6. Mr. Darryl D'Monte (Environmental Journalist) 7. Mr. Chandrashekhar Prabhu (Architect and Town Planner) 8. Mr. Datta Ishwalkar (Girni Kamgar Sangharsh Samiti) 9. Mr. Suresh Bhosale The Terms of Reference of the CCC are: 1. To develop a reliable picture of the floods in Greater Mumbai and document what actually took place, the extent of damage to lives and dignity of persons, along with a detailed examination of property loss and damage, linked critically to the issue of relief and compensation. 2. To determine the causes and factors that led to the flooding, including the role of the state executive, government and administration in implementing the Disaster Management Plan. 3. To understand the role of the MCGB and the State police – in pre- empting, containing and controlling damage to life and property. 4. To recommend a set of measures to better anticipate natural calamities and to minimize their impact; as also to ensure that Disaster Management Plans are implemented more effectively. 5. To identify in particular those responsible for inaction and hold them accountable. 6. To ensure effective citizen participation in the planning of the city and in Disaster Management. 7. Any other relevant matters that the Panel may decide to include. The CCC calls on all those with relevant information to share to send their submissions to cccmumbaiflood at gmail.com and cccmumbaiflood at yahoo.co.uk and to CCC, c/o Citizens for Justice and Peace, Nirant, Juhu Tara Road, Juhu, Mumbai 400 049. The CCC intends to release its Report within three months. The Report will then be available to the public to initiate follow up and remedial action with the State Government, BMC and other relevant authorities, as well as citizens' groups. Debi Goenka Cyrus Guzder The Concerned Citizens' Commission (CCC) is endorsed by the following groups: Bombay Environmental Action Group (BEAG) Citizens For Justice and Peace (CJP) Girangoan Rozgar Hakk Samiti Shahid Bhagwat Jadhav Samiti Kendra Conservation Action Trust AGNI National Association of People's Movement (NAPM) BNHS (Bombay Natural History Society) NAGAR Apnalaya Nivara Hakk Suraksha Samiti Citispace Clean Air Bombay Catholic Sabha Voice Of The Exploited (VOTE) All India Catholic Union (AICU) Friends of Society SEED People's Union for Human Rights (PUHR) KHOJ National Welfare Society ACHRA and Welfare Education Trust All India Human Rights & Citizens Option Communalism Combat Mangrove Society of India Marine Drive Residents Association Oval Cooperage Residents Association Nariman Point Residents Association Nirmala Niketan Rashtriya Yuva Sangathan Sarvoday International Trust Mohalla Committee Prayas Apnalaya Ration Kruti Samiti, Mumbai Majlis CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust) Documentation, Training and Research Centre Institute for Community Organisation Research _____ CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust) Announcements List announcer at crit.org.in http://lists.crit.org.in/mailman/listinfo/announcer From adreesh.katyal at gmail.com Wed Aug 31 18:04:40 2005 From: adreesh.katyal at gmail.com (Adreesh Katyal) Date: Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:04:40 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Famous on net, anonymous in life Message-ID: <549462c105083105344df07929@mail.gmail.com> Famous on net, anonymous in life CHARLES ASSISI TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ SUNDAY, AUGUST 28, 2005 11:54:06 PM ] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1212792,curpg-3,fright-0,right-0.cms Jivha has always been a popular name on the net but his sudden disappearance has baffled the online community. In his late twenties, he studied engineering and eventually graduated with an MBA from IIM Calcutta; a voracious reader; is avowedly agnostic, though given a choice he'd be Hindu; and has no hobbies except trawling for news. Ironically, nobody knows what his name is in the real world. You could say the same of Kiran Jonalagadda. Online, people call him Jace. He doesn't particularly cherish his privacy. There is not an iota of deceit in him. Unsurprisingly, the 26- year-old Bangalore-based technology buff is hugely popular online. His blog on www.livejournal.com/users/jace is accessed everyday by a few hundred people. Follow his online trail and you'll find him everywhere. On other people's blogs, on mailing lists that furiously debate the merits of PHP versus SQL or the subtleties of service on Air Deccan and SpiceJet; in archives of online conversations that date back 10 years. Try communicating with him over the phone though. The superbly articulate online personality suddenly morphs into a painfully exasperating man. Almost a social recluse, Jace acknowledges he is deeply introverted. "I don't use the phone because it forces me to speak,"he says helpfully. Is that why you maintain a detailed blog then? "Yes. A significant part of my relationships are sustained online." Unlike young men his age, he hates going out on testosterone-induced beer binges over the weekend. "I usually end up on various mailing lists or just reading a book,"he confesses. What about a girlfriend? "I met her online."Of course, it isn't exclusively online anymore, he hastens to add. As for earning a living, he detests the routine. He offers his services as a freelance consultant to start-ups, at a time and pace he chooses. "I need freedom from the pressure of having to something right away." Then there's Chandrashekhar Bhosle from Mumbai. FreeGeek on the Internet, traces of the 28-year old's existence can be picked up on www.freedomink.org. Connected to the Internet for anywhere between 8 to 12 hours everyday and hugely popular, he doesn't think much of discussing his life and work in a public space. "I'm in the market for a house 1 RK / BHK / Studio apartment. Preferably new construction at or before Andheri on western line and at or before Chembur on central/harbour in a large residential complex. Any tips?" Why? "I write better than I talk,"says he. Which is why, he too, like Jivha in the not-so-distant past and Jace for as long as he can remember, maintains a complex ecosystem of online relationships. To an observer challenged by the dynamics of online life, all of this may sound surreal. Neither do these individuals cherish their privacy nor are they devious. Why live two lives then? Probe deeper and a few clues emerge. This is a world deeply reminiscent of the sixties. Citizens hold libertarian views, have no political affiliations, do not subscribe to any religion, are deeply interested in the culture of our times, contemptuous of the mainstream media and bound tightly by intellectual arrogance. Jivha once wrote, "I cannot stand idiots. I cannot tolerate stupidity almost always."Jace concedes: "I have an issue with people who don't agree with my point of view."And FreeGeek admits bluntly to smugness. "What's wrong with that?"asks Nishant Shah. A researcher at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, he argues succinctly. "Arrogance is the defining characteristic of any community. The feminist looks down on the bimbette and the biker on the car driver."His point is just this. People behave the same, whether online or offline. As for those who choose to stay online, there is no dichotomy between both worlds. One is just a subset of the other. And Jivha's disappearing, that is in the very nature of electrons. They are hopelessly impossible to put a finger on. It always seems to appear in and out of existence. Like Jivha.