From kaiwanmehta at gmail.com Wed Jun 1 21:07:05 2005 From: kaiwanmehta at gmail.com (kaiwan mehta) Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 21:07:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Bombay Sarai - We meet again In-Reply-To: <2482459d05052608314a7175a3@mail.gmail.com> References: <2482459d05052608314a7175a3@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <2482459d050601083718a8c344@mail.gmail.com> Hi, Many regulars have not yet responded, what Prashant said he did not see the mail! Some are out travelling, should I postpone? Best Kaiwan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: kaiwan mehta Date: May 26, 2005 9:01 PM Subject: Bombay Sarai - We meet again To: reader-list at sarai.net Hi, Feels good that many sarai relatives are congratulating us for the Sarai (satsangs) in other cities!! Well let all of us meet again, some of us specifically wanted to discuss our researches with each other, so we could do that - else sit and chat and feel good about meeting each other. Its great some of us have developed interesting correspondences since out first meeting. Well I suggest, Saturday 5 June at 6 pm - same place regal Barrista. If there is a good night show at Regal - some of us could catch that too!! If you have any other suggestions for date or place, let me know. If most of you cant make it we can reschedule, so please do get in touch with me. Looking forward to meet you all, Cool Regards, 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 - -- 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 ish at sarai.net Wed Jun 1 02:13:35 2005 From: ish at sarai.net (ISh) Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 02:13:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: "Made with Linux" List? In-Reply-To: References: <1117557853.22174.20.camel@localhost.localdomain> Message-ID: <429CCC77.1040909@sarai.net> Would it be beneficial to encourage a separate "music made with Linux" list? Thoughts? ___________________________________________________________________________ Hi All. Music itself holds no prejudice so I think it should be all promoted as Music. ( Pure and safe , which is free from definitions and critics) There are already too many categorizations nowadays in music which usually ride a fad or fashion curve and are used for filling up shelf space. I think categorizing music as ‘music made on linux’ is baseless. And discriminating music on the basis of which platform it was produced, like Linux or from OS X of any other OS, actually degrades Music.(also is a very technical discrimination) It is not something like it is rock or jazz. It is also in a way admitting that linux is inferior in music circles, which is not true at all. So I think we should be a little careful while saying it is music produced on linux or a mac because for the end listener it will be our music that is doing the talking(not linux or windows). Linux, softwares, Mac, Sequencers etc are all important but are still 'tools' to achieve the music. <>Boom <>Ish frEeMuZik.net/ sarai.net (P.S I m a strong supporter of Free software and Linux ... but (1) the thoughts mentioned above are for ‘music’ and are not part of the 'free software Vs. Proprietary software’ argument and (2) I m not looking at 'made with Linux' as a very technical definition, i m looking at it as an 'end listener' definition ) James Stone wrote: >On Tue, 31 May 2005 12:44:13 -0400, Greg Wilder wrote: > > > >>Would it be beneficial to encourage a separate "music made with Linux" >>list? Thoughts? >> >> > >There is the recently created "free musicians" wiki to post info and links >to music made with Linux: > >musicians.opensrc.org > >There is also a radio station stream there to which can be added links to >music. > >I think that it would be really good if people could set up pages there, >to make the links to the music a bit more permanent, and also to help >others to find out how the music was composed. > >Best, > >james > > > > > From soudhamini_1 at lycos.com Thu Jun 2 08:10:50 2005 From: soudhamini_1 at lycos.com (sou dhamini) Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 21:40:50 -0500 Subject: [Reader-list] madurai Message-ID: <20050602024050.4B0C8E5BC7@ws7-2.us4.outblaze.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050601/dffa3624/attachment.html From prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com Wed Jun 1 10:56:57 2005 From: prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: 1 Jun 2005 05:26:57 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Murtaja Mustafa , Bollywood Music ,Prashant Pandey Message-ID: <20050601052657.707.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com> He has got training from the best masters of the Indian classical tradition. A voice that evokes in you what is termed as spiritual. No wonder A.R Rahaman has chased him from time to time for singing opportunities. The man is Murtaja Mustafa,son of the legengary Ustad Ghulam Mustafa. Murtaja Mustafa is one of most chilled out singers that I have ever met.Both of us are sitting on a red persian carpet in his small drawing room decorated with trophies,awards,and ancient muscial instruments. " yaha pe Rahman ki class lagti hai",(So this is AR Rahman's music class!) I say to myself. Thats another story;we will come to it later. I had gone to his Turner Road residence to meet the legendary classical vocalist , Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. Apart from being the leading light of the Rampur Ghrana , Ustad ji has taught/mentored almost every second playback singer. Right from Asha Bhosle ,Manna De to Shaan and Sonu Nigam, Ustad Ji has helped generations of playback singers to excel in their art. Then there are two special disciples who are just family to him- AR Rahman and Hariharan. Ustad is extremely low-profile and quiet in his demeanour. He also doesn’t prefer to talk much about his star students. I had lot of questions in mind when I started the interview but I started to realize that he was not at all interested in critiquing anybody or anything. He answered all my questions in parables like a Zen master.Then he has also taught his two sons Kadir and Murtaja. If you have heard Rahmans’ Pia Haji Ali (Fiza), Anarkali (Boys, Tamil) and Chupke se (Sathiya) ,and Ismail Darbars' Kisna (Kisna) you would feel instantly what and how their smooth vocals have contributed to these songs. Murtaja has often collaborated with Rahman (bhai) on films like The legend of Bhagat Singh, whose background score he recorded in London. Murtaja is also working on an album where all the three brothers will sing. Then there are usual routine classical performances, studio recordings and riyaz and more riyaz ; Mustafa household never sleeps. Murtaja told me, “Even if I come at 3 o clock in the night and I have a 10 am mixing session next day in the studio I will reach the studio at sharp 10 am. Same applies to Papa, he has taken sessions with Rahman bhai at 3 am in the morning”. Something like this offers an insight on the industry where professionals try to beat lack of time and space with passion. Motivation levels are very high here. I had a good chat with Murtaja. I had been chasing him for a fortnight and he finally got me an appointment with Ustad ji and also agreed to talk to my Dictaphone. The result – he got late for a recording session and missed altogether his Friday Jumma Namaz. It re-affirmed my belief that in my research, respondents have at times proved to be more self-sacrificing than me. Such gestures often make me feel more responsible for my work. Readers,let me know if you want to know more about the interview I will do a detailed posting. PRASHANT PANDEY, for SARAI -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050601/b923fe88/attachment.html From steffl at bigfoot.com Thu Jun 2 03:29:34 2005 From: steffl at bigfoot.com (Erik Steffl) Date: Wed, 01 Jun 2005 14:59:34 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: "Made with Linux" List? In-Reply-To: <429CCC77.1040909@sarai.net> References: <1117557853.22174.20.camel@localhost.localdomain> <429CCC77.1040909@sarai.net> Message-ID: <429E2FC6.3040706@bigfoot.com> I think the point of having examples of music made with linux (i.e. tools available for linux) is to be able to see what can be done, to have subsequent discussions about which LADSPA plugin was used and all that stuff. IMO it makes sense for lot of people on this list. erik ISh wrote: > Would it be beneficial to encourage a separate "music made with Linux" > > list? Thoughts? > > ___________________________________________________________________________ > > Hi All. > > Music itself holds no prejudice so I think it should be all promoted as > Music. ( Pure and safe , which is free from definitions and critics) > There are already too many categorizations nowadays in music which > usually ride a fad or fashion curve and are used for filling up shelf > space. I think categorizing music as ‘music made on linux’ is baseless. > > And discriminating music on the basis of which platform it was produced, > like Linux or from OS X of any other OS, actually degrades Music.(also > is a very technical discrimination) It is not something like it is rock > or jazz. It is also in a way admitting that linux is inferior in music > circles, which is not true at all. So I think we should be a little > careful while saying it is music produced on linux or a mac because for > the end listener it will be our music that is doing the talking(not > linux or windows). Linux, softwares, Mac, Sequencers etc are all > important but are still 'tools' to achieve the music. > > <>Boom > > <>Ish > frEeMuZik.net/ sarai.net > > (P.S I m a strong supporter of Free software and Linux ... but (1) the > thoughts mentioned above are for ‘music’ and are not part of the 'free > software Vs. Proprietary software’ argument and (2) I m not looking at > 'made with Linux' as a very technical definition, i m looking at it as > an 'end listener' definition ) > > > > James Stone wrote: > >> On Tue, 31 May 2005 12:44:13 -0400, Greg Wilder wrote: >> >> >> >>> Would it be beneficial to encourage a separate "music made with Linux" >>> list? Thoughts? >>> >> >> >> There is the recently created "free musicians" wiki to post info and >> links >> to music made with Linux: >> musicians.opensrc.org >> >> There is also a radio station stream there to which can be added links to >> music. >> >> I think that it would be really good if people could set up pages there, >> to make the links to the music a bit more permanent, and also to help >> others to find out how the music was composed. >> >> Best, >> >> james >> >> >> >> >> > From pukar at pukar.org.in Wed Jun 1 10:35:16 2005 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 10:35:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] Reminder: Talk on 3rd June Message-ID: <004601c56667$87a1ce00$0dd0c0cb@freeda> The PUKAR Gender and Space Project presents a talk by Nandita Godbole on The making of an immigrant home Representation and improvisation of inherited cultural landscapes in immigrant homes date: Friday, 03 June 2005 time: 3 p.m. place: PUKAR Office, 2nd Floor, Kamanwala Chambers, Opp Stand Book Stall, Sir. P M Road, Fort, Mumbai 400001. Tel: 5574-8152 Abstract Overlays of political borders, contested lands and cultural landscapes often complicate and blur definitions of home. In culturally diverse, cosmopolitan cities, immigrant families continually reinterpret the fundamental question, "What is home?" As these families define their physical and cultural 'selves' in their adopted country, we witness the transformation of ordinary, mundane places into socio-culturally complex neighborhoods and cities. This on-going study examines how immigrants use visual elements to reflect their intrinsic values and philosophies and reinforce the idea of 'home'. It also explores how 'inherited' cultural landscapes influence, shape and define homemaking sensitivities of immigrant families. Nandita Godbole has a Masters degree in Botany (University of Mumbai) and Landscape Architecture (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign). She is currently an independent researcher and her areas of interest include public space usage and sacred landscapes. 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/20050601/cc55b984/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From iram at sarai.net Thu Jun 2 12:22:22 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 08:52:22 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd:HIMAL is back Message-ID: <1e5edb0a8f4724e3f2df5ddf226b09ed@sarai.net> ------ Original Message ------ Subject: Fwd:HIMAL is back From: shivamvij at gmail.com Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 08:33:50 +0200 http://www.himalmag.com/ Within Grasp: Persian Gas for the Southasian Engine by Kanak Mani Dixit The Islamabad-New Delhi thaw has made real the possibility of a pipeline that would transport natural gas from the offshore reserves of Iran, through Pakistani territory into India. While it would cater to the ever-increasing demand for energy in the Subcontinent, the appeal of the Iranian gasline also lies in the economic linkages it would deliver to cement ties of goodwill between India and Pakistan. Too good to be true, but true, the gasline is an idea whose time has come. It will create, literally, facts on the ground capable of sustaining a strong cross-border relationship beyond the 'bhai-bhai bonhomie' of today. Full Article Important Notice This is a preview of the reintroductory July 2005 issue of Himal Southasian, which suspended publication in May 2004. The magazine will restart continuous publication in October 2005. To receive a hard copy of the full July 2005 issue at no charge, write to distribution at himalmag.com To subscribe to Himal Southasian, write to subscription at himalmag.com For advertisement information, write to advertising at himalmag.com Old subscribers are informed that their pending subscription will be reactivated in October 2005. -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: shivam Subject: HIMAL is back Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 17:17:45 +0530 Size: 3522 Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050602/c4d6f539/attachment.mht From mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com Thu Jun 2 12:53:42 2005 From: mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 00:23:42 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Murtaja Mustafa , Bollywood Music ,Prashant Pandey In-Reply-To: <20050601052657.707.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <20050602072342.17629.qmail@web80909.mail.scd.yahoo.com> Dear Prashant, Please post the interview as soon as possible...I have been following with postings with great interest, music being the very stuff of Hindi cinema it is amazing how little we know about its conditions of production, yours being one of the first serious and sustained attempts I have come across. I knew about the Kumar Sanu school of singing but the Sonu Nigam school was news for me... Lovely. wrote: > > He has got training from the best > masters of the Indian classical tradition. > A voice that evokes in you what is > termed as spiritual. No wonder A.R > Rahaman has chased him from time to > time for singing opportunities. > The man is Murtaja Mustafa,son > of the legengary Ustad Ghulam Mustafa. > Murtaja Mustafa is one of most chilled > out singers that I have ever met.Both of us > are sitting on a red persian carpet in > his small drawing room decorated with > trophies,awards,and ancient muscial > instruments. " yaha pe Rahman ki class lagti > hai",(So this is AR Rahman's music class!) > I say to myself. Thats another story;we will > come to it later. > > > > I had gone to his Turner Road residence > to meet the legendary classical vocalist , > Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. Apart from > being the leading light of the Rampur > Ghrana , Ustad ji has taught/mentored > almost every second playback singer. > Right from Asha Bhosle ,Manna De to > Shaan and Sonu Nigam, Ustad Ji has > helped generations of playback singers > to excel in their art. Then there are > two special disciples who are just family > to him- AR Rahman and Hariharan. Ustad is > extremely low-profile and quiet in > his demeanour. He also doesn’t prefer to > talk much about his star students. > I had lot of questions in mind when I > started the interview but I started to > realize that he was not at all interested > in critiquing anybody or anything. He > answered all my questions in parables > like a Zen master.Then he has also taught > his two sons Kadir and Murtaja. If you > have heard Rahmans’ Pia Haji Ali (Fiza), > Anarkali (Boys, Tamil) and Chupke se (Sathiya) > ,and Ismail Darbars' Kisna (Kisna) you > would feel instantly what and how their > smooth vocals have contributed to these songs. > Murtaja has often collaborated with Rahman (bhai) > on films like The legend of Bhagat Singh, > whose background score he recorded in London. > Murtaja is also working on an album > where all the three brothers will sing. > Then there are usual routine classical > performances, studio recordings and > riyaz and more riyaz ; Mustafa household > never sleeps. Murtaja told me, “Even if > I come at 3 o clock in the night and I > have a 10 am mixing session next day in > the studio I will reach the studio at > sharp 10 am. Same applies to Papa, he > has taken sessions with Rahman bhai > at 3 am in the morning”. Something > like this offers an insight on the > industry where professionals try to > beat lack of time and space with passion. > Motivation levels are very high here. > > > I had a good chat with Murtaja. I had > been chasing him for a fortnight and > he finally got me an appointment > with Ustad ji and also agreed to talk > to my Dictaphone. The result – he got > late for a recording session and missed > altogether his Friday Jumma Namaz. > It re-affirmed my belief that in my > research, respondents have at times > proved to be more self-sacrificing > than me. Such gestures often make me > feel more responsible for my work. > > Readers,let me know if you want to know > more about the interview I will do a > detailed posting. > > PRASHANT PANDEY, for SARAI > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________ > 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!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com Thu Jun 2 12:53:53 2005 From: mahmoodfarooqui at yahoo.com (mahmood farooqui) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 00:23:53 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Murtaja Mustafa , Bollywood Music ,Prashant Pandey In-Reply-To: <20050601052657.707.qmail@webmail10.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <20050602072353.59879.qmail@web80908.mail.scd.yahoo.com> Dear Prashant, Please post the interview as soon as possible...I have been following with postings with great interest, music being the very stuff of Hindi cinema it is amazing how little we know about its conditions of production, yours being one of the first serious and sustained attempts I have come across. I knew about the Kumar Sanu school of singing but the Sonu Nigam school was news for me... Lovely. wrote: > > He has got training from the best > masters of the Indian classical tradition. > A voice that evokes in you what is > termed as spiritual. No wonder A.R > Rahaman has chased him from time to > time for singing opportunities. > The man is Murtaja Mustafa,son > of the legengary Ustad Ghulam Mustafa. > Murtaja Mustafa is one of most chilled > out singers that I have ever met.Both of us > are sitting on a red persian carpet in > his small drawing room decorated with > trophies,awards,and ancient muscial > instruments. " yaha pe Rahman ki class lagti > hai",(So this is AR Rahman's music class!) > I say to myself. Thats another story;we will > come to it later. > > > > I had gone to his Turner Road residence > to meet the legendary classical vocalist , > Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. Apart from > being the leading light of the Rampur > Ghrana , Ustad ji has taught/mentored > almost every second playback singer. > Right from Asha Bhosle ,Manna De to > Shaan and Sonu Nigam, Ustad Ji has > helped generations of playback singers > to excel in their art. Then there are > two special disciples who are just family > to him- AR Rahman and Hariharan. Ustad is > extremely low-profile and quiet in > his demeanour. He also doesn’t prefer to > talk much about his star students. > I had lot of questions in mind when I > started the interview but I started to > realize that he was not at all interested > in critiquing anybody or anything. He > answered all my questions in parables > like a Zen master.Then he has also taught > his two sons Kadir and Murtaja. If you > have heard Rahmans’ Pia Haji Ali (Fiza), > Anarkali (Boys, Tamil) and Chupke se (Sathiya) > ,and Ismail Darbars' Kisna (Kisna) you > would feel instantly what and how their > smooth vocals have contributed to these songs. > Murtaja has often collaborated with Rahman (bhai) > on films like The legend of Bhagat Singh, > whose background score he recorded in London. > Murtaja is also working on an album > where all the three brothers will sing. > Then there are usual routine classical > performances, studio recordings and > riyaz and more riyaz ; Mustafa household > never sleeps. Murtaja told me, “Even if > I come at 3 o clock in the night and I > have a 10 am mixing session next day in > the studio I will reach the studio at > sharp 10 am. Same applies to Papa, he > has taken sessions with Rahman bhai > at 3 am in the morning”. Something > like this offers an insight on the > industry where professionals try to > beat lack of time and space with passion. > Motivation levels are very high here. > > > I had a good chat with Murtaja. I had > been chasing him for a fortnight and > he finally got me an appointment > with Ustad ji and also agreed to talk > to my Dictaphone. The result – he got > late for a recording session and missed > altogether his Friday Jumma Namaz. > It re-affirmed my belief that in my > research, respondents have at times > proved to be more self-sacrificing > than me. Such gestures often make me > feel more responsible for my work. > > Readers,let me know if you want to know > more about the interview I will do a > detailed posting. > > PRASHANT PANDEY, for SARAI > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________ > 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: __________________________________ Discover Yahoo! Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html From freestspirit at yahoo.co.uk Thu Jun 2 12:54:36 2005 From: freestspirit at yahoo.co.uk (Bikram Jeet Batra) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 08:24:36 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: Delhi Master PLan 2021 In-Reply-To: <20050602065605.A00E628D9A3@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20050602072436.72182.qmail@web25302.mail.ukl.yahoo.com> Hi Aman and Sanghmitra, The draft 2021 plan is available from the DDA website. It is also available at the Jain Book Agency in CP and Aurobindo Mkt. Aman - It might be a good idea to talk to Lalit at Hazard Centre in New Delhi. They've been doing a lot of work around the master plan, and are following work on the commonwealth village etc. best, Bikram > Thnks Aman. Your mail gives me a chance to visit > the book stores. I am also looking for it. We are > working with urban poor in calcutta. > Thanks > Sanghamitra > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Aman Sethi > To: reader-list at sarai.net > Sent: Monday, May 30, 2005 6:47 PM > Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi masterplan 2021 > > > Dear all > > I am working on an article on the Commonwealth > Games Village, to be built in time for the 2010 > Commonwealth Games - Delhi .. I don't really have an > angle yet .. but Delhi's proposal included plans for > a review of the transportation and residental > infrastructure in east and central delhi. > > I need a copy of the draftplan of the 2021 > masterplan for delhi .. does anyone know where i can > get a copy from? .. am already trying to contact > the Urban development department, DDA and MCD .. if > anyone has any other resources/ ideas? > > regards > Aman > ___________________________________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger - NEW crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com From ysaeed7 at yahoo.com Thu Jun 2 14:14:55 2005 From: ysaeed7 at yahoo.com (Yousuf) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 01:44:55 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Murtaja Mustafa , Bollywood Music ,Prashant Pandey In-Reply-To: <20050602072353.59879.qmail@web80908.mail.scd.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <20050602084455.79136.qmail@web51401.mail.yahoo.com> Dear Prashant Are you sure if his name is Murtaja? Maybe you could check if he spells it as MURTAZA... Yousuf wrote: > > Dear Prashant, > > Please post the interview as soon as possible...I > have > been following with postings with great interest, > music being the very stuff of Hindi cinema it is > amazing how little we know about its conditions of > production, yours being one of the first serious and > sustained attempts I have come across. > > I knew about the Kumar Sanu school of singing but > the > Sonu Nigam school was news for me... > > Lovely. > > wrote: > > > > > He has got training from the best > > masters of the Indian classical tradition. > > A voice that evokes in you what is > > termed as spiritual. No wonder A.R > > Rahaman has chased him from time to > > time for singing opportunities. > > The man is Murtaja Mustafa,son > > of the legengary Ustad Ghulam Mustafa. > > Murtaja Mustafa is one of most chilled > > out singers that I have ever met.Both of us > > are sitting on a red persian carpet in > > his small drawing room decorated with > > trophies,awards,and ancient muscial > > instruments. " yaha pe Rahman ki class lagti > > hai",(So this is AR Rahman's music class!) > > I say to myself. Thats another story;we will > > come to it later. > > > > > > > > I had gone to his Turner Road residence > > to meet the legendary classical vocalist , > > Ustad Ghulam Mustafa Khan. Apart from > > being the leading light of the Rampur > > Ghrana , Ustad ji has taught/mentored > > almost every second playback singer. > > Right from Asha Bhosle ,Manna De to > > Shaan and Sonu Nigam, Ustad Ji has > > helped generations of playback singers > > to excel in their art. Then there are > > two special disciples who are just family > > to him- AR Rahman and Hariharan. Ustad is > > extremely low-profile and quiet in > > his demeanour. He also doesn’t prefer to > > talk much about his star students. > > I had lot of questions in mind when I > > started the interview but I started to > > realize that he was not at all interested > > in critiquing anybody or anything. He > > answered all my questions in parables > > like a Zen master.Then he has also taught > > his two sons Kadir and Murtaja. If you > > have heard Rahmans’ Pia Haji Ali (Fiza), > > Anarkali (Boys, Tamil) and Chupke se (Sathiya) > > ,and Ismail Darbars' Kisna (Kisna) you > > would feel instantly what and how their > > smooth vocals have contributed to these songs. > > Murtaja has often collaborated with Rahman (bhai) > > on films like The legend of Bhagat Singh, > > whose background score he recorded in London. > > Murtaja is also working on an album > > where all the three brothers will sing. > > Then there are usual routine classical > > performances, studio recordings and > > riyaz and more riyaz ; Mustafa household > > never sleeps. Murtaja told me, “Even if > > I come at 3 o clock in the night and I > > have a 10 am mixing session next day in > > the studio I will reach the studio at > > sharp 10 am. Same applies to Papa, he > > has taken sessions with Rahman bhai > > at 3 am in the morning”. Something > > like this offers an insight on the > > industry where professionals try to > > beat lack of time and space with passion. > > Motivation levels are very high here. > > > > > > I had a good chat with Murtaja. I had > > been chasing him for a fortnight and > > he finally got me an appointment > > with Ustad ji and also agreed to talk > > to my Dictaphone. The result – he got > > late for a recording session and missed > > altogether his Friday Jumma Namaz. > > It re-affirmed my belief that in my > > research, respondents have at times > > proved to be more self-sacrificing > > than me. Such gestures often make me > > feel more responsible for my work. > > > > Readers,let me know if you want to know > > more about the interview I will do a > > detailed posting. > > > > PRASHANT PANDEY, for SARAI > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > _________________________________________ > > 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: > > > > > > __________________________________ > Discover Yahoo! > Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM > and more. Check it out! > http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html > _________________________________________ > 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: > > __________________________________ Discover Yahoo! Get on-the-go sports scores, stock quotes, news and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/mobile.html From machleetank at gmail.com Thu Jun 2 15:31:25 2005 From: machleetank at gmail.com (Jasmeen P) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 15:31:25 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] blank noise: lost and found. Message-ID: (SHORT TEXT MESSAGE) One Night Stand: public participatory performance to reclaim the streets. May 27 Brigade Road Coffee Day 6 pm. Please call to participate. 98868 40612 27th may 2004 Payal, Romal, Sandhya and I are drenched as we enter at Coffee House on MG Road. Time 4 30 pm. I begin to believe that god is a man against feminism. It continues to pour and I receive a hundred text messages: "Is it on?" "Sorry I don't think I can make it." "Am stuck in traffic." 6 pm: It is still drizzling. The traffic is less. We move from coffee house to coffee day. The people there are nice, smiley, friendly. Out of the 13 expected the people that showed up were Payal, Rahima, Romal, Sandhya, Hemangini, Rahima, Namita. Umesh. Smriti, Umang and Yashas showed up as documenters of the event.. People required: 14 Numbers present: 8 People missing: 6 "Let's get people on the street to participate!" The event for the evening took various avatars while being introduced to different people. At the traffic signal we say, "Hello, we are doing social work here. Can you put these posters up at the police traffic signals?" we also let him know that we were going to do a small performance without interrupting the traffic. ( The traffic police man was a nice man. He whistled and we would exit. No problem on that front at all. ) Or "hello we are doing a project on street sexual harassment…err….eve teasing and we invite you to participate. Would you like to be an alphabet of the sentence, ' Y R U LOOKING AT ME?' and appear/disappear at traffic signals? We targeted the shop "Health and Glow": a shop where one can buy all the girly things from body wash to cosmetics to sanitary napkins. Rahima, Namita and I went about introducing the project idea to both customers and the working staff. We were lucky to find participants in the customers there. Neha, Vikram, Siraj and Rajitha there. THANKYOU!! (Everyone is all smiles and we walk onto the road.) Yes it happened. The reactions included curiosity, surprise, discomfort, more questions, public support. "I think people were willing to listen. it was a good place to catch them. But they need a slogan. Something condensed so that they get the point. There were also some inquisitive people who got into a dialogue and supported it." Smriti Chanchani. Namita felt that we could illustrate different characters through the clothes we wear during the performance. My response: to bring on the different people and include them in the performance versus us trying to illustrate their presence. Plan B: To do it again. It is evolving. Will keep you posted. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi everyone, For those of you wondering about the incoherence from my part here's a 'brief' update- My mails and the blog seem a bit confusing I hope this mail should clear things a little- The project in two phases: The first phase was with 'dealing with the victim hood' of street sexual harassment. The second phase is towards being proactive and confronting. Here are some of the tangible materials I have right now with which I would want to work- - A handful of clothes; -from the 'did you ask for it' project (most of it my own. I'm still hoping people will send me theirs) - Testimonies via sound. - The news piece. - Newspaper reports - Emails- responses to the project- responses to clothes email-'did you ask for it'. Testimonies. - Photographs of stalkers. - Smaller sub projects: a project on women bus conductor's perception of safety in relation to the uniform she wears daily. (photo and sound) - Questionnaire results: questions on clothing and safety, answered by college students. - Documentation of presentation - A floating group of I'm interested' participants. - Documentation of performances. About Building testimonies in a public space I was concerned with the form I would adapt. I toyed around with the idea of 'cleansing and spitting'- I thought of an interactive sink into which you could expunge your memories (of these unpleasant incidents). I'm not sure if I would like to go through with this because while this would fit perfectly in a space like a gallery I don't see it there at this point in time. There were also initial ideas of confession booths around the street and broadcasting testimonies. I am not convinced about this either (plus the whole religious connotations that come with confession booths) The third idea was to use clothing to build testimonies-for this I've collected my clothes, my mother's clothes-clothes that we wore when we were sexually threatened. The initial response from people was that this was a great idea and that they wanted to help but soon the excitement subsided and degenerated into the standard, familiar responses: -I don't remember what I was wearing -I burnt it, but can I send you something similar? -I don't agree with you on this one-It's not about the clothes -I don't want to give it you, they are my favorite pair/I can't give it away -why don't you take a photograph of it? Or ask people to send you photos of them in it?? Despite these minor hiccups I definitely want to take this part forward. It is ongoing. This could never be an isolated arts project. People fear the word activist. In the initial stages (2003) I did too. While I don't have a problem with my project being 'activist art' or 'community art' or 'public art' disillusionment creeps in when the people I'm supposed to be working with don't respond the way I would expect them to (not turning up for meetings, not being responsive enough…etc). I've been thinking about 'approach', 'strategy', 'transparency', and the language or tone addressing participants and wonder if I should be relying on other participants or just going ahead with it (which seems to be the easy and convenient way even though it defies the whole purpose of what I'm trying to achieve). I'm still grappling with these conflicts and would be grateful for any feedback/suggestions/advice. Things I actually did : Went around to colleges looking for participants. Most of the colleges were busy with the exams but some of them were nice enough to give me time, space and students to make 2 hour presentations. The presentations made it clear that this wasn't some feminist/ultra-feminist project and that anyone (men especially) was welcome. About 200 pamphlets, questionnaires and enthusiastic 'yes's' later 3 people showed up for the meetings. Bangalore University was an eye-opener. No one wanted to participate-they either had exams or were concerned with the 'morality' of the whole issue. These moral issues not impinging I've still decided to work on my immoral project with smaller groups (the most promising one seems to be a group of journalism students from Christ College) The concrete ideas that came out of these meetings were A) A newspaper B) A street performance on the street with help of costumes designed by students of fashion at srishti,nift. C )Have also been meeting with people who own cafes and have TVs installed; they could broadcast the news video there. I've already discussed this with owners of cafes who seemed open and enthusiastic.) Things I am doing/ have happened and are still happening. The night walk in collaboration with Pukar.( was to happen on the 20th of May in Mumbai, it didn't quite work but was quite an experience.) on the 20th of May, Friday or the 27th: key performers wearing a reflective badge will perform through the night in Marine Drive in Bombay and Brigade Road in Bangalore : I'm still trying to figure out ways in which it wont be an exclusive 'feminist performance'. Should it be transparent and direct? In terms of form, I have been in dialogue with Ashok Sukumaran. We have chosen to go ahead with reflectors. The one/ two main performers in each city will be wearing a costume made of reflectors. In addition they will also be carrying speakers that will disperse testimonies of women who have experienced street sexual harassment. I can see the performance being static. That is just standing for two hours while the people are walking by. Others present are free to do what they want; they will also be wearing reflector badges. Hopefully people will keep joining in, there will be a floating crowd of women in reflectors. Every woman walking there will wear a reflector. In performance I will be dispersing testimonies of women who have experienced street sexual harassment, implicitly. I am also hoping to gather about 10 people who will choreograph the performance with me. For example (Brigade Road) there are men who just hang around on the railing of the footpath, outside movie halls, against the walls; something a woman will be less inclined to do). This would happen through the night. I'd be very grateful for any feedback/suggestions PS: eagerly waiting for the clothes. Jasmeen www.blanknoiseproject.blogspot.com www.fotolog.net/machlee/ -- ph: + 91 98868 40612 From sastry at cs.wisc.edu Fri Jun 3 11:37:54 2005 From: sastry at cs.wisc.edu (Subramanya Sastry) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 11:37:54 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Report for May Message-ID: NewsRack: Automating News Gathering and Classification ------------------------------------------------------ Here is my report for the month of May. Bug fixes --------- I have made several minor bug fixes and the software is now more stable. The Sarai installation has now been running for the over 3 weeks without crashing, or having to be restarted. New developers -------------- A couple of students (undergraduate, masters) are now considering working on NewsRack for their projects under the joint guidance of Prof.Om Damani of IIT-Bombay. I have been working on creating suitable workable projects for them to work on, based on their background, skills, and time commitment. One of these students will work for about 1.5 months, and the masters student will work for about an year. Current development ------------------- I have begun the process of making NewsRack usable with news sites that do not provide RSS feeds (Hindu, Deccan Herald, Hindustan Times, for ex). The algorithm itself is straightforward and is outlined below and is essentially a spidering process. 1. Download main URL 2. Identify Base HREF, if any 3. Identify all unique relative URLs in the page -- but weed out links that point to images. 4. Construct a list of URLs to follow using the Base HREF and the relative URLs found in the page. 5. Recursively follow the links found in 4 above by repeating steps 2-4 for every candidate link. By this process, the title, date, and URL links can be identify for every possible news item. There are (of course) problems with this approach which I am going to list later on. I have begun this experiment by writing Perl scripts to fine-tune the algorithm. I now have a working Perl script that successfully downloads the day's news links for Hindu, Deccan Herald, and The Telegraph (of those newspapers that I have tried). But, it doesn't work well for Hindustan Times, Indian Express, or Times of India. On a little further investigation, it can be noticed that Hindu, Deccan Herald, and Telegraph organize their news as: http://// (or some such variation). Since only relative links are followed, only links relative to "http:///" are followed and hence only news for that day is downloaded. But, ToI, HT, and IE all organize their websites as database-driven sites. So, this strategy does not quite work. So, I am now investigating other ideas, including examining time stamps of the published news items and only downloading news published in the last 24 hours or so. In addition, there is still the problem of sifting through downloaded files to identify which files are actually news stories. For example, some of the downloaded files are page indexes and headline pages. It is unclear how to do this without some sort of newspaper-specific hacks -- for example, all Hindu stories are stored as http:////stories/ so, I could discard all other links. But, there is no obvious generic solution to this problem at this time. New Interest ------------ There is continuing interest in this tool. When possible, I am now trying to meet with individuals and groups and help them with the process of setting up a profile, since the tool still requires a fair bit of initial time investment. From prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com Thu Jun 2 12:09:34 2005 From: prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: 2 Jun 2005 06:39:34 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Quotes, Bollywod Music,Prashant Pandey Message-ID: <20050602063934.17972.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> Its a must read for you all... What everybody here has to say about a researcher from Sarai. 1. Aree Sarai na... mujhe yaad hai ek baar hum log kisi seminar me gaye the... i think Adoor was also there... the panel spoke so much about the films...jitna sala filmmaker ne bhi na socha ho...You are a film student... wahe pe jo chala jaiga sari filmmaking bhool jaiga... (Oh Sarai, i remember now...once there was a film seminar there...Adoor Gopalakrishnan was also there...Even the filmmakers hadnt thought of all that what the panel was talking about...You are a film student...dont go there you will forget your film making" Sudhir Mishra(filmmaker) 2. Does your work make you an anthropologist ? Vivienne Poacha( Singer) 3. Do they pay you for all this ? Asif (Music company executive) 4. He is a student doing a research project for his college... Shantanu(Bombays' ace sound engineer introducing me to his colleages) 5. Chalo accha hai ki koi pehli baar hum logo ka haal chaal poochne aaya hai...aap please media me hum logo ke bare me likho.(For the first time somebody has come to us...Please write about us in media) Yogesh Pradhan(Music Arranger for Lucky,Devdas,HumDil De Chuke Sanam) 6. Is this for a newspaper ? (Himesh Reshamiya, Music Director) 7. Please tell me all the jargons that you have thrown in your proposal...Sarai is a scam. You must be staying in a posh hotel on their money. (A senior from College) 8. Impressive. You have done your homework. Can I have your CV ? (Shameer Tandon, Head of Virgin Records India and Music Director,Page 3) ................................................................... PRASHANT PANDEY   -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050602/2e7b4ec1/attachment.html From zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in Thu Jun 2 14:41:08 2005 From: zzjamaal at yahoo.co.in (khalid jamal) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 10:11:08 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Fast food chains:McDudes!! Message-ID: <20050602091108.17880.qmail@web8608.mail.in.yahoo.com> Hi all, I m almost finished with my Post Graduation (and my bank balance TOO..!!) And hence am able to spend a great deal of time with “Fellows” at fast food chains. Our discussions, as usual, starts with a lot of curls and curves, comes to our work and then to our employers. This time I deliberately chose to provoke questions pertaining to “work pressure” and the general dissatisfaction amongst employees across fast food joints. Following are some of the responses that came out as a result of my provocations. I must admit here that provoking is a real fun!! And a fine Art too, Especially if you are a researcher at Sarai. Its time for my next posting which also becomes the time to put all the fun I have had in writing. READ!!!! ------------------------------------------- The McDonald’s Way. Move forward. Focus on what is best for the system. Contributions. Recognize individual and team achievements. Develop. Integrity and trust Open communications. Confront and resolve solutions. No losers. Aim for “win-win” situation. Actively Listen. Act the way you talk. Leverage diversity Debate for the benefit of customer and system. Deliver. All commitments. Support. Decisions 100% ------------------------------------- “Your Work is your choice, dude!!” I’ve been a McDonalds employee for almost 4 years now. 2 as crew 1 as a shift manager and now an assistant manager. Yes I work at McDonlads it has been my choice I choose to work there, I may not like it all the time but I could quit any time if I wanted to. I do empathize with a lot of the people here. I have employees that are the best I could possibly have and see them get treated like crap by our Owner/Operator and General Manager. I also have to deal with the employees that call me a f**king A*s when I asked them nicely to sweep (seriously I had someone say that to me) I've been crew and been crapped I've also been a manager and been crapped on. But I chose to stay for my own reasons. Like I said it is my choice, I could go down to some call center, Departmental store or some factory job and get paid maybe a little less, or maybe a little more, but I choose to stay. (Somedays I wounder why) But I still stay. I dont mind reading about peoples complaints because no matter where you work you will always have that one day were you just come home and rant. Every job has that. But if some one has found a job where they haven't had a day like that send me an application!! I just think everyone needs to chill out and realize that its just a work, a job and its your choice to work there. Have fun with it. I try to have fun with my employees we try to have fun and work at the same time sometimes it goes a little to far and I have to step in a little but 99.9 % of the times when there happy Im happy. And if you have a crankey manager just hit them over the head with the reality board a couple of times. I promise it won’t hurt them much. Have fun and have a great day at work. Bharat,McDonald’s. --------------------------------- I have been working there for roughly 1.5years. Here are the reasons why I have stayed there for so long, and will probably never leave for a while: * Managers treat you like they would treat their friends. No, they don't let you off with eating in the crew room while clocked on, or swearing on shift etc, but they are very sociable, open people who are great to work with. I am not a lonely person who accepts anyone with open arms, I am a very social person myself and I can see how these Managers are a great asset to the store. * The condition of the store is second-to-none and the store looks like something you would see on a training video. * Management and Owners treat staff with the utmost respect with things like rostering, wages and training. No crew is treated differently from the other, whether full time or casual. * The "old school" crew who work there are never going to leave, because they have learnt that it is a good job. Up to 12 crew haven't left in the last 6 months. This is an obvious sign that this store is doing really well. Whether you are good or bad comes from the customer. It seriously comes from customer feedback. It's like everyday that a McDonald's restaurant has a new employee being trained, these employees get in shit for going too slow or doing everything wrong or not doing things that they weren't taught. Sure they make like millions of mistakes but that’s because they're learning, and what do customers do? They glare at the manager on duty and they get the crew person in shit. Sure it's not all customers but its most of them. I basically hate work only because of the way I get treated by the customers. I admit that I love working with the people I work with but not these Inspectors who expect everything to be perfect and dandy, they focus on customer satisfaction but not the satisfaction of their employees. Here's my point, the crew working in the service get in shit from customers, the back people get in shit from the service people for going too slow, the crew get in shit for arguing, then all of this leads to some of the employees abusing the work and the employer. I'm just gonna agree with people saying that you're not forced to be working for the company, you have a god damn choice! If I , being a woman, can travel for almost an hour by bus during this scorching heat to do the work that I do, why not others? The crux of the matter is: My work engages me and hence imlovinit!! And iminit!! Lubna khan,McDonald’s ------------------------------------------ I'm a college student, and I make overtime pay all the time, but only because I choose to work those hours. If someone is so stupid they stay with a job they hate, that's their problem. I was promoted because I care about the job I do. Managers at McDonalds do the same job as the crew. I was a crew person for 2years, and I was treated perfectly fine and paid more money than most professions that require the same skills. Why? BECAUSE I KNEW HOW TO DO MY JOB. Of course you won't be treated as well if you don't do your job right. Nobody likes that. I have news for you. If you work hard, your pay will reflect it. If you are lazy or stupid, or both, of course you will make low wages. I have more news for people who think our job is sad... THAT'S NOT MCDONALD'S PROBLEM! It is a business just like any other. I can tell you right now though, I probably make more money at McDonald's and get more benefits than you do at whatever the hell you choose to do, and this is just a job to get me through college. When things are slow, we may cut some labor and send someone home or when things are high we don’t hesitate to overstaff either, but basically, we have a lot of fun. Managers and crew laugh and make jokes constantly with each other and we all have a good time. Working at my store is more like getting paid for going out to club. Sure there is work involved, but hey, there's no reason you can't have fun. So, you must work for the shittiest McDonald's in the Nation, That, or you're just the shittiest employee and you don't know how to make your bosses laugh Sandeep, McDonald’s, Pursuing MBA Correspondence from IGNOU. He regularly sees McDonald’s website, likes McD TV ads. and dreams of going to Hamburger University to learn trade formally. ----------------------------------------- Hi, I will have been a McD's employee for 2 years next month. I think this has given adequate time for me to judge the good side and bad side. PROS: Money- working at McDonalds gives me the opportunity to earn money which means i don’t have to beg for money from family to go out on a week end at PVR or to buy clothes of my choice,like some of my friends do. People- I ve met lots of people at my store who i now consider to be close friends. these include managers and other crew. also, ifind managers at my store are very understanding about problems with scheduling, being late etc. i suppose im just lucky. Working conditions-I find that my store is a good, safe place to work. there are plenty of first-aid to go to if you injure yourself, if a piece of equipment beaks it will usually get fixed pretty soon afterwards. CONS: Scheduling- although managers are usually understanding when it comes to changing shifts, it doesn't stop the scedule being f*cked up. people get put down fo shifts they cant turn up for, people requesting days off months in advance and not getting them, people asking for shifts and not getting them, full timers getting part time hours and vice versa, sometimes at night you'll be lucky to have 3 crew and 2 managers on which isnt nearly enough. Customers- i dont think people realise that a mcdonalds extra value meal is NOT a culinary delicacy.....its fast food!!! We can’t get them meticulously prepared food with right amount of salt and pepper and sause all the time. Sometimes,our customers expect us to be their mothers!! McDonalds disciples- these are people who love their job...too much. they spend all their time in the store forsaking education and a social life for a good pay review. from these seeds unpopular managers do grow. it comes as no surprise that these people are unpopular manager's favourite crew members. Some managers- the minority of managers at my store think they are better than crew because of the type of shirt they wear. These are the type of managers who try to run a kitchen on a Saturday afternoon and fail miserably and blame it on the crew. Luckily, other managers put these ones in their place. Food- well, if you eat the same thing over and over in the same environment which is a strictly regulated work place , you too will be exhausted soon. Ahh well, I suppose that the cons outweigh the pros slightly. but still I love my work, basically because i have many good friends there and i know i am good at my job. Sandhya Sharma,McDonald’s --------------------------------------------------- Smile in the Golden Arches Apparently,”Lean Time is Clean Time”, at McDonald’s. However,”Smile” remains an integral part of the McD uniform. And You See It On Smiling Cashier : greeting in a “friendly” manner. Smiling manager: Making passes through the dining room on a regular basis, interacting with customers, raising a smile or two. Smiling customers: Hung on the wall (wall of fame!!) after being photographed during one of their parties at Mc D. Smiling Stars: McD employees being honored as Employee of the month, or Rising star, stamped on the wall with their pass port-size-smiling –face-snap. Smiling service guy: Looking directly into your eye and Offering you a Meal-solution; “Would you like some extra cheese with mustard ketchup, sir? “ And last and also the least Smiling interiors: With changed color, look and the “feel” inside the store, particularly emphasizing on “environmental graphics” and “warmer tones”. ONE LIFE. ONE SHOT. Happiness, Health & Peace, Syed Khalid Jamal --------------------------------- Free antispam, antivirus and 1GB to save all your messages Only in Yahoo! Mail: http://in.mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050602/c6cc7ce8/attachment.html From cahen.x at levels9.com Fri Jun 3 13:19:18 2005 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 09:49:18 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos letter / 05-26 to 06-02-2005 Message-ID: <002401c56810$bf2a8f10$0301a8c0@acerkxw6rbeu2s> pourinfos.org l'actualité du monde de l'art / daily Art news ----------------------------------------------------------------------- infos from May 26, 2005 to June 02,2005 (included) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (mostly in french) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 Call : call for works/sound is art, Phonurgia, Arles, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1686 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 Call : Call for generative sound artists/composers, Toy Satellite,Victoria, Australia. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1685 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 Call : Call for paper, A Creativity & Cognition Symposium, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1684 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 Call : Avent Calendar exhibition, Biot, France. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1683 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 Job : director of Art Center, Serigan, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1681 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 Job : Art teacher, Ecole Régionale Supérieure d'Expression Plastique, Tourcoing, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1680 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 Job : Director of Institut d'Arts Visuels, Orleans, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1679 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 Job : art teacher assistant - Photography, Lorient, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1678 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 Job : Art teacher assistant - communication, Ecole supérieure d'arts de Lorient, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1677 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Job : Art teacher graphic design, Ecole supérieure d'arts de Lorient, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1676 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Workshop : Workshop franco-german about sound documantary of creation, Summer University of radio, phonurgia, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1675 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 Job : art teacher assistant - video, Ecole supérieure d'arts de Lorient, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1674 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Publication : archée cybermensuel, may_2005, Montréal, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1673 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 Residency : artist residence Abbadia, Henday, France. http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=1672 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Exhibition : Guillaume Leblon, winner of XV th monumental art award of Ivry, galerie fernand léger, Ivry, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1671 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Exhibition : "Chapitre 2" At abbey of Maubuisson / student exhibition from l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts de Paris-Cergy,Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1670 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Exhibition : David Bioulès, open studio MMV, la reserve, Montpellier, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1668 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Exhibition : artcore 10 : " BRÉSIL ÉCOSOPHIE ", galerie artcore, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1667 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Exhibitionn : Fluxer... it is taken part ! Villa Myosotis, Dunkerque, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1666 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Exhibition : Fabrice Hyber, "Nord-Sud", Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1682 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Exhibition : Like animals, Association art visuel, Tour des archives, Vernon, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1669 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Exhibition : Hussein Chalayan, Turkey Pavillon, 51 st Venice Bienniale 2005, Italy. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1665 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Various : The Audio-visual creation killed by his ? Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1663 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Various : Petition against the demolition of Metelkova, Ljubljana, Slovénia. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1664 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Various : Petition : NO to dismantling of the royalties of Visual artists,Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1662 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Call : Young creation : Jeune Création 2006, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1661 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Call : Emerging Curator Program, Firstdraft, Surry Hills, Australia. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1660 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Call : Refuse To Die, Propeller Centre, Toronto, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1659 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 Call : Furtherfield.org, Londres, United Kingdom. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1656 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 Call : Light feast /Faites de la Lumière, France. lien http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1655 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 Call : Accumulation Project, Brooklyn NY, USA. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1657 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 Screening : daily images, Maison du Théâtre et de la Danse, Epinay-sur-Seine, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1654 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 Meeting : Conference : " Artists versus medias.", POLART, Strasbourg, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1653 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 34 Performance : De In Search Of The Miraculous, David Christoffel, Centre d'Art du Quartier Quimper, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1652 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 Various : First International City of Vinaròs Award for Digital Literature, Vinaròs, Spain. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1651 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 36 Exhibition : Vienneses Videos, Bétonsalon-Paris, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1650 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Exhibition : Six millions, Fanny Aboulker, Espace Brochage Express,Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1649 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 Exhibition : web exhibition "Why rock?" Annie Abrahams, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1648 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 39 Exhibition : 2nd episode, Olivier Leroi, la box_bourges, Bourges, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1647 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 Exhibition : Festival for Jubilee of art Cybernetique,SCHÖFFER studio, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1646 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 Sceening : Compilation #3 " The invention of the laughter "videobox, Lunch Box, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1645 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 Call : Festival of new cinema de Montréal, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1644 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 Call : sound pieces about social control for Zeppelin2005, Barcelone, spain. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1643 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 Call : documentary screening, 1st International show of A E P C E, Saint-Ouen, France. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1642 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 45 Call : 'Out of Darkness', Artist's video and cinema, Liverpool, United Kingdom. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1641 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 Publication : portrait, number 5, review Parade, Ersep, Tourcoing, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1640 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 47 Rencontres : Cycle "Exil(s)" Art en exil Association, Brood des Récollets, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1639 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 48 Meeting : seminars about Pure Data interactivity, Art Sensitif, Mains d'Œuvres, Saint Ouen, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1638 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 49 Meeting : What means to represent today? transversale, Brood des Cordeliers, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1637 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 50 Meeting : Rendez-vous, Anne Laplantine, La Salle de Bains, Consortium, Dijon, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1636 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 51 Exhibition : " Postures ", Michaëll Sellam, lagalerie, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1635 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 52 Screening : Draft of a dream, the beautiful moment, Hall, Scam, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1634 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 53 Rencontres : programme Critical Secret, Paris, France. lien http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1633 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 54 Program : Tatiana Trouvé et cneai editions, cneai, Chatou, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1632 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 55 Exhibition : Inventory 2003/2005, Ecole Spéciale d'Architecture E.S.A., Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1631 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 56 Exhibition : Africa Remix, Pompidou center, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1630 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 57 Exhibition : Saverio Lucariello, Parc Saint Léger, Pougues-les-Eaux, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1629 From madhumita at disabilityindia.org Sat Jun 4 07:27:14 2005 From: madhumita at disabilityindia.org (Dr Madhumita Puri) Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2005 07:27:14 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] Millennium Development Goals Message-ID: Dear All Sorry for the cross posting.... A group of professionals involved with disability development have been striving to bring to the attention of the UN, non-inclusion of disabilities in the Millennium Development Goals. We have finally drafted the petition and put it up on www.disabilityindia.org I request you to read the draft and please add your signature as well as pass it on to others. You can mail your agreement to sales at disabilityindia.org Looking forward to your support, Dr Madhumita Puri From jassim.ali at gmail.com Fri Jun 3 12:29:37 2005 From: jassim.ali at gmail.com (Jassim Ali) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 12:29:37 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Quotes, Bollywod Music,Prashant Pandey In-Reply-To: <20050602063934.17972.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> References: <20050602063934.17972.qmail@webmail9.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <271ece9c050602235922cc8e46@mail.gmail.com> Wow prashant ...the cross section of the music industry and their varied quips and questions throws up a very interesting picture of our jing bang (whatever that means, hhehee) music industry with its own bruce dickinsons and cowbells ! great going and lookin fwd for more fireworks regards, jassim On 2 Jun 2005 06:39:34 -0000, Prashant Pandey < prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com> wrote: > > > Its a must read for you all... What everybody here has to say about a > researcher from Sarai. > > 1. Aree Sarai na... mujhe yaad hai ek baar hum log kisi seminar me gaye > the... i think Adoor was also there... the panel spoke so much about the > films...jitna sala filmmaker ne bhi na socha ho...You are a film student... > wahe pe jo chala jaiga sari filmmaking bhool jaiga... > (Oh Sarai, i remember now...once there was a film seminar there...Adoor > Gopalakrishnan was also there...Even the filmmakers hadnt thought of all > that what the panel was talking about...You are a film student...dont go > there you will forget your film making" > > Sudhir Mishra(filmmaker) > > 2. Does your work make you an anthropologist ? > Vivienne Poacha( Singer) > > 3. Do they pay you for all this ? > Asif (Music company executive) > > 4. He is a student doing a research project for his college... > Shantanu(Bombays' ace sound engineer introducing me to his colleages) > > 5. Chalo accha hai ki koi pehli baar hum logo ka haal chaal poochne aaya > hai...aap please media me hum logo ke bare me likho.(For the first time > somebody has come to us...Please write about us in media) > > Yogesh Pradhan(Music Arranger for Lucky,Devdas,HumDil De Chuke Sanam) > > 6. Is this for a newspaper ? > (Himesh Reshamiya, Music Director) > > 7. Please tell me all the jargons that you have thrown in your > proposal...Sarai is a scam. You must be staying in a posh hotel on their > money. > (A senior from College) > > > 8. Impressive. You have done your homework. Can I have your CV ? > > (Shameer Tandon, Head of Virgin Records India and Music Director,Page 3) > > ................................................................... > > PRASHANT PANDEY > > > > > > > _________________________________________ > 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, Jassim Ali Client Partner (Strategic Planning & Business Development) Webchutney "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."- St Tyler -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050603/a916cf3b/attachment.html From zulfisindh at yahoo.com Fri Jun 3 20:29:37 2005 From: zulfisindh at yahoo.com (Zulfiqar Shah) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 07:59:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Europe: an identity against civil war Message-ID: <20050603145937.41176.qmail@web30708.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Europe: an identity against civil war Josep Ramoneda In order to be assured of at least the possibility of becoming just another citizen in a world free from the spectre of blood and the bewitchment of horror, he could only anticipate the destruction of the existing world. These are the words, slightly paraphrased, of Hannah Arendt. The citizen to whom she refers, the "man of goodwill", is Franz Kafka. Kafka died in 1924 and thus did not live to see the collapse he foresaw; neither did he see the destiny that was in store for his city, Prague, doomed to linger for so long in suffering. Now that Europe is at last becoming whole, this evocation of Kafka helps to remind us that the great founding myth of Europe has been that of the taboo against civil war. The "no" votes in France and the Netherlands over the proposed treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union demonstrates the enormous difficulty of progressing towards constructing a European cosmopolitanism based on shared experience. Yet this is the only possible way for Europe to overcome the contradictory impulses that challenge it: a flight into globalisation versus a retreat into nationalism (the latter being, as Olivier Roy has pointed out, the most serious risk Europe faces). The injection of more democracy into the process of uniting Europe will encounter obstacles and diversions along the way – which the French and Dutch results can be seen to represent – but it is essential that Europe proceeds by devising a minimal framework that can accommodate but also go beyond the cultural exceptions of each nation. The meaning of a taboo If it is true that identities are defined in opposition to something or somebody, the identity of Europe has been defined in opposition to civil war. I say "civil" because, if we Europeans really wish to form a shared "demos", then wars between Europeans are civil wars (perhaps it is significant that in China, what was first known as "the great war", then as "the first world war" – the combat of 1914-18 – was long referred to as "the European civil war"). Europeans have been killing each other for centuries. But it took the Nazi extermination of the 1940s, which went beyond all limits in the exercise of evil, for Europeans to realise the need to construct a Europe that would define itself in opposition to the massacre of Europeans, to industrial-scale genocide, and to the conversion of "crimes of logic" (Albert Camus) into state imperatives. Thus, after 1945 and taking shape from the early 1950s, the new Europe was born. Civil war – a clash between members of the same community rather than between states – is the worst of war’s many horrors. Human beings inhabit spaces that are delimited by belonging, which slowly have been expanding: family, community, city, nation. From the moment that Europe becomes common territory, any war between European states will be at least in part a civil war. With the construction of the European Union, civil war in Europe became – and remains – unthinkable. In order to establish this taboo, however, it was necessary to descend to the seventh circle of hell that the Nazi era represented. The European Union is, in its origins, a huge market (and it is difficult to make of it anything more than a market) but it also entailed from the very start a profound moral component: "never again". In the 20th century, Europe demolished the idea of limits. Totalitarianism started from the idea that anything is possible. Reason ceased being critical to become the legitimiser of the will to power, of systemic injustice. As accomplice to extermination, reason died. When the reality of Nazi genocide came to light after 1945, the idea that this could never be repeated took root in the consciousness of citizens. If the European Union has any meaning today, it is precisely this: the taboo against civil war. The lesson of Buchenwald The sense of the European demos that is now under construction was already present in 1945, in Albert Camus’s Letters to a German Friend. When Camus wrote "we", he did not mean "we, the French" but "we, the free Europeans"; when he wrote "you", he did not mean "you, the Germans" but "you, the Nazis". This "we" of Camus is the origin of the new European demos whose identity and legitimacy have emerged in opposition to total evil, to civil war, and is therefore inextricably united with the defence of freedom. Jorge Semprún describes how he understood for the first time what Europe was when a prisoner in the in Buchenwald concentration camp. There, a handful of Europeans struggled for survival against Nazism. That group was Europe itself. Among them were young people from the Soviet Union, in particular Ukrainians. Those who endured the camps and returned home were suspected of being accomplices of the Nazis for the mere fact of having survived. The great majority ended up in Siberia, where they continued to resist the Stalinist form of totalitarianism. In other words, they continued, albeit unknowingly, to construct Europe. It would be enormously unjust to deny them the right to be Europeans. This is why Europe was incomplete until the countries of its east began to join; it is also why (though it may seem paradoxical), although Europe cannot be unlimited, it must attend to all countries that knock at its door. The Balkans failure Europeans have not lived along the same timescales. In the east, the descent into hell was prolonged. For millions of citizens, "liberation" in 1945 simply meant changing from one form of totalitarianism to another. Now, they have started to come together again in the Europe to which they always belonged. The peaceful course of the revolutions of 1989 shows that east-central Europeans too had begun to internalise the taboo of civil war. But a Europe returning to itself was shadowed by persistent scars, above all the Balkans. The savage wars of a disintegrating Yugoslavia from 1991 saw the triumph of ethnic cleansing, internationally endorsed. This failure of Europe is a reminder that nothing is ever achieved definitively: not even the taboo against war. Each time that Europe has surrendered its principal weapon, critical reason, to the service of the will to power (in the name of fatherland, class, ethnic group, religion, or technology) the way has been opened up for civil war and disaster. The Balkans are Europe, and Europe needs the Balkans. We must not look away again, nor keep the region at a distance, as if it was some kind of potential reserve of base passions. Europe as critical reason A mean-spirited dialectic seems to be confronting the countries that were in 2004 incorporated into the European Union in the form of a fidelity test: either Europe or the United States. This is an absurd game, fostered by people who have an interest in debilitating Europe. What is so strange about people, who have lived for so many years with Russia as a constant threat, feeling a special admiration for the prime enemy of their oppressors: the United States? The evolution towards authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin’s regime (with the assent of certain European governments that suffer from paralysis of their democratic reflexes whenever they are anywhere near Moscow) is hardly reassuring. Yet the destiny of these countries is Europe. And only if Europe should fail will it be different. What might be the failure of Europe? Two things: the inability to extend to everyone the social cohesion that has so far been attained; and the breaking of the civil war taboo. The "Europe of 25" raises short-term problems of economic, financial and social adjustment but in the long term its strength depends on a key area: that of education and culture. The ability to invent, create and seduce (viral power) must be the distinctive hallmark of Europe. Europe presents herself as a bearer of human rights. But if, as erudite people claim, the basic principle of humanity is reason, human rights are universal and not the exclusive property of anyone. It would be ethnocentric to believe otherwise. Europe developed curiosity (the driving force of knowledge) in the interests of both conquest and science, deploying critical reason to advance beyond other nations that remained bogged down in their own glory. Europe has come to grief every time it has abandoned critical reason. In our present-day society of risk, Europe will once again undergo the test critical reason presents. Europe cannot remain a prisoner of its own impotence in international relations; neither can it respond by dispersal its energies in new conflicts. Europe must define its own model without fear of being different or being led astray by dogmas of economic growth as the foundation of all progress. Europe must defend its secularism and institutional neutrality as territory that is common to all: those who are here now and those yet to come, without detriment to the beliefs of anyone. If it abandons critical reason and comes under the sway of truths that solidify in the brain (to use JM Coetzee’s expression), if it takes the path of security at any price, if it gives way to community fragmentation in the name of false relativism out of fear of the newcomer, or if it forgets the centrality of the human individual (a notion that has dominated its culture since the Renaissance), instead of growing Europe will shrink. The recently incorporated countries (and those still on the waiting list, like Romania and Ukraine) have emerged from an experience different to that of modernity, and they come with renewed energies after tremendous change. Europe will be at once denser and more open as a result. Some people stress the economic weakness of the new arrivals, but it is more intelligent and forward-looking to highlight their great educational and creative potential. An identity without enemies An identity against civil war is exactly the opposite of units of destiny in universal terms. "A civilisation is an anti-destiny", writes Andre Glucksmann; it unites "against what destroys it". The peculiarity of the European identity is its nature as an open or transcendent identity, one not defined by exclusion of the other, but rather by the incorporation among ourselves by all those who reject civil war, independently of their origins or where they might be coming from. Europe must demonstrate that, contrary to Carl Schmitt’s doctrine, it is possible to engage in politics without any need to point at an enemy. This is why it is an error to believe that the European identity will be constructed in opposition to the United States. There are and will be conflicts of interests with the United States, but it is absurd to think of Europe’s relations with the US in polarised ways. This is a trap set by American neo-conservatives; only those who suffer from the childish ailment called anti-Americanism will fall for it. The European identity is always projected beyond Europe – with the risk of being suspected of identity imperialism – in keeping with the enlightened requirement that obliges Europe to act in accordance with Kant’s categorical imperative: "as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature....." And, precisely because it was founded in the experience of evil, it is a vigilant identity, one that is alert to threats of destruction and self-destruction. If closed identities have been and are (as in the Balkans) the standard-bearers of civil conflict among Europeans, the identity that will arise to oppose this conflict will naturally be open. The only condition for including the "other" as one of "us" is rejection of civil war and acceptance of the framework agreed for the rules of the game. Like any process of de-territorialisation, this generates crises and fissures. There will always be somebody who reacts fearfully when borders and certainties are blurred. A few seek shelter and protection under the wing of the strongest party (like the Atlanticist front that clustered around George W Bush during the war in Iraq), while others lose themselves in the time warp of closed societies (like the nationalist front that rejects the processes of globalisation). It is natural that, when faced with the uncertainties that come hand-in-hand with change, more conservative people want to reaffirm the values of tradition in the founding documents of the new Europe. They should not forget that Christianity is, in Europe, both Catholicity (another form of universal vocation) and diversity, and that the splits within Christianity represent a step towards freedom; as Voltaire remarked, "if there were only one religion in England there would be danger of despotism; if there were two they would cut each other’s throats, but there are thirty, and they live in peace and happiness." An open Europe Why is the identity constructed against civil war an open one? Because the lowest common denominator is rejection of fraternal destruction. And beyond that, all ideas and positions are amenable to being presented and discussed on the European stage. As George Steiner has noted, being a European means seeking to reconcile, morally, intellectually and existentially, the incompatible ideals, claims and praxes of the city of Socrates with those of the city of Isaiah. The proposed, contested European constitution has dispensed with the erroneous category of "the people", a category designed to snare individuals in the cobwebs of atavism, of a story that presumes to be above them. The European demos was not founded on peoples but on citizens and states. The next step will be to recognise the full, founding power of citizens. Europe’s patriotism is not one of freedoms, nor one of conflict between the different groups of "we"; if it were, the only line of exclusion would be drawn by the person who wants to regress to civil war, the self-destruction of Europe. The European identity thus defines a peculiar relationship with the "other". This makes the debate on borders – understood in relation to internal frontiers as well as geographic limits – decisive. Europe cannot be a fortified "white world" that reacts in paranoid fashion to anything that seems to be different. With regard to the exterior, it must be permeable enough both to project itself and to permit itself to be inseminated; with regard to its interior, it must accept that globalisation is happening in all directions and that Europe too is at once recipient and motor of the process. This means not fleeing from contact or from conflict but transforming them into shared policies and institutions. True, there is a danger in believing that Europe’s pacification means that plenitude has been achieved and Europe’s potential historically realised. This fantasy, if accepted, would confirm the prejudice of Europeans’ inability to take responsibility for themselves – corroborating the views of Americans like Robert Kagan who see Europe as a post-heroic paradise that cannot recognise, far less confront, the problems of the world. Europe knows, precisely because its only general requirement is rejection of self-destruction and its results, that unity is not a value in itself. The value is pluralism. Europe’s identity is not a fact prior to some common project inscribed on the skin of the history of Europeans but (as Etienne Balibar says) "a quality of collective action" continually being shaped in the course of the complex evolution of European society. In the European space of freely-associated states, we see the emergence of a potential system of political articulation, one capable of overcoming the physical and spiritual divisions that accompany what is national: the system of cities, of the diversity of cultures brought into relationship on the basis of the protocols of urbanity, of modernity. The city overflows borders and makes it possible to weave a fabric that prevails from within over all national packaging, thanks to the viral power of what is urban. Only the city can save us from multiculturalist errors. >From regression to renewal The identity against civil war as a minimalist identity, pared down to the essential, one that does not attempt to befuddle the consciousness of citizens. It is etched into the modern European awareness that war is something to be avoided. United States neo-conservatives see this as a weakness or sign of impotence. It may be, in part; but the taboo against war, constructed upon images of extermination, is a key component of the European identity. In the past, Europeans engaged in a classical form of imperialism: that of conquest and occupation of territories. The experience has left gaping wounds and a bitter aftertaste. Today, for Europe, negotiation and agreement are frontline instruments. The Americans, by contrast, have been engaging in a modern, return-ticket kind of imperialism: they act and then leave, they are present to destroy and absent when it is time for construction. Europe’s strength now is in what I call "viral power" (although others prefer the more prissy formulation of "soft power"): the ability to make contagious those ideas and customs that give shape to a certain way of being in the world. In the network society the viral capacity of countries or regional groups is decisive, so much so that I believe that it is possible to divide societies into two types. The first has the viral power that can transcend its borders, in terms of life, information, money, industry, inventiveness and ideas (exogenous viral power, or cosmopolitan power); the second has a self-destructive form of viral power perhaps because of an inability to generate viruses that are expansive and universal (so that the miasmas remain in the family, as endogenous – or national – viral power). Europe should use the tremendous potential of its exogenous viral power as an antidote, both against ethnic multiculturalism and against any order that is founded in fantasies of the end of history. A European demos The preamble of the European constitution – not exactly a memorable text – refers to the terrible disagreements that have led to this coming together: "Believing that Europe, reunited after bitter experiences, intends to continue along this path of civilisation, progress and prosperity " An identity is not imposed, but is formed, is developed and is extended: the taboo against civil strife was followed in Europe by a rejection of political totalitarianism and moral authoritarianism. Such an identity would continue to assert itself as the everyday experience of the citizens took on a European dimension in addition to local and national ones – a necessary condition for the consolidation of a European demos. But European identity will always be open to other countries that share the same standards of coexistence and communication. Hence Europe does not have closed borders. This means Turkey, of course, and why not Israel and Palestine some day? It might be argued that as long as European identity is so minimalist, national identities will be assured of a long life. People need to feel they belong and want to have strong community feeling but are not aware that every identity represents a certain loss of freedom, which is ever greater with each turn of the identity screw. The European identity cannot be – in the experience of the citizens – an identity that is of the same order as national identities, and neither need it be incompatible with them. The feeling against civil war is stronger than the mythical national stories that are constructed upon the abuse of power, selective memory and outright deception. Spain knows something of this: being against civil war is the shared value that has made a relatively peaceful transition possible. An identity against civil war is something like a renewal of the promises of the social contract now that modern experience has reached its limits, in totalitarianism and weapons of mass destruction. The European social model is not far removed from the bases of this identity. It was constructed in the post-war years to buttress a rejection of civil war and it requires updating and reforms. To destroy it would be a kind of self-destruction of Europe, regression to civil war. This essay was translated by Julie Wark Source: Open Democracy __________________________________________________ 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/20050603/1bd1bbeb/attachment.html From shekhar at crit.org.in Sun Jun 5 02:02:39 2005 From: shekhar at crit.org.in (Shekhar Krishnan) Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2005 21:32:39 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Mumbai Free Map Message-ID: <9bd41d1116e5a85477001c0fda4dc916@crit.org.in> Dear All: Please see the latest demo of the Mumbai Free Map on http://freemap.crit.org.in This now contains detailed vector layers for roads, railways, buildings and plots, projected onto a satellite composite image of the city. The data has been sourced from existing municipal development plans, surveys, and maps, which we have scanned, traced and stitched together with our archive of project materials at CRIT. This project has been developed using completely free and open source software (Map Server, GRASS, QGIS) and copyleft and public geographic data. The project web page is on http://www.crit.org.in/projects/gis and we welcome comments and feedback on it as we begin developing an interface by which to annotate the maps and develop the Mumbai Free Map as an open source and interactive city archive and community information infrastructure. Regards, S.K. _____ Shekhar Krishnan CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust) B-43, Shravasti Goregaon-Malad Link Road Malad (West), Mumbai 400064 India http://www.crit.org.in/members/shekhar From singhgurminder2000 at hotmail.com Sun Jun 5 14:43:47 2005 From: singhgurminder2000 at hotmail.com (gurminder singh) Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2005 14:43:47 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Visit a Gurdwara in Delhi Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050605/6bc1c3b9/attachment.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Jun 4 15:16:11 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2005 15:16:11 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Caste and Gender (Insight Magazine) In-Reply-To: <20050602180947.31013.qmail@webmail49.rediffmail.com> References: <20050602180947.31013.qmail@webmail49.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Insight Magazine Date: 2 Jun 2005 18:09:47 -0000 Subject: new issue-insight Dear All, the new issue of INSIGHT on Caste and Gender is now online at http://www.sammaditthi.com/INSIGHT/insight_home.asp we have worked hard to put forward dalit women perspective. we are eagerly waiting for ur response. the printed version will be released tommorow regards Anoop From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Mon Jun 6 16:11:49 2005 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 11:41:49 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] IV Global Conference of =?iso-8859-1?q?Peoples=92?= Global Action, Haridwar, Uttaranchal, North India Message-ID: Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2005 16:40:54 -0700 (PDT) From: pga-4globalconf at riseup.net To: "caravana" Subject: [caravan99] CALL: IV Global Conference of Peoples´Global Action IV Global Conference of Peoples’ Global Action 27th September to 2nd October 2005 Haridwar, Uttaranchal, North India 1. Background 2. Why a global conference now? Why in Asia? 3. Objectives of this conference 4. Asian convenors and conference hosts 5. Dates, venue and logistics 6. Programme and preparation process 7. Participants Appendixes: I. Hallmarks of PGA II. Organizational Principles of PGA III. A brief history of Peoples’ Global Action IV. Sustained campaigns V. Application form 1. Background Global capitalism is causing more exploitation, oppression, destitution and war in our times than ever before. The governments, multinational corporations and financial interests that rule over the global economy continue concentrating wealth and power. They fasten their control over our lives and resources on multilateral institutions and agreements, such as the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and regional trade agreements like the EU, FTAA, APEC, etc. These entities ensure that injustice and destruction expand all over the world, increasing the pain and despair of all oppressed and discriminated people, such as peasants, indigenous peoples, women, workers, the unemployed, slum dwellers, ethnic or religious minorities, Dalits and other exploited castes, Hijras, etc . The monstrous global inequalities have reached an absurd level where almost 1 billion people suffer chronic hunger and more than 1 billion lack access to safe drinking water, while the 3 richest men own more wealth than the poorest 48 countries, and 285 individuals posses as much as half of the humanity. In addition to the daily economic violence engendered by capitalism, imperialist countries are waging more and increasingly destructive wars to steal resources from the poor. This is why many anti-capitalist movements have actively participated in anti-war protests as a natural extension of their activity. The atrocious nature of those wars is one more consequence of capital’s expansion, just like the suicides of thousands of indebted peasants in South Asia, the displacement of indigenous peoples, the exploitation of workers and women, etc. The world is full of such examples of the destructive and insatiable greed of a social and economic system that most humans reject and despise. The people and institutions that rule over this system will continue generating abuse, misery and death, and any attempt to reform them are a waste of energy and time. For this reason, grassroots movements are working in all continents to take back collective and democratic control over our resources and forms of life, to rebuild our autonomy and self-organisation. This is the continuation of an ancient revolutionary tradition which encompasses slave insurrections and anti-colonial liberation struggles, indigenous and feminist uprisings, peasants’ and workers’ revolutions, anti-capitalist direct action and environmental activism, cultural and sexual self-affirmation, grassroots antagonist education and independent media, just to mention some examples. Over the last decades, growing numbers of grassroots movements have come to the common conclusion that we need to strengthen and interconnect this revolutionary tradition. We are all fighting against common problems and adversaries, and this struggle requires the participation of all people who suffer the consequences of discrimination or oppression of all kinds. Today more than ever, the emancipation of any of us is connected to the emancipation of all oppressed people in the world. This results in an urgent need to learn from and about each other, in order to be able to support each other as much as possible. To achieve that, we also need to become aware of our own participation in sexism, racism or other forms of inequality and exploitation, and fight against them. Another shared conclusion is the need to build locally controlled and genuinely democratic and participatory social and economic relations as alternatives to capitalism. We don’t want to repeat past mistakes and replace one form of exploitation and control by another. We cannot make our freedom depend on the good will of any revolutionary vanguard or political party. All revolutions of the 20th century have confirmed that centralised power corrupts and leads to disappointment and collapse. Therefore if we want emancipation to last, it should be built and maintained by the equal participation of all people in struggle, by local autonomy combined with international solidarity and globally coordinated action. For these reasons, grassroots movements all over the world have built tools for non-hierarchical communication and coordination on the basis of diversity, autonomy and decentralisation. Peoples’ Global Action (PGA) was created with this aim in February 1998 by a wide range of grassroots movements from the South and the North. It has served as tool to call for Global Days of Action against Capitalism during summits of global bodies (like the WTO, the G8, the IMF/WB, etc), and it inspired other forms of action and solidarity (such as inter-continental caravans, local actions, gender conferences, seminars and exchanges, publications, etc). PGA is defined by a number of features that distinguish it from other international networks, expressed in its hallmarks (the basic points of consensus on which the network is based, see appendix I), and organisational principles (see appendix II). The 4th global PGA conference will take place in a very different context than the previous one, which took place in September 2001 (see appendix III for a brief history of PGA). The September 11th 2001 attacks have been used by some Western countries and economic interests to attempt regaining the legitimacy of the global capitalist regime, after a period of extraordinarily fast growth of anti-capitalist protests all over the world (also in the North). The attacks were also presented as a justification to invade and devastate Afghanistan and Iraq, and to intensify control and repression and foster fear and racism all over the world. This fear and racism is targeted especially against Arabs and Muslims, who are used as scapegoats to divert attention from the daily violence inflicted by capitalism over millions of people all over the world. Due to all these changes, from 2001 to 2005 the international activity of many social movements was focused on reacting to the aggressions and wars caused by imperialist countries and economic interest. Many movements did so in the framework of large coalitions and platforms, which were not necessarily anti-capitalist or horizontal, and more often than not dominated, by NGOs and political parties. We believe that it is time to strengthen again the global self-organised coordination of grassroots antagonist action, to take again the initiative and attack the economic interests and entities in the driving seat of global capitalism. 2. Why a global conference now? Why in Asia? At the last global conference (Cochabamba, Bolivia, September 2001) it was decided by consensus to focus on strengthening the regional processes at continental level. The decentralised process that followed has been different in each region: in some the process slowed down, while in others it has been strengthened, expanded and consolidated (see appendix III). Regarding the Asia region, the PGA process has been further strengthened and consolidated after its last regional conference in Dhaka, Bangladesh, hosted by Krishok Federation (Organization of farmers of Bangladesh) and Kisani Shaba (Farmers women organization of Bangladesh). It was attended by over 150 activists from grassroots people's movements from South and South East Asia, comprising peasants, women, trade Unions, fisher folk, indigenous people and youth. One of the conclusions of this conference was that at this point in time it makes sense to bring together again the regional processes into a global conference, in order to revitalise successful forms of global action against capitalism and explore new strategies to reinforce the cooperation, exchange and solidarity at the global level. It was also argument that even when there are new and well-funded platforms with similar aims, such as the Social Forums, which started in January 2001, there is the strong necessity of a specific space, with a real horizontal, anti-capitalist and feminist nature for grassroots movements. Thus, we believe in the urgent necessity of strengthening and consolidate globally the anti-capitalist network “People Global Action” as a tool of coordination and communication, which combines a confrontational action-orientation with decentralisation and the full autonomy of all participant movements (NGOs may only participate as observers, if at all, and that representatives of political parties are not welcome). So, following the Asian PGA Conference, South Asian movements met in Bangalore (India) and discussed the necessity of holding the Fourth PGA Global Conference. As a result, Asian movements proposed that the next PGA Global Conference takes place in Asia, few months before the next World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference, which will be held in Hong Kong in December of 2005. This proposal was bring to the rest of regions. The European Regional Conference that took place in Belgrade in summer 2004 also agreed and supported the Asian proposal for the global conference. 3. Objectives of this conference The objectives that we propose for the global conference are: · Contributing to the consolidation of regional PGA processes. · Planning in-depth exchanges between movements in different regions, in particular about the construction of decentralised and alternative livelihoods and social relations as alternatives to capitalism. · Define a plan of action and strategies of struggle, including Global Days of Action against Capitalism, especially before and during the upcoming WTO ministerial conference. · Revitalising a collective discussion about the global PGA process, alongside the consolidation of autonomous regional processes. · Promoting gender work within each organisation and within PGA as a whole. · Creating a PGA women network and introducing masculinity work at global level. 4. Asian convenors and conference hosts The convenors of Asia, chosen at the last regional conference in Bangladesh are: Asian Convenor: All Nepal Peasants’ Association (ANPA), Nepal South East Asian Convenor: Assembly of The Poor, Thailand South Asia Convenor: Bhartiya Kisan Union (BKU), India This conference was initially going to take place in Nepal, hosted by ANPA, but due to the outrageous coup d'état and dictatorship recently imposed by the King, the venue had to be shifted to North India, near the border with Nepal. The Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers’ Movements (ICC) has taken on the task of hosting the conference. We are holding the conference near the Nepalese border in order to make it possible for conference delegates to visit Nepalese movements after the conference, in case the conditions allow. Nepal is undergoing a very interesting pre-revolutionary situation, due to the combined efforts of many different grassroots movements. Many of these movements are eager to meet the delegates of the PGA conference. Therefore, if the security conditions allow, ANPA and other movements will organise a visit to Nepal, and if that is not possible, there could be a solidarity action at the border. We therefore advise all participants to leave some days free after the conference. 5. Date, venue and logistics The conference will take place from the 5th to 12th October in Haridwar, India. Haridwar is a town of 220.000 inhabitants in the state of Uttaranchal (North India), 5 hours away from Delhi by train. It will be preceded by a mass protest in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) on the 2nd October, which we hope to be attended by all conference participants, since it will set a very positive and action-oriented collective tone for the rest of the conference. A caravan of grassroots movements from South India will reach Mumbai on the 2nd October to meet the international delegates and participate in the protest with them, and we will travel all together to Haridwar after the protest. We hope that all participants will join us in Mumbai. Haridwar is situated at the foothills of the Himalayas, in the precise place where the Ganges River leaves the mountain range. It has therefore been considered a sacred place for centuries, and every night floating lights are deposited at the point where the river enters the plains (known as “The Stairs of God”). Thousands of people come to bath in the cold and crystalline water (considered to have special healing powers in this location) and every 12 years there is an immense spiritual festival. This explains the large amount of ashrams (places for meditation, yoga and spiritual introspection) that exist in this town. The accommodation will take place in ashrams, which are sympathetic to the aims of the conference. The conditions will be modest and coherent with the principles and ideas of PGA: sleeping on thin mattresses on the floor, quite a lot of people in each room, collective toilets, etc. Participants should bring their own sleeping bags or sheets and blankets, and are advised to bring anti-mosquito cream and mosquito nets. There will be rooms for women only and men only, as well as mixed rooms. The food will be contributed by Indian peasants, members of the farmers’ organisations of the ICC (conference hosts), who despite their difficult situation want to make this contribution to the success of the conference. We hope that all participants will be happy to share the same simple and unpretentious conditions. We will do our best to do special arrangements for people with restricted mobility or any other particular need. Anyone needing any other type of accommodation for comfort reasons should make their own arrangements. As mentioned above, besides the action in Mumbai before the conference, there will hopefully be a visit to Nepal at the end, if the security conditions allow. This visit will be organised by the Nepalese movements. Registered participants will receive more information in the future. If this visit is not possible, there might be an action of solidarity at the border with Nepal, and visits to Indian movements. We therefore advise everyone to leave at least one week free between the end of the conference and their date of return. 6. Programme and preparation process The final programme for the conference will be defined over the next months through a collective discussion process, which will hopefully include grassroots movements from all continents. The basic structure proposed by the conference hosts is: 2nd October: Action in Mumbai. Travel to Haridwar with Indian movements. 4th October: Arrival of the participants to Haridwar. 5th - 6th October: Gender training workshops, including masculinity. 7th – 8th October: Information Exchange: workshops proposed by the participant organizations, such as on the struggle against sexism and other forms of oppression, militarism, privatisation, trade and gender, etc. 9th – 10th October: Campaigns and plan of actions. Building alternatives. These two days proposals of the organization of initiatives and action strategies at the global level: exchanges, inter-regional solidarity, sustained campaigns, etc, as well as coordination of actions against the Hong-Kong WTO conference and other future Global Days of Action against Capitalism will be discussed and concretised. 11th - 12th October: PGA global process: convenors committee, manifesto, organisational principles, next conferences, etc. 13th October: Visit to Nepalese grassroots movements. If it is not possible to visit Nepal, solidarity action at the border and visits to Indian movements. The parts in italics are not part of the conference programme but we hope that all participants will be able to attend them. All the organizational process, as well as decision-making will be completely transparent and collective. Regular reports on the progress of the organization of the conference will be sent to all regional PGA lists. The following elements will be use in the discussion process for the preparations of the conference: · E-mail discussion: we propose to use the list caravan99 at lists.riseup.net. To subscribe, send an email to caravan99-subscribe at lists.riseup.net · Preparatory meetings: According to the conclusions of the last European PGA conference (Belgrade, summer 2004), there should be at least a preparatory meeting in Europe which should be attended by all European organisations and collectives that want to participate in the global conference. One of the purposes of this meeting is to discuss which issues Europeans want to take to the conference, and to talk about the programme and all other aspects of the conference. We hope that this meeting will take place, and would be very glad if similar meetings could take place in other regions. Where it is not possible to hold such meetings, regional lists can be used (such as agplatina at lists.riseup.net for Latin America, pga at lists.riseup.net for North America and pga-asia at lists.riseup.net, pga-asia at cupboard.org for Asia) · Direct communication with participants: the application form asks participants their opinion about the programme of the conference and whether they want to present any workshop, film, exhibition, etc. All answers will be sent to caravan99 at lists.riseup.net and the regional lists as contributions to the collective discussion. We hope that the combination of all these elements will make it possible to prepare collectively the conference and define its contexts. According to the PGA organisational principles (see appendix II), the convenors committee has the mandate to set the conference programme, but we hope that it will be possible to set it by a consensus-based collective process. 7. Participants Grassroots movements, organizations, collectives, unions, etc that agree with the PGA hallmarks (see appendix I) are welcome to join the conference. Delegates from NGOs may have a status of observer if the grassroots organizations coming from the same country agree. Political parties are not allowed to send representatives. In the case of delegations of more than one representative, at least half of them must be women. The Indian Coordination Committee of Farmers Movements will provide food and accommodation for a maximum of 600 participants. The organisations from Africa, Latin America and Asia that need support for part of their travel costs should apply before the 20th August. Visas or other expenses besides the travel costs will not be covered. Only in very exceptional cases the complete cost of the flight tickets will be reimbursed, we ask all the organisations to contribute with a minimum of 20% of their tickets, if possible more. In order to avoid an imbalance in the representation from the South and the North due to economic reasons, all participants from Western Europe, North America and Australia are asked to cover their own travel costs and establish redistribution channels to ensure the participation of disadvantaged social sectors or regions (such as Eastern Europe). In addition to this, we expect all participants from the North to contribute to the travel costs of participants from Africa, Latin America and Asia. We will try to raise funds for this purpose from coherent sources besides the contributions of participants from the North, and any help in that respect will be more than welcome. However, the contributions from Northern participants are most likely to be essential to the success of the conference, since Southern participation might otherwise be very limited. There will be a fee of 50 US$ for participants from Western Europe, North America and Australia, and 10 US$ for participants from other regions. All participants should apply and pay for their tourist visas in their respective Indian consulates or embassies. If you face any problems to get a tourist visa, please let us know with enough time. The working languages during the conference will be English, Spanish and Hindi. If you need translation to other language and cannot arrange it, you should let us know well in advance, to see if translation can be organised. The final application deadline will be the 2nd September in order to leave enough time to send the information to the different regional lists and the caravan99 at lists.riseup.net list. Participants asking for help with the travel costs should apply before the 20th August. The application form can be found in the appendix V, and it should sent to: pga-4globalconf at riseup.net Appendixes I Hallmarks of PGA The following hallmarks define the basic consensus on which PGA is based: 1. A very clear rejection of capitalism, imperialism and feudalism; all trade agreements, institutions and governments that promote destructive globalization; 2. We reject all forms and systems of domination and discrimination including, but not limited to, patriarchy, racism and religious fundamentalism of all creeds. We embrace the full dignity of all human beings. 3. A confrontational attitude, since we do not think that lobbying can have a major impact in such biased and undemocratic organizations, in which transnational capital is the only real policy-maker; 4. A call to direct action and civil disobedience, support for social movements' struggles, advocating forms of resistance which maximize respect for life and oppressed peoples' rights, as well as the construction of local alternatives to global capitalism; 5. An organizational philosophy based on decentralization and autonomy II Organizational Principles of PGA III. A brief history of Peoples’ Global Action A brief history of PGA will be included in the web page www.agp.org IV. Sustained Campaigns The following global campaigns were defined at the previous global conference in Cochabamba (Bolivia): · Campaign against state militarism and para-militarism · Campaign for defence and recognition of self-determination and land sovereignty of all people · Campaign against all privatisation · Campaign on construction of alternative models to the capitalist system, based on education and training Most campaigns have not even started at the global level, due to different reasons (such as the post-Sept 11th wars, the fact that they were defined at the global conference rather than emerging from the grassroots level and passing through regional conferences, etc). At the Haridwar conference we should decide what to do about them. V. Application form Please send this application form to pga-4globalconf at riseup.net before the 2nd September. Organisations that need help with travel costs should send this application before the 20th August. 1. ORGANISATION DETAILS Name of the organization: Address: Email: Tel: Fax: 2. DESCRIPTION OF THE ORGANISATION · When and why was it created, where and on which issues does it work? · Objectives of the organisation · Current activities, campaigns, actions, etc. · Is your organization working on alternatives to capitalism, such as seed banks, decentralised water management, alternative energy, cooperatives, etc ? If yes, please describe briefly such projects. 3. PARTICIPANT(S) Name and gender of the participant(s): Languages: 4. CONTENTS OF THE CONFERENCE · Which issues does your organisation think should be discussed in the conference? · What is your opinion of the proposed structure of the conference? · Does your organisation want to organize any workshop, performance or culture event? · Does your organization bring any exhibition or video? 5. LOGISTICS AND TRAVEL · Do any members of your delegation need any special arrangement, such as a special diet, special beds, wheelchair or medical care? · Could your organisation help with translation of documents before the conference? Could your delegation help with translation during the conference (documents, workshops or informal conversations)? If yes, in which language? · For organisations located in Africa, Latin America or Asia: does your organisation need help with travel costs? In that case, how much can your organisation contribute? · For organisations located in rich countries: can your organisation contribute to the travel costs of organisations from the South? If yes, how much? 6. DOCUMENTATION Please, send with this form any document that your organization wants to be distributed during the conference. We are going to prepare a welcome document with the description of the participant organizations and the documents send by them. This welcome document will be distributed in Spanish, English and Hindi, but we invite all organizations to translate this document into their own language. If you want any document to be included in the welcome document, please send it to us as soon as possible. We would be thankful if you could also provide translations of your document in English and/or Spanish and/or Hindi. caravan99 at lists.riseup.net -- http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/person-1024.25.html&lang=en http://blogger.xs4all.nl/kranenbu/ http://locative.net/blog/mixreality/ 0031 (0) 641930235 From iram at sarai.net Mon Jun 6 15:15:18 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 11:45:18 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] 4th post by Biswajit and Nilanjan: How children view the hanging Message-ID: How children view the hanging Fourth posting by Biswajit and Nilanjan Hetal Parekh, the victim in the most talked about rape and murder case of out time, was a schoolgirl. How did her peers react to the crime, the punishment and the media coverage? We have seen some of them in the TV and newspaper pictures holding up placards evidently prepared by grown-ups to demand “exemplary” punishment of the convict, Dhananjay Chatterjee, or silently standing in prayer lines. But beyond that? We did not know because we did not want to know. As we started talking to the children, it became apparent that not only did the mass media have a deep impact on young minds (as expected), but the young ones, too, had important things to say about the issues raised by the media and the way these were raised. The first group we discussed with was an all-girl one. It comprised nine students (class VI-IX) of Jagatpur Rukmini Vidyamandir for Girls, a rather “ordinary” school in Behala at the south-west fringe of Kolkata. The students mostly belonged to working-class families. Their fathers were masons, gardeners, petty shop-owners or cab-drivers, or had left them in the care of their mothers, who worked as domestic helps. Most of these children were not yet born when the Hetal was raped and murdered by the security guard of her apartment building, Dhananjay, in 1991. Two of the children do not have TV at home while two others have no cable connection. None of their families subscribe to any newspaper regularly. However, their elders read newspapers particularly when some news turns into hot topic. The children, too, read newspapers occasionally but watch TV regularly, either at home or at some neighbour’s place. What did they like to watch? Almost all of them named crime-related programmes such as Police File, Crime Diary, Crime Files, etc., as well as detective soaps like CID. There is an abundance of prime-time crime-related programmes, both on Bengali and Hindi channels, where the highly dramatised and gory reconstructions of violence, particularly crimes on women like rape and murder are being dished out every evening. Our interaction with these children shows that their perceptions – rather imaginations, fears and hatred – about the crimes and criminals as well as values about the punishments are greatly shaped by these programmes. According to them, the elders in their families, too, avidly watch these programmes and ask the teenaged girls to do the same to make them “aware of the dangers ahead”. “My grandpa told me to watch the Police File to know how the girl (Hetal Parekh) was tortured and murdered by Dhananjay. It will enhance my knowledge about the dangers that girls face,” recalled one of them. Another said that her father told her to follow the news on Dhananjay’s hanging. “An aunt in the neighbourhood told me watch it to learn about the bad things that boys do to girls,” reported one of them. All of them came to know about the crime and punishment of Dhananjay chattarjee from elders who were engrossed in hot discussions before as well as after the judicial execution. “It was discussed everywhere – at home, in the locality and school. TV and newspapers were also full of stories on the hanging. This made us curious,” said one girl. Most of them followed the news of hanging on TV channels. Like the elders, they became conditioned to the gradual building of climax to the great spectacle of the hanging, orchestrated by the media and the government. “I watched the TV whole night on the day of the hanging. We have never seen a hanging. I wanted to watch the hanging to know how a normal living person was turned into a dead man,” said a girl. Others, too, were keen to watch the episode. The images of Dhananjay they had received from the TV reconstructions of his crime were grotesque. They particularly mentioned the Police File programme on Akash Bangla, the TV channel known as the ruling CPI(M)’s unofficial organ. “The person who acted as Dhananjay was ugly and fearsome. His loafer looks, bloody eyes and beastly body movements sent chills through our spines. We began to hate and fear Dhananjay. This portrayal of Dhananjay led us to support the hanging,” said Lipika, while other girls corroborated her. But they were able to make a distinction between the hyper-real and real. “Later, we saw Dhananjay’s picture in the newspapers and TV news. He looked like a normal bhadralok in bridegroom make-up and certainly not as horrific as he was shown in the Police File. The Police File report tried to convince us that he was a bad man who deserved the hanging. People came to favour his hanging after this episode was telecast. In other episodes, there were commercial breaks, but this one hardly had any,” observed Sebika and Lipika while others in the group supported them. The children reflected the divisions and swings in public opinion on the death sentence. While the elders and the media influenced their judgments, their ability to articulate was striking. There were arguments both for and against the death sentence and taking a decision was not easy, they noted. According to them, the hanging could be justified because: a) Dhananjay had tortured and killed Hetal, b) if released, he would have committed the same crime again, and c) this could have happened to them also. At the same time, they felt opposed to the hanging on the following grounds: a) Dhananjay had been in jails for years together, b) it was his first crime, c) many criminals who had committed multiple crimes of similar nature were still evading arrest or conviction, d) there would be no difference between the killer and the judge if the latter ordered killing of the former, and e) it was often found that courts rectified the previous conviction orders, which had compelled innocent persons to languish in jail for long. There would be no chance of such judicial rectification if the convict was hanged to death. “Initially, most of the people were in favor of the hanging. But the mood changed substantially on the eve of the hanging. We, too, felt it was better to keep Dhananjay in prison for life rather than killing him. The government should stop hanging but imprison the criminals for life who dare to violate the honours of women,” said the girls. These children were aware of the class bias of our legal–judicial system and made critical observations on that issue. “If the crime had been committed by a fellow resident of the apartment rather than the security guard, he would have escaped the noose. We know that ministers’ sons or relatives go unpunished even after committing heinous crimes. Why was there such a hue and cry over Dhananjay when such crimes are often committed? Dhananjay’s poor family could not match the money power of Hetal’s family and failed to engage better lawyers to save his life,” argued one of them. When asked why they came to such a conclusion, they said, “Those who were opposed to the death sentence said this during the TV debates. These aspects were also discussed at our homes.” They even demanded that the government look after Dhananjay’s parents who had lost all their resources in the long legal battle. Nevertheless, they would have favoured the hanging uncritically if Hetal was their friend or a student of the same school. “If she was our friend or a senior in school, we would have reacted in the manner the students of Hetal’s school had reacted.” Hangman Nata Mallick evoked a mixed response. While his name sounded funny for them, his bizarre job evoked awe and fear. But the girls had their own reading of the texts. “He was not eager to hang Dhananjay and fell sick after the hanging. We have seen that on TV. He should not be blamed for the hanging, as it is his livelihood. He just obeyed the government order,” they pleaded. Why did the media make a big hype over the hanging? The children put forth an explanation. “There was no hanging for many years. Reporters have done their jobs. Otherwise how can the news business go on?” maintained the girls. Condoning the hype, however, these girls were critical about the demonstration of the hanging or techniques of noose making in the media. “Younger children, attracted to the constant discussions everywhere on the issue and repeated media images on hanging, imitated it playfully without realising the danger.” These girls in their early teens, however, did not go for the temptation. “We heard that some children died while imitating the hanging. Earlier, the same kind of deaths occurred when children tried to imitate Shaktiman. But we knew the danger involved in this game and also feared that parents would scold us if they came to know.” Do they feel safer after the hanging, now that the perpetrator of a grave crime against women has been eliminated? “We feel more scared. Parents do not want to leave us alone either at home or outside. They are always scared that we could be abducted and tortured (throughout the discussion, they seemed to be consciously avoiding the words like ‘rape’ or ‘molestation’). The men would not come to their senses even if they are taught about the right virtues a thousand times. Girls cannot enjoy freedom even if they earn money,” they commented. However, they made a distinction between their friends and the unfamiliar males. “We have no fear of our friends among the boys in our locality. But the situation is different with others whom we do not know.” Aware of AIDS and the use of condoms for safe sex through the TV and other media campaigns, these young girls felt embarrassed by the sexist ads of male undergarments (e.g., a youth with his genital area covered by computer graphics crashing into a bathroom to make animated love to bathing beauty) or soaps and shampoo ads (the Liril ad which suggests strong erotic gestures with male and female characters chasing one another other after the bath with green chilies and carrots in their hands). Nevertheless, they are glued to the cola or shampoo ads which cast their favorite heroes. Other ads, which attract these growing-up girls, visibly undernourished, are related to food products such as ice-creams. The second batch of students were from one of the city’s posh schools — South Point School in south Kolkata. Among 12 students, 11 were boys. Four of them were studying in class X and the rest in class IX. All of them have television with cable connections and at least two newspapers at home. Seven stay in high-rise apartments. Their parents are middle-class or upper middle-class professionals – college teachers, bank managers, engineers and public sector company officials. Most of them came to know about the Dhananjay episode from TV as well as newspapers. But their interest in the incident was triggered by the heated discussion among the elders, both at home and outside. “Normally, we do not read beyond sports and entertainment pages. But Dhananjay‘s story became the hottest topic all around us. The stories on hanging hogged the front-page headlines for weeks together. So it was virtually impossible to ignore them,” recalled one of the students. Another admitted that he began following the newspaper reports on the hanging after watching Police File. The girl among these students stay alone at home after her school hours since both of her parents are working. “After the reports on Hetal Parekh murder, my parents warned me to be cautious while staying alone at home or moving outside. Parents of my friends also gave them the same advice,” said the girl, Suparna. The boys also reported some kind of heightened insecurity among parents or tension about the security of the teenage girls. Their parents, cousins and friends’ families had restricted the movement of young girls at that time, they recalled. Despite living in apartment buildings where employment of security guards are common now, they did not recall any tension in the relationship between the residents and guards or an attitudinal shift towards them even though Dhananjay was a security guard. “Neighbours in our apartments discussed the issue among them. But we never talked to the security guards on the issue,” said one of the students. While the perceptions about personal security were different among the boys and the girl, all of them pointed out that the hanging of Dhananjay did not increase any sense of security among them or their parents. On the question of death sentence, it was interesting to note that all except one boy were opposed to it while the girl was basically in favour. It may not coincidental that boys could not recall Hetal’s name properly while the girl could. “Being a security guard, Dhananjay betrayed the trust. That’s why his crime attracted so much condemnation. The death sentence was justified in view of the betrayal and the crime,” she opined. But the boys condoned the crime on the ground that Dhananjay had committed the crime “on momentary excitement”. “TV channels showed him as a ghastly criminal. We think he was basically a good man. He deserved punishment and served 14 years in jail. He could have been detained for life, but the death sentence was not justified,” said the boys. The sympathy with Dhananjay, a rural poor, was not missing despite these students’ own urban upwardly mobile background. “Many high-class criminals are still alive and free despite committing multiple murders and crimes on women,” they reasoned. All of them castigated media, both print and audio-visual, for committing “excesses” in covering the whole episode. “Media should be held responsible for the death of the children [playing the hanging game]. Particularly TV channels made the hangman a hero and showed his demonstration of the hanging and preparation of the noose. TV channels and newspapers carried his interviews. How can you focus on such a person whose job is to reply violence by violence? Even after the hanging, popular TV programmes like Khonj Khabar showed Nata Mallick’s business of selling pieces of the noose as talisman. Was it necessary at all?” questioned a student. Others expressed their reservation about the coverage of Dhananjay’s last days at the condemned cell. “It was almost a running commentary on his daily chores — what he was eating, how he listened to the radio. Was it a circus?” remarked another. Another student reported that cell-phone operators, too made it abuzz with the latest reports on the hanging. “There was no way to escape it,” he recalled. But how differently would they have covered the episode if they were journalists? The students were at a loss. “That’s a difficult question,” one of them grinned. Out of the entire coverage, the lasting media images for the boys were the front-page pictures of Dhananjay’s last journey to the crematorium and the stories about the Bengali delicacies he had had before leaving for the gallows. For Suparna, however, the climax of whole episode, the hanging itself, was more memorable. While all the boys like to watch the various crime-related programmes to make themselves “aware and cautious about the criminals”, only one reported parental objections to the viewing of such daily dishes of violence. “One programme showed a child being killed by driving nails into his body. That was excessive violence. They should not show such brutality. There must be a limit,” observed a student. However, exposed to round-the-clock mass media “representations of violent societal reality”, these teenagers were clearly as confused over the “limit” as the grown-ups. From aleclerc at fondation-langlois.org Tue Jun 7 01:36:52 2005 From: aleclerc at fondation-langlois.org (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Andr=E9ane_Leclerc?=) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 16:06:52 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] News from the Daniel Langlois Foundation Message-ID: <641A525B0A2A2540B1DD0A3DE660241C982D2F@exchange.terra-incognita.net> The Daniel Langlois Foundation announces its new and revised programs After more than a year of evaluation, consultation and reflection, the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science, and Technology announces the progressive resumption of its programs, effective September 2005. The mandate of the Foundation has not changed at all; its purpose is to further artistic and scientific knowledge by fostering the meeting of art and science in the field of technologies. The Foundation seeks to nurture a critical awareness of technology's implications for human beings and their natural and cultural environments and to promote the exploration of aesthetics suited to environments shaped by human beings. http://www.fondation-langlois.org/pdf/e/pressrelease.pdf From vishnu at cscsban.org Mon Jun 6 13:28:21 2005 From: vishnu at cscsban.org (T. Vishnu Vardhan) Date: Mon, 06 Jun 2005 13:28:21 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Nativity in Mythologicals Message-ID: <6.0.1.1.1.20050606125606.02470e20@localhost> Hi, this is the fifth posting from the project Documenting the Death of a Genre: Mythologicals in Telugu Cinema. From the interviews that I have done of few yester year stars, technicians and critics one thing has interested me a lot. That is the nativity in Telugu cinema or as some call telugudanam in telugu cinema. Nativity is seen as oen of the important reasons for the success of N.T. Rama Rao both in films and politics. And when I asked where and how does he embody telugudanam/telugu nativity... the answer is "his mythological roles", "the fluency with which he delivers (lengthy and grandhik) dialogues", "his diction", etc. In the third posting, I outlined the critique of Telugu mythologicals of 1930s which failed to use high grandhik language. One can understand this as a pre-cursor to the standardization of Telugu in films, before the formation of Andhra Pradesh, and which has a different trajectory in telugu literature. But the interesting and surprising thing for me is that this high-flown Telugu in mythologicals being seen as an important aspects of nativity or telugudanam. Why because, almost no Telugu speaks in such language in her/his day to day life. Further, I have come across some people critiquing socials of the same time (produced in Madras) for lacking nativity, because these films were shot in and around Madras. That means, some of the viewers had problems with the geographic location. For instance, one person writes that in so and so film they showed a village but it does not look like a Telugu/'Andhra' village. And most of the time socials were seen as representing Telugu nativity/Telugudanam or in other words, it is expected from socials. Whereas Mythologicals were never burdened with such a demand except for the critique of using 'non-standard' language as I mentioned. But this highly grandhicised Telugu is what even people like A. Nageshwara Rao see as nativity/telugudanam. Listening to these interviews, I was trying to think and read more about nativity. A lot of people (academic and non-academic) mention nativity, but I hardly came across any description of it. Everybody seems to have an understanding of what nativity is, and outline various (sometimes wiered things) which represent nativity. Specifically in the context of the recent Telugu cinema (Gemini), some of the viewers said that the heorine in the film lacked nativity. And the wonder is that the heroine in the film is a marwadi. But the viewers expect a certain 'native' representation of this marwadi heroine. And lot of Telugu film critics, directors, etc. talk about nativity in their films. But again the biggest surprise is that almost all the film songs are shot abroad. Further, this nativity is no where near to a realistic representation of the world we see or in other words 'realism'. One more instance, is that of Bapu's and K.Vishwanath's films (both are popular film directors of 80s) which people think and write have a lot of nativity. And there are songs where the hero sings about the heroine and says 'you are like a Bapu drawn picture'. And gongura is seen as representing telugudanam in cuisine, which atleast from the part I come from hardly eat. Looking forward for comments and useful bibliography. More anon.... Vishnu Vardhan. T T. Vishnu Vardhan Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, 466, 9th Cross, 1st Block, Jayanagar, Bangalore - 560011. e-mail: vishnu at cscsban.org thvishnu_viva at yahoo.com Tel. no. 080-26562986 mobile no. +919845207308 fax no. 080-26562991 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050606/c40fb7a1/attachment.html From carlos.katastrofsky at gmx.net Mon Jun 6 13:39:55 2005 From: carlos.katastrofsky at gmx.net (carlos katastrofsky) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 10:09:55 +0200 (MEST) Subject: [Reader-list] [ann] [mov] SINS part 2 - skin Message-ID: <10894.1118045395@www75.gmx.net> dear all, i´m proud to announce the second part of the project SINS (stands for Sins Is Not Surface). have a look at it here: http://aqua.subnet.at/carlos/projekte/media/sins :::: the video series SINS deals with different concepts of human “layers”. each of the five parts of SINS focuses on one of the following terms: surface, skin, fashion, architecture and screen. the footage of each movie has been exclusively extracted from the web by means of searchengines and consists of approx. 1500 pictures as well as numerous audio- and videofiles. the short movies are - according to their thematical focus - technically constructed as tense representations of the www - material. layer by layer the pictures and sounds make us aware of the im/possible glance beneath any layer we encounter. :::: comments are welcome! greetings, carlos -- Weitersagen: GMX DSL-Flatrates mit Tempo-Garantie! Ab 4,99 Euro/Monat: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl From jhuns at vt.edu Tue Jun 7 20:48:33 2005 From: jhuns at vt.edu (Jeremy Hunsinger) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 11:18:33 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Civiblog Message-ID: <3AEB1EB2-2C3E-4EF8-BC68-5C5018C4B833@vt.edu> distribute as appropriate Civiblog, a one-stop-site for global civil society. Canadian to the core — ever-devoted to peacekeeping and “globalist” foreign policies — it is our aim to showcase all communiqué in the sector, at home and abroad, onsite and by way of links and RSS syndication to partner sites. We are tapping into two explosive movements at once: 1) the growth of the citizen sector and 2) blogging, which is an increasingly popular tool with the potential to empower citizens the world over, one post at a time. Civiblog is completely free - no hosting costs or licensing fees. Civiblog is targeted - designed by and for civil society workers. Civiblog is community-driven - news from around the world, written by you. http://www.civiblog.org/ jeremy hunsinger jhuns at vt.edu www.cddc.vt.edu jeremy.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments From nisha2004 at gmail.com Wed Jun 8 01:20:53 2005 From: nisha2004 at gmail.com (Nisha .) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 22:50:53 +0300 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: To Fanatics, Crackpots, and Other Theatrical Creatures In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <299c778405060712507034474d@mail.gmail.com> "Seagullindia" india.com> cc: Subject: eSTQ Invitation piece 06/06/2005 20:01 :15 Kb e-stq To Fanatics, Crackpots, and Other Theatrical Creatures By Sudhanva Deshpande Sometimes, it is easy to forget what a remarkable phenomenon Indian theatre is. I should instantly rephrase that: remarkable phenomena that Indian theatres are. For a moment, let us ignore that we have a performance history going back some two thousand five hundred years. Let us ignore that the first systematic treatises on performance and aesthetics were compiled in India. Let us ignore all this, not because it is not important, but because it can prevent us from appreciating what we have, right now, in the present. After all, wasn't there someone who quipped that the theatre has no future, because it is always here and now, in the present! What we have is mind-boggling. A director recently speculated that there are some 40,000 theatre groups in the country. If there are about 50 people associated with each group ? and I suppose he was including here the backstage workers, ushers, lighting persons, the dhobi who irons the costumes, the tea boy, and so on ? we get a figure of 20,00,000 people who are associated with theatre in India. This figure, according to him, does not include those who do plays in schools and colleges, but I presume it includes rural troupes. Two million people, then. This figure is more than the total population of a country like Mauritius, or more than the total adult population of several European countries. If, on average, each of these 40,000 groups produce 2 plays per year, that makes 80,000 plays every year. If each play has a run of 5 shows, you get 4,00,000 performances every year. In other words, at least 1,095 performances every day. By any reckoning, this is extraordinary. Not simply in terms of numbers, but in terms of range. Take Bombay, for example. The city is home to four major language theatres: Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi, English. In the first two of these languages, you have a thriving commercial theatre as well as an amateur theatre. In Gujarati, according to another informal estimate, some 60 lakh people pay to watch commercial theatre every year in Bombay. For Marathi, my guess is that the figure would be higher. Alongside, Bombay also has theatre in Kannada, Sindhi, Bengali, Malayalam and Telugu. Then there are the large number of students who do theatre in colleges and schools. Bombay also has some active street theatre groups. Then there are the plays that get done in colonies and housing societies as part of various festivals, the Ganesh puja being the most important. Then there are workers ? yes, that species still survives, miraculously, in the face of overwhelming odds ? who do plays in their unions and bastis. The variety of performance spaces is also huge. You have the large auditoria, like Shivaji Mandir in Dadar or Dinanath Mangeshkar Natyagruha in Vile Parle, that mount the commercial plays. Sometimes two, or even three, a day. You have smaller, more experimental spaces like the NCPA at Nariman Point or Prithvi in Juhu. Prithvi made the lovely Horniman Circle Gardens in South Bombay its second performance space. Prithvi and others have also been mounting shows at the Bandra seaface for the past two years. Then there are auditoria like the Karnataka Sangh, which cater, though not exclusively, to certain language groups. The Marathi theatre group Awishkar has been performing in a school in Mahim for the past few years, reminding one of Chhabildas, which spawned a veritable movement of experimental theatre back in the seventies. Now, this is only one city. There are smaller cities, and villages. Consider Andhra Pradesh, not a state one generally associates with theatre. Here, the Praja Natya Mandali has over one thousand units across the state. In other words, a unit in not just every district or taluka, but virtually every village! Some of these units are all women, many are all dalit. When a friend went to their State Conference last year, she had to address a gathering of some 40,000 actors, singers and dancers! There is no doubt about it. Theatre is alive, and growing. Some would object to my optimism. They would point to the indifferent quality of a lot of the work being done, they would point to the lack of infrastructure that most cities provide (and this would include Bombay, in spite of its thriving theatre scene), to the lack of resources that individual groups have, to the lack of funding, lack of newspaper space, lack of critical discourse, lack of training institutions, and so on and so forth. All this, of course, is completely true. But there is another way of looking at it, isn't there. Theatre lacks nearly everything, and yet it obstinately survives and even thrives. Which means that those 2 million or more who do theatre love it with such passion that they refuse to let it die. More importantly, there are many million more who watch them. They are the lifeblood of our theatre. They endure all manner of hardships to sustain this fragile art ? ticket prices, uncomfortable seats, mosquito attacks, bad acting, and so on. They endure all this, and more, for that one moment of magic that only live performance can give them. In other words, we have in our country, many million fanatics and crackpots. They are the heroes of our theatre. This space, the weekly eSTQ, hopes to reach out to them. This is not a space only, or even primarily, for the theatre practitioner or scholar. This is a space, most of all, for the theatre lover. We invite your opinions, comments, thoughts, musings, outbursts, anything. You could write about the state of theatre in your city or state or language; you could look at larger trends; you could review a play that you have recently seen or a book you have read; you could talk about a playwright past or present, or an actor or director or critic or anyone connected with theatre; you could share your difficulties, practical or theoretical; you could interview someone; you could pretty much do anything at all in this space. And, it goes without saying, you are welcome to respond to a previous article that has appeared here. We do not need only well-argued essays. Hazy or random thoughts would just as well. If you wish to send in things in a language other than English, please do. We will have it translated to the best of our ability. The word limit is 800 words minimum, 1200 words maximum. And yes, you will be paid, if your piece is carried. Not a prince's ransom, but enough to get you tickets to next week's show. (Unless you want a five star dinner to go with it.) If you want to send in shorter comments on earlier pieces, do that. 200-300 words. We'll carry that in the readers' response section, without monetary compensation, though. This is your space. Claim it. Sudhanva Deshpande is an actor, director and playwright with the Delhi-based group, Jana Natya Manch.He can be reached at deshsud at rediffmail.com.. Please click on reply to comment Theatre Log WRITERS'S BLOC If you have a full-length or one-act play, monologue or anything that shows your talent as a playwright contact us on letsrage at hotmail.com. If your original play is in an Indian language please send in an English translation. Script Submission - 5 June 2005. In association with British Council, Mumbai and Royal Court Theatre, UK Delhi Moneeka Misra Tanvir passed away on 28 May, and with her, we lost an incredible life devoted to theatre. Through Naya Theatre she helped make some of the finest theatre many of us ever saw. Come together to remember Moneeka-di, to share her memories, to salute her. Saturday, 4 June 2005, 5.00 pm., Deputy Speaker's Hall, Constitution Club, Rafi Marg. Mumbai A Summertime Attraction At Prithvi Theatre, 4, 5, 18, 19 June. All shows 11 am. A play for everyone above 14 years. Neeraj Kabi [Actor, Director, Human resource trainer] Email: pravahtheatre at gmail.com Bangalore Pratidwandi by Mayaavan A play based on Sunil Gangopadhyay's novel. Adapted and directed by Abhishek Majumdar. In English on Friday, 3 June and Saturday, 4 June at 7.30 pm. In Bengali on Sunday, 5 June at 7.30 pm at Ranga Shankara, Bangalore. Call 9886491601 or email maayaavan at yahoogroups.com for information. ACTor's new production Sleuth at Ranga Shankara, Bangalore 7-12 June 2005. Chennai The Madras Players and EVAM present Evam Indrajit by Badal Sircar at Sivagami Petachi Auditorium, Chennai, on 4, 5, 11, 12 June at 7.15 pm and on 5 and 12 June at 2.00 pm. Tickets Rs 300, 200 and 100. Call 98402 22363 for bookings or 96102 96102 for door delivery. Kolkata Panel discussion on Changes in Theatre at G D Birla Sabhaghar on 9 June. Participants include Arun Mukherjee, Bibhash Chakravorty, Dolly Basu, Kaushik Sen, Suranjana Das Gupta. Moderator S.V. Raman. Swapnasandhanee presents Bhalo Rakhshas-er Galpo Every Saturday in June, 6.30 pm, Sujata Sadan. Story Joya Mitra. Adaptation Ujwal Chattopadhyay. Director Kaushik Sen. Sundaram presents Operation Bhomragarh on 5 June at Girish Mancha, Kolkata, 7 June at Nazrul Mancha, Kamarahati, 10 June at Madhusudan Mancha, Kolkata, 12 June at Kala Mandir, Kolkata. All shows 6.30 pm. Playwright and director Manoj Mitra. to submit your announcements click here Oxfam works with others to find lasting solutions to poverty and suffering. Oxfam GB is a member of Oxfam International, a company limited by guarantee and registered in England No. 612172. Registered office: 274 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 7DZ. Registered charity No. 202918. http://www.oxfam.org.uk -- breaking news, emergency information, and enhanced content is only a click away. From guenther.schatter at medien.uni-weimar.de Tue Jun 7 17:33:39 2005 From: guenther.schatter at medien.uni-weimar.de (Guenther Schatter) Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 14:03:39 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Professorship in Experimental Radio Message-ID: <42A58D1B.8010900@medien.uni-weimar.de> Extension of the Application Deadline for a W2 Professorship in Experimental Radio Media Faculty of the Bauhaus University Weimar, Germany “Experimental Radio” refers to radio as a global phenomenon and includes "Hoerspiel" and auditory media, journalistic, literary, and musical reflection, sound objects and sound installation as well as artistic strategies, interventions and cooperative working practice. Internet, wireless culture, and the faculty’s own radio frequency provide possible tools and methods of approach. Through the adoption of current international tendencies and new technological means, countless experimental radio works can be tested, researched, and developed. Requirements for the position include a completed university degree, university teaching experience, and relevant job experience in the area of radio art. An active cooperation with other projects within the university’s Faculty of Media Design - especially in the area of electroacoustic music and sound design, part of an existing cooperation between the Franz Liszt Academy of Music and the Media Faculty of the Bauhaus University - as well as the support of non-commercial radio initiatives on the regional, national and international level is expected. General employment requirements are ruled in § 48 of the "Thueringer Hochschulgesetz". Judicial employment classification complies with § 50 of the "Thueringer Hochschulgesetz". Further information (mainly in German) is available at: http://www.uni-weimar.de/medien/mediengestaltung http://ewww.uni-weimar.de/ausschr/m0606.de.html The Bauhaus-University Weimar makes special efforts in employing and supporting women. Severely disabled persons with equal professional qualification receive preferred consideration. Applications should carry the reference number M/AP-03/05 and should be sent together with the usual supporting documents to Bauhaus-Universitaet Weimar Dekan der Fakultaet Medien Bauhausstraße 11 99421 Weimar Germany until 2005/06/30 From lists at shivamvij.com Wed Jun 8 00:47:44 2005 From: lists at shivamvij.com (Shivam) Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 19:17:44 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] [arkitectindia] Invitation: Poetry reading on 12 June Message-ID: Dear all, On 3 June, the ZESTPoets list turned one and we are organising the first ever ZESTPoets real-world poetry reading on: Saturday 12 June 2005, 5 pm at the National Coffee House, Connaught Place, Delhi. (Third Floor, Mohan Singh Place, near Rivoli Cinema) You are welcome to walk in, preferably with poems in hand. Anyone can read any poetry. You don't *have* to be a ZESTPoets member to attend, but joining the group would not be a bad idea either: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/join We have chosen CP because it is central and accessible to all; and Coffee House on Anand Vivek Taneja's recommendation. Anand promises, "Coffee House is used to impecunious poets hanging out for hours on end and declaiming (usually terrible) free verse..." So we'll try and rescue the place! You are welcome to bring along friends and spouses. It would be nice if you could inform beforehand that you will be there, by sending a brief email to lists-at-shivamvij-dot-com. See you there! Shivam 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 mihir25 at indiatimes.com Tue Jun 7 13:59:19 2005 From: mihir25 at indiatimes.com (mihir25) Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 13:59:19 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah Message-ID: <200506070833.OAA13673@WS0005.indiatimes.com> When he was called Pandit Jinnah RAJNISH Sharma Hindustan Times Lucknow, June 5 http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922_1389389,0015002500000000.htm When the former Deputy PM L K Advani described Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a secular man during his early days, he wasn't quite off the mark as it is now a part of recorded history. Though his comments have raised a furore back home, few would know that this man was even referred to as Pandit Jinnah once. And if indifference to religion is any indicator of secularism, the Qaid-e-Azam was probably the biggest of all secular fundamentalists. There are two incidents hitherto not found in any history book which highlight this aspect of his character in a rather comical way which were narrated by none other than the eminent jurist and statesman, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. It was told by Sir Tej to his granddaughter's husband Dr IM Chak, Retired Dy Director of CDRI during a meeting with his grandfather Pt. Prithvi Nath Chak, another legal giant of that time under whom Motilal Nehru learnt to practise law. A contemporary of Sir Sapru, Jinnah along with him once visited Egypt during the month of Ramzaan. The Muslim porters there refused to carry their luggage saying they would only carry the luggage of a fellow Muslim. When Jinnah told them to go ahead, the porters decided to test them. They were asked to recite the kalma. While Sir Tej happily recited it with �lan, he had Jinnah looking sheepishly at him for the wine loving brown sahib didn't know a word of it! Sir Tej had a hard time convincing the porters that Jinnah, who was to later create a separate Islamic State, was indeed a Muslim! The other incident saw these two friends sparring in the court of law in a case that involved elements of religion. The case saw Sir Tej quoting innumerable ayats from Quran in support of his arguments. Jinnah, though a formidable lawyer himself, drew a blank once again on this account. The next day local newspaper headlines screamed Pandit Jinnah vs Maulana Sapru! Indiatimes Email now powered by APIC Advantage. Help! Help -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050607/e04e6c2b/attachment.html From aarti at sarai.net Wed Jun 8 23:41:52 2005 From: aarti at sarai.net (aarti at sarai.net) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 20:11:52 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] harpers article Message-ID: interesting article in harpers about the cuban model of agriculture. http://www.harpers.org/TheCubaDiet.html The Cuba Diet What will you be eating when the revolution comes? Posted on Monday, June 6, 2005. Originally from April 2005. By Bill McKibben. Sources The pictures hanging in Havana’s Museum of the Revolution document the rise (or, depending on your perspective, the fall) of Cuba in the years after Castro’s revolt, in 1959. On my visit there last summer, I walked through gallery after gallery, gazing upon the stock images of socialist glory: “anti-imperialist volunteers” fighting in Angola, Cuban boxers winning Olympic medals, five patients at a time undergoing eye surgery using a “method created by Soviet academician Fyodorov.” Mostly, though, I saw pictures of farm equipment. “Manual operation is replaced by mechanized processes,” read the caption under a picture of some heavy Marxist metal cruising a vast field. Another caption boasted that by 1990, seven bulk sugar terminals had been built, each with a shipping capacity of 75,000 tons a day. In true Soviet style, the Cubans were demonstrating a deeply held (and to our eyes now almost kitschy) socialist belief that salvation lay in the size of harvests, in the number of tractors, and in the glorious heroic machinery that would straighten the tired backs of an oppressed peasantry—and so I learned that day that within thirty years of the people’s uprising, the sugarcane industry alone employed 2,850 sugarcane lifting machines, 12,278 tractors, 29,857 carts, and 4,277 combines. Such was communism. But then I turned a corner and the pictures changed. The sharply focused shots of combines and Olympians now were muddied, as if Cubans had forgotten how to print photos or, as was more likely the case, had run short of darkroom chemicals. I had reached the gallery of the “Special Period.” That is to say, I had reached the point in Cuban history where everything came undone. With the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, Cuba fell off a cliff of its own. All those carts and combines had been the products of an insane “economics” underwritten by the Eastern bloc for ideological purposes. Castro spent three decades growing sugar and shipping it to Russia and East Germany, both of which paid a price well above the world level, and both of which sent the ships back to Havana filled with wheat, rice, and more tractors. When all that disappeared, literally almost overnight, Cuba had nowhere to turn. The United States, Cuba’s closest neighbor, enforced a strict trade embargo (which it strengthened in 1992, and again in 1996) and Cuba had next to no foreign exchange with anyone else—certainly the new Russia no longer wanted to pay a premium on Cuban sugar for the simple glory of supporting a tropical version of its Leninist past. In other words, Cuba became an island. Not just a real island, surrounded by water, but something much rarer: an island outside the international economic system, a moon base whose supply ships had suddenly stopped coming. There were other deeply isolated places on the planet—North Korea, say, or Burma—but not many. And so most observers waited impatiently for the country to collapse. No island is an island, after all, not in a global world. The New York Times ran a story in its Sunday magazine titled “The Last Days of Castro’s Cuba”; in its editorial column, the paper opined that “the Cuban dictator has painted himself into his own corner. Fidel Castro’s reign deserves to end in home-grown failure.” Without oil, even public transportation shut down—for many, going to work meant a two-hour bike trip. Television shut off early in the evening to save electricity; movie theaters went dark. People tried to improvise their ways around shortages. “For drinking glasses we’d get beer bottles and cut the necks off with wire,” one professor told me. “We didn’t have razor blades, till someone in the city came up with a way to resharpen old ones.” But it’s hard to improvise food. So much of what Cubans had eaten had come straight from Eastern Europe, and most of the rest was grown industrial-style on big state farms. All those combines needed fuel and spare parts, and all those big rows of grain and vegetables needed pesticides and fertilizer—none of which were available. In 1989, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the average Cuban was eating 3,000 calories per day. Four years later that figure had fallen to 1,900. It was as if they suddenly had to skip one meal a day, every day, week after month after year. The host of one cooking show on the shortened TV schedule urged Cubans to fry up “steaks” made from grapefruit peels covered in bread crumbs. “I lost twenty pounds myself,” said Fernando Funes, a government agronomist. Now, just by looking across the table, I saw that Fernando Funes had since gained the twenty pounds back. In fact, he had a little paunch, as do many Cuban men of a certain age. What happened was simple, if unexpected. Cuba had learned to stop exporting sugar and instead started growing its own food again, growing it on small private farms and thousands of pocket-sized urban market gardens—and, lacking chemicals and fertilizers, much of that food became de facto organic. Somehow, the combination worked. Cubans have as much food as they did before the Soviet Union collapsed. They’re still short of meat, and the milk supply remains a real problem, but their caloric intake has returned to normal—they’ve gotten that meal back. In so doing they have created what may be the world’s largest working model of a semi-sustainable agriculture, one that doesn’t rely nearly as heavily as the rest of the world does on oil, on chemicals, on shipping vast quantities of food back and forth. They import some of their food from abroad—a certain amount of rice from Vietnam, even some apples and beef and such from the United States. But mostly they grow their own, and with less ecological disruption than in most places. In recent years organic farmers have visited the island in increasing numbers and celebrated its accomplishment. As early as 1999 the Swedish parliament awarded the Organic Farming Group its Right Livelihood Award, often styled the “alternative Nobel,” and Peter Rosset, the former executive director of the American advocacy group Food First, heralded the “potentially enormous implications” of Cuba’s new agricultural system. The island’s success may not carry any larger lesson. Cuban agriculture isn’t economically competitive with the industrial farming exemplified by a massive food producer across the Caribbean, mostly because it is highly labor-intensive. Moreover, Cuba is a one-party police state filled with political prisons, which may have some slight effect on its ability to mobilize its people—in any case, hardly an “advantage” one would want to emulate elsewhere. There’s always at least the possibility, however, that larger sections of the world might be in for “Special Periods” of their own. Climate change, or the end of cheap oil, or the depletion of irrigation water, or the chaos of really widespread terrorism, or some other malign force might begin to make us pay more attention to the absolute bottom-line question of how we get our dinner (a question that only a very few people, for a very short period of time, have ever been able to ignore). No one’s predicting a collapse like the one Cuba endured—probably no modern economy has ever undergone such a shock. But if things got gradually harder? After all, our planet is an island, too. It’s somehow useful to know that someone has already run the experiment. * * * Villa Alamar was a planned community built outside Havana at the height of the Soviet glory days; its crumbling, precast-concrete apartments would look at home (though less mildewed) in Ljubljana or Omsk. Even the names there speak of the past: a central square, for instance, is called Parque Hanoi. But right next to the Parque Hanoi is the Vivero Organopónico Alamar. Organopónico is the Cuban term for any urban garden. (It seems that before the special period began, the country had a few demonstration hydroponic gardens, much bragged about in official propaganda and quickly abandoned when the crisis hit. The high-tech-sounding name stuck, however, recycled to reflect the new, humbler reality.) There are thousands of organopónicos in Cuba, more than 200 in the Havana area alone, but the Vivero Organopónico Alamar is especially beautiful: a few acres of vegetables attached to a shady yard packed with potted plants for sale, birds in wicker cages, a cafeteria, and a small market where a steady line of local people come to buy tomatoes, lettuce, oregano, potatoes—twenty-five crops were listed on the blackboard the day I visited—for their supper. Sixty-four people farm this tiny spread. Their chief is Miguel Salcines López, a tall, middle-aged, intense, and quite delightful man. “This land was slated for a hospital and sports complex,” he said, leading me quickly through his tiny empire. “But when the food crisis came, the government decided this was more important,” and they let Salcines begin his cooperative. “I was an agronomic engineer before that,” he said. “I was fat, a functionary. I was a bureaucrat.” Now he is not. Most of his farm is what we would call organic—indeed, Salcines showed off a pyramidal mini-greenhouse in which he raises seedlings, in the belief that its shape “focuses energy.” Magnets on his irrigation lines, he believes, help “reduce the surface tension” of the water—give him a ponytail and he’d fit right in at the Marin farmers’ market. Taking a more “traditional” organic approach, Salcines has also planted basil and marigolds at the row ends to attract beneficial insects, and he rotates sweet potato through the rows every few plantings to cleanse the soil; he’s even got neem trees to supply natural pesticides. But Salcines is not obsessive even about organicity. Like gardeners everywhere, he has trouble with potato bugs, and he doesn’t hesitate to use man-made pesticide to fight them. He doesn’t use artificial fertilizer, both because it is expensive and because he doesn’t need it—indeed, the garden makes money selling its own compost, produced with the help of millions of worms (“California Reds”) in a long series of shaded trenches. While we ate rice and beans and salad and a little chicken, Salcines laid out the finances of his cooperative farm. For the last six months, he said, the government demanded that the organopónico produce 835,000 pesos’ worth of food. They actually produced more than a million pesos’ worth. Writing quickly on a piece of scrap paper, Salcines predicted that the profit for the whole year would be 393,000 pesos. Half of that he would reinvest in enlarging the farm; the rest would go into a profit-sharing plan. It’s not an immense sum when divided among sixty-four workers—about $150—but for Cuban workers this is considered a good job indeed. A blackboard above the lunch line reminded employees what their monthly share of the profit would be: depending on how long they’d been at the farm, and how well they produced, they would get 291 pesos this month, almost doubling their base salary. The people worked hard, and if they didn’t their colleagues didn’t tolerate them. What is happening at the Vivero Organopónico Alamar certainly isn’t unfettered capitalism, but it’s not exactly collective farming either. Mostly it’s incredibly productive—sixty-four people earn a reasonable living on this small site, and the surrounding neighbors get an awful lot of their diet from its carefully tended rows. You see the same kind of production all over the city—every formerly vacant lot in Havana seems to be a small farm. The city grew 300,000 tons of food last year, nearly its entire vegetable supply and more than a token amount of its rice and meat, said Egidio Páez Medina, who oversees the organopónicos from a small office on a highway at the edge of town. “Tens of thousands of people are employed. And they get good money, as much as a thousand pesos a month. When I’m done with this job I’m going to start farming myself—my pay will double.” On average, Páez said, each square meter of urban farm produces five kilograms of food a year. That’s a lot. (And it’s not just cabbage and spinach; each farm also seems to have at least one row of spearmint, an essential ingredient for the mojito.) So Cuba—happy healthy miracle. Of course, Human Rights Watch, in its most recent report, notes that the government “restricts nearly all avenues of political dissent,” “severely curtails basic rights to free expression,” and that “the government’s intolerance of dissenting voices intensified considerably in 2003.” It’s as if you went to Whole Foods and noticed a guy over by the soymilk with a truncheon. Cuba is a weird political system all its own, one that’s been headed by the same guy for forty-five years. And the nature of that system, and that guy, had something to do with the way the country responded to its crisis. For one thing, Castro’s Cuba was so rigidly (and unproductively) socialist that simply by slightly loosening the screws on free enterprise it was able to liberate all kinds of pent-up energy. Philip Peters, a Cuba analyst at the conservative Lexington Institute, has documented how the country redistributed as much as two thirds of state lands to cooperatives and individual farmers and, as with the organopónico in Alamar, let them sell their surplus above a certain quota. There’s no obvious name for this system. It’s a lot like sharecropping, and it shares certain key features with, say, serfdom, not to mention high feudalism. It is not free in any of the ways we use the word—who the hell wants to say thank you to the government for “allowing” you to sell your “surplus”? But it’s also different from monolithic state communism. In 1995, as the program geared up, the markets were selling 390 million pounds of produce; sales volume tripled in the next three years. Now the markets bustle, stacked deep with shiny heaps of bananas and dried beans, mangos and tomatoes. But the prices, though they’ve dropped over the years, are still beyond the reach of the poorest Cubans. And the government, which still sells every citizen a basic monthly food ration for just a few pesos, has also tried to reregulate some of the trade at the farmers’ markets, fearing they were creating a two-tier system. “It’s not reform like you’ve seen in China, where they’re devolving a lot of economic decision making out to the private sector,” Peters said. “They made a decision to graft some market mechanisms onto what remains a fairly statist model. It could work better. But it has worked.” * * * Fidel Castro, as even his fiercest opponents would admit, has almost from the day he took power spent lavishly on the country’s educational system. Cuba’s ratio of teachers to students is akin to Sweden’s; people who want to go to college go to college. Which turns out to be important, because farming, especially organic farming, especially when you’re not used to doing it, is no simple task. You don’t just tear down the fence around the vacant lot and hand someone a hoe, quoting him some Maoist couplet about the inevitable victory of the worker. The soil’s no good at first, the bugs can’t wait to attack. You need information to make a go of it. To a very large extent, the rise of Cuba’s semi-organic agriculture is almost as much an invention of science and technology as the high-input tractor farming it replaced, which is another thing that makes this story so odd. “I came to Havana at the time of the revolution, in 1960, to start university,” said Fernando Funes, who now leads the national Pasture and Forage Research Unit. “We went from 18,000 university students before the revolution to 200,000 after, and a big proportion were in agricultural careers. People specialized in soil fertility, or they specialized in pesticides. They were very specialized. Probably too specialized. But yields were going up.” Yields were going up because of the wildly high-input farming. In the town of Nuevo Gerona, for instance, there is a statue of a cow named White Udder, descended from a line of Canadian Holsteins. In the early 1980s she was the most productive cow on the face of the earth, giving 110 liters of milk a day, 27,000 liters in a single lactation. Guinness certified her geysers of milk. Fidel journeyed out to the countryside to lovingly stroke her hide. She was a paragon of scientific management, with a carefully controlled diet of grain concentrates. Most of that grain, however, came from abroad (“this is too hot to be good grain country,” Funes said). White Udder was a kept woman. To anyone with a ledger book her copious flow was entirely uneconomic, a testimony to the kinky economics of farm subsidies. “In that old system, it took ten or fifteen or twenty units of energy to produce one unit of food energy,” Funes said. “At first we didn’t care so much about economics—we had to produce no matter what.” Even in the salad days of Soviet-backed agriculture, however, some of the local agronomists were beginning to think the whole system was slightly insane. “We were realizing just how inefficient it was. So a few of us were looking for other ways. In cattle we began to look at things like using legumes to fix nitrogen in the pasture so we could cut down on fertilizer,” Funes said. And Cuba was inefficient in more than its use of energy. Out at the Agrarian University of Havana on the city’s outskirts, agriculture professor Nilda Pérez Consuegra remembers how a few of her colleagues began as early as the 1970s to notice that the massive “calendar spraying” of pesticides was breeding insect resistance. They began working on developing strains of bacteria and experimenting with raising beneficial insects. They could do nothing to forestall the collapse of the early 1990s, though. White Udder’s descendants simply died in the fields, unable to survive on the tropical grasses that had once sustained the native cattle. “We lost tens of thousands of animals. And even if they survived, they couldn’t produce anything like the same kind of milk once there was no more grain—seven or eight liters a day if we were lucky,” Funes said. Fairly quickly, however, the agricultural scientists began fanning out around the country to help organize a recovery. They worked without much in the way of resources, but they found ways. * * * One afternoon, near an organopónico in central Havana, I knocked on the door of a small two-room office, the local Center for Reproduction of Entomophages and Entomopathogens. There are 280 such offices spread around the country, each manned by one or two agronomists. Here, Jorge Padrón, a heavyset and earnest fellow, was working with an ancient Soviet refrigerator and autoclave (the writing on the gauges was in Cyrillic) and perhaps three hundred glass beakers with cotton gauze stoppers. Farmers and backyard gardeners from around the district would bring him sick plants, and he’d look at them under the microscope and tell them what to do. Perhaps he’d hand them a test tube full of a trichoderma fungus, which he’d grown on a medium of residue from sugarcane processing, and tell them to germinate the seed in a dilute solution; maybe he’d pull a vial of some natural bacteria—verticillium lecanii or beauveria bassiana—from a rusty coffee can. “It is easier to use chemicals. You see some trouble in your tomatoes, and chemicals take care of it right away,” he said. Over the long run, though, thinking about the whole system yields real benefits. “Our work is really about preparing the fields so plants will be stronger. But it works.” It is the reverse, that is, of the Green Revolution that spread across the globe in the 1960s, an industrialization of the food system that relied on irrigation, oil (both for shipping and fertilization), and the massive application of chemicals to counter every problem. The localized application of research practiced in Cuba has fallen by the wayside in countries where corporate agriculture holds sway. I remember visiting a man in New Hampshire who was raising organic apples for his cider mill. Apples are host to a wide variety of pests and blights, and if you want advice about what chemical to spray on them, the local agricultural extension agent has one pamphlet after another with the answers, at least in part, because pesticide companies like Monsanto fund huge amounts of the research that goes on at the land-grant universities. But no one could tell my poor orchardist anything about how to organically control the pests on his apples, even though there must have been a huge body of such knowledge once upon a time, and he ended up relying on a beautifully illustrated volume published in the 1890s. In Cuba, however, all the equivalents of Texas A&M or the University of Nebraska are filled with students looking at antagonist fungi, lion-ant production for sweet potato weevil control, how to intercrop tomatoes and sesame to control the tobacco whitefly, how much yield grows when you mix green beans and cassava in the same rows (60 percent), what happens to plantain production when you cut back on the fertilizer and substitute a natural bacterium called A. chroococcum (it stays the same), how much you can reduce fertilizer on potatoes if you grow a rotation of jack beans to fix nitrogen (75 percent), and on and on and on. “At first we had all kinds of problems,” said a Japanese-Cuban organoponicist named Olga Oye Gómez, who grows two acres of specialty crops that Cubans are only now starting to eat: broccoli, cauliflower, and the like. “We lost lots of harvests. But the engineers came and showed us the right biopesticides. Every year we get a little better.” Not every problem requires a Ph.D. I visited Olga’s farm in midsummer, when her rows were under siege from slugs, a problem for which the Cuban solution is the same as in my own New England tomato patch: a saucer full of beer. In fact, since the pressure is always on to reduce the use of expensive techniques, there’s a premium on old-fashioned answers. Consider the question of how you plow a field when the tractor that you used to use requires oil you can’t afford and spare parts you can’t obtain. Cuba—which in the 1980s had more tractors per hectare than California, according to Nilda Pérez—suddenly found itself relying on the very oxen it once had scorned as emblems of its peasant past. There were perhaps 50,000 teams of the animals left in Cuba in 1990, and maybe that many farmers who still knew how to use them. “None of the large state farms or even the mechanized cooperatives had the necessary infrastructure to incorporate animal traction,” wrote Arcadio Ríos, of the Agricultural Mechanization Research Institute, in a volume titled Sustainable Agriculture and Resistance. “Pasture and feed production did not exist on site; and at first there were problems of feed transportation.” Veterinarians were not up on their oxen therapy. But that changed. Ríos’s institute developed a new multi-plow for plowing, harrowing, riding, and tilling, specially designed not “to invert the topsoil layer” and decrease fertility. Harness shops were set up to start producing reins and yokes, and the number of blacksmith shops quintupled. The ministry of agriculture stopped slaughtering oxen for food, and “essentially all the bulls in good physical condition were selected and delivered to cooperative and state farms.” Oxen demonstrations were held across the country. (The socialist love of exact statistics has not waned, so it can be said that in 1997 alone, 2,344 oxen events took place, drawing 64,279 participants.) By the millennium there were 400,000 oxen teams plying the country’s fields. And one big result, according to a score of Ph.D. theses, is a dramatic reduction in soil compaction, as hooves replaced tires. “Across the country we see dry soils turning healthier, loamier,” Professor Pérez said. Soon an ambitious young Cuban will be able to get a master’s degree in oxen management. * * * One question is: How resilient is the new Cuban agriculture? Despite ever tougher restrictions on U.S. travel and remittances from relatives, the country has managed to patch together a pretty robust tourist industry in recent years: Havana’s private restaurants fill nightly with Canadians and Germans. The government’s investment in the pharmaceutical industry appears to be paying off, too, and now people who are fed by ox teams are producing genetically engineered medicines at some of the world’s more advanced labs. Foreign exchange is beginning to flow once more; already many of the bicycles in the streets have been replaced by buses and motorbikes and Renaults. Cuba is still the most unconsumer place I’ve ever been—there’s even less to buy than in the old Soviet Union—but sooner or later Castro will die. What then? Most of the farmers and agronomists I interviewed professed conviction that the agricultural changes ran so deep they would never be eroded. Pérez, however, did allow that there were a lot of younger oxen drivers who yearned to return to the cockpits of big tractors, and according to news reports some of the country’s genetic engineers are trying to clone White Udder herself from leftover tissue. If Cuba simply opens to the world economy—if Castro gets his professed wish and the U.S. embargo simply disappears, replaced by a free-trade regime—it’s very hard to see how the sustainable farming would survive for long. We use pesticides and fertilizers because they make for incredibly cheap food. None of that dipping the seedling roots in some bacillus solution, or creeping along the tomato rows looking for aphids, or taking the oxen off to be shoed. Our industrial agriculture—at least as heavily subsidized by Washington as Cuba’s farming once was subsidized by Moscow—simply overwhelms its neighbors. For instance, consider Mexico and corn. Not long ago the journalist Michael Pollan told the story of what happened when NAFTA opened that country’s markets to a flood of cheap, heavily subsidized U.S. maize: the price fell by half, and 1.3 million small farmers were put out of business, forced to sell their land to larger, more corporate farms that could hope to compete by mechanizing (and lobbying for subsidies of their own). A study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace enumerated the environmental costs: fertilizer runoff suffocating the Sea of Cortéz, water shortages getting worse as large-scale irrigation booms. Genetically modified corn varieties from the United States are contaminating the original strains of the crop, which began in southern Mexico. Cuba already buys a certain amount of food from the United States, under an exemption from the embargo passed during the Clinton Administration. So far, though, the buying is mostly strategic, spread around the country in an effort to build political support for a total end to the embargo. No one ever accused the Cubans of being dumb, said Peters of the Lexington Institute. “They know the congressional district that every apple, every chicken leg, every grain of wheat, comes from.” But that trickle, in a free-trading, post-Castro Cuba, would likely become, as in Mexico and virtually every other country on earth, a torrent, and one that would wash away much of the country’s agricultural experiment. * * * You can also ask the question in reverse, though: Does the Cuban experiment mean anything for the rest of the world? An agronomist would call the country’s farming “low-input,” the reverse of the Green Revolution model, with its reliance on irrigation, oil, and chemistry. If we’re running out of water in lots of places (the water table beneath China and India’s grain-growing plains is reportedly dropping by meters every year), and if the oil and natural gas used to make fertilizer and run our megafarms are changing the climate (or running out), and if the pesticides are poisoning farmers and killing other organisms, and if everything at the Stop & Shop has traveled across a continent to get there and tastes pretty much like crap, might there be some real future for low-input farming for the rest of us? Or are its yields simply too low? Would we all starve without the supermarket and the corporate farm? It’s not a question academics have devoted a great deal of attention to—who would pay to sponsor the research? And some clearly think the question isn’t even worth raising. Dennis Avery, director of global-food issues at the conservative Hudson Institute, compared Cuba with China during the Great Leap Forward: “Instead of building fertilizer factories, Mao told farmers to go get leaves and branches from the hillsides to mulch the rice paddies. It produced the worst soil erosion China has seen.” Raising the planet’s crops organically would mean “you’d need the manure from seven or eight billion cattle; you’d lose most of the world’s wildlife because you’d have to clear all the forests.” But strict organic agriculture isn’t what the Cubans practice (remember those pesticides for the potato bugs). “If you’re going to grow irrigated rice, you’ll almost always need some fertilizer,” said Jules Pretty, a professor at the University of Essex’s Department of Biological Sciences, who has looked at sustainable agriculture in fields around the world. “The problem is being judicious and careful.” It’s very clear, he added, “that Cuba is not an anomaly. All around the world small-scale successes are being scaled up to regional level.” Farmers in northeast Thailand, for instance, suffered when their rice markets disappeared in the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. “They’d borrowed money to invest in ‘modern agriculture,’ but they couldn’t get the price they needed. A movement emerged, farmers saying, ‘Maybe we should just concentrate on local markets, and not grow for Bangkok, not for other countries.’ They’ve started using a wide range of sustainability approaches—polyculture, tree crops and agroforestry, fish ponds. One hundred and fifty thousand farmers have made the shift in the last three years.” Almost certainly, he said, such schemes are as productive as the monocultures they replaced. “Rice production goes down, but the production of all sorts of other things, like leafy vegetables, goes up.” And simply cutting way down on the costs of pesticides turns many bankrupt peasants solvent. “The farmer field schools began in Indonesia, with rice growers showing one another how to manage their paddies to look after beneficial insects,” just the kinds of predators the Cubans were growing in their low-tech labs. “There’s been a huge decrease in costs and not much of a change in yields.” And what about the heartlands of industrial agriculture, the U.S. plains, for instance? “So much depends on how you measure efficiency,” Pretty said. “You don’t get something for nothing.” Cheap fertilizer and pesticide displace more expensive labor and knowledge—that’s why 219 American farms have gone under every day for the last fifty years and yet we’re producing ever more grain and a loaf of bread might as well be free. On the other hand, there are those bereft Midwest counties. And the plumes of pesticide poison spreading through groundwater. And the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico into which the tide of nitrogen washes each planting season. And the cloud of carbon dioxide that puffs out from the top of the fertilizer factories. If you took those things seriously, you might decide that having one percent of your population farming was not such a wondrous feat after all. * * * The American model of agriculture is pretty much what people mean when they talk about the Green Revolution: high-yielding crop varieties, planted in large monocultures, bathed in the nurturing flow of petrochemicals, often supported by government subsidy, designed to offer low-priced food in sufficient quantity to feed billions. Despite its friendly moniker, many environmentalists and development activists around the planet have grown to despair about everything the Green Revolution stands for. Like Pretty, they propose a lowercase greener counterrevolution: endlessly diverse, employing the insights of ecology instead of the brute force of chemistry, designed to feed people but also keep them on the land. And they have some allies even in the rich countries—that’s who fills the stalls at the farmers’ markets blooming across North America. But those farmers’ markets are still a minuscule leaf on the giant stalk of corporate agribusiness, and it’s not clear that, for all the paeans to the savor of a local tomato, they’ll ever amount to much more. Such efforts are easily co-opted—when organic produce started to take off, for instance, industrial growers soon took over much of the business, planting endless monoculture rows of organic lettuce that in every respect, save the lack of pesticides, mirrored all the flaws of conventional agriculture. (By some calculations, the average bite of organic food at your supermarket has traveled even farther than the 1,500-mile journey taken by the average bite of conventional produce.) That is to say, in a world where we’re eager for the lowest possible price, it’s extremely difficult to do anything unconventional on a scale large enough to matter. And it might be just as hard in Cuba were Cuba free. I mean, would Salcines be able to pay sixty-four people to man his farm or would he have to replace most of them with chemicals? If he didn’t, would his customers pay higher prices for his produce or would they prefer lower-cost lettuce arriving from California’s Imperial Valley? Would he be able to hold on to his land or would there be some more profitable use for it? For that matter, would many people want to work on his farm if they had a real range of options? In a free political system, would the power of, say, pesticide suppliers endanger the government subsidy for producing predatory insects in local labs? Would Cuba not, in a matter of several growing seasons, look a lot like the rest of the world? Does an organopónico depend on a fixed ballot? There’s clearly something inherently destructive about an authoritarian society—it’s soul-destroying, if nothing else. Although many of the Cubans I met were in some sense proud of having stood up to the Yanquis for four decades, Cuba was not an overwhelmingly happy place. Weary, I’d say. Waiting for a more normal place in the world. And poor, much too poor. Is it also possible, though, that there’s something inherently destructive about a globalized free-market society—that the eternal race for efficiency, when raised to a planetary scale, damages the environment, and perhaps the community, and perhaps even the taste of a carrot? Is it possible that markets, at least for food, may work better when they’re smaller and more isolated? The next few decades may be about answering that question. It’s already been engaged in Europe, where people are really debating subsidies for small farmers, and whether or not they want the next, genetically modified, stage of the Green Revolution, and how much it’s worth paying for Slow Food. It’s been engaged in parts of the Third World, where in India peasants threw out the country’s most aggressive free-marketeers in the last election, sensing that the shape of their lives was under assault. Not everyone is happy with the set of possibilities that the multinational corporate world provides. People are beginning to feel around for other choices. The world isn’t going to look like Cuba—Cuba won’t look like Cuba once Cubans have some say in the matter. But it may not necessarily look like Nebraska either. * * * The choices are about values,” Pretty said. Which is true, at least for us, at least for the moment. And when the choices are about values, we generally pick the easiest and cheapest way, the one that requires thinking the least. Inertia is our value above all others. Inertia was the one option the Cubans didn’t have; they needed that meal a day back, and given that Castro was unwilling to let loose the reins, they had a limited number of choices about how to get it. “In some ways the special period was a gift to us,” said Funes, the forage expert, the guy who lost twenty pounds, the guy who went from thinking about White Udder to thinking about oxen teams. “It made it easier because we had no choice. Or we did, but the choice was will we cry or will we work. There was a strong desire to lie down and cry, but we decided to do things instead.” From amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in Wed Jun 8 11:31:46 2005 From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in (Amit Basu) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 07:01:46 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Kolkata Sarai Fellows Meet 5 May 2005 In-Reply-To: <299c778405060712507034474d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20050608060146.81006.qmail@web8509.mail.in.yahoo.com> On Sunday I went to meet other Sarai Fellows at Udipi Restaurant, near Deshapriya Park. After a few mails, some of us decided that we will meet here at 5.00 pm. When I reached there I saw Vasudha was sitting with a paper written "Sarai Meet" placed on the table . Her residence is close. She said only Madhuja informed that she wont be able to make it. Myself and Vasudha sat there for more than an hour speculating what are the pecularities of Kolkata fellows that unlike Mumbai and Delhi they are not keen to meet others and share different ideas, views and concern. Not even on the reader-list we find any comments on this issue! Both of us could not draw any conclusion and acknowledged that, this could be an issue worth researching. As the old joke goes about the Calcuttans that 'only two persons are good enough to start a Union'. So we concluded our meeting with the decision to meet at Udipi Restaurant on every Second Saturday at 5.00 pm. And we hope that on 9 July more fellows will join us. Amit --------------------------------- How much free photo storage do you get? Store your friends n family photos for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. http://in.photos.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050608/9e7a5365/attachment.html From geert at xs4all.nl Thu Jun 9 02:29:55 2005 From: geert at xs4all.nl (Geert Lovink [c]) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 22:59:55 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Incommunicado 05: information technology for everybody else (Amsterdam, June 15-17) (Modified by Geert Lovink) [u] Message-ID: Incommunicado 05: information technology for everybody else (final program) June 15: Opening Night June 16-17: Working Conference De Balie, Amsterdam Organization: Institute of Network Cultures, together with Waag Society & Sarai. Supported by: Hivos, Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and IICD. Information and registration: www.incommunicado.info/conference Wiki: http://www.networkcultures.org/wiki/ Incommunicado 05: information technology for everybody else Incommunicado 05 is a two-day working conference working towards  a critical survey of the current state of 'info-development', also known as the catchy acronym 'ICT4D' (ICT for development). Before the recent “flattening of the world” (Thomas Friedman, 2005), most computer networks and ICT expertise were located in the North, and info-development mostly involved rather technical matters of knowledge and technology transfer from North to South. While still widely (and even wildly) talked about, the assumption of a 'digital divide' that follows this familiar geography of development has turned out to be too simple. Instead, a more complex map of actors, networked in a global info-politics, is emerging. Different actors continue to promote different -and competing- visions of 'info-development'.New info-economies like Brazil, China, and India have suddenly emerged and are forming south-south alliances that challenge our sense of what 'development' is all about. Development-oriented systems (like simputers and MIT’'s $100 computer system) emerge and re-emerge. The corporate sector suddenly discovers the “bottom of the pyramid” and community computing, in their drive for markets beyond those now increasingly stagnant in the OECD countries, and among the prosperous and professional in the rest of the world. However tempting, these new developments and particularly the emerging alliances  should not be romanticized in terms of a new tri-continentalism. Brazil's info-geopolitical forays are anything but selfless. And while China's investments in Africa have already been compared to the 19th century scramble for Africa led by European colonial powers, many expect it to be soon exporting its 'Golden Shield' surveillance technologies to states such as Vietnam, North Korea, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, for all of whom it is acting  as a regional internet access provider. However, the cohesion of the new south-south alliances originates in part from the shared resistance to an emergent Euro-American front on  intellectual property rights (IPR) and related matters. In parallel, and in eager response to the newfound enthusiasm for ICT4D through Public-Private Partnerships (fueled largely by the ongoing UN financial crisis and the broader neo-liberal privatization agenda), major info-corporations are advertising themselves as “partners in development” and are promoting ICTs as the vehicles for “good governance and effective service delivery” („e-governance“), but also to stake out their own commercial claims, crowd out public-sector alternatives, and subvert south-south cooperation. Ambitious info-development projects struggle to find a role for themselves either as basic infrastructures supportive of all other development activity or as complement to  older forms of infrastructure and service -oriented development. And often they are expected to meet a host of often contradictory aims: alleviating info-poverty, catapulting peasants into the information age, promoting local ICT and knowledge based industries, or facilitating democratization through increased participation and local empowerment. Meanwhile, of course, info-development also facilitates transnational corporate efforts to offshore IT-related jobs and services in ever-shorter cycles of transposition, leaving local 'stakeholders' at a loss as to whether or not scarce public subsidies should even be used to attract and retain industries likely to move on anyway. Info-development creates new conflicts, putting communities in competition with each other. But it also creates new alliances. Below the traditional thresholds of sovereignty, grassroots efforts are calling into question the entire IPR regime of and access restrictions on which commercial info-development is based. Commons- or open-source-oriented organizations across the world seem more likely to receive support from southern than from northern states, and these coalitions, too, are challenging northern states on their self-serving commitment to IPR and their dominance of key info-political organizations. Meanwhile lesser-known members of the UN family, such as the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), are beginning to feel the heat brought on by “no-logo”-style campaigns that are targeting the entire range of public international actors and bring an agenda of accountability to the institutions of multilateral governance. As a response to the increasingly contradictory (dare one say confused) info-political activities of the major agencies like the ITU, UNDP, UNESCO, and WIPO, even the UN  has begun to lose its aura. As public tagging of a perceived positive UN role in governance, humanitarianism, and peacekeeping shifts towards corruption and inter-agency rivalries, (carefully guided by neo-conservative think-tanks), the ensemble of supra-state apparatuses supposed to sustain visions of a post-imperial order suddenly seems mired in a frightening family dispute that threatens to spin out of control. In spite of the neat sociological grammar of declarations and manifestoes, increasingly hybrid actors no longer follow the simple schema of state, market, or civil society, but engage in cross-sector alliances. Responding to the crisis of older top-down approaches to development, corporations and aid donors are increasingly bypassing states and international agencies to work directly with smaller non-governmental organizations. And while national and international development agencies now have to defend their activity against both pro- and anti-neo-liberal critics, info-NGOs participating in public-private partnerships and info-capitalist ventures suddenly find themselves in the midst of another heated controversy over their new role as junior partner of states and corporations. Responding by stepping up their own brand-protection and engaging in professional reputation management, major NGOs even conclude that it is no longer their organizational culture but their agenda alone that differentiates them from corporate actors. The spectacular world summit on the information society (WSIS), barely noticed by the mainstream media but already uniting cyber-libertarians afraid of UN interventions in key questions of internet governance, will conclude later this year. While many info-activists are assessing (and re-assessing) the hidden cost of invitations to sit at 'multi-stakeholder' tables along with mega-NGOs and corporate associations, others are already refusing to allow an organizational incorporation of grassroots or subaltern agendas into the managed consensus being built around the dynamic of an 'international civil (information) society'. Mirroring the withdrawal from traditional mechanisms of political participation, there is growing disaffection with multilateralism as the necessary default perspective for any counter-imperial politics. Unwilling to accept the idioms of sovereignty, some even abandon the very logic of summits and counter-summits to articulate post-sovereign perspectives.  And alongside this of course, is the day to day reality of those at the grassroots and most importantly working as policy, research and practice info-intermediaries to find ways of using (and remaking) ICTs to be of benefit to the “multitudes”.order profitability) have used ICTs to transform the global networks of commercial production and supply. The challenge for ICT4D is not to ensure that everyone in the world has 24/7 access to .xxx and “Texas hold’em” but that the opportunities that the Walmarts have so successfully and creatively seized are similarly the basis for a transformation towards creative and open access opportunities for transforming the life chances and lived realities of everybody else.  History The 'incommunicado' project started early 2004 as a web research resource combined with an email-based mailinglist. It was founded by Soenke Zehle and Geert Lovink, who had earlier collaborated during the European Make World and Neuro events, that attempted to develop critical work around new media and no border issues. Incommunicado didn't start out of the blue. It was a merger from two lists, Solaris, founded late 2001 by Geert Lovink and Michael Gurstein, and a defunct G8 Dotforce list. The Solaris email list was an early attempt to develop a critical discourse around the ICT4D policy complex and was inspired by the then-newly opened centre Sarai in Delhi, a place that embodies new cultural practices beyond the classic development models. Beginning in late 2003, the first World Summit on the Information Society accelerated the awareness that critical voices, inside and outside the Machine, had to gather in order to reflect on the circulating metaphors and rhetoric. Poor outcomes of the alternative 'WSIS, We Seize' campaign, which positioned itself outside of the world conference spectacle, proved that there is a great need for a radical critique of notions such as 'information society', 'e-governance', 'digital divide' or 'civil society'. At the moment there are 300+ subscribers to the list, and at any given moment in time 50-70 users are either reading the incommunicado rss-news or searching the collaborative weblog, whose topic areas include network(ed) ecologies, ICT for Development, internet governance, analyses of the NGO sector, and emerging South-South relations. So far, incommunicado has been an exclusively online resource and list community, consisting of researchers, ICT practitioners, activists and social entrepreneurs. The event in Amsterdam in June 2005 will be the first meeting of this emerging network. Future plans include the launch of an open-access journal or an incommunicado reader. On Being Incommunicado The term incommunicado generally refers to a state of being without the means or rights to communicate, especially in the case of incommunicado detention and the threat of massive human rights violations. The latter also implies an extra-judicial space of exception, where torture, executions and "disappearances" occur - all-too-frequently in the lives of journalists and media activists, online or offline, across the world. After the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the bilateral order, the discourse of human rights has become an important placeholder for agendas of social change and transformation that are no longer articulated in third worldist or tricontinentalist terms. Yet despite the universalizing implications of human rights, they can also invoke and retrieve the complex legacy of specific anti-colonial and third-worldist perspectives that continue to inform contemporary visions of a different information and communication order. The term 'incommunicado' was chosen as the name for this research network to acknowledge that while questions related to info-development and info-politics are often explored in a broader human rights context, this does not imply embracing a politics of rights as such. Instead, one of the aims of the incommunicado project is to explore tactical mobilizations of rights-based claims to access, communication, or information, but also the limits of any politics of rights, its concepts, and its absolutization as a political perspective. --- Final program: ::Wednesday, June 15:: Opening Night 20.00-22.30 Main Hall Situating the workshop agenda in the broader context of the UN Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as well as the controversy over an emerging international civil society, the public event on Wednesday night will introduce the topics of the work conference to a broader non-specialist audience. Offering a working definition of info-development/ICT4D, the public event will raise some of the key conference issues, including the extent to which this field is indeed characterized by a shift from North-South to South-South alliances and the role played by info-development NGOs. Chair: Tracey Naughton (Chair WSIS Media Caucus, South Africa) With contributions by: Soenke Zehle and Geert Lovink, introduction to the Incommunicado project Nnenna Nwakanma (Africa Civil Society for the Information Society, Nigeria) : The mirage of South-South cooperation in ICT4D Jeebesh Bagchi (Sarai New Media Initiative, India): Forgetting Development: Cybermohalla Practices and Information Networks Bernardo Sorj (University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil): Internet in the Slums Anthony Mwaniki (One World, Kenya): Mobile Technology - A Tool For Development? Partha Pratim Sarkar (Bytesforall, Bangladesh): ICTs at the grassroots and intermediaries: who empowers whom? Anriette Esterhuysen (APC, South Africa) ::Thursday, June 16:: Plenary Lecture 1: Introduction and Overview 10.00-11.00 Main Hall ICT4D is widely considered a key element in processes of democratization, good governance, and poverty alleviation. This plenary will situate the rise of ICT4D in the context of the transformation of development as a whole, and outline individual workshop agendas. Chair: Geert Lovink (INC, NL) With contributions by: Roberto Verzola (sustainable agriculture campaigner, Manilla): The emerging information economy. Respondant: Heimo Claassen (researcher, Brussels) Monica Narula (Sarai New Media Initiative, Delhi): The Delhi decleration, a new context for new media Workshop A1: NGOs in Info-Development 11.30-13.00 Main Hall We have become used to thinking of NGOs as 'natural' development actors. But their presence is itself indicative of a fundamental transformation of an originally state-centered development regime, and their growing influence raises difficult issues regarding their relationship to state and corporate actors, but also regarding their self-perception as representatives of civic and grassroots interests. Following a survey of some of the major info-development NGOs and networks, this workshop will address questions related to the politics of representation pursued by these actors: why should they sit at a table with governments and international agencies, and who is marginalized by such a (multistakeholder) dynamic of 'inclusion' dominated by NGOs? Chair: Anriette Esterhuysen (APC, South Africa) With contributions by: Loe Schout (HIVOS, NL): Internet connects world citizens, but does it breed new ones, too? Maartje OpdeCoul (One World, NL): Evaluating ICT4D projects Michael Gurstein (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA): Civil Society or Communities: The Contradiction at the Core of the Information Society Maja van der Velden (University of Bergen, Norway): Cognitive Justice Partha Pratim Sarkar (Bytes4all, Bangladesh) Toni Eliasz (Ungana-Afrika, South Africa): What CSOs bring to ICT Policy Processes Workshop A2: After WSIS: Exploring Multistakeholderism 11.30-13.00 Salon For some, the 2003-5 UN World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is just another moment in an ongoing series of inter-governmental jamborees, glamorizing disciplinary visions of global ICT governance. For others, WSIS revives 'tricontinentalist' hopes for a New International Information and Communication Order whose emphasis on 'civil society actors' may even signal the transformation of a system of inter-governmental organizations. Either way, WSIS continues to encourage the articulation of agendas, positions, and stakes in a new politics of communication and information. Following the effort to actively involve civil society actors in WSIS activities, the idea of an emergent 'multistakeholderism' is already considered one of the key WSIS outcomes. This workshop will take a critical look at different approaches to the idea of multistakeholderism. Chair: Neeltje Blommestein (IICD, NL) With contributions by: Lisa McLaughlin (Mass Communication and Women's Studies, Miami University-Ohio, USA): Introduction: Issues in Multi-stakeholderism. Ralf Bendrath (University of Bremen, Germany): Experiments in Multi-Stakeholderism—Lessons learned from WSIS. Beatriz Busaniche (Fundacion Via Libre, Argentina): WSIS and Multistakeholderism: Could we call them "best practices"? Ljupco Gjorgjinski (Center for Dialogue and Democracy, Macedonia): multistakeholder partnerships–cybernetic Governance for the information society Stijn van der Krogt (IICD, NL): The Polder model applied to ICT4D in the South-- lessons learned from IICD's multi-stakeholder processes Sally Burch (ALAI, Equador) Paul Maassen (HIVOS, NL): Civil society as a stakeholder: the dilemma of constituency Ned Rossiter (University of Ulster, UK): Post-Representation & the Architecture of Net Politics Nnenna Nwakanma (Africa Civil Society for the Information Society, Nigeria): Partnerships and Networks: the African Civil Society Perspective Workshop A3: Open Source, Open Borders 11.30-13.00 Cinema Chair: Jo van der Spek (radio maker, NL) Some of the organizations active in the WSIS process lost their accreditation because participants used their visa to say goodbye to Africa. Widely reported, the anecdote suggests that media and migration form a nexus that is nevertheless rarely explored in the context of ICT4D. In this session, we will survey some of the work on migrant and refugee media. It will also introduce the agenda of the wireless bridge project, a sister event of the incommunicado work conference that will take place in Tarifa (Spain) later in June. Presenters: Florian Schneider (kein.org, Germany) Roy Pullens (researcher, NL): IOM and border control as info development Nnenna Nwakanma (Africa Civil Society for the Information Society, Nigeria): An Anecdote of a would-be illegal immigrant. 14.00-16.00 Open Sessions Main Hall: 14.00-15.00 Solomon Benjamin (urban researcher, CASUM-m, Bangalore India): case study on ICT and real estate in Bangalore (including video documentary, produced for Incommunicado 05) 15.00-15.30 Francois Laureys (IICD) in conversation with Sylvestre Ouedraogo (Burkina Faso) 15.30-16.00 Sally Burch (ALAI, Ecuador): Social movements, communication and ICTs Salon: E-Waste 14.00-16.00 E-Waste: Special session on electronic waste, organized by Waste, advisors on urban development and development. In this session, a highly diverse group of people from the development, ICT, recycling, finance, insurance, and waste management worlds consider strategies and approaches in relation to preventing, reusing or recycling WEEE, or waste from electronic and electrical equipment in the Netherlands. The impulse behind the session comes from a twinning project between Stichting WASTE, in the Netherlands, and the NGO ACEPESA, in Costa Rica. The goal of the session is to arrive at ideas for interventions in both the Netherlands and Costa Rica. Session organisers: Anne Scheinberg, Kiwako Mogi, Stichting WASTE, Gouda (www.waste.nl). Session chair: Jeroen IJgosse, WASTE. Confirmed Discussants: Portia Sinnott, Micro Services Plus, California, Joost Helberg, Vereniging Open Source Netherlands, Stephan Wildeboer,OS-OSS, Angela Jonker, Flection Netherlands, dhr Herben, Province of Limburg, Netherland Cinema: 14.00-14.20 Kim van Haaster (INC researcher, NL), The University of the Future: Software Development in Revolutionary Cuba. 14.20-14.40 T. B. Dinesh (BangaloreIT.org, India): Observations on the impact of IT on Society, in Bangalore. 14.40-15.00 Toni Eliasz (Ungana-Afrika, South Africa): on lacking ICT capacity among small development organizations and networks 15.00-15.20 Enrique Chaparro (Fundacion Via Libre, Argentina ): on the hidden prices for ICT4 aid. 15.20-15.40 Oliver Vodeb and Jerneja Rebernak, art & ICT4D, a presentation of the Memefest 2005 competition. 15.40-16.00 Jo van der Spek and others: info solidarity with Iraq (www.streamtime.org) Plenary Session 2: After Aid: Info-Development after 9/11 16.30-18.00 Main hall What is the status of aid in the promotion of ICT4D, and how have ICT4D actors responded to the politicization and securitization of aid, including the sale of security and surveillance technologies in the name of info-development? To what extent does info-development overlap with new info-infrastructures in the field of humanitarian aid (ICT4Peace)? Are global trade justice campaigns a response to classic development schemes? Chair: Ravi Sundaram (Sarai, India) With contributions by: Enrique Chaparro (Fundacion Via Libre, Argentina), Glen Tarman (Trade Justice Campaign, UK): Join the band: ICTs, popular mobilization and the global call to make poverty history Steve Cisler (librarian, USA): Outside the Church of ICT Shuddha Sengupta (Sarai, India): Knowing in your Bones: Politics, Anxiety and Information in Delhi, 2005 20.30: Screening, part 1, co-curated by De Balie ::Friday, June 17:: Plenary 3: ICT4D and the Critique of Development 10.00-12.00 Main Hall The critique of development and its institutional arrangements - of its conceptual apparatus as well as the economic and social policies implemented in its name - has always been both a theoretical project and the agenda of a multitude of 'subaltern' social movements. Yet much work in ICT4D shows little awareness of or interest in the history of such development critique. Quite the contrary, the ICT4D debate, whose terms are reproduced in the members-only loop of a few major NGO networks like APC, OneWorld, or PANOS, along with a small number of states and influential donor organizations, remains surprisingly inward-looking, unable or unwilling to actively challenge the hegemony of an ahistorical techno-determinism. Even many activists believe that ICT will lead to progress and eventually contribute to poverty reduction. Have development skepticism and the multiplicity of alternative visions it created simply been forgotten? Or have they been actively muted to disconnect current struggles in the area of communication and information from this history, adding legitimacy to new strategies of 'pre-emptive' development that are based on an ever-closer alliance between the politics of aid, development, and security? Are analyses based on the assumption that the internet and its promise of connectivity are 'inherently good' already transcending existing power analyses of global media and communication structures? How can we reflect on the booming ICT-for-Development industry beyond best practice suggestions? Chair: Kees Biekart (ISS, NL) Contributions by: Ravi Sundaram (Sarai New Media Initiative, India): Post-Development and Technological Dreams: An Indian Tale Solomon Benjamin (urban researcher, CASUM-m, Bangalore India): E-Politics of the New Civil Society Jan Nederveen Pieterse (University of Illinios, USA): Digital capitalism and development Tracey Naughton (Chair WSIS Media Caucus, South Africa): Putting Lipstick on Pigs Workshop C1: ICT corporations at the UN 13.00-15.00 Main hall The controversial agreement between Microsoft and the UNDP, issued at a time when open source software is emerging as serious non-proprietary alternative within ICT4D, is generally considered in terms of a public-private partnership, to be assessed on its own terms. But it should also be considered in the broader context of rising corporate influence in the UN system, from the almost-no-strings-attached Global Compact, widely criticized as multilateral collusion in corporate 'bluewashing', to the Cardoso Panel on UN-Civil Society Relations and its controversial definition of civil society. Chair: Soenke Zehle (Incommunicado, Germany) With contributions by: Lisa McLaughlin (University of Illinois, USA): Cisco Systems, the United Nations, and the Corporatization of Development Michael Gurstein (New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA): Critiquing Apple Pie: What We Can Say and Not Say About the UN These Days Manuel Acevedo (consultant, Spain): ICT4D partnerships at face value: experiences from the multilateral trenches Steve Cisler (librarian, USA): PPPP: problems of public-private partnerships Workshop C2: FLOSS in ICT4D 13.00-15.00 Salon Pushed by a growing transnational coalition of NGOs and a few allies inside the multilateral system, open source software has moved from margin to center in ICT4D visions of peer-to-peer networks and open knowledge initiatives. But while OSS and its apparent promise of an alternative non-proprietary concept of collaborative creation continues to have much counter-cultural cachet, its idiom can easily be used to support the 'liberalization' of telco markets and cuts in educational subsidies. What is the current status of OSS as idiom and infrastructural alternative within ICT4D? Chair: Paul Keller (Waag Society, NL) With contributions by: Dorkas Muthoni (Linux Chicks Africa, Kenya): Chix Presence: A strategic partner in increasing the efficiency of FOSS for the benefit of society Felipe Fonseca (MetaReciclagem, Brazil): MetaReciclagem: technology re-appropriation and collective innovation" Ednah Karamagi (Brosdi, Uganda) Bill Kagai (FOSSFA, Kenya) Nnenna Nwakanma (Africa Civil Society for the Information Society, Nigeria) Enrique Chaparro (Fundacion Via Libre, Argentina ): ICT are not (just) tools Seppo Koskela (Applied Linux Institute, Helsinki): Free Software, ICT4D and Finland - the Short Story. Sylvestre Ouéadraogo (executive President of Yam Pukri Burkina Faso) Alexandre Freire (Digital Cultures/Ministry of Culture, Brazil) Workshop C3: Culture and Corporate Sponsorship in the ICT4D Context 13.00-15.00 Cinema Introduction: Solomon Benjamin (Bangalore) Open informal discussion. What is the aim of Western cultural organizations in the context of ICT4D projects? Think of the hip design event Doors of Perception in Bangalore and Delhi, our own Waag-Sarai Platform, Beijing and its new media arts inside the Millennium Dome, or the German media festival in Chiang Mai (Thailand). What is the agenda of these organizations? Is the ‘electronic art’ they are exporting merely paving the way for the big software and telecom firms to move in, or should we reject such a mechanic, one-dimensional view? Workshop D1: New Info-Politics of Rights 15.30-17.00 Main Hall Recent framings of ICT as an object of civil society politics have resulted in the coupling of ICT with the notion of “rights”: issues of the spread, use and adaptation of these technologies are increasingly defined in terms of human, civil, communication and information rights, et cetera. This session questions the choice, perhaps the tactical optionality, of making ICT-related issues into matters of rights. The rights-frame formats ICT for particular modes of the institutional processing of issues. At the same time, ICT and the discourses knitted around this object themselves can be seen to spread the rights frame. Considering that counter-cultural engagements with new media were previously framed as tactical undertakings, the question is whether the rise of “rights” does not thwart the potential of a creative, aesthetic, affective politics of the tactical. Or is the case that networks have a better use for rights than institutions? This is the context in which we ask: what are rights for, how are they used by NGOs, when does the coupling of ICT with rights work, and when does it fail? Chair: Richard Rogers (GovCom/University of Amsterdam, NL) With contributions by: Soenke Zehle (Incommunicado, Germany): Politics of Info-Rights meets Tactical Media Jodi Dean (HWS Colleges, USA) Noortje Marres (University of Amsterdam, NL): Why is this happening to ICT? Info-rights as a special case of issue hybridisation Magela Sigillito (Third World Institute, Montevideo, Uruguay) Thomas Keenan (Bard College Human Rights Program, USA): On some dilemmas in claiming rights: persistence, elasticity, instrumentality Ned Rossiter (University of Ulster, UK): organised networks and the situation of rights Workshop D2: Digital Bandung: New Axes of Info-Capitalism 15.30-17.00 Salon We are witnessing a shift from in the techno-cultural development of the web from an essentially post-industrialist euro-american affair to a more complexly mapped post-third-worldist network, where new south-south alliances are already upsetting our commonsensical definitions of info-development as an exclusively north-south affair. One example of this is the surprising extent to which a 'multilateral' version of internet governance has been able to muster support, another is the software and intellectual property rights reform (WIPO Development Agenda). info-development, that is, has ceased to be a matter of technology transfer and has become a major terrain for the renegotiation of some of the fault lines of geopolitical conflict - with a new set of actors. But does this really affect the established dependencies on 'northern' donors, and if so, what are some of the new alliances that are emerging? What is this new ‘post-Bandung’ movement? Chair: Ravi Sundaram (Sarai, India) Open informal discussion Workshop D3: Nuts and Bolts of Internet Governance 15.30-17.00 Cinema One of the few areas where WSIS is likely to produce concrete results is internet governance (IG). The IG controversy revolves around the limits of the current regime of root server control (ICANN/US) and possible alternatives, but it is also significant because it signals the repoliticization of a key domain of a technocratic internet culture that long considered itself to be above the fray of ordinary info-politics. The sense that IG has info-political implications and should be subject to discussion beyond expert fora is, however, much more widespread that actual knowledge of the techno-cultural dynamic actually involved in governing the internet. This workshop with be a nuts-and-bolts session for non-techies. Chair: Reinder Rustema (Internet Society, NL) With contributions by: Enrique Chaparro (Fundacion Via Libre, Argentina) Danny Butt (Independent Consultant; Researcher, New Zealand): Cultures of Internet Governance: From global coordination to trans-cultural dialogue" Plenary 4: Closing Session 17.30 – 18.30 Main hall Moderated by Soenke Zehle and Geert Lovink Plus: WSIS Awards, Dutch nominations, announced by Jak Bouman Video Session Rethinking 'underdevelopment or revolution' through ICTs. Live videoconference with San Francisco, coordinated by Sasha Constanze Chock 18:30-19:00 Cinema This session is focused on appropriation of ICTs by social movements that don't fit into the public private development industry framework. Rather than consider the success or failure of strategies to patch ICTs into a 'development' framework that means binding peripheral locations and populations more tightly to service of the metropole, we'll discuss ICTs and revolutionary activity in Brazil, Korea, Bolivia, and elsewhere. With remote participation from, amongst others, Dongwon Jo from MediACT in Seoul, Dorothy Kidd from University of San Francisco, Pablo Ortellado/Indymedia Brazil and members from ERBOL and CMI Bolivia. 20.30: Screening, part 2, co-curated by De Balie From harshvardhan.tripathi at tv18online.com Wed Jun 8 10:58:15 2005 From: harshvardhan.tripathi at tv18online.com (Harshvardhan Tripathi) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 10:58:15 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah Message-ID: <4F81D7B1314DB14B8DD0FB274DDC29DB020D02BC@postman.bomtv18.com> VERY INTERSTING -----Original Message----- From: mihir25 [mailto:mihir25 at indiatimes.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 1:59 PM To: reader-list at sarai.net Subject: [Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah When he was called Pandit Jinnah RAJNISH Sharma Hindustan Times Lucknow, June 5 http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922_1389389,0015002500000000.htm When the former Deputy PM L K Advani described Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a secular man during his early days, he wasn't quite off the mark as it is now a part of recorded history. Though his comments have raised a furore back home, few would know that this man was even referred to as Pandit Jinnah once. And if indifference to religion is any indicator of secularism, the Qaid-e-Azam was probably the biggest of all secular fundamentalists. There are two incidents hitherto not found in any history book which highlight this aspect of his character in a rather comical way which were narrated by none other than the eminent jurist and statesman, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. It was told by Sir Tej to his granddaughter's husband Dr IM Chak, Retired Dy Director of CDRI during a meeting with his grandfather Pt. Prithvi Nath Chak, another legal giant of that time under whom Motilal Nehru learnt to practise law. A contemporary of Sir Sapru, Jinnah along with him once visited Egypt during the month of Ramzaan. The Muslim porters there refused to carry their luggage saying they would only carry the luggage of a fellow Muslim. When Jinnah told them to go ahead, the porters decided to test them. They were asked to recite the kalma. While Sir Tej happily recited it with élan, he had Jinnah looking sheepishly at him for the wine loving brown sahib didn't know a word of it! Sir Tej had a hard time convincing the porters that Jinnah, who was to later create a separate Islamic State, was indeed a Muslim! The other incident saw these two friends sparring in the court of law in a case that involved elements of religion. The case saw Sir Tej quoting innumerable ayats from Quran in support of his arguments. Jinnah, though a formidable lawyer himself, drew a blank once again on this account. The next day local newspaper headlines screamed Pandit Jinnah vs Maulana Sapru! _____ Indiatimes Email now powered by APIC Advantage. Help! My Presence Help _____ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050608/be0ae0db/attachment.html From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Thu Jun 9 15:09:20 2005 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 10:39:20 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] RFID in Delhi... in the stomachs of cows...watch out when you're eating! Message-ID: From: Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 09:34:50 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: [SV_RFID] Microchip IDs for cattle Nod for tracking stray cattle with microchips By Sandeep Joshi NEW DELHI, APRIL 5. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi has cleared the controversial proposal to implant computer chip in the stomachs of buffaloes and cows to ascertain their ownership and keep track of their movement in the city. However, the Bharatiya Janata Party has expressed the fear that the project would make milk costlier and also put an unnecessary financial burden on dairy owners. The proposal was passed recently by the MCD Standing Committee without any debate. The civic body expressed the hope that the microchips in the stomachs of bovines -- to be read through a special scanner -- would help keep track of their movement in the city, besides checking the mushrooming growth of unauthorised dairies. In fact, a similar project is already being implemented in Punjab and is a common practice in developed countries. The microchip will have a unique identity number and will ensure that no new animals are smuggled into the city from the neighbouring States and also check the menace of stray cattle. The owners of all authorised dairies would be charged Rs.900 for each implant. Each microchip would be given orally to the animals and it would then get embedded in their stomach. The civic body has warned that those animals found without the microchip would be impounded and auctioned. The MCD took this decision after the Supreme Court's directed that all unauthorised dairies be relocated at Ghogha in Narela in North-West Delhi. Significantly, while a Corporation survey revealed that there were nearly 35,000 cows and buffaloes in these unauthorised dairies, the civic body was surprised to receive applications for allotment of land for as many as 50,000 cows and buffaloes. Later, investigations revealed that some people from the neighbouring townships and land sharks were trying to get dairy land allotted in Ghogha. Under the Ghogha dairy relocation scheme, the Delhi Government has allotted 180 acres for the development of a dairy colony with all the necessary facilities and basic infrastructure. The Corporation officials plan to implant the microchip in cattle when dairy owners move here and subsequently, every year the dairy owners would have to pass the chip detection test and those without them would be impounded. However, the BJP Councillor and Standing Committee Member, Vijender Kumar Gupta, has accused the Congress leaders in the civic body of getting the controversial issue passed in haste without any discussion. "The impractical scheme would not only result in waste of public money as well as that of dairy owners, it will also increase the cost of milk in the Capital," he said. Mr. Gupta also alleged that the proposal was opposed by the BJP as it was prepared to financially benefit some predetermined private operator and not to control the unauthorised dairy menace in the city. The matter was then referred to a sub-committee for investigation but it never met. But the Standing Committee without any discussion approved the recommendations of the so-called sub-committee, he added. --- rhnarendra.ol24 at hathway.com wrote: --------------------------------- -- http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/person-1024.25.html&lang=en http://blogger.xs4all.nl/kranenbu/ http://locative.net/blog/mixreality/ 0031 (0) 641930235 From shivamvij at gmail.com Tue Jun 7 20:58:00 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 20:58:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Civiblog In-Reply-To: <3AEB1EB2-2C3E-4EF8-BC68-5C5018C4B833@vt.edu> References: <3AEB1EB2-2C3E-4EF8-BC68-5C5018C4B833@vt.edu> Message-ID: Dear Jeremy, I am curious as to how Civiblog is any different from the myriad free blogging services on offer: surely, it makes no difference as to whether I host my civil society blog on blogspot or civiblog. Or does it? thanks shivam On 6/7/05, Jeremy Hunsinger wrote: > distribute as appropriate > > Civiblog, a one-stop-site for global civil society. Canadian to the -- Go to google.com and look for - The Slimes of India www.shivamvij.com From abshi at vsnl.com Thu Jun 9 21:41:25 2005 From: abshi at vsnl.com (abshi at vsnl.com) Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 21:11:25 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] Talk 17 June 2005: PANOPTIC BODIES: BLACK EUNUCHS IN THE TOPKAPI Message-ID: <7235c307232c7d.7232c7d7235c30@vsnl.net> The PUKAR Gender and Space Project presents a talk by Jateen Lad on PANOPTIC BODIES: BLACK EUNUCHS IN THE TOPKAPI PALACE date: Friday, 17 June 2005 time: 6.30 p.m. place: Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai Abstract This lecture engages the disciplines of architecture, philology and theology to explore the notion of the harem as a forbidden and guarded sanctuary in both ritual and palatial contexts. The fantasme of the black eunuch in the Grand Seraglio has been a silent but persistent presence in representations of the imperial harem; either a perverse shadow in the margins of Orientalist representations or the epitome of loyalty in more contemporary readings. This paper enters the labyrinthine passages of the quintessential harem, the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, in an attempt to better understand the body of the eunuch and the nature of the imperial harem as an actual space. There follows a consideration of how the presence, identity and the subtleties of power acquired by the black eunuchs came to be embodied architecturally. In the process, it will be shown how the notions of surveillance and mediation - qualities embodied in the function and body of the eunuch - permeated the enclo sing walls of the harem to infuse deep into its inner structure. Jateen Lad studied architecture at Cambridge, UK and has practised in London, Berlin, Rotterdam and East Africa and is design critic at a number of London schools. As a research fellow with the Aga Khan Program at Harvard and MIT his writings engaged architecture, philology and theology to explore the notion of the harem as a forbidden and guarded sanctuary in both ritual and palatial contexts. He is currently establishing a design studio in Pondicherry and is researching notions of display and multiplicity in the Hawa Mahal at Jaipur. 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:: genderspace at pukar.org.in Website:: www.pukar.org.in From k.kuldeep97 at rediffmail.com Fri Jun 10 11:09:15 2005 From: k.kuldeep97 at rediffmail.com (kuldeep kaur) Date: 10 Jun 2005 05:39:15 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Hospital's labour room as a space for unheard voices Message-ID: <20050610053915.8166.qmail@webmail17.rediffmail.com>   Better sense may prevail as I don’ t have any other reason to continue Kalapna was screaming with pain as I entered the induction room. At least five-six gynae doctors were there on her bedside. A senior resident of surgery was trying to insert I/V canula to maintain body fluid volume. All of them were busy. I requested the evening duty nurse to give over the charge. She said, “Didi you will have to count down the instruments, articles by yourself. I cannot leave this patient.” “Oh! Then we can start right with this patient only.” I replied. “ Yes, it is must. She is Kalpana, a mother with 8th month pregnancy with severe anemia (Hb=4gm) with severe pregnancy induced hypertension (BP was 220/130 mm/hg). She is semi-conscious, not responding to verbal commands. She is about to deliver the baby.” In between our conversation we were assisting the doctors in handling the patient for her internal assessment as well as to avoid displacement of I/V lines. She was on anti-eclamptic drug, which is emergency drug to avoid possibility of sudden fit. Suddenly our senior resident shouted, “come fast, she is delivering the baby” she was on bed. Bobby and I (evening duty nurse) have to run for normal delivery set and required medicines. In the mean time pediatric nurse was also called in. She immediately received the baby and rushed to the Nursery (a small neo-natal unit attached with induction room). I left the evening duty staff nurse with the patient and decided to help pediatric Nurse for resuscitating the baby. Pediatric senior resident was also informed by through intercom. After ensuring that baby was normal and stable I joined evening duty nurse for further management of my patient. We helped Kalpana to get out of the bed. Placenta was yet inside and a through internal examination was required. Evening duty was over at 8:00 PM but Bobby (evening duty nurse) was still there for the patient. Pediatric Nurse came to show the baby’s sex to the mother after sometime. Kalapna was looking surprised. She immediately shouted in furious voice, “This is not my child, I can never give birth to a girl-child. This is not my child, show me my baby. I give birth to a male baby. He is my baby. Give me my baby.” It was a shock for all of us. We tried to convince her but she was not listening to anyone. “Dr Mona, I think she is not in her senses although her Blood Pressure is stable now. She is not able to cope-up with the process of labour.” I tried to break the silence. “Blood pressure is normal. She is arguing. No major complication now. She can easily recognize her baby”. We planned to call her mother. The pediatric nurse decided to show the baby to her husband and brothers and to get their signatures on respective files to avoid further confusion. She persuaded her, “ Kalpana, this is your first baby, your own baby. Why you are not accepting her? She is so cute and sweet you are a mother now. You can not ignore your baby.” “ Par yeh mera bacha he nahi hai (But this is not my child) Tum police le ke ayo, hum sabat kar ke dikhange. (Call the police, I will prove).” She insisted. Till that time I took the over from evening duty nurse and she left for her hostel. We were at least eight medical personnel in the induction room, trying to convince her but she was screaming and trying to remove all her canulas, I/V lines and catheter. We decided to call her mother inside so that she can make her co-operate. Her mother entered the induction room in furious mood and shouted at us. “Aap log samajate kauon nahin? (Why don’t you understand?)” She looked around at all of us and continued, “is ke ladki ho he nahi sakti. Humne iska ultrasound karwaaia hai, doctor ne bataya hai ke ladka he hoga. Pura ek hazar rupaya laga hai hamara ultrasound pe. Aab ladki kaise ho sakti hai. (She can never give birth to a girl child. We have got her Ultrasound, The doctor has told us about the male fetus. We have paid one thousand for that check-up. How can it be girl?” We were stunned. Condition of Kalpana was not improving. She was not allowing us to keep up the efforts to check the bleeding. She was bleeding profusely. She could go in shock once again. Despite all our efforts she was not ready to listen. She was not allowing us to pursue with episiotomy suturing. A junior resident ran to blood bank to get blood for her. I was trying to give her I/V fluids. Senior resident was assisting with another junior resident in Episiotomy suturing. Kalpana tried to run outside in delivery gown with all tubing. It was already 9:30 PM. During this time we could not take care of the other patients. Her mother and relatives were arguing with night duty staff out side the induction room and were using abusive language. Then we informed emergency medical officer and Nursing Supervisor. Consultant was also called from home. All patients admitted in ward and their relatives were listening each and everything with keen interest. This whole atmosphere was working out to create an imagery fear in rest of the patients and attendants. We were seen as suspects with no reason to substantiate the claims of Kalpana and her family members. I was feeling very upset to realize that how we will be to re-establish their faith in us? The social pressure to give birth to sons was turning to be an extra burden on us. We discussed that have the doctor who did the ultrasound would have told them about girl fetus and they would have got the male baby what would have been their reaction. What could we do about the doctor who did the ultrasound and told them the sex of baby despite much talked about campaign against such practices? The family was ready to accept the baby girl half mindedly. They cursed us saying that god will see to all and everyone will get the justice. Here my thoughts were with the newborn and the behavior she will encounter as an unwelcome sudden guest. One of my colleagues said that with the passage of time they will find the similarities of features of newborn with her parents. I found it wishful thinking and became a bit philosophical that better sense may prevail. regards kuldeep -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050610/a79cec88/attachment.html From ravig1 at vsnl.com Thu Jun 9 12:06:18 2005 From: ravig1 at vsnl.com (Ravi Agarwal) Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 12:06:18 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] More on Jinnah- Indian Express Message-ID: <028201c56cbd$8ce6ec90$6801a8c0@ToxicsLink.local> So many Jinnahs Was he an avowed communalist or advocate of a secular Pakistan? IAN TALBOT Posted online: Thursday, June 09, 2005 at 0000 hours IST The furore surrounding L.K. Advani's recent visit to Pakistan and his homage to its founder at Jinnah's mausoleum in Karachi has reopened the debate about the Quaid-e-Azam's vision for the subcontinent. A rhetorical reply to the question, will the true Jinnah stand up, is the response which one do you want? For there is the Jinnah of the 1916 Lucknow Pact, dubbed by Sarojini Naidu as the "Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity". Then there is the Jinnah of the 1940 Lahore Resolution and the two-nation theory basis for dividing the subcontinent. Another Jinnah speaks of making Pakistan "a laboratory for Islam", while contradicting this is the celebrated espousal of a secular state in the speech of August 11 1947 which Advani cited with approval in Karachi. One could go even further and add the Jinnah of Ayesha Jalal's Sole Spokesman construction who is portrayed as arguing only for Pakistan as a bargaining counter in the constitutional round with Congress and the British. Jinnah was, however, finally forced to accept the "moth-eaten" Pakistan of the 3 June Plan as the only realistic option. Nearly 60 years later, the debate continues to swirl around Jinnah's enigmatic vision for Pakistan. Its academic and public dimensions, as at the present, frequently generate more heat than light. Why the controversy? First and foremost, it stems from Jinnah's own vagueness about Pakistan. This was a deliberate attempt to provide as much common ground as possible in the Muslim League struggle. Lack of a clear vision hindered post-colonial nation building. It left the field open to conflicting understandings of the role of Islam, language and ethnicity in the new Pakistan state. Jinnah's early death enabled his legacy to be appropriated by all manner of aspirants to power. The fact that he did not commit his innermost thoughts to paper provided further scope for mythologising. For the carefully preserved record of his public utterances reveal them for what they are. Addresses finetuned for their differing audiences and contexts. They are as much all things to all men as was the Pakistan demand itself. Selective quotations frame the Jinnah required by those who seek to refer to history to legitimise contemporary concerns. Founders of nations are always used in this way. Jinnah however is a particularly rich symbolic resource for a subcontinent negotiating conflicting sources of identity. The view of Jinnah in India has been much more consistent than in Pakistan. Despite the attempts by such writers as H.M. Seervai and Gandhi's grandson Rajmohan to row against the current, the tide of opinion is overwhelmingly negative. This intellectual view finds a popular echo in bazaar level portrayals of Jinnah as Ravana. With varying degrees of sophistication, Jinnah is thus the maligned "other" of Indian nationalism; the communal counterpoint to Nehru's secular vision of a united India. Personal circumstances, the desire for power and the divide and rule policies of the Raj have all been used to explain his 20 years' transformation from Muslim nationalist to communalist. The final descent to the dark side is marked by the passage of the Lahore Resolution. Jinnah the architect of Pakistan, the destroyer of Indian unity in this discourse cannot be readily accorded a "secular" mantle once Pakistan is created. The speech to the Constituent Assembly of August 11 is thus ignored, or glossed over as damage limitation, a desire to keep the minorities and more importantly their money in Pakistan. Political considerations aside, this way of thinking about Jinnah in India inevitably casts Advani's comments on Jinnah's secular credentials in a dissonant note. For Jinnah, the secularist, resplendent in the clarion call, "Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims, not in the religious sense, because that is the personal faith of each individual but in the political sense as citizens of the state", we have to turn to the liberal discourse in Pakistan. Why is Jinnah its hero? It needs to be recognised that successive bouts of martial law have hindered civil society and freedom of expression. In such circumstances even muted liberal sentiments require the buttressing of the founding father's favour. The key text as Advani rightly recognised is the August 11 1947 speech. In times of enlightened moderation, Jinnah's Karachi Constituent Assembly address is available in full. During the martial law regime of Zia-ul-Haq, it was removed from collections of his speeches. Newspaper articles on the occasion of the anniversary of Jinnah's birth in 1981 omitted the key "secular" phrases of the speech. This censorship was consonant with the regime's self-perceived commitment to the preservation of the Pakistan ideology and the "Islamic character" of the state. It was also during the period 1977-88 that a number of unconvincing attempts were made to depict Jinnah as wanting to establish an Islamic state. Karam Hydri's work (Millat ka pasban) was typical of this genre. The restoration of democracy in 1988 encouraged liberal interpretations which played down the two nation theory and the conception of Pakistan as a "theocracy". Saeed R. Khairi (Jinnah Reinterpreted) contrasted the pragmatic and reasonable Jinnah with the Utopian and irrational Gandhi who introduced religion into politics and the insensitive Nehru who dealt the final blow to Indian unity with his "re-writing" of the 1946 Cabinet Mission Plan. The most ambitious reinterpretation of Jinnah was produced by Akbar S. Ahmed, social scientist and civil servant. He grandiloquently called Jinnah's August 11 speech as part of his "Gettysburg address". Ahmed, however, ran into controversy surrounding his multi-media projects on Jinnah because his portrayal was too socially liberal, rather than because it undermined nationalist orthodoxy. Indeed he castigated Jalal for disconnecting Jinnah from his cultural roots and portraying him like a "robot" "programmed to play for high stakes". Attempts to provide Jinnah with a "human face" with respect to his Parsi wife Rattanbhai Petit did not however play well. With a good deal of sophistication and scholarship, Ahmed maintained that in the closing period of his life, Jinnah increasingly moored his concern for tolerance and the safeguarding of minority rights in his understanding of Islam. In other words, Jinnah's secular vision had an Islamic rather than western basis. This squaring of the circle enabled Ahmed to claim that Jinnah provides a paradigm for Muslim identity and leadership in a modern world obsessed with western media images of Islamic fanaticism and terrorism. This view is as much a construct as the many other images of Jinnah created by devotees and opponents alike. The real Jinnah remains as ungraspable as the aloof stereotypical portrayals of Pakistani painters. His inscrutability is nothing new. It frequently frustrated Mountbatten during the series of meetings which took place between them early in April 1947. Historians may well gnash their teeth at the futility of projecting backwards contemporary understandings of secularism and fundamentalism in order to label Jinnah. Competing visions for the subcontinent he helped divide will continue to appropriate his legacy in the quest for legitimacy. Talbot is director of the Centre for South Asian Studies, Coventry University, and author of 'Pakistan: A Modern History' -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050609/3fe27336/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: ntid=69_zoneid=426_source=_block=0_capping=0_cb=da8e05970097146ef64cdb01e5e8e667 Type: application/octet-stream Size: 43 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050609/3fe27336/attachment.obj From pukar at pukar.org.in Thu Jun 9 16:13:20 2005 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 16:13:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] PANOPTIC BODIES: BLACK EUNUCHS IN THE TOPKAPI PALACE; Talk by Jateen Lad Message-ID: <002701c56ce0$168a3e80$16d0c0cb@freeda> The PUKAR Gender and Space Project presents a talk by Jateen Lad on ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­PANOPTIC BODIES: BLACK EUNUCHS IN THE TOPKAPI PALACE date: Friday, 17 June 2005 time: 6.30 p.m. place: Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai Abstract This lecture engages the disciplines of architecture, philology and theology to explore the notion of the harem as a forbidden and guarded sanctuary in both ritual and palatial contexts. The fantasme of the black eunuch in the Grand Seraglio has been a silent but persistent presence in representations of the imperial harem; either a perverse shadow in the margins of Orientalist representations or the epitome of loyalty in more contemporary readings. This paper enters the labyrinthine passages of the quintessential harem, the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, in an attempt to better understand the body of the eunuch and the nature of the imperial harem as an actual space. There follows a consideration of how the presence, identity and the subtleties of power acquired by the black eunuchs came to be embodied architecturally. In the process, it will be shown how the notions of surveillance and mediation - qualities embodied in the function and body of the eunuch - permeated the enclosing walls of the harem to infuse deep into its inner structure. Jateen Lad studied architecture at Cambridge, UK and has practised in London, Berlin, Rotterdam and East Africa and is design critic at a number of London schools. As a research fellow with the Aga Khan Program at Harvard and MIT his writings engaged architecture, philology and theology to explore the notion of the harem as a forbidden and guarded sanctuary in both ritual and palatial contexts. He is currently establishing a design studio in Pondicherry and is researching notions of display and multiplicity in the Hawa Mahal at Jaipur. 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/20050609/7de9b56d/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From shivamvij at gmail.com Wed Jun 8 11:32:52 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 11:32:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Correction: Invitation: poetry reading on 12 June In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: To all those who read this invitation, 12 June is a Sunday, not Saturday. My apologies if this caused any inconvenience. Shivam ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: shivam Date: Jun 8, 2005 12:40 AM Subject: Invitation: poetry reading on 12 June To: announcements at sarai.net Dear all, On 3 June, the ZESTPoets list turned one and we are organising the first ever ZESTPoets real-world poetry reading on: Saturday 12 June 2005, 5 pm at the National Coffee House, Connaught Place, Delhi. (Third Floor, Mohan Singh Place, near Rivoli Cinema) You are welcome to walk in, preferably with poems in hand. Anyone can read any poetry. You don't *have* to be a ZESTPoets member to attend, but joining the group would not be a bad idea either: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/join We have chosen CP because it is central and accessible to all; and Coffee House on Anand Vivek Taneja's recommendation. Anand promises, "Coffee House is used to impecunious poets hanging out for hours on end and declaiming (usually terrible) free verse..." So we'll try and rescue the place! You are welcome to bring along friends and spouses. It would be nice if you could inform beforehand that you will be there, by sending a brief email to lists-at-shivamvij-dot-com. See you there! Shivam From cahen.x at levels9.com Fri Jun 10 16:38:13 2005 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2005 13:08:13 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos letter / 06-03 to 06-10-2005 Message-ID: <001901c56dac$b1e42a90$0301a8c0@acerkxw6rbeu2s> pourinfos.org l'actualité du monde de l'art / daily Art news ----------------------------------------------------------------------- infos from june 03, 2005 to June 10,2005 (included) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (mostly in french) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 Call : Open Source/Open Ear, Chicago, USA. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1739 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 Call : corpo at corpo, Send me an “image” of your body, and I will send you an “image” of mine, Montpellier, France. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1738 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 Workshop : Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1737 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 Job : Otis College, LA, seeks Asst. Chair for Academic Admin. for Fine Arts, Los Angeles, USA. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1740 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 Residency : artist at Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands. http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=1736 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 Meeting : and the total library: A debate organized by the BPI, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1734 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 Meeting : Seminar open over "the century" of Alain Badiou, Etablissement d'en Face projects, Brussel, Belgique. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1733 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 Screening : Le MEX-PARISMENTAL festival 4th edition, Cinéma la Clef, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1732 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 Exhibition : Antoni Muntadas, Spanish Pavilion, 51st Venice Biennale 2005, Italy. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1729 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Exhibition : When somebody lends you his eyes... Olga Kisseleva,The New Gallery, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1728 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Exhibition : Jean-Gabriel Periot, Aire, Moulins, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1730 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 Performance : Keith Hennessy, Chosen, Les Laboratoires d'Aubervilliers, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1727 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Performance : contemporary dance Festival, Latitudes Contemporaines, Lille, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1726 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 Exhibition : Caroline, Boucher, Ingrid Luche, Le Dojo, Nice. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1725 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Meeting : Death is never like, Claude Ber, poetry market, Marche de la poesie, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1735 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Exhibition : Aurelien Louis, Aymeric Louis, Jean-François Roux - Federic Trialon,L'atelier P.K.182 , Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1724 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Exhibition : Mounia Lazali, The Lights of the lanterns, galerie perif.net , Beijing, China. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1723 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Call : Ingenio 400, Short Film and Net Art Awards, Madrid, Spain. lien http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1722 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Call : ANAT New Media Lab 2005 Call for Applications, Melbourne, Australia. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1721 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Formation : call, La Manufacture nationale de Sèvres, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1720 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Job : assistant in charge of communication, Contemporary art center La Galerie, Noisy-le-Sec, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1719 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Publication : The 485 places of the contemporary art, guides institutions of contemporary art, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1718 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Residency : artist residence, Experimental TV Center, Newark, USA. http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=1717 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Various : Art Radio, WPS1 Venice Biennale Live , Venice, Italia. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1714 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Screening : Hot Society, David Kidman, Transat Video et l’Autre cafe, St-Laurent de Terregatte, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1713 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Various : Concert-web. Do not forget all the hostages of the world, Florence Aubenas, Hussein Hanoun and others, Les Riches Douaniers, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1715 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Exhibition : The 32th edition of FIAC 2005 , Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1712 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Exhibition : Program of june, Abbaye de Maubuisson, Saint-Ouen-l'Aumône, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1711 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 Exhibition : performance, Henningsen, Infr´Action at Venice, Italia. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1710 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 Exhibition : lucien pelen, chaises, les ChantiersBoiteNoire, Montpellier, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1709 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 Exhibition : Felice Varini, Entre ciel et terre, Biennale de la Ville, Saint-Etienne, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1708 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 Exhibition : MULtiple d'artistes, Astrrides - artist studio, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1707 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 Screening : Program Barbizon theater, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1716 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 34 Meeting : Diffusion of Numerical Arts...Laboratoire Paragraphe, Paris 8, Saint Denis, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1704 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 Meeting : Internet ethics / Etica di Internet , Facoltà di Design e Arti, Rome et Venise, Italie. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1703 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 36 Meeting : Eric Rondepierre, "Alterations", Rec., Play, Rew., Centre d'art Mira Phalaina / Maison populaire, Montreuil, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1702 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Meeting : Conference "watchwords passwords" directed by Mark Alizart, Espace Paul Ricard, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1701 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 Call : to answer the questions which were raised by students, Pretoria, South Africa. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1699 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 39 Publication : Archistorm # 13 - mai-juin, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1698 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 Publication : Writing on art: a specific literature ? Figures de l'art # 9, Pau, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1697 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 Publication : Camouflage Comics: Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, Pays-Bas. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1705 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 Residency : artist residence, Synapse 2006, Ecole superieure d'arts, Rueil Malmaison, France. http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=1696 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 Residency : artist residence,The Newark Museum Arts Workshop, Newark, USA. http://pourinfos.org/residences/item.php?id=1695 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 Exhibition : Gilles Balmet, la galerie de l'Esad, Amiens, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1693 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 45 Exhibition : performance NØ PØRNØISE#1, //errances de l'eros// ERRATUM, Les Voutes, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1706 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 Exhibition : program "ManifestO" Festival d'images at Toulouse, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1692 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 47 Exhibition : directed by Michel François, Ecole Regionale des Beaux-Arts de Rouen, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1691 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 48 Exhibition : " Obsession "International Audio -Video Art Festival, Gallery -X, Istambul, Turkey. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1690 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 50 Exhibition: Web exposition : new work at computer fine arts collection, New-York, USA. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1689 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 49 Exhibition : Venice good-bye, Le Sous-Salon, news space opening in Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1688 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 50 Exhibition : Lucy ORTA Jorge, Drink water 01, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice, Italy. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1687 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 51 Exhibition : Patrick Chambon, Inauguration of the gallery Stephane GianGiacomi, Monaco, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1694 From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jun 10 22:25:22 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2005 22:25:22 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi I-Fellows meet in June Message-ID: Dear all, Delhi-based Independent Fellows 2004-05 have decided to meet on Saturday the 18th of June at the National Coffee House at Bhai Mohan Singh Place near Rivola cinema in Connaught Place at 5 pm. Past I-Fellows, current and past student stipendiaries, Sarai regulars and absolutely anyone who would like to attend, is most welcome. We particularly invite Sumit and Saumya, past I-Fellows whose research subject was the coffee houses. Like tea at JNU, coffee at the coffee house is cheap and does not bolster the interests of any multinational. Looking forward to the meet, Shivam From db at dannybutt.net Sat Jun 11 01:43:24 2005 From: db at dannybutt.net (Danny Butt) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 08:13:24 +1200 Subject: [Reader-list] Cultural Futures: Call For Contributions and Event Announcement: (Auckland, Dec 1-5 2005) Message-ID: First Event Announcement and Call For Contributions - please circulate CULTURAL FUTURES: PLACE, GROUND AND PRACTICE IN ASIA PACIFIC NEW MEDIA ARTS Hoani Waititi Auckland / Tamaki Makaurau, December 1-5 2005 http://culturalfutures.place.net.nz "The first imperative, that of crossing borders, translates as scepticism of the rhetoric of bounded identities, and relates to the role of the practitioner as a 'journeyman', as the peripatetic who maps an alternative world by her journey through it. The second, of building a shelter against the odds of the law, insists however on a practice that is located in space, and rooted in experience, that houses itself in a concrete 'somewhere' on its own terms, not of the powers that govern spaces. It is this fragile insistence on provisional stability, which allows for journeys to be made to and from destinations, and for the mapping of routes with resting places in between." -- Raqs Media Collective, 'X Notes on Practice' Cultural Futures: Place, Ground and Practice in Asia Pacific New Media Arts is an international event exploring cultural issues in the emerging new media environment. It brings internationally significant artists to Auckland / Tamaki Makaurau for dialogue, workshops and exhibitions. Cultural Futures is affiliated with the International Symposium for Electronic Arts (ISEA2006), as an initiative of the Place, Ground and Practice Working Group for the Pacific Rim New Media Summit. The Cultural Futures symposium, exhibitions and workshops will develop international awareness of local work in new media arts; and link international practices in new media arts to dialogues in Aotearoa's cultural identity. Confirmed participants include: Albert L Refiti (Aotearoa) Amanda Macdonald Crowley (Australia) Cheryl L'hirondelle (Canada) Creative Combat (Australia / Aotearoa) Fatima Lasay (Philippines) Jenny Fraser (Australia) Lisa Reihana (Aotearoa) Rachael Rakena (Aotearoa) Raqs Media Collective (India) with more currently under negotiation. Information on the presenters is available at http://culturalfutures.place.net.nz/presenters.html The symposium will include significant time set aside for open discussion, and an entire afternoon for workshops that will develop ongoing initiatives for new media arts in the Asia Pacific region. The outcomes from the workshop will be presented at the Pacific Rim New Media Summit in San Jose, California in August 2006. To support this dialogue, we will be publishing a poster/broadsheet which includes writings and imagery on the theme of "place, ground and practice in the new media context". The broadsheet will be distributed to a wide public to help establish an agenda for discussion during the symposium. Submissions might address the following themes: Place-based new media practices Migration and movement Indigeneity and colonisation Home and belonging New media and cultural transformation Globalisation and cosmopolitanism New media audiences and infrastructure Activism and social change Texts (in any genre) should be of less than 1500 words and images in JPEG format under 2MB in size. These should be sent via e-mail to info at culturalfutures.place.net.nz by August 30 2005. Publication will be at the discretion of the editors, and all submitters will be notified of the editors' decision as soon as possible. All contributions printed will be attributed and copyright will remain with the contributor. All submitters not attending Cultural Futures will receive copies of the publication by post - please include your postal address with your submission. We are also exploring possibilities for a book and/or journal issue on these themes, to be developed after the symposium. Please e-mail if you wish to receive more information about these plans as they develop. Kia ora. Danny Butt Jon Bywater Nova Paul Organisational Group, Cultural Futures info at culturalfutures.place.net.nz http://culturalfutures.place.net.nz From kaiwanmehta at gmail.com Sat Jun 11 09:09:42 2005 From: kaiwanmehta at gmail.com (kaiwan mehta) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 09:09:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Bombay Meet - Tea at Banganga Message-ID: <2482459d05061020392fce5bb@mail.gmail.com> Hi All, WE had to postpone the last meeting since most were travelling then! Well can we meet Saturday 18 JUne at 6 pm at Banganga .... the water tank at walkeshwar! Drop in a reply - coming or not! Banganga would be cool and nice ..... lets meet!! I have CC'd to some personal addreses I had....pass it on if you have some other sarai fellows' personal ids. Regards 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 mediachef at gmail.com Sat Jun 11 16:18:09 2005 From: mediachef at gmail.com (Steve Dietz) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 11:48:09 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] ISEA2006 Community Domain Commissions - Call Message-ID: <85d7931b050611034832ba69ed@mail.gmail.com> ISEA2006 Symposium ZeroOne San Jose: A Global Festival of Art on the Edge CALL FOR PROSALS FOR COMMISSIONED WORKS THEME: COMMUNITY DOMAIN http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/ http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./calls.html http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/communitydomain1/ 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 artworks and projects reflecting on the thematic of Community Domain. Up to three commissions will be awarded, and the results will be shown at the ISEA2006 Symposium and ZeroOne San Jose Festival. ABOUT THE ISEA2006 SYMPOSIUM AND ZEROONE SAN JOSE FESTIVAL The 2006 edition of the internationally renowned ISEA Symposium will be held August 5-13, 2006, in San Jose, California. The Inter-Society for Electronic Arts (ISEA) is an international non-profit organization fostering interdisciplinary academic discourse and exchange among culturally diverse organizations and individuals working with art, science and emerging technologies. Prior host cities include Helsinki, Paris, Sydney, Montreal, Chicago, Manchester and Nagoya. ZeroOne San Jose is a milestone festival to be held biennially that makes accessible the work of the most innovative contemporary artists in the world. In 2006 it will be held in conjunction with the ISEA2006 Symposium. See http://isea2006.sjsu.edu for more information about the Festival and Symposium. ABOUT THE COMMUNITY DOMAIN CALL Over the next year leading up to August 2006, individuals or groups will be commissioned to work with various San Jose communities combining technologies such as GPS, mobile communications or digital imagery to map their experiences and to tell their stories. These experiences and stories will become part of the fabric of the festival. In this way, the Festival becomes not only a glimpse of the possibilities of art and technology, but using some of those same innovative technologies, it is a celebration of the diversity found in San Jose and a platform for community members to participate. A wide range of cultural contexts, media, art disciplines and venues are feasible within the definition of "Community Domain". See http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/thematic.html#community for more about the theme. San Jose has a very diverse and hybrid population. , and we are particularly interested in projects that traverse different communities. Three commissions will be offered for projects related to the Community Domain theme: one at a level of $25,000 and two at the level of $5,000. Proposals may be submitted by individuals or groups: professional artistic credentials and advanced forms of technology are not required. The proposal narrative should be no more than three pages in length and should cover five topics: Description of the project: What are the characteristics of the project? In what ways will the project connect to the theme of Community Domain? Audience: In what fashion will an audience be engaged in this project? In what ways will the project seek to engage audience members of varying cultural backgrounds? Technology: What types of technology will be incorporated into the project? Personnel: Please identify the key individuals/groups involved in this project, and their qualifications. Budget: Please provide a brief explanation of how funds will be used to support this project. Special Considerations: Projects will be welcome in a variety of traditional or new forms of art, media and physical environments. For example, projects in formal theater or exhibition settings or informal community or outdoor settings will be appropriate. All art forms are welcome including literary, performing, visual, media and multidisciplinary. Appropriate forms of technology include, but are not limited to, mobile communications, Worldwide Web, recorded audio or video, film, robotics and digital imagery. Projects involving teams and collaboration are encouraged. All projects should incorporate an element of "shared space" that will be accessible to persons of varied backgrounds. Preference will be given to projects involving artists and other personnel having significant familiarity with the communities and cultures of San Jose and Silicon Valley. TIMELINE Proposals must be submitted by August 1, 2005. Proposals will only be accepted online at http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/submissions. All proposals will be reviewed by a panel of distinguished authorities on culture, art, technology, and community. Final awards will be announced by September 1, 2005. All awards are subject to ZeroOne San Jose's fundraising efforts. INQUIRIES Questions regarding this call for proposals can be addressed to communitydomain at yproductions.com PLEASE NOTE There will be a subsequent call, beginning September 1, 2005, for existing projects related to the Community Domain theme that do not, necessarily, focus on San Jose / Silicon Valley. http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/ http://isea2006.sjsu.edu./calls.html http://isea2006.sjsu.edu/communitydomain1/ -- 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 AIM: WebWalkAbout http://www.yproductions.com From blarkin at barnard.edu Sat Jun 11 18:17:39 2005 From: blarkin at barnard.edu (Brian Larkin) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 08:47:39 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] conference on nigerian video films Message-ID: <0619b25b77d6ec3f85a21b0814bf531c@barnard.edu> nollywood rising is a major conference/film festival on nigerian video films - nollywood as it is being called - which are rapidly becoming the dominant visual media in africa. the links page has a series of journalistic articles on the phenomenon. www.nollywoodconventionusa.com fyi for those interested in emerging media forms best brian larkin From shivamvij at gmail.com Sun Jun 12 12:07:23 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 12:07:23 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] MUMBAI: Loquations celebrates a year of ZESTPoets Message-ID: Loquations extends a warm invitation to all ZEST-ers in Bombay; please join us in the reading of your poems at NCPA on 14th July 2005. 14th July: Poetry on the net: Selections from ZESTPoets (ZESTPoets celebrated their first birthday on June 3rd.) Various readers present a programme of poems posted on the ZESTPoets list. Moderator: Jane Bhandari. Venue: The Sunken Garden, NCPA, Nariman Point, Mumbai (Entrance opposite the Oberoi.) Time: 5.30 (more or less) till 8.00. Date: Tuesday, 14th July 2005 ABOUT LOQUATIONS: Loquations was started by Adil Jussawalla a little over five years ago to provide a platform for poetry readings in English, including translations from other languages. There are about fifty members, some of whom are practising poets, though this is not a requirement. Presentations cover a wide variety of poetry subjects and styles, ranging from Sufi poems to William Shakespeare, from Rap to Classical Greek, or a simple reading of favourite poems. Presenters are mostly drawn from the group itself. Members do not read their own poetry at these meetings. From time to time outstation poets drop by to read their works, and take part in a lively discussion afterwards. Loquations meets every Tuesday evening at The Chauraha, NCPA, by kind permission. Membership is free, and visitors are welcome. For more information email loquations2003 at yahoo.co.uk -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured in into my life (-JD) www.shivamvij.com From epk at xs4all.nl Sun Jun 12 19:02:55 2005 From: epk at xs4all.nl (Eric Kluitenberg) Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 15:32:55 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Live Streams from Incommunicado 05 on June 15, 16 & 17, 2005 Message-ID: <42AC3987.7010205@xs4all.nl> A N N O U N C E M E N T: LIVE STREAMS FROM INCOMMUNICADO 05 JUNE 15,16 & 17, 2005. http://incommunicado.info/conference http://www.debalie.nl/live Incommunicado 05: information technology for everybody else International Working Conference Amsterdam, De Balie, June 16-17, 2005 Incommunicado 05 is a two-day working conference working towards a critical survey of the current state of 'info-development', also known as the catchy acronym 'ICT4D' (ICT for development). Before the recent “flattening of the world” (Thomas Friedman, 2005), most computer networks and ICT expertise were located in the North, and info-development mostly involved rather technical matters of knowledge and technology transfer from North to South. While still widely (and even wildly) talked about, the assumption of a 'digital divide' that follows this familiar geography of development has turned out to be too simple. Instead, a more complex map of actors, networked in a global info-politics, is emerging. The opening debate and the proceedings of the Incommunicado conference in the Main Hall of the conference venue De Balie in Amsterdam, will be streamed live as MP3 audio stream and a broadband videostream (Real). The main parts of the program are: * Wednesday June 15, 20.00 - 22.30 hrs Central European Time: Opening: Public Debate * Thursday June 16, 10.00 - 18.00 CET: First Day Program, discussions and workshops * Friday June 17, 10 - 18.30 CET: Second Day Program, discussions and workshops * Friday June 17, 18.30 - 19.15 CET: Remote session The live-streams are available via the following web-links: De Balie live page: http://www.debalie.nl/live (includes link to conference live-chat) MP3 stream direct: http://live.nu/balie-lo.m3u Real-stream direct: http://live.dds.nl/1.ram Please refer to the conference website for further details and background on the program: http://incommunicado.info/conference A small web dossier has been set up on the website of De Balie that will also make video-registrations of the conference live-streams available after conclusion of the event: http://www.debalie.nl/dossierpagina.jsp?dossierid=38576 Concept: Geert Lovink & Soenke Zehle Incommunicado 05 is organized by the Institute of Network Cultures (Amsterdam) together with Waag Society (Amsterdam) and the New Media Centre Sarai (Delhi), with support from HIVOS, IICD, and the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. http://incommunicado.info/conference From deb99kamal at yahoo.com Mon Jun 13 05:07:45 2005 From: deb99kamal at yahoo.com (Debkamal Ganguly) Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 16:37:45 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Introducing Swapan Kumar: Crime pulp fiction of Bengal Message-ID: <20050612233745.65335.qmail@web52802.mail.yahoo.com> Hello, In all my previous postings, I taled about pieces of memoirs or crime novels that date in the end of 19th century or early 20th century, As my intention is not that much to collect the comprehensive list for those books, I feel in previous postings I could provide some cases of literature involving crime, at the same time those texts are sites for study of other dominant cultural discourses regarding 'notion of history', 'idea of rationality', the use of the new form of novel in the context of Bengal in case of crime stories while retaining older narrative strategies. As my main working area is juvenile crime fiction I would provide in future postings for that genre as well. Right now, I would like to introduce a pulp cime fiction writer, Swapan Kumar. It was his pseudonym. According to the collected books possibly his first published pocket book came out 1953, and I can recount my juvenile period in late 70s and early 80s, till that time he was a prolofic writer. I tried to trace his career. First I tried to locate him. I asked to few publishers and book sellers in famous College St. At place people could remember him but they were amazed to know that he can become a subject of serious study. They were unable to give me his personal details not even his real name. As his books are no more available in new editions, my only luck was to look in the heaps of old books, scattered in the footpaths in and around College St. After repeated effort of mine and one of my film-institue friend Kallol (eventually he is also fascinated by the tales of Swapankumar) some old editions were dug out from the heaps of those books. More over oneday in a suburb railway station bookstall, I could find new copies of Swapan kumar. Interestingly the size of the book is shorter and thinner than the eralier more familiar editions and the publication house also has been changed. Now some of the Swapan Kumar books are published by a house who specialise in publishing in pocket books in subjects like commoner's witchcraft, how to do tantric rites to keep your enemy always away from you or a book contained instructions how to read a signs to know your future from the behaviour of a visible crow (Kaakshatra). This unusual connection of Swapan Kumar with these kind of subaltern beliefs and rituals provided me an important cue to make an impression about Swapan Kumar. While I asked about the whereabouts of Swapan Kumar, I came across two interesting stories. According to one story his real name was Dr. S.N.Pandey, and he started writing these cheap crime fictions to cover his expenses for carrying out the medical course. He also wrote some popular books on the nature and cures of 'Gupta Jouna Rog" (secret sexual diseases) in his real name. According to another version Swapan Kumar also was known was Sri Vrigu, one of the most popular Jyotishis (Palmist, future forcaster) in the suburb of Kolkata. Advertisement of his future forecasting clinic comes often in the personal columns of most celebrated dailies of Bengal like Anandabazar Patrika. In the meantime my friend Kallol unearthed the most crucial news from an old man of publishing industry, that Swapankumar/Sri Vrigu died six months back before commissioning of this project. It was a real moment of set back for me. The only option that stays with me is to construct a Swapankumar and the associated subculture around him, which was far away from the 'glory of Bengal enlightenment' culture. In coming postings I would try to provide some general characteristics of his stories, the possible cultural reading of those texts with the seriousness of studying obscured cultural artefacts. Till next posting Debkamal ------------------------------------------- 404 Vimla Vihar 8-49 Gautamnagar St no. 1 Dilsukhnagar, Hyderabad - 500060 India Phone - 9246363517 __________________________________ Discover Yahoo! Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out! http://discover.yahoo.com/stayintouch.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jun 10 19:16:16 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2005 19:16:16 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Mumbai 14th June and Delhi 12th June: ZESTPoets first anniversary reading Message-ID: Loquations extends a warm invitation to all ZEST-ers in Bombay; please join us in the reading of your poems at NCPA on 14th July 2005. 14th July: Poetry on the net: Selections from ZESTPoets (ZESTPoets celebrated their first birthday on June 3rd.) Various readers present a programme of poems posted on the ZESTPoets list. Moderator: Jane Bhandari. Venue: The Sunken Garden, NCPA, Nariman Point, Mumbai (Entrance opposite the Oberoi.) Time: 5.30 (more or less) till 8.00. Date: Tuesday, 14th July 2005 ABOUT LOQUATIONS: Loquations was started by Adil Jussawalla a little over five years ago to provide a platform for poetry readings in English, including translations from other languages. There are about fifty members, some of whom are practising poets, though this is not a requirement. Presentations cover a wide variety of poetry subjects and styles, ranging from Sufi poems to William Shakespeare, from Rap to Classical Greek, or a simple reading of favourite poems. Presenters are mostly drawn from the group itself. Members do not read their own poetry at these meetings. From time to time outstation poets drop by to read their works, and take part in a lively discussion afterwards. Loquations meets every Tuesday evening at The Chauraha, NCPA, by kind permission. Membership is free, and visitors are welcome. For more information email loquations2003 at yahoo.co.uk Issued by Jane Bhandari, Mumbai o o o o o The ZESTPoets list has turned one year old, and we're celebrating by organising its first real-world poetry reading on Sunday 12 June 2005, 5 pm at the National Coffee House, Connaught Place, Delhi. (Third Floor, Mohan Singh Place, near Rivoli Cinema) You are welcome to walk in, preferably with poems in hand. You are welcome to read whatever poetry you would want to. You don't have to be a ZESTPoets member to attend, but joining the group would not be a bad idea either. We have chosen CP because it is central and accessible to all; and Coffee House on Anand Vivek Taneja's recommendation. Anand promises, "Coffee House is used to impecunious poets hanging out for hours on end and declaiming (usually terrible) free verse..." So we'll try and rescue the place. You are welcome to bring along friends and spouses. It would be nice if you could inform beforehand that you will be there, by sending a brief email to lists-at-shivamvij-dot-com. See you there! Issued by Shivam Vij, Delhi o o o o o Please distribute as appropriate From zulfisindh at yahoo.com Sun Jun 12 04:17:09 2005 From: zulfisindh at yahoo.com (Zulfiqar Shah) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2005 15:47:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] The Price of Hate and Pardon:Paulo Coelho Message-ID: <20050611224709.81738.qmail@web30714.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The Price of Hate and Pardon Paulo Coelho [Unpublished] In my notes for the year 1989 I come across some sentences jotted down from a conversation I had with J, whom I call my “master.” At that time we were talking about an unknown mystic called Kenan Rifai, about whom little has been written. “Kenan Rifai says that when people praise us we should watch how we behave,” says J, “because that means that we hide our faults very well. Finally we end up believing that we are better than we think and then the next step is to let ourselves be dominated by a false feeling of security that will eventually set up dangers all around us.” “How can we be attentive to the opportunities that life gives us?” “If you have only two opportunities, learn how to turn them into twelve. When you have twelve they will multiply automatically. That is why Jesus says: “he who has a lot will have a lot more given. He who has little will have that little taken from him.” “That is one of the harshest sentences in the Gospels. But I have noticed throughout my life that it is absolutely true. So how can we identify the opportunities?” “Pay attention to every moment, because the opportunity - the “magic instant” – is within our reach, although we always let it pass by because we feel guilty. So try not to waste your time blaming yourself: the universe will see to correcting you if you’re not worthy of what you’re doing.” “And how is the universe going to correct me?” “It won’t be through tragedies; these happen because they are part of life, and they should not be thought of as punishment. Generally the universe shows us that we are wrong when it takes away what is most important to us: our friends. “Kenan Rifai was a man who helped many people find themselves and to achieve a harmonious relation with life. Even so, some of those people proved to be ungrateful and never even turned their head to say ‘thanks’. They turned to him only when their lives were in a state of utter confusion. Rifai helped them again without mentioning the past: he was a man with many friends and the ungrateful always ended up on their own.” “Those are fine words but I don’t know if I am capable of pardoning ingratitude so easily.” “It’s very difficult. But there is no choice: if you don’t pardon, then you’ll think about the pain they caused you and that pain will never go away. I’m not saying that you have to like those who do you wrong. I’m not telling you to go back to that person’s company. I’m not suggesting that you start seeing that person as an angel or as someone who acted without any hurtful intentions. All I am saying is that the energy of hate will take you nowhere, but the energy of pardon which manifests itself through love will manage to change your life in a positive sense.” “I have been hurt many times.” “That’s the reason that you still bear within yourself the little boy who cried hiding from his parents, the boy who was the weakest in his class. You still bear the marks of that frail little boy who could never find a girlfriend and was never good at sports. You haven’t managed to chase off the scars of some injustices they committed against you during your life. But what good does that do you? None at all. Absolutely nothing. Just a constant desire to feel sorry for yourself for being the victim of those who were stronger. Or else dress up like an avenger ready to inflict more wounds on those who hurt you. Don’t you think you’re wasting your time with all that?” “I think it’s human.” “It’s certainly human. But it’s neither intelligent nor reasonable. Respect your time on this Earth, understand that God has always pardoned you, and learn to pardon too.” After this conversation with J, which took place just before I traveled to spend 40 days in the Mojave desert in the United States, I began to understand better the boy, the adolescent, the hurt adult I once was. One morning, going from the Valley of Death in California to Tucson in Arizona, I made a mental list of everyone I thought I hated because they had hurt me. I went along pardoning them one by one and six hours later, in Tucson, my soul felt so light and my life had changed much for the better. Warriors of Light [Network] --------------------------------- Discover Yahoo! Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing & more. Check it out! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050611/64606cb9/attachment.html From iram at sarai.net Mon Jun 13 09:51:38 2005 From: iram at sarai.net (iram at sarai.net) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 06:21:38 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Rakesh Sharma vs NYPD : Please sign the petition Message-ID: Subject:Fwd: Rakesh Sharma vs NYPD : Please sign the petition From:anusha rizvi Date:Fri, 10 Jun 2005 07:28:35 +0100 (BST) To:reader-list at sarai.net fyi Subject: Rakesh Sharma vs NYPD : Please sign the petition Enclosed below is the text of a petition to be sent to authorities in New York, Washington DC and New Delhi to protest against Rakesh Sharma's harrowing experience with cops from NYPD. His seems to be a clear case of racial profiling, which, inspite of explicit denials by the US establishment, is a rampant practice. Please lend your support by raising your voice against harassment of individuals through draconian powers being exercised by the US law enforcement agencies in the name of War on Terror. Please sign the petition by going to http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/980334649 . Please circulate this petition to others in your addressbook as well. Petition text : We are shocked to hear about the intimidation and harassment faced by the well-known Indian film-maker Rakesh Sharma in New York on May 13, 2005. NYPD personnel 'detained and interrogated' him for 3 hours and subjected him to verbal and physical abuse. The details of the incident can be found in the formal complaint filed by him on May 16, 2005 with The Civilian Complaint Review Board, New York. (http://rakeshfilm.com/NYPD/index.htm) Mr. Rakesh Sharma has been traveling in several countries including USA to screen his film – Final Solution ( http://www.rakeshfilm.com/finalsolution.htm). The film has been screened at over 60 international film festivals and has won over a dozen awards. On May 12, 2005, he was invited to present his film in New York at a screening co-organized by Columbia University and New School. As is clear from the sequence of events, the next day, Mr. Sharma was taking street shots of traffic in Manhattan, less than a block away from his hotel, when an NYPD detec tive accosted him. Even though Mr. Sharma answered each query, produced his identification papers and offered to put the detective in touch with his hosts in New York, he had to face hostile questioning, threats and public humiliation. The detective confiscated his passport, physically pushed him, snatched his camera and among other things said to him: "We know how to deal with you guys, asshole", clearly a racist remark. Though Mr. Sharma was not formally arrested, he was not free to leave, not allowed to make any phone calls and was 'interrogated' by 2 more sets of officers. Finally, detectives of the 'cold case squad' at the 17th precinct illegally previewed the footage shot by him even after his identity had firmly and formally been established. We would like to register a strong protest against the NYPD and urge you to immediately conduct an enquiry into the episode. We find the ethic of interrogation adopted by the NYPD to be violent, insidious and oppressive . We feel that the NYPD not just violated several of Mr. Sharma's rights but may possibly have indulged in racial profiling. According to Mr. Sharma – " Perhaps I was accosted and interrogated because of my brown skin, my beard and the fact that I had a camera". We urge the United States Department of Justice through its Civil Rights Division to respond, especially in view of its " Initiative to Combat Post-9/11 Discrimina tory Backlash". Mayor Bloomberg, we urge you to take immediate punitive action against officers responsible for the incident. We hope that a formal apology will be tendered to Mr. Sharma and due compensation will be offered to him for the mental and physical distress suffered by him. May we also urge you to take formal steps to ensure that visitors to New York City are not subjected to such harassment and intimidation by NYPD in the future. We would like directives to be issued to law enforcement agencies to put an immediate stop to the practice of racial profiling. We oppose and resist the perpetuation of newer and more grotesque forms of violence by state agencies in the name of national security and protest strongly against the consequent violation of peoples' civil liberties and legal rights. May we suggest that such actions are not just an assault on the US Constitution but on the very concepts of liberty and freedom of expression. --- Rakesh wwww.rakeshfilm.com From aarti at sarai.net Mon Jun 13 15:20:52 2005 From: aarti at sarai.net (Aarti) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 15:20:52 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Sarai.txt 2.2 (text version) Message-ID: <42AD56FC.5090608@sarai.net> Sarai txt 2.2 1 May - 1 July, 2005 Also see: http://broadsheet.var.cc/blog for previous issues. *TRANSMIT* A blank audio cassette, CD, notebook is a medium of as well as testimony to multiple everyday acts of creativity; a tool and an impetus to the flow of needs, desires and friendships; a gift, and also a commodity. That which does not contain anything can take any form. That which does not have a fixed location finds itself constituting the rhythms of different relationships. It flows, leaving trails in the landscape. These trails are lines of transmission. They could be the pre-configured circuits on which transmission rides. Or rewired circuits, as that which is transmitted seeks and finds new shapes, carriers, loops, in its path. And they are also eddies, of acts performed and journeys undertaken when that which is being transmitted spills over its destined routes. Depending on how lines of power are drawn, and where we position ourselves, we experience and register blockages, barriers, risks, threats, fears and small moments of epiphany. *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Content of the text version: (Does not include the poster) SIDE 01 Anchor texts: - Production of Newness (commons-law post by Solomon Benjamin) - Forms of Technology Transfer (from public lecture at 'Contested Commons Trespassing Publics' conference, Sarai-CSDS and ALF, by Doron Ben Atar) SIDE 02 - PLAY: Even Before I have Stepped into The Station... (Meera Pillai, Sarai Independent Fellow) - SHUFFLE: How to Build a Transmitter - REPLAY: What it Is and What It's Called (from presentation at 'Contested Commons Trespassing Publics' conference, Sarai-CSDS and ALF, by Jane Gaines) - PAUSE: Long Distance Conversations (Shuddhabrata Sengupta) - REWIND: The Censor and the Interpreter (from presentation at 'History, Memory, Identity' seminar at Sarai-CSDS, by Luisa Passerini) - RECORD: The Map is Never Complete/Terracotta (Muthata Ramanathan, Sarai Independent Fellow, and Smriti Vohra) - RELEASE: MGM Vs Grokster: "My Way" to "Our Way" BACKPAGE: - Sarai[s] : Saraiki + frEeMuzik.net - Forthcoming: Medianagar 02 - Credits write to : broadsheet at sarai.net for print copies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SIDE 01: Subject: Production of Newness Date: 19/03/2005 To: commons-law at sarai.net Reply to: sollybenj at yahoo.co.in Hi, I want to raise some questions and provocations about the 'production of newness' regarding settled understandings about modes of producing social goods, specifically in the context of the divide between research in the university setting and its application on the ground. My observations come from a close look at three of India's large industrial clusters - one in Delhi, which in 1995 manufactured about 30% of the cables (23 family types) and conductors (both copper and aluminium) in the Indian market; and textile clusters in the cities of Kancheepuram (of 'high grade' silk sarees) and Ramanagaram (silk reeling, with Asia’s largest silk cocoon market). Our studies in these areas have been to trace how these economies grew, paralleling macro-economic transformation, to demonstrate that very little, if not all, of the innovation came from non-university trained people, on the job. Not only is the range of innovations in all three places fascinating, but also, in the very short period of three months, a new fabric made out of silk waste found itself in the high-fashion markets of Milan, New York and Tel Aviv, via 'suitcase entrepreneurs'. I would like to point out that there was no intellectual property regime to 'sustain and foster innovation', and no technical or management training by NGOs or government agencies. There were a few cases where there was an attempt to promote 'new technologies' - one by an NGO, and the other by the Tata Energy Research Institute - on silk reeling. These were total disasters, and the overqualified technicians doing their stints in the field were the laughing stock of the scruffy locals, who commented that the salaries would be better utilised in buying more cocoons! As for 'basic research', one has only to visit the computers supplied by Japan Aid laid out in thick plastic sheets in a 'demonstration' Tata silk farm near Bangalore. I suspect that as part of a Nehruvian development argument, the issue of basic research in universities, as contrasted with 'slummy'/applied research innovation, reflects a politics of the ability to corner resources. Earlier, it was the select few in the IITs (Indian Institute of Technology); and now it's the multinationals, via complex contractual regulations and the international intellectual property rights asserted in their newfound collaborations. I'll take the chance to mention here a very interesting document - the 1912 Mysore Economic Conference by Sir Vishwaria, where the issue was technological innovation in silk production. The verbatim accounts of the discussions show that the big debate was whether to have research exclusively in laboratories, or instead for scientists to sleep out on the farms, and observe how farmers reared cocoons and made yarn. And in this way, test out their 'innovations' in the field, and move away from a framework of 'technology transfer' to a framework of 'technology, basic and applied'. For those interested, we'll be happy to share this, perhaps in a more reflective piece. But for now, I strongly urge a look at accounts of historical and social processes like the 1912 conference! History may help us ask necessary questions about our assumptions and axioms. Cheers, Solly Excerpted and adapted from a posting by Solomon Benjamin on the commons-law list. http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/commons-law/2005-March/002324.html *** - Forms of Technology Transfer During the 18th and 19th centuries, there were three forms of technology transfer between the US and Europe. One was the knowledge itself, whichever way it came. It could come as something written or described, but this was problematic because descriptions lacked standard measurements. For example, when people registered for patents in the English Patent Office, they were required to describe the machine, but they always kept their accounts vague because they feared that if the descriptions were too detailed, the machine would be copied. Another form of transfer was the machines themselves. But these were not of great use unless you knew how to operate them. Which brings me to the central agent, the people themselves, the carriers of skill and technological know-how, who were crucial to this process. The migration of artisans and the dissemination of technical skills took place in spite of a concerted effort on the part of the British government to keep its trade secrets at home. As the imperial conflict between the patriots and the metropolis took shape in the mid-1770s, the British Parliament ruled that all people leaving for North America from the British Isles and Ireland, with the intent to settle, were required to pay £50 per head. After the United States won its independence from Britain, the act of exporting equipment for various industries, from textiles, leather, paper and metals to glass and clock-making, was prohibited. The Utopian Socialist thinker Robert Owen, recalling his earlier days in the English textile industry, reported that in the 1780s, “Cotton mills were closed against all strangers. No one was admitted. They were kept with great jealousy against all intruders, with their doors being always locked.” A tactic that can still evoke smiles was that of employing Welsh speakers in certain mills. These people were ‘safe’; they could not go anywhere or divulge anything, as no one understood their language. The American ‘founders’ knew of these restrictions. But they also believed that for the United States to survive politically and economically, it had to close the technology gap. Framers of the US Constitution unanimously approved Article 1, Section 8, which instructed the government to promote the progress of science and useful arts by securing, for a limited time, for authors and inventors, the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. This was a significant break from the English system of intellectual property, which was itself founded on the promotion of piracy. In the 14th century, the English monarchy lured European artisans to England by offering them a production monopoly. The English law of patents granted what are known as ‘patents of importation’ to introducers. ‘Inventors’ and ‘introducers’ are different categories; yet in the English system, they are not distinct. The first United States Patent Act broke with the European tradition of patents of importation. It restricted patents exclusively to original inventors, and established the principle that prior use anywhere in the world constituted grounds for invalidating a patent. In theory, the US pioneered a new standard of intellectual property rights that set the highest possible standards for patent protection, that of worldwide originality and novelty. But the intellectual property laws Congress enacted in the first fifty years of its existence were a smokescreen for a very different reality. The statutory requirement of worldwide originality and novelty did not hinder widespread, and officially sanctioned, technology piracy. William Thornton, who administered the American Patent Office for an extended period, did not insist on the oath of worldwide novelty. It is indeed entirely possible that most of the patent applications received were for devices that were already in use, since acquiring a patent required little more than the successful completion of paperwork. Moreover, the Patent Act of 1793 explicitly prohibited foreigners from obtaining patents in the US for inventions that had been put to work elsewhere in the world. This meant that while US citizens could petition for introducers patents in European nations, European inventors could not protect their intellectual property in America. What seems to be emerging, then, is a new understanding of the proper arena for technology piracy. The young republic embraced a Janus-faced approach. In theory, it pioneered a new standard of intellectual property with the strictest possible requirements. A self-respecting government, eager to join the international community, could not flaunt its violation of the laws of other nations. But in practice, the state encouraged widespread piracy and industrial espionage. In this process of theoretical distancing from/pragmatic embracing of piracy, the US had come full circle. The fledgling republic had become the primary technology exporter in the world. The years of piracy upon which the current stature was founded were, however, erased from the American national memory. The intellectual debt owed to imported technology did not turn the US into a champion of the free exchange of knowledge. As the diffusion of technology began to flow eastward of the Atlantic, America emerged as the world’s foremost advocate of extending intellectual property rights to the international sphere. Excerpted and adapted from “US Path to Wealth and Power: Intellectual Piracy and the Making of America”, a public lecture by Doron Ben- Atar at the ‘Contested Commons, Trespassing Publics’ conference organised by Sarai-CSDS and the Alternative Law Forum (6-8 January 2005, New Delhi). The full text of the lecture can be accessed at: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2005-April/005344.html An audio file of the lecture is available for free download at: http://www.sarai.net/events/ip_conf/doron.mp3 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ SIDE 02 PLAY - Even Before I Have Stepped into the Station... Spotting us from the corner of their eyes, the boys leap up and flee. Joseph calls out, “Hey, it’s us! Where are you off to?” They pause, two or three with a leg over the railings. Their faces split in grins, they wait for us to catch up with them. “Did you think we were the police?” asks Joseph, his cheerful voice booming. “We were playing bomma,” they explain. A simple game played by younger boys at Vijaywada railway station: tossing a coin, calling out heads or tails, keeping the coin if you call correctly. The keepers of law mistake this for gambling, and usually object. Curious passersby slow down, stop to watch us talk to the children. There are seven boys aged 8-12 in this group, hanging out at the end of the handicapped-accessible ramp beside the broad steps of the station’s side entrance. Vijaywada is the largest junction on the South Central Railway. It services 135 trains and about 30,000 passengers daily. On an average, 23 children arrive here each day, having left their homes and families. Joseph and Basha, who trawl the railway platforms daily on behalf of a local NGO working with children in need of care and protection, are familiar figures to these particular boys. The fact that I am accompanying Joseph and Basha makes me ‘safe’, in the group’s perception. “Does anyone speak Hindi? She can speak Hindi,” Joseph says. In my minimal Telugu, and with hand gestures, I explain, “Telugu raadu. I can’t maatlaadu, but if you speak to me, artham cheysukontaanu.” All seven are amused at my incompetence, but generous about my effort. Three start talking to me in Hindi, and a fourth, we discover, speaks Tamil, so he and I have that language in common. Most important is their question “Tumhara gaon kahaan (Where is your village)?” One of them has travelled to Bangalore, and asks me where the street children’s shelters are. “I looked for them, but I couldn’t find them.” I give him a quick tip on how to locate the shelters there. A man comes by with a flask and tiny plastic “glasses” that can hold about two tablespoons of liquid. Within a moment, we are all sipping tea. The vendor is in a chatty mood. “I tell them they should also sell tea...I can help one or two. They can sell tea and make Rs. 50-100 a day. But they don’t listen.” The boys ignore him. “Do you hang out here often?” I ask. They say yes, nod casually. “And no one disturbs you?” “No...Or if they come, we go there. Or there.” They point to the roof abutting the ramp, to the roof of the wide porch, to the space under the metal stairs leading from a footbridge to the road outside the railway station. “When we want to sleep, we go under those stairs. Or up there, when it is hot. We climb up that.” They point at a cast iron drainpipe along the side of the building. “Is that difficult?” They laugh. One boy leaps onto the railings. In a couple of seconds, he has shimmied up to the roof and back. “We can climb up that neem tree to the porch. Or use that pipe over there...or those pipes.” I’ve not even entered yet, and already I’ve seen three non-standard living spaces that the Vijaywada railway station provides to its young residents. Spaces that I have never noticed there before. This was my second lesson in recent times. Earlier, three young men at the station had drawn freehand maps to indicate spaces they thought were ‘safe’ and ‘dangerous’ for children who live there. In their sketch, a well-lit, modern food court and the railway reservation counter were marked as dangerous, and the roofs of footbridges and stairways connecting different platforms were marked as the safest - for rest, for play, for living. How the youngsters inhabiting the station perceived its spaces in terms of ‘security’ and ‘threat’ was in complete contradiction to how those same spaces were perceived by me, a middle-aged, middle-class woman. Meera Pillai mpillai65 at yahoo.com Sarai Independent Fellow, 2004-05. Her research is titled “Food Courts and Footbridges: Conceptualising Space in Vijaywada Railway Station”. Compiled from two postings, which can be accessed at: https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2005-January/004879.html https://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2005-May/005689.html *** SHUFFLE Materials Required ØA 1-megahertz crystal oscillator ØAn audio transformer ØA generic printed circuit board ØA phone plug ØA 9-volt battery clip ØA 9-volt battery ØA set of alligator jumpers ØSome insulated wire for an antenna How to Build a Transmitter 1] Flatten out the two metal tabs on the bottom of the transformer and glue them to the circuit board. 2] Insert and firmly secure the leads of the oscillator into the circuit board, placing it far to the right. Solder. 3] Insert the stripped end of the red wire of the transformer into a hole in the printed circuit board. Insert the red wire from the battery clip into another hole that is connected by copper foil to the first hole. Solder. 4] Insert the white transformer wire into a hole whose copper foil is connected to the upper left pin of the oscillator. Solder. 5] Cut one of the clip leads in half and strip the insulation from the last half-inch of each piece. 6] Insert the black wire of the battery clip into a hole whose copper foil connects to the lower right pin of the oscillator. Do the same with the stripped end of one of the alligator clip leads. Solder the two wires to the copper foil. The alligator clip will be the “ground” connection. 7] Insert the stripped end of the other alligator clip into a hole that is connected to the upper right pin of the oscillator. Solder to the copper foil. This is the antenna connector. 8] Open the phone plug, insert the blue and green wires of the transformer into the plastic handle. Put each of the transformer wires into holes in the plug. Solder. Depending on the antenna, the transmitter can send voice and music across the room, or across the street. To get a good range, clip the ground wire to a good ground, such as a cold water pipe, and clip the antenna to a long wire. Choose your range. Transmit. http://www.scitoys.com/scitoys/scitoys/radio/am_transmitter.html *** REPLAY - What It Is, and What It’s Called How many times can a joke be told if a joke be told more than once? How many ways can a joke be told if a joke be told more than once? What would a jester do if told that a joke dies with its first telling? Would a joke remain the same joke if we only changed the spelling? In 1895, the Lumière brothers in France made a film called L'Arroseur Arrosé, or The Waterer Watered. The plot was apparently simple, comic, almost slapstick. A gardener is holding a hose. A boy steps on the hose, choking off the flow of water. The gardener peers down the hose. The boy lifts his foot from the hose. The gardener is squirted. Early films were in high demand; the period between 1895 and 1899 was a sort of Wild West of opportunity to reproduce at random and at large. Often the original negatives ran out, and the prints could only be shown about 60 times; by then they were reduced to shreds. In such instances, as with The Waterer Watered, the only option was to re-shoot, i.e., to ‘re-tell’ the joke. So, like all jokes which grow and transform in the telling, this rudimentary plot changed with each version. Stylistic components such as depth of field were introduced; so were dramatic elements. The boy is spanked; the ‘watered’ gardener ‘waters’ the boy in turn; the boy is played by a girl... From 1896 to 1903 occurs what I call the moment of the too-too-many copies of The Waterer Watered. Through my research on this film’s multiple variants, we know that a film called The Gardener (Le Jardinier, 1895, Lumière Company) was shown at the Salon Indien in Paris. The film later becomes The Waterer Watered. This is further complicated, in that the Lumières made the same film, The Waterer Watered, more than once. Making and Re-making: Most textbooks record one version of The Waterer Watered, and possibly two. Only two textbooks from the 1930s refer to ten versions. I have actually counted up to sixteen versions. As we shall see, these versions were not just by the Lumières, the ‘original’ makers. In 1896, Méliès made his own version. Edison made an 1896 American version, Bad Woman, Bad Boy, in which both roles are played by women; this film is not extant. The British made The Bad Boy and the Garden Hose (Blackton and Smith), and The Gardener with Hose or The Mischievous Boy (W.H. Smith). Then we have two more French examples, one of them made by the pioneer woman producer/director Alice Guy-Blaché. Most interesting to me is the mystery print, The Gardener and the Bad Boy, which was shown in New York in 1896, but had no mention of any exhibitor or distributor. The date of this ‘extra-legal’ screening does not correspond with the date that the Lumière company actually showed the first work in New York. Prints and Titles: The other question of the too-too-many copies, besides the number of copies, is also what you call the copies. Do the titles give us an indication of the prints? Because all we have to go on, in our attempt to do this kind of motion picture history, this history of copyright, are titles and prints in archives all over the world which have probably been misnamed. In addition to the multiple translations of the French L’Arroseur Arrosé as Waterer and Watered and The Waterer Watered, you will also see The Practical Joke and the Gardener, Watering the Gardener, The Sprinkler Sprinkled, and Teasing the Gardener. With all of these variations, where is the correspondence, if any, between the titles and the prints? Some argue that The Waterer Watered is the first comedy, some argue that it’s the first fiction film. I have to tell you that I am not a believer in ‘firsts’. I am also on the warpath against ‘origins’. And what I love about this particular project is that it is impossible to really determine where the ‘first’ occurs, when the ‘first’ occurs, or if there is a ‘first’... Excerpted and adapted from the presentation “Early Cinema, Heyday of Copying” by Jane Gaines, at the ‘Contested Commons, Trespassing Publics’ conference organised by Sarai-CSDS and the Alternative Law Forum (6-8 January 2005, New Delhi). An audio file of the presentation can be accessed at: http://www.sarai.net/events/ip_conf/day02_audio/stream-070105-afterlunch.mp3 *** PAUSE - Long Distance Conversations I am a prisoner of phone booths. STD/ISD/PCO/FAX/Xerox By Japanese Machine booths. I am enthralled by their darkened glass panes, stencilled signage and plastic flowers, the late hours they keep, and the stories that gather on their wallpapers. Like an idiot hungry for tales of travellers who idled in the sarais of the Delhi sultanate, I waste my time in the phone booths of ‘90s New Delhi. Even when I have nothing to say and no one to call. I go there to eavesdrop on the world, to whisper in my head the magic of distant place names: Adas, Addagadde, Galsi, Gambhoi, Kanjirapuzha, Kalna, Zira, Zineboto. Or, I search further in the book of codes for cities with enchantments: Rosario, Uppsala, Valparaiso, Zauqa, Aqaba...and Sandnes...and Los Angeles. ...Phone booths in the city centre, close to railway stations and cheap hotels, are home to a floating population of tourists and travellers in various stages of fatigue and enthusiasm. They unbuckle their voluminous rucksacks, unzip their hip pouches to take out scraps of paper with phone numbers in Belgium or Germany, while imagining the prospects of return and mapping their future itineraries. Will it be Ladakh before Goa, or Dharamsala before Varanasi? These are the roving envoys of the lonely planet, invariably overcharged by smooth phone booth owners who hide their racism behind the complicated arithmetic of time and money conversions. ...A refugee Afghan doctor and his wife come to ring up Kabul. I asked them once if they still have friends or relatives there. “No,” they said, “everyone is dead, or in exile. We call only to see if the house we left behind is still standing. When the phone rings, it means that the house has not been shelled.” ...Three Malayali nurses, exceptionally graceful, regularly call up family in their home town. After the change has been tendered, the boss of our phone booth, who lets the nurses move to the head of the queue (no one seems to mind), asks them searching questions about the Christian faith. Is the Holy Ghost a ghost? Was Jesus reborn after his death? Did the Virgin Mary have a normal delivery? Do Christians have caste? The nurses painstakingly answer these questions in halting Hindi, promise to try and find out from their priest. ...The night’s calls are nearly over, at 12.40 am. Along with me, there’s a backpacker still trying to get through to Barcelona, and the boss, staring at cable TV. The phone rings, but the boss and the backpacker have fallen asleep, and for the next twenty-five minutes or so, the shiny-shoed salesman who rushes in makes long-distance love to a married woman in Bangalore. Sometimes he breaks off from Kannada and begins talking about her long hair in English. He jokes about the sleeping husband, asks for news of the children, promises to see her soon. ...The boss counts the day’s takings and begins to roll down the shutter. I offer to drive the backpacker down to the all-night STD booth outside the Eastern Court buildings on Janpath. We drive in silence; we have things to say to the people we need to call, not to each other. Then my companion decides to tell me that his friend is dead and cold in a hospital morgue, that he is catching the next flight back in the morning with her body. When we get to the booth, he lets me wake the operator and get the cards with which to work the phones. He shuts the door tight behind him when he calls, and I cannot hear his voice. When he is done, he thanks me and leaves before I can ask him if I can take him to his hotel, or to the hospital. ...How did he say what he had to tell his friend’s family? “Flavia and I are coming home tomorrow, but she is not alive”, or “Flavia died this morning at 6.45 in her sleep”, or just, “Flavia is dead.” Sometimes I think of all the telephone conversations that criss-cross the earth...Numbers don’t match, there is static interference, satellite links fail, people don’t know what to say, or are unable to say what they mean. Perhaps all that is unsaid collects each night and hovers above us like an unknown layer in the atmosphere, until it is blown away on the rare days when people find it possible to really speak to each other. Shuddhabrata Sengupta shuddha at sarai.net Excerpted from an essay first published in The India Magazine, August-September 1996; republished in Elsewhere, ed. Kai Friese, Penguin India, New Delhi, 2000. For full text see: http://www.sarai.net/compositions/texts/works/longdistance.htm *** REWIND - The Censor and the Interpreter For an oral historian, the first major source is the encounter between two subjectivities, between the interviewee and the interviewer. But when I say two subjectivities, I mean not only the agency, the capacity to act. I mean also the world of ideas, imagination, thought, emotion, which inhabits the subject. And the source here is to be understood in the literal sense like the water which vivifies. The source is the meeting between human beings, and therefore the recognition between them, how they relate to each other and present each other, the understanding between them, and finally the actual emotion of meeting. So this is the first source of oral history: the emotion of the meeting. Of course, there are other similar sources. I mean, there is a similar source in history also that does not use the oral at all, and it is called empathy. It is the empathy of the biographer; it is the empathy with the document. So this encounter is there, the encounter of feelings. Why do I insist on the emotion? Not only because I think that it is an under-recognised topic and attitude in history, but also because I am thinking of Freud’s reference to the question of emotion when he says that the erotic drive is actually extremely flexible. It is much more flexible than the drive to eat, because you cannot eat just anything but you can become attached to anything. You can love anything. This flexibility of sentiment is the first source of oral history. Secondly, this encounter between two subjectivities is expressed in words, and therefore it gives rise to an inter-subjectivity of dialogue. It is this inter-subjectivity that is taped on the tape recorder. This ‘tape’ is a very strong censorship. It is the censorship of everything that is not a word. The tape recorder does not include the image, does not include the body. (It does, however, include laughter, chuckles, cries...). But the very censorship it operates through also forms the tools through which we work. The taped interview is the source I always send my students back to. They cannot go back to the original situation but they can go back to the taped interview. The transcript, which is the third source, is only a shortcut: a shortcut for analysis. But the transcript is already the translation of the oral into the written. So it has undergone a huge transformation. And then there is a fourth transformation, which is interpretation. Here one uses all sorts of disciplinary tools, from folklore, from anthropology, from media studies, from economics, and so on. Then there is the question of temporalities. I would say that in the oral interview there are three temporalities at least. One is the time in which one does the interview – the present. Another is the time period of the narration. A narration, for instance, can refer to Fascism in the 1930s, between the two world wars. And the third is the temporality of the narration itself. The narration can very well have centuries-long roots. It can have roots in other traditions of narration – a tradition of narration that exists since a very long time or that comes from different spheres, for instance TV shows, and so on. Operating through these three temporalities, the inter-subjectivity of the encounter produces something that can constitute very different collections. It can constitute an oral archive, it can become the basis of a community project or it can undergo literary treatment, or it can become a radio programme, or it can become a source for history. These are ways in which oral material becomes a source...In order to be transformed into a source, oral material has to undergo specific procedures. Excerpted and adapted from a talk by Luisa Passerini at the ‘History, Memory, Identity’ workshop organised by Sarai-CSDS (14-16 January 2005). *** RECORD - The Map Is Never Complete This project is an attempt to extend critical understandings of the use of spatial technologies (remote sensing and GIS) that typically focus on institutional and instrumental aspects. My research includes documenting my observations of the actual processes of technological practice. I argue that we should pay attention to the spaces and actors involved in the technical stages of knowledge production, and maintain the linkages from the phenomenon to be represented (e.g., the agrarian landscape) to the objects of representation (e.g., a land use map) and the manner in which these are utilised. During my ongoing interactions with the technical staff of the NGO that I have been associated with for this work, I have noticed a specific culture of learning/practice. I accompanied a soil scientist on a soil mapping field trip. To familiarise me with his approach to soil classification and mapping, he handed me a soils manual and asked me to read it on the day before our field visit. It contained information about soil characteristics such as texture, depth, and colour – specifically, definitions of different classes of texture, depth, etc. Later he gave me a quick overview of his field methods. These methods were based on the interaction between soil characteristics, and this information was not contained in the manual. I asked him about this as we drove to the site the next morning. He replied that while writing the manual, he had made a deliberate choice to not include the information about the interactions. He also refused to tell me about it in the jeep. He described this as a question of style that he had developed over the years. In his opinion, if he ‘told’ me about it, broke it down into steps, it would not help me in the least. I would not develop my own style or understanding, and would instead practice a simplistic method of soil mapping. We spent nearly two days traversing the fields, classifying soils and mapping their distributions. During this, he shared many insights. However none were prescriptive; instead, they were (some rather slippery) building blocks. This seemed to me a specific epistemology and approach to learning. There is no absolute soil class or soil map for a region. Much is based on interpretation and making tough, but informed, choices on the ground. In order to impart this kind of knowledge, my ‘teacher’ chose to provide me with the basics textually, and then chose to show the way differently through ‘practice’. I had to learn to make these choices myself as I stood on a plot of land and looked around – how to situate myself with respect to the local topography, interpret the local geology, triangulate it with standing crops (if any) in the area, the slope of the land, the colour of the soil. The map is never complete, stage by stage, inch by inch – a choice you make down the line might still influence a choice you had just made. Muthatha Ramanathan muthatha at u.washington.edu Sarai Independent Fellow, 2004-05. Her research is titled “Tracing Spatial Technology in the Rural Development Landscape of South India”. Her posting can be accessed at: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2005-April/005376.html +++++++ Terracotta, known locally as peeli mitti (yellow earth), is of a recalcitrant grain, its rough beauty fretted with stones, roots, twigs, sharp edges of buried fragments, gritty seams of resistance willing their own annihilation. To prepare this clay for use, soak it in a bucket overnight. Pour off the water that collects on the surface of the sediment. Vigorously sieve the dense slurry through a close-latticed mesh. Free of detritus, liquid silk falls through, so fine that it coats the skin without nudging the alignment of a single hair. Allow this yield to dry to the preferred consistency, turning it over occasionally to make sure it is evenly exposed. Technically speaking, if the slurry is kept adequately moist and left to “sour” in the bucket for an extended period, the clay later proves stronger, as well smoother and more supple, to the potter’s grip. smriti at sarai.net *** RELEASE - MGM vs. Grokster: “My Way” to “Our” Way In October 2001, Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer and twenty-eight of the world’s largest entertainment companies took the makers and distributors of the Grokster, Morpheus and Kazaa softwares to court, alleging secondary copyright violation. They held that the distributors of the software were directly responsible for the infringing activities of users of the system. MGM vs. Grokster came up for hearing before a bench of the US Supreme Court on 29 March 2005. Arguments are currently in progress, and a decision is expected by the end of June this year. Grokster, like other P2P softwares such as Kazaa, Limewire and BitTorrent, enables users connected to a network, such as the Internet, to share files with each other. These could be music files, video files and even digitised books. The industry has traditionally been suspicious of technologies that enable the circulation of cultural material in ways and forms that cannot be controlled by the owners of the copyright on that material. An anxiety ratcheted up by the immense transformative possibilities opened up by new media and digital technology tools on the one hand, and a parallel tightening of an international intellectual property regime on the other. The Grokster case is not the first instance of such a suit. In 1999, AGM music filed a similar suit against the makers of Napster, a similar file-sharing software. At the juridical level, the Grokster case is a question of technological innovation and its limits, when situated within a regime that places an equally high value on the protection of the intellectual property of other innovators, such as artists, authors, musicians, etc., which technologies like Grokster are seen to threaten, violate and undermine. A precedent had been set in 1984 with Sony Corporation of America vs. Universal City Studios, or the Betamax case. The US Supreme Court ruled that a company was not liable for creating a technology that some customers may use for copyright infringing purposes, so long as the technology lends itself to substantial, commercially viable non-infringing uses. However a consideration of the Grokster case would have to take into account the fact that this is as much about the ‘case’ and all that surrounds it as a cluster of transmissible signals, as it is about the bare facts of the case itself. The many avatars of Grokster – a posting on a list, an announcement on a website, a transcript in an archive, an entry in a blog, perhaps a conversation between a judge and his teenage grandson – gesture to the cumulative effects of what happens when something enters a network capable of allowing the simultaneous exchange of information between an ever-expanding constituency of interested parties. Ideas multiply and go places. And so does the simple idea of file sharing. From a court case to a web log to a posting to the words in the paper that you hold in your hand to the next set of hands that hold the paper, and so on. A lawsuit against a technology of transmission itself becomes the object of transmission along the byways of the Net. Information travels across the neurons of the Net sparking off connections, sometimes at random. A Washington lawyer who attended the oral submission before the Supreme Court describes this on his blog, an artist who uses file-sharing software to upload and share his music with peers features news of the case on his site, a website begins a countdown of all the technologies that would be retrospectively prohibited if the Court rules against the technology, a law school decides to upload the oral transcripts in pdf format on its portal. A group of artists get together and file amicus curiae (friends of the court) briefs in favour of Grokster, just as other artists signed by the recording labels file briefs against it. A critical mass gathers around the case, so that regardless of whether the final judgment is in its favour or not, it (and along with it, the idea of file sharing) has nonetheless entered the accretive memory of the network. The circulation of things is crucially about the patterns of usage that emerge around them. Circulation builds cultures and contexts of sociality, in which things are gifted, shared, transformed, repurposed and remixed. In a network, Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” is open to becoming “his way” and “her way”. Sometimes maybe even “our way”. Then, these ‘ways’ enter the everydayness of discourse and practice and it becomes difficult to create barriers to block them. For more information on this case see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MGM_Studios_v._Grokster and http://www.eff.org/IP/P2P/MGM_v_Grokster/ To download a full text version in pdf format of the oral submission before the United States Supreme Court, see: http://p2p.weblogsinc.com/entry/1234000167039288/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ BACKPAGE: - Story: Saraiki SARAI[S]: In medieval South Asia, sarais (inns) were constructed at strategic distances all along intersecting trade routes, providing free food and lodging for travellers, and grain and fodder for their weary horses, camels and pack animals. Sarais were junctions where those on the road -– merchants, traders, artisans, seekers of fortune, scholars, pilgrims, vagrants, beggars, priests – could find shelter, sustenance and companionship. Magicians, dancers and musicians lived around the sarais and performed for its floating clientele. Sarais functioned as crucial hubs in an extensive communication network that used horse mail and itinerant human couriers to cover huge distances. Messages passed along the length and breadth of the South Asian subcontinent, from Kandahar and beyond in the far north-west, bordering Afghanistan and the Baluchistan deserts in the west, to the Irrawaddy basin in Burma in the east, and from the Tibetan plateau in the far north to the far southern tip of the Deccan peninsula. Even today, the map of Delhi is inscribed with at least twelve locations that include the word sarai. A transit point suspended between departure and arrival, the sarai was a site for the exchange of news, stories, gossip, trade secrets and useful information. Many tongues carrying their own subtle inflections and unique cadences jostled for space here. From this eloquent din emerged a strange, polyglot creation, an unruly mix of Persian, Khari Boli, Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashto and Turkish. It was called Saraiki: the language of the sarai. ** frEeMuzik.net Welcome to frEeMuzik (http://www.freemuzik.net/). This is a digital intervention, a collective where musicians can interact and create recordings without commercial pressures. It aims to foster an open cultural space for the expression and documentation of musical forms that are ignored/neglected in the market, and are threatening to disappear. All music on the site can be freely downloaded. Artistes are invited to improvise, experiment and freely contribute to frEeMuzik.net, which will focus on genres across the musical spectrum, including Indian and Western classical/folk, Latin, Indigenous and electronic. With its alternative, non-profit approach, and without soliciting funds/promotion from music companies or corporate sponsors, frEeMuzik.net intends to establish a record label and recording studio, and build an audio library by collecting old and rare records as well as new CDs. We will also be working with Internet radio towards broadcasting frEeMuzik.net in the public domain. We welcome participation from photographers, musicians, sound recordists, mixing/mastering experts, studio professionals, software coders and people interested in contributing to the frEeMuzik.net resource base in any way. Contact ish at sarai.net http://users.sarai.net/ish/idea.htm FORTHCOMING: Medianagar 02 Medianagar is the annual Hindi publication of the Publics and Practices in the History of the Present project, in Sarai. Medianagar 02 explores the dynamic and fluid networks of the production, distribution and circulation of diverse media forms. It attempts a creative exploration of the forms, trends and representations of media in the contemporary city. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ [END OF BROADSHEET] CREDITS Editorial Collective: Aarti Sethi Iram Ghufran Shveta Sarda Smriti Vohra Editorial Co-ordinator Monica Narula Design (print version): Mrityunjay Chatterjee Photographs: Monica Narula Write to broadsheet at sarai.net From shivamvij at gmail.com Mon Jun 13 23:36:02 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 23:36:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] India has one of the world's best universities Message-ID: No exams. No classes. No degrees. Only some violence, a few suicides. Welcome to India's Universities. o o o o o o No exams again, boy ends life By Siraj Qureshi Thursday, June 02, 2005 AGRA, JUNE 1: http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=71517 A student of Dr B.R. Ambedkar University in Agra committed suicide yesterday after the authorities put off the pharmacy examinations for the third year in a row. Sonvir Singh's classmates took to the streets after the incident and went on a rampage for over three hours inside the campus today, pelting stones at the Institute of Basic Science and the Vice-Chancellor's office. The university authorities had to call in the police to bring the students under control. According to the students, Sonvir, a resident of Saiyyan town of Agra, had shut himself inside his hostel room on Tuesday after he saw that the university has closed for summer vacation till July 4 without announcing the exam dates for the pharmacy course. It was to be held in May. Fearing that his careerwas doomed, he allegedly took his own life. From machleetank at gmail.com Tue Jun 14 12:54:33 2005 From: machleetank at gmail.com (Jasmeen P) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 12:54:33 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] ONE NIGHT STAND Message-ID: Hi One Night Stand is a mobile public performance about asserting yourself on the streets. This performance/event invites you to be participant. We begin at 5 pm from the MG/ St Marks Road crossing and gradually move towards Brigade and Residency Road. Looking forward to seeing you, With kind regards, Jasmeen Patheja. Contact Jasmeen at 98868 40612 Email: blanknoise at gmail.com www.blanknoiseproject.blogpsot.com -- ph: + 91 98868 40612 From kcoelho at email.arizona.edu Tue Jun 14 01:02:27 2005 From: kcoelho at email.arizona.edu (Karen Coelho) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 01:02:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] new posting Message-ID: <002201c5704e$a2789a60$42008796@user> On "Thaneer" Ashokamitran's novella "Water" ("Thaneer" in the original) is a prose documentary set in the drought-stricken summer months of 1969 in Madras. I am reviewing it here for two reasons: first, it is built, to a large extent, on the same images and textures that I have in mind for my project. And second, it drew me almost too easily into its present, telescoping time, suggesting a changeless city and casting an ironic light - or shadow - on all the putative developments of the intervening 35 years. The work first appeared in serialized form in the journal "Kanaiyaazhi" in 1971, and then in its entire form in 1973. I am reading a version published by Katha in 2001, translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom. The book is a detailed realist-impressionist depiction of the struggle for water on the streets of Madras, through an almost claustrophobic focus on a single street whose existence (and near destruction) revolves around the daily quest for water. Its protagonist is a single woman in her late twenties called Jamuna who lives alone in a rented room on the street. Her restless tossings of ambition, hopelessness, self-hate and compassion are mirrored and inflected by the action on the street outside. Water, in this book, is social and symbolic material, medium, metaphor. It drops into every conversation - as central character or casual idiom; it is not only background to the action, but propels it (for example, characters make decisions to move or stay on the street based on the water situation). Worries about water punctuate every scene; strategies to capture water form and dissolve social relationships; hope, despair, cruelty and compassion, play out on the street between landlady and tenant, relatives and neighbors as the water alternately gushes and withholds itself. Jamuna's despair over her sister leaving the house and moving to a hostel is expressed in worries over water: hotels and hostels were supplied with water from drums, rarely cleaned and "filled in the dead darkness from some decaying well. That water could contain roots, droppings, rubbish, leeches, snails, cockroaches, even frogs. Chaya had gone away to that hostel. Was this the water that she was drinking?... Chaya. Chaya" (p.43). Subtle changes in the water situation mark the passage of time, or rather, produce effects of timelessness - "it was now months since the water had stopped coming out of the taps." (p.44). The street comes alive in the darkness just before dawn when the pumps start to flow. Women, awakened by the sounds outside that signal the beginnings of the brief release, are instantly in the fray, churning urgently back and forth across the street, pleading, fighting, negotiating, building up or calling on favors, as one pump stops and another continues to yield. The whole range of social relations and norms is indexed and invoked to claim priority in the queue - age, property rights, states of ritual purity. Yet, always, the need for water, the right to water is vociferously asserted to counter these claims. The street gets almost reluctantly knit into a neighborhood through peculiar "gifting" relations around water - a particularly enterprising and particularly desperate woman noses out a still-yielding pump hidden in somebody's bathroom down the street, and marshals all her conversational skills to procure a bucketful. At some point the Municipal Corporation lorry arrives to install a tank on the street, and a new set of gender and social relations develop around this source, as the lorry driver and workers negotiate their stakes with men in the neighborhood, and avenues for petty entrepreneurship are slowly recognized. Then, in the name of improving the situation, the street gets dug up, ostensibly to clean the mains. But the Corporation team also uncover - as they expect to -- the "nipples" that have been illegally attached to each household connection - these are small pieces of extra tubing that intrude into the street water main, in the hope of sucking water out of the pipes when levels are lower than usual. Residents had paid hundreds of rupees to corporation workers to intall these a few months earlier. Now the corporation supervisor systematically removes all these connections. The excavation sends the street into a spiral of chaos - electric lines are damaged, plunging portions of the street into darkness; vehicles get stranded in the trench which remains uncovered for days. A drainage line gets broken by a worker's spade and the hapless resident of the house is forced to repair it. But the street excavations also provide a source of hope: residents have heard that new pipes are being laid in some places and that "places like Mylapore and Mandaveli are not suffering so much!" (p.60). The supervisor of the digging team informs them that the entire pipe system on this street was only recently laid, and that a few pipes would soon be renewed. It turns out that his brother-in-law had been hired to dig a borewell on the street, which yielded nothing. The supervisor defends his relative: "Saar, I am told they dug to a depth of eighteen feet. Tell me, what can anyone do if there is no water left underground?" (p.60). Ultimately, then, hope drains away into the unknowable underground, even as it is being publicly policed in messy excavations. The public is also aware of the leakiness of this underground order: residents remark on how one of the houses on the street always has water. "They say there's a little water flowing out there, somehow" (p.20). Once again, what struck me in all this was how much the descriptions resonated with contemporary landscapes of thirst in the city. Or, how little has changed despite all the hype about infrastructure improvements funded by close to 1000 crore rupees since the 1980s, much of this loaned from the World Bank. Most Chennai residents would still claim, as a character in the book does: "This water business has become a terrible struggle" (p.23). Yet, for some the problem remains trivial, as it is for Bhaskar Rao, a film producer in the novel. When Jamuna refuses to go out with him because "Today is the day they start giving us water from the tank," he responds: "Such a fuss, and it is only water. I tell you, I'll bring huge cauldrons of water tomorrow, in my car" (p.33). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050614/52fdc0fa/attachment.html From vivek at sarai.net Wed Jun 15 13:50:00 2005 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 13:50:00 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Sarai Independent Fellow Archana Jha on Folk Forms Message-ID: <42AFE4B0.7020303@sarai.net> Painted Folklore- Tradition of Chitrakatha India has a very old tradition of 'gatha gayatri' and in some areas it still exists. Story-tellers used to go to distant places, roam around from village to village, and tell stories. This factor has played an important role not only in the development of the folk art of India, but also helped in spreading various local folk forms from one area to the other. While Court art forms were patronised by State and the kings, the ruling class never determined the character of local folk forms. Folk forms preserved their elements in changing social environment for quite long periods. However, with time, the character and style changed in folk forms due to social and economical factors or because of some outside influences. The tradition of 'chirtra katha' in India dates back to the time of Patanjali. In his writings, there is a reference of 'Chitra Katha' style when story-tellers spread moral and religious doctrines among the people with the help of pictorial illustrations. In Bihar and Bengal, the storytellers were called 'Jadu Patua'. They moved with their scroll made of clothes, beautifully painted in different colours. The main character in these paintings was always 'Krishna'. The pictures provided a vivid account of events from the famous epics. In Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh in central India, Chitra Katha, particularly the 'paithans', was very popular. They moved village to village to entertain people with their paithan style paintings, which told stories from Ramayana. Pot Painting of Orissa and Rajasthan have also came from Chitrakatha tradition. The storytellers from South India, particularly from Tamilnadu, used a painted wooden cabinet that could be unfolded to depict a kind of altars to display illustrations of Vishnu legends. In Kerala, people used leather puppets for this purpose and in Andhra Pradesh (Tirupati), people painited in Kalamkari style. The storytellers went to distant places to entertain and in that process they influenced locals with their particular style of painting and singing. One can find same kind of motifs in folk paintings of different areas. For instance, 'Ramgoli' in Maharastra, 'Alpana' in Bengal, 'Aripan' in Bihar, 'Kolama in South India, 'Mandana' in Rajasthan are some motifs influences by these stories and styles. With passing of time and the changes in societies’ modes of existence, changes also come in the art forms. The 'Patuas' of Bengal, who used to paint the colourful pictorial scroll, adopted a new style. By then they had migrated to urban areas for survival. And hence, the urban requirements and sensibilities forced them to change their age old style. In city (Calcutta), they started producing art for mass market, mainly the pilgrims. There articles were cheap, but did not have much artistic value. The intention was that it should be within the reach of everyone, because in religious places, people came from all kinds of social and economic backgrounds. The important factor is that now the character of these paintings was not only religious; a number of themes were also taken from daily life of common people and contemporary local events. The kalamkari and paithani style of painting still exists but few people can afford to purchase them. But printed cloth materials with kalamkari style motifs are easily available for mass consumption. In India even the metros and big cities still contain some local elements. One, in the shape of communities coming from same region and state living in the same localities try to retain some of the common art and folk forms in various manners. Two, a growing demand for cloth and other materials with folk motifs has been generated in recent years, and it helps in their survival in some form or the other. Therefore, one can easily see an association with the strong tradition of story telling and art motifs in various forms even now. Archana Jha (Independent Fellow) From mpillai65 at yahoo.com Wed Jun 15 15:16:16 2005 From: mpillai65 at yahoo.com (Meera Pillai) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 02:46:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] "Dabbu kaavaala?": Interview notes from Vijayawada Railway Station Message-ID: <20050615094617.12685.qmail@web53506.mail.yahoo.com> Rayanna says he's ten years old, but size-wise, he looks barely seven.  Thin, he has a small face like an upside-down drop, with bright eyes and a brighter smile.  He sits beside me on one of the shiny hexagonal black granite seats on Platform 1, sketching the station from his perspective.  The seats are built around several of the iron pillars that prop up the silver-painted corrugated iron and clear fibreglass roof of the platform.  When he's done, he stands in front of me and hops from one foot to another as I ask him questions - not impatiently, but barely containing the energy in his little body. Originally from Eluru, he has been at Vijayawada railway station for about two months now.  Why did yu leave?  "My father died, and my mother married again.  My stepfather used to beat me.  So I left."  How come you decided to get off at Vijayawada, rather than any of the other stations?  "I was travelling on the train from Eluru.  I met another boy on the train.  He told me to get off at Vijayawada.  He said there was a hostel there that helped boys like us.  So I got off, and one of the "akkas" who works on the platform took me to the hostel."  You can stay at the hostel, and they'll look after you and you can go to school and so on, how come you came back to the station?  "The people at the hostel are really nice, but you can't get money there.  So I came back to the station.  I still go back to the hostel to sleep, and eat there often." What do you do at the station?  "I sweep the trains."  He gestures with his little palm-leaf broom.  "I only come to the station in the morning.  I come after breakfast at the hostel, stay till about 11:30 - 12.  I only pay attention to two trains - the Cochin and the Howrah.  I only work on them."  He tosses his head cockily, dismissing the other trains as unworthy of his notice.  Why is that?  "There are lots of rich people on those trains.  They give me money and food.  I go back to the hostel after that, eat, play carroms and watch TV in the evening, eat dinner and sleep." How much money do you make?  "Thirty, forty, fifty."  That's a lot of money.  Will you give me some?"  He invokes the parental authority that he has left behind, saying firmly,"My mother has told me I shouldn't give money to anyone."  He reaches into his pocket and brings out a neat stash of one-rupee coins, clinking them backwards and forwards on his litttle palm.  That's a lot of money, I say again.  Surely you can give me some?  His face softens.  With a questioning upward intonation to his voice, he asks me gently, "Dabbu kaavaala?"  There's something exceedingly poignant in the seriousness in his voice as he checks whether this woman, twice his size, thrice his weight and four times his age really needs financial support from him.  I shake my head, laying my palm against his cheek. Rayanna is wearing a pair of long trousers in dark suiting material that are a perfect fit, though grimy and missing the critical top button or hook - he has tucked in the ends of the waistband at his twelve inch waist like one would a dhoti.  His upper body is bare, in deference to the 40 degree plus Vijayawada summer heat.  Didnt the folks at the hostel give you other clothes?  "As soon as I got there, I got a set, but after that I didn't bother.  There's no point.  They get dirty when I clean the trains." There are so many people around in the station - how do they deal with you?  Rayanna's friend, Surya Raja Rao, twelve years old, who has also been chatting with me, answers, "They beat you.  The police especially, but almost any adult."  "They don't beat me.  Nobody beats me," Rayanna says proudly.  He is so slight, so bright, it would be difficult to dredge up sufficient animosity against this little chap to carry it through to a corporal conclusion, but that is likely to change as he grows older and bigger, if he continues here.  He holds his body in mock-respectful stiffness, a foot held forward at a ridiculous angle to rob the posture of any possibility of seriousness.  He raises his hand to his forehead in a seeming salute - "I just salute them and get on my way."  And just in case I didn't get the full dramatic effect, he repeats the gesture, and then actually gets on his way, breaking into a skip and a run.  __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail From mihir25 at indiatimes.com Wed Jun 15 19:36:59 2005 From: mihir25 at indiatimes.com (mihir25) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 19:36:59 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah Message-ID: When he was called Pandit Jinnah RAJNISH Sharma Lucknow, June 5 Hindustan Times http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922_1389389,0015002500000000.htm When the former Deputy PM L K Advani described Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a secular man during his early days, he wasn't quite off the mark as it is now a part of recorded history. Though his comments have raised a furore back home, few would know that this man was even referred to as Pandit Jinnah once. And if indifference to religion is any indicator of secularism, the Qaid-e-Azam was probably the biggest of all secular fundamentalists. There are two incidents hitherto not found in any history book which highlight this aspect of his character in a rather comical way which were narrated by none other than the eminent jurist and statesman, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. It was told by Sir Tej to his granddaughter's husband Dr IM Chak, Retired Dy Director of CDRI during a meeting with his grandfather Pt. Prithvi Nath Chak, another legal giant of that time under whom Motilal Nehru learnt to practise law. A contemporary of Sir Sapru, Jinnah along with him once visited Egypt during the month of Ramzaan. The Muslim porters there refused to carry their luggage saying they would only carry the luggage of a fellow Muslim. When Jinnah told them to go ahead, the porters decided to test them. They were asked to recite the kalma. While Sir Tej happily recited it with Èlan, he had Jinnah looking sheepishly at him for the wine loving brown sahib didn't know a word of it! Sir Tej had a hard time convincing the porters that Jinnah, who was to later create a separate Islamic State, was indeed a Muslim! The other incident saw these two friends sparring in the court of law in a case that involved elements of religion. The case saw Sir Tej quoting innumerable ayats from Quran in support of his arguments. Jinnah, though a formidable lawyer himself, drew a blank once again on this account. The next day local newspaper headlines screamed Pandit Jinnah vs Maulana Sapru! From zainab at xtdnet.nl Wed Jun 15 20:37:06 2005 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 19:07:06 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Borders No More Message-ID: <1124.219.65.12.67.1118848026.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Borders No More ... I am sitting in front of my PC, in my house, in Byculla, Mumbai, India. While I am attempting to write, my mind races back to my home guard friend Vijaya’s experiences of patrolling Victoria Terminus Railway Station in Mumbai. “Platform number one, very danger. They (the authorities) asked me to take on permanent duty there. But I refused. Very danger,” was Vijaya’s final opinion. Vijaya and her other colleagues believe that platform number one is a danger zone. It has many pickpockets and drug addicts. For some days after hearing from Vijaya and her colleagues, I was wary of being at platform number one. A friend responded to me on hearing this story. She said, “That is perhaps how boundaries get created. We define zones and spaces in our minds and practice them regularly. Soon, they acquire that character.” I am attempting to write of my recent experience of visiting Bangladesh. Bangladesh – perhaps a far away place for a Mumbaiitte, a place that can be imagined and read about in the newspapers and seen on television. I fell in love with someone there and love drove me to Bangladesh. On my first visit, I started out from Mumbai to Kolkatta in a train. On the way, there were conversations between a co-passenger and me. “Where are you headed?” he had asked me. “Bangladesh,” I replied. After a while, he had said with a tone of disgust and anger, “All the bloody terrorist activities in Assam are sponsored by the Bangladeshi government.” I did not react. He stuck firm to his opinion. An old Bengali lady traveling with us in the same compartment happened to ask him where I was going. When she heard that I was going to Bangladesh, a look appeared on her face. I can’t describe that look in a word – there is no word for that look. It was mixture of memories, history, identity, past, nostalgia, pain, longing and desire. “Bangladesh” is all that she said to me with that look. I reached Kolkatta. My host received me at Howrah Station. On our way to his home, we were speaking of how Muslims are usually perceived. He said, suddenly, “Door se dekho to har cheez ajeeb nazar aati hai (When seen from a distance, everything appears strange).” These words have remained with me ever since then. Bangladesh is a distant dream to a Mumbaiitte. I did not even know that there was no embassy in Mumbai. Maybe that many people don’t go to Bangladesh. From Kolkatta, the route to Bangladesh requires you to have a hundred rupees in your pocket. Board a local train to Bonga from Sealdah. The ticket costs Rs.17. on reaching Bonga, cross the railway tracks and take a share-an-auto to Haridaspur border. This ride costs you Rs.20. The border area is lush green. It looks like a transport hub. There are people who have houses and homes around the area. And there is regular trade, exchange and activity taking place there. When I first reached the border, I was too surprised. In my mind, I had imagined the border to be a deserted place. But here was something completely contrary to my desert imaginations. Later I was told that people living around the border regularly cross here and there. Some Bangladeshi laborers pay fifty rupees to the border officials in order to come over to Kolkatta just to catch a night show Hindi film in Kolkatta. They return back the next day. An Indian beggar was once helped to cross over into Bangladesh where he now begs and regales the local Bengalis with his Hindi and tales. Haridaspur on the Indian side; Benapole on the Bangladesh side – these are the names of the borders that you need to write on your immigration form. You start your journey at Haridaspur with exchanging money and getting immigration forms. There are several touts who make their living by asking you pay fifty rupees and with that amount, you shall cross over the immigration and the customs on the Indian side of the border with absolute ease. Actually, the fifty rupees is to save you from useless harassment – there is always a commission in the fifty rupees for the officer on the table. After you cross immigration and customs on the Indian, you land to the gate. This gate has emblems of the Indian flag. It is always closed. I don’t know how borders and boundaries get created in reality. I don’t know who decided that the gate should be put there itself. But the gate is there – in reality and a few kilometers away, at Bonga station and beyond, in West Bengal, the gate exists in the mind and, that gate in the mind is also closed. I show my passport to the Border Security Force guard. He checks for the immigration stamp and clearance. He turns my passport up, down, checks the front page if the photo in the passport is the same as the person standing before him, looks at the last page, some address and then, he opens the gate. As I move beyond the boundaries of the gate, I land into the infamously famous ‘no-man’s-land’. No-Man’s-Land, I ask myself. At one level, I am filled with tears and at another level I wish to laugh out aloud, as if that laughter is only another darker manifestation of my tears. I stand on that space – the no-man’s-land. Apparently, I have no identity once I am on this patch of land. I belong nowhere. There are some labourers working on that patch of land. An old lady is snorkeling there, sifting among the bushes and shrubs, trying to find something. As I stand firmly on that piece of land, I ask myself for my own identity. And a sense of strength prevails all over me. I know my identity – I am Me. But the funniest part of nationhood is that I need proof of my identity – some papers, with some stamp, with some authorization, to prove who I am. I move slowly from no-man’s-land and I am confronted with another gate which is open and has emblems of the Bangladeshi flag. I am now officially landing into Bangladesh. The transfer is not just physical. I need to wind my watch thirty minutes ahead. I hear the muezzin’s call to prayer. The landscape is still the same – lush green, but the language is completely Bengali. I pass through Customs and Immigration and with a few bribes, some amount of harassment, some amount of story telling, stamps are put on my passport and I am now in another country altogether. I have been to Bangladesh thrice in my life thus far. When I came back to Kolkatta after my first visit, my host introduced me to his friend. His friend said to me, “Wow! You have some nerve. It really requires love to take you to Bangladesh. Otherwise we, sitting here in Kolkatta, never dream of going there and you, from Mumbai went there ...” He had gone ahead to ask me about whether Hindus were being killed in Bangladesh. My host intervened and said, “Hush, hush. Why talk about all this now? Let’s eat dinner.” Each time I come back from Bangladesh, I am struck with this one question: Bangladesh is so close to people in Kolkatta. Each one of them has an ancestral, a historical connection with Bangladesh. Yet, when I narrate my Bangladesh tales to my friends in Kolkatta, I see in their eyes that same look which is a mixture of memory, identity, history, past, pain, desire, longing and nostalgia. And that look makes it seem that Bangladesh is so far. It so far that it can only be evoked as a place of the past. It is so far that it is only a place which lies in memory, in the past. It is so far that it cannot be reached. The gates are closed ... it appears forever ... Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From zainab at xtdnet.nl Wed Jun 15 20:40:13 2005 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 19:10:13 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Borders No More Message-ID: <1158.219.65.12.67.1118848213.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Dear All, Sharing a piece from my recent travels to East India and beyond. Hoping to write more. Cheers, Zainab Borders No More ... I am sitting in front of my PC, in my house, in Byculla, Mumbai, India. While I am attempting to write, my mind races back to my home guard friend Vijaya's experiences of patrolling Victoria Terminus Railway Station in Mumbai. "Platform number one, very danger. They (the authorities) asked me to take on permanent duty there. But I refused. Very danger," was Vijaya's final opinion. Vijaya and her other colleagues believe that platform number one is a danger zone. It has many pickpockets and drug addicts. For some days after hearing from Vijaya and her colleagues, I was wary of being at platform number one. A friend responded to me on hearing this story. She said, "That is perhaps how boundaries get created. We define zones and spaces in our minds and practice them regularly. Soon, they acquire that character." I am attempting to write of my recent experience of visiting Bangladesh. Bangladesh - perhaps a far away place for a Mumbaiitte, a place that can be imagined and read about in the newspapers and seen on television. I fell in love with someone there and love drove me to Bangladesh. On my first visit, I started out from Mumbai to Kolkatta in a train. On the way, there were conversations between a co-passenger and me. "Where are you headed?" he had asked me. "Bangladesh," I replied. After a while, he had said with a tone of disgust and anger, "All the bloody terrorist activities in Assam are sponsored by the Bangladeshi government." I did not react. He stuck firm to his opinion. An old Bengali lady traveling with us in the same compartment happened to ask him where I was going. When she heard that I was going to Bangladesh, a look appeared on her face. I can't describe that look in a word - there is no word for that look. It was mixture of memories, history, identity, past, nostalgia, pain, longing and desire. "Bangladesh" is all that she said to me with that look. I reached Kolkatta. My host received me at Howrah Station. On our way to his home, we were speaking of how Muslims are usually perceived. He said, suddenly, "Door se dekho to har cheez ajeeb nazar aati hai (When seen from a distance, everything appears strange)." These words have remained with me ever since then. Bangladesh is a distant dream to a Mumbaiitte. I did not even know that there was no embassy in Mumbai. Maybe that many people don't go to Bangladesh. From Kolkatta, the route to Bangladesh requires you to have a hundred rupees in your pocket. Board a local train to Bonga from Sealdah. The ticket costs Rs.17. on reaching Bonga, cross the railway tracks and take a share-an-auto to Haridaspur border. This ride costs you Rs.20. The border area is lush green. It looks like a transport hub. There are people who have houses and homes around the area. And there is regular trade, exchange and activity taking place there. When I first reached the border, I was too surprised. In my mind, I had imagined the border to be a deserted place. But here was something completely contrary to my desert imaginations. Later I was told that people living around the border regularly cross here and there. Some Bangladeshi laborers pay fifty rupees to the border officials in order to come over to Kolkatta just to catch a night show Hindi film in Kolkatta. They return back the next day. An Indian beggar was once helped to cross over into Bangladesh where he now begs and regales the local Bengalis with his Hindi and tales. Haridaspur on the Indian side; Benapole on the Bangladesh side - these are the names of the borders that you need to write on your immigration form. You start your journey at Haridaspur with exchanging money and getting immigration forms. There are several touts who make their living by asking you pay fifty rupees and with that amount, you shall cross over the immigration and the customs on the Indian side of the border with absolute ease. Actually, the fifty rupees is to save you from useless harassment - there is always a commission in the fifty rupees for the officer on the table. After you cross immigration and customs on the Indian, you land to the gate. This gate has emblems of the Indian flag. It is always closed. I don't know how borders and boundaries get created in reality. I don't know who decided that the gate should be put there itself. But the gate is there - in reality and a few kilometers away, at Bonga station and beyond, in West Bengal, the gate exists in the mind and, that gate in the mind is also closed. I show my passport to the Border Security Force guard. He checks for the immigration stamp and clearance. He turns my passport up, down, checks the front page if the photo in the passport is the same as the person standing before him, looks at the last page, some address and then, he opens the gate. As I move beyond the boundaries of the gate, I land into the infamously famous 'no-man's-land'. No-Man's-Land, I ask myself. At one level, I am filled with tears and at another level I wish to laugh out aloud, as if that laughter is only another darker manifestation of my tears. I stand on that space - the no-man's-land. Apparently, I have no identity once I am on this patch of land. I belong nowhere. There are some labourers working on that patch of land. An old lady is snorkeling there, sifting among the bushes and shrubs, trying to find something. As I stand firmly on that piece of land, I ask myself for my own identity. And a sense of strength prevails all over me. I know my identity - I am Me. But the funniest part of nationhood is that I need proof of my identity - some papers, with some stamp, with some authorization, to prove who I am. I move slowly from no-man's-land and I am confronted with another gate which is open and has emblems of the Bangladeshi flag. I am now officially landing into Bangladesh. The transfer is not just physical. I need to wind my watch thirty minutes ahead. I hear the muezzin's call to prayer. The landscape is still the same - lush green, but the language is completely Bengali. I pass through Customs and Immigration and with a few bribes, some amount of harassment, some amount of story telling, stamps are put on my passport and I am now in another country altogether. I have been to Bangladesh thrice in my life thus far. When I came back to Kolkatta after my first visit, my host introduced me to his friend. His friend said to me, "Wow! You have some nerve. It really requires love to take you to Bangladesh. Otherwise we, sitting here in Kolkatta, never dream of going there and you, from Mumbai went there ..." He had gone ahead to ask me about whether Hindus were being killed in Bangladesh. My host intervened and said, "Hush, hush. Why talk about all this now? Let's eat dinner." Each time I come back from Bangladesh, I am struck with this one question: Bangladesh is so close to people in Kolkatta. Each one of them has an ancestral, a historical connection with Bangladesh. Yet, when I narrate my Bangladesh tales to my friends in Kolkatta, I see in their eyes that same look which is a mixture of memory, identity, history, past, pain, desire, longing and nostalgia. And that look makes it seem that Bangladesh is so far. It so far that it can only be evoked as a place of the past. It is so far that it is only a place which lies in memory, in the past. It is so far that it cannot be reached. The gates are closed ... it appears forever ... Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From kristoferpaetau at GMAIL.COM Wed Jun 15 14:19:41 2005 From: kristoferpaetau at GMAIL.COM (Kristofer Paetau) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 10:49:41 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Re-Institutionalize # 07: PIET'S VOYAGE Message-ID: <80bd928c05061501491da84179@mail.gmail.com> "Piet's Voyage" is an art-experience I made with a friend, Piet Strauven, who doesn't think of himself as an artist, but whom I consider to be an interesting model for artists. The project is about a deal that I made with Piet, concerning his voyage and the pictures he would take during this trip. You are welcome to have a look at this project: A web documentation to view at: http://www.paetau.com/downloads/Re-Institutionalize/Piets_Voyage_English.html A PDF documentation (324 KB) to download at: http://www.paetau.com/downloads/Re-Institutionalize/Piets_Voyage_English.pdf Auf Deutsch: Eine Webdokumentation zum Anschauen: http://www.paetau.com/downloads/Re-Institutionalize/Piets_Voyage_Deutsch.html Ein PDF Dokument (320 KB) zum Runterladen: http://www.paetau.com/downloads/Re-Institutionalize/Piets_Voyage_Deutsch.pdf Best, MfG. Kristofer Paetau -- If you do not want mails anymore, you can unsubscribe automatically by sending an empty e-mail from your e-mail account to: ARTINFO-L-unsubscribe-request at listserv.dfn.de If this doesn't work, you probably got this e-mail re-routed through another address: Please reply to this mail and write UNSUBSCRIBE in the mail subject and please indicate some old or alternative e-mail addresses in order to help us unsubscribe you. Thank you and apologizes for the trouble! -- Kristofer Paetau http://www.paetau.com/exhibitionviews -- From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu Jun 16 12:52:48 2005 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 09:22:48 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Microsoft helps China to censor bloggers Message-ID: <42B128C8.7070601@ranadasgupta.com> fascinating. R http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1506477,00.html Microsoft helps China to censor bloggers Jonathan Watts in Beijing Wednesday June 15, 2005 The Guardian Civil liberties groups have condemned an arrangement between Microsoft and Chinese authorities to censor the internet. The American company is helping censors remove "freedom" and "democracy" from the net in China with a software package that prevents bloggers from using these and other politically sensitive words on their websites. The restrictions, which also include an automated denial of "human rights", are built into MSN Spaces, a blog service launched in China last month by Shanghai MSN Network Communications Technology, a venture in which Microsoft holds a 50% stake. Users who try to include such terms in subject lines are warned: "This topic contains forbidden words. Please delete them." Even the most basic political discussion is difficult because "communism", "socialism", and "capitalism" are blocked in this way, although these words can be used in the body of the main text. Many taboo words are predictable, such as "Taiwanese independence", "Tibet", "Dalai Lama", "Falun Gong", "terrorism" and "massacre". But there are also quirks that reflect the embryonic nature of net censorship and the propaganda ministry's perceived threats. The word "demonstration" is taboo, but "protest" is all right; "democracy" is forbidden, but "anarchy" and "revolution" are acceptable. On MSN Space, Chinese bloggers cannot use the name of their own president, but can comment on Tony Blair. "Tiananmen" cannot be mentioned. A Microsoft spokesman said the restrictions were the price the company had to pay to spread the positive benefits of blogs and online messaging. "Even with the filters, we're helping millions of people communicate, share stories, share photographs and build relationships. For us, that is the key point here," Adam Sohn, a global sales and marketing director at MSN, told the Associated Press news agency. For the Chinese government, which employs an estimated 30,000 internet police, the restrictions are an extension of a long-standing policy to control the web so that it can be used by businesses but not by political opponents. For Microsoft, it appears to be a concession to authoritarianism on the net. It comes only months after Microsoft's boss, Bill Gates, praised China's leaders, who have mixed market economics with rigid political control. "It is a brand new form of capitalism, and as a consumer it's the best thing that ever happened," he said. Along with a throng of other net giants, Microsoft is trying to make inroads into China's fast-growing internet market, expected to top 100 million users this year. Only the United States has more people online, but Mr Gates admitted this year that his company was underperforming in China. Microsoft is not alone in accepting censorship requests from China. The free-speech group, Reporters Without Borders, says Yahoo has a similar policy. The group said any justification for collaborating with Chinese censorship based on obeying local laws did "not hold water". The multinationals must "respect certain basic ethical principles" wherever they operated. China's information industry ministry, meanwhile, has ordered owners of blogs and bulletin boards to register their sites by the end of this month or have them shut down. The ministry's website said: "The internet has profited many people, but it also has brought many problems, such as sex, violence and feudal superstitions and other harmful information that has seriously poisoned people's spirits." From eye at ranadasgupta.com Thu Jun 16 12:57:53 2005 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 09:27:53 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] The future of the atmosphere Message-ID: <42B129F9.4080305@ranadasgupta.com> The Chairman of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, is a pretty interesting person, and this interview with him is so too. Bizarre that multinational oil corporations are lobbying governments to regulate oil consumption in anticipation of ecological catastrophe... R 'The boat is sinking' As our appetite for oil hastens climate change, who will speak out for the alternatives? One possible champion is Lord Ron Oxburgh, the distinguished geologist who also happens to be chairman of Shell. He tells Aida Edemariam why the time for complacency is over Wednesday June 15, 2005 The Guardian When Lord Ron Oxburgh visited the Hay festival a couple of weeks ago he arrived during a spell of weather best described as unsettled. A record-breakingly warm Friday was followed on Saturday by a wild, gusting wind and, in the festival marquees, a great howling and a flapping of canvas. The lighting rigs creaked with the strain, and pictures of Hay, projected on to screens behind the performers, bucked and swayed; it was a glimpse of how it must feel to sail a boat into a storm, and an almost too appropriate backdrop to chief government scientist David King's calm laying out of the basic facts of climate change: that since the industrial period carbon dioxide levels have risen from 270 parts per million (classical for all previous warm periods) to 379ppm today, and are rising at 2ppm per year. In 10 years' time they will be at 400ppm; at 500ppm, Greenland's ice will melt entirely - it's already receding by 10 metres a year - and the sea level will rise, drowning coastal cities and entirely changing the contours of the earth. Most scientists now agree that unless we stabilise the earth's atmosphere by 2050, there will be no way to halt the disaster. Oxburgh, the non-executive chairman of Shell in the UK, on the dias with Greenpeace executive director Stephen Tindale, listened to King with increasing impatience, his abundant black eyebrows knitting restlessly under windblown white hair. As soon as he decently could, he grabbed the microphone, strode to the front of the stage and launched into his speech, contemptuous of the lectern, glancing only occasionally at his notes, leaning in towards the audience as if, like an evangelist, he wanted to pick everyone up and shake sense into them, just as the wind was shaking the tent. "We have roughly 45 years. And if we start NOW, not in 10 or 15 years' time, we have a chance of hitting those targets. But we've got to start now. We have no time to lose." We meet later but, returning to the speech, I suggest to Oxburgh that there is a certain inconsistency to his position. He heads one of the biggest petrochemical multinationals in the world; a multinational, moreover, whose recent track record includes an attempt to scupper the decommissioned Brent Spar oil platform; a series of North Sea gas leaks; struggles in the Niger Delta with the Ogoni tribe, who believe Shell's riches are being acquired at their expense; failure to halt the execution by the Nigerian government of Ken Saro-Wiwa, who campaigned for the Ogoni; oil spills and ground-level flaring in the Delta. The Climate Justice Programme has called this practice "environmental racism", as it seems only to happen in developing countries; Oxburgh, somewhat unconvincingly, insists the locals appreciate the flares as a heat source for drying fish. And then there was the unfortunate moment last year when Shell announced it was downgrading the size of its oil reserves by 20%, greatly upsetting its investors. Shell was subsequently investigated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and Oxburgh's predecessor lost his job - though in 2004 Shell somehow also posted the biggest profit of any British company ever: £9.3bn. So if the logical solution to the trouble we're in is to stop using oil, surely Oxburgh's comrades at Shell aren't too happy with him? "I think most of the people I work with talk in the same way. Though they might not talk about it so publicly." Also, many of them are, principally, businessmen; "the difference is, I have worked for a lot of my life as a research scientist. And if I don't say it, who's going to?" Oxburgh always wanted to be a scientist, but despite the support of his parents, who had themselves left school at 14, his teachers steamrollered him into classics at Oxford. After five terms he'd had enough, so he looked around and saw that the head of the geology department was also the man who had climbed furthest up Everest (this was before Edmund Hillary), "and I guess because I was a climber" he joined the geology department. "Geology was an incredibly boring subject in some ways, but for the fact that it got you out into the mountains." At Oxford he and his friends climbed every building they could, the prize being the crumbling cupola of its historic library, the Radcliffe Camera. There were no indoor climbing walls, so they practised on the mantelpieces in their rooms. He's 70 now, and doesn't climb any longer, but he loves orienteering, gleeful that it allows you to rely on your wits rather than physical fitness, and thus to beat people far younger than yourself. Shell made him his first job offer after he had finished a PhD at Princeton, where he made major contributions to the discovery of plate tectonics. But they wanted to wait until he had done military service; when the military rejected him, Oxford offered him a short teaching contract. He stayed for 18 years. Since then he has taught at Cambridge, been Rector of Imperial College London and was chief scientist at the MoD during the six years in which Russia imploded, the Berlin Wall came down, and the first Iraq war began. Now a KBE and crossbench life peer who sits on the House of Lords select committee on science and technology, he joined Shell as a non-executive director in 1996. He is tough, but approachable; he gives the impression of idealism, and smilingly refuses to be drawn into any criticisms of his company. But Oxburgh also has a reputation for independence and, in these last two months before he retires from the chairmanship, a fierce need to talk about the future. "Look, Shell is an energy company, not an oil company, and the fact is that neither Shell nor any other energy company is going to be doing business in the same way in 25 years' time." Already Shell "can't actually make enough solar panels at the moment to satisfy demand". So far it has spent $1.5bn, more than any other company, he says, on renewables. (To put this in context, the cost of getting one oilfield up and running can reach $10bn, though funding can come from a variety of sources.) But these are early days for biofuels and renewable energy, and early days too for a method many including Oxburgh tout as a possible eureka: carbon sequestration, which involves trapping the CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels and storing it, usually underground, in the cavities where the oil, natural gas, or coal came from in the first place. It's a possible option in the North Sea and in the US, but more difficult in India and China, where abundant cheap brown coal produces relatively high levels of CO2 but where there are few obvious places to store it. Which brings up another, potentially far greater, problem. As Oxburgh points out, China, India, Brazil and Mexico are rapidly emerging markets, and "as countries grow and become more prosperous, they use more energy. It is a sad fact that if these countries experience the perfectly legitimate growth in GDP [gross domestic product] that they have a right to expect, and they do so in the same energy-inefficient way that we have seen our prosperity grow, then I think we are wasting our time. Because, frankly, the numbers of people are so large, and the rate of change is so great, that there will be simply no hope of meeting our targets by 2050." China, for example, "is opening a new, old-fashioned, dirty, full-sized power station at the rate of one a fortnight." (The developing world, not surprisingly, will be most affected by climate change: Africa is forecast to get warmer at double the rate of anywhere else and, says David King, will soon be feeling the effects of climate change at a level rivalling the effects of the HIV epidemic.) This is the sort of issue that must be dealt with at government level, and governments are notoriously blind beyond the next election, not to mention worried about upsetting powerful corporations. Yet just a couple of weeks ago Shell and 12 other signatories, including BP, sent an open letter to Tony Blair, in which they pointed out that "governments tend to feel limited in their ability to introduce new policies for reducing emissions because they fear business resistance, while companies are unable to take their investments in low-carbon solutions to scale because of lack of long-term policies," and urged immediate action. Oxburgh advocates that government uses the controls at its disposal: "Regulate biofuels. Or subsidise. Or tax" - any incentive really, but "what we don't want to see is in two years' time the government simply becoming bored with climate change after we've invested a lot of our shareholders' money. Remember, those shareholders are pension funds and other similar organisations." The prospect of big business forcing government to regulate it would be funny, if it weren't so serious. Meanwhile, the price of oil is high at $55 a barrel, and the oil companies don't see it falling substantially in the near future. At the current rate of progress, says Oxburgh, "we are going to be really quite dependent on fossil fuels for another 50 years. And nothing is going to slow the world economy more, and inhibit our control of the greenhouse gas problem, than a world recession. So, fundamentally, what we are trying to do worldwide is to make sure that we have enough of a supply of oil and gas." Paradoxically, the high price of oil is also good for renewable energy, as it forces the speedier development of alternatives, and Oxburgh just views this as a further business opportunity: corn ethanol, to take the example of a biofuel currently in use, currently costs nearly as much as oil. Shell, therefore, is in no trouble. But the planet is, and Oxburgh sees no point in mincing words. "The boat is sinking, and we have to use everything that we possibly can." From keith at thememorybank.co.uk Thu Jun 16 13:15:14 2005 From: keith at thememorybank.co.uk (Keith Hart) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 09:45:14 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Microsoft helps China to censor bloggers In-Reply-To: <42B128C8.7070601@ranadasgupta.com> References: <42B128C8.7070601@ranadasgupta.com> Message-ID: <42B12E0A.3080501@thememorybank.co.uk> There has been much commentin the western media about Microsoft 'caving in' to Chines government pressure and someabout how Google, Yahoo etc aree not averse to suspending international law in order to get a toehold in the Chinese market. This misses the larger point that Microsoft has made a strategic decision to line up with states in the struggle for democracy on the internet. India offers an equally compelling, but more decentralized case study of the samething. Thousands of decisions are being made at every level of government and society there to install the software and machines that will establish Indian standards for decades to come. The main competitors are Microsoft and Linux (represented by its own commercial corporations such as Red Hat Linux). The latter promote their software by stressing that it is cheaper, more robust and flexible than Windows. Bill Gates, on the other hand, emphasizes Microsoft’s track record of collaboration with government bureaucracy in regulating access to the internet. The point is that the corporate model of capitalism, inaugurated in the late nineteenth century and brought to its climax in the so-called 'neo-liberal' world economy today, rests on legal collaboration between states and corporations to subject people everywhere to a system of command and control from the top. The main issue is how do you force people to pay up within a generalized system of private property brought to this stage of monopoly? China is really a boon for democrats since it makes clear what the stakes are in a way that is not so obvious in India, for example. And the old men in Beijing are likely to lose in the not so long run. Keith From pukar at pukar.org.in Wed Jun 15 14:40:05 2005 From: pukar at pukar.org.in (PUKAR) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 14:40:05 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [announcements] Reminder: Talk by Jateen Lad at Max Mueller Bhavan on Friday, 17 June 2005 Message-ID: <002001c5718a$172c1e40$21d0c0cb@freeda> The PUKAR Gender and Space Project presents a talk by Jateen Lad on ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­PANOPTIC BODIES: BLACK EUNUCHS IN THE TOPKAPI PALACE date: Friday, 17 June 2005 time: 6.30 p.m. place: Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai Abstract This lecture engages the disciplines of architecture, philology and theology to explore the notion of the harem as a forbidden and guarded sanctuary in both ritual and palatial contexts. The fantasme of the black eunuch in the Grand Seraglio has been a silent but persistent presence in representations of the imperial harem; either a perverse shadow in the margins of Orientalist representations or the epitome of loyalty in more contemporary readings. This paper enters the labyrinthine passages of the quintessential harem, the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, in an attempt to better understand the body of the eunuch and the nature of the imperial harem as an actual space. There follows a consideration of how the presence, identity and the subtleties of power acquired by the black eunuchs came to be embodied architecturally. In the process, it will be shown how the notions of surveillance and mediation - qualities embodied in the function and body of the eunuch - permeated the enclosing walls of the harem to infuse deep into its inner structure. Jateen Lad studied architecture at Cambridge, UK and has practised in London, Berlin, Rotterdam and East Africa and is design critic at a number of London schools. As a research fellow with the Aga Khan Program at Harvard and MIT his writings engaged architecture, philology and theology to explore the notion of the harem as a forbidden and guarded sanctuary in both ritual and palatial contexts. He is currently establishing a design studio in Pondicherry and is researching notions of display and multiplicity in the Hawa Mahal at Jaipur. 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/20050615/4cc7d199/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From peeyush.bajpai at gmail.com Thu Jun 16 14:14:48 2005 From: peeyush.bajpai at gmail.com (Peeyush Bajpai) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 14:14:48 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re:Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah Message-ID: <220f752b05061601446e0b4ba3@mail.gmail.com> Ingonrance of his (Jinnha) own religion or religious text do not make him secular. But utilizing religion to fragment or create discord can only be entitled as communalism. In this context, Advani is as communal as Jinnha, or read backwards both equally secular. Hence Advani did not say anything wrong as he belives himself to be secular too!. peeyush Message: 1 Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 19:36:59 +0530 From: "mihir25" (by way of Monica Narula) Subject: [Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah To: reader-list at sarai.net Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed When he was called Pandit Jinnah RAJNISH Sharma Lucknow, June 5 Hindustan Times http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922_1389389,0015002500000000.htm When the former Deputy PM L K Advani described Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a secular man during his early days, he wasn't quite off the mark as it is now a part of recorded history. Though his comments have raised a furore back home, few would know that this man was even referred to as Pandit Jinnah once. And if indifference to religion is any indicator of secularism, the Qaid-e-Azam was probably the biggest of all secular fundamentalists. There are two incidents hitherto not found in any history book which highlight this aspect of his character in a rather comical way which were narrated by none other than the eminent jurist and statesman, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. It was told by Sir Tej to his granddaughter's husband Dr IM Chak, Retired Dy Director of CDRI during a meeting with his grandfather Pt. Prithvi Nath Chak, another legal giant of that time under whom Motilal Nehru learnt to practise law. A contemporary of Sir Sapru, Jinnah along with him once visited Egypt during the month of Ramzaan. The Muslim porters there refused to carry their luggage saying they would only carry the luggage of a fellow Muslim. When Jinnah told them to go ahead, the porters decided to test them. They were asked to recite the kalma. While Sir Tej happily recited it with Èlan, he had Jinnah looking sheepishly at him for the wine loving brown sahib didn't know a word of it! Sir Tej had a hard time convincing the porters that Jinnah, who was to later create a separate Islamic State, was indeed a Muslim! The other incident saw these two friends sparring in the court of law in a case that involved elements of religion. The case saw Sir Tej quoting innumerable ayats from Quran in support of his arguments. Jinnah, though a formidable lawyer himself, drew a blank once again on this account. The next day local newspaper headlines screamed Pandit Jinnah vs Maulana Sapru! -- Peeyush Bajpai www.indicus.net From ravig1 at vsnl.com Thu Jun 16 15:54:54 2005 From: ravig1 at vsnl.com (Ravi Agarwal) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 15:54:54 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The future of the atmosphere References: <42B129F9.4080305@ranadasgupta.com> Message-ID: <040601c5725d$a5547db0$6801a8c0@ToxicsLink.local> Good to hear, hard to explain..see below..... maybe these are times of 'multiplicities' ravi agarwal ====================================================================== Oil firms and toxic waste disposal The Punch, Thursday June 16, 2005 In spite of the United Nations' 1992 Basel Convention that banned toxic waste trade worldwide, reports alleging reckless dumping of toxic wastes in various parts of the country have persisted. Recently, oil multinational, Shell Petroleum Development Company, SPDC, was accused of burying suspected toxic substances in Igbeku, Sapele Local Government Area of Delta State, in 2002. The community reportedly discovered last year, when their crops started withering, that the waste was buried in a virgin land. Experts then conducted soil tests and confirmed the waste as toxic. The SPDC has denied the allegation, though its contractor was said to have handled the deal. The company faced a similar charge in 1999, when a community in Ozoro, Isoko Local Government, also in Delta State, accused one of SPDC's agents of pumping over one million litres of chemicals suspected to be toxic waste into a 17,000ft deep dry well. Strange health conditions, withered crops, polluted farmlands and fish ponds were also reported. Shell was accused at the time, yet it treated the alarm raised by the community with contempt. The Sarabubowei community in Warri, Delta State, has also alerted the authorities that three of its people have died in the past six months following persistent release of dangerous chemicals from gas flaring by ChevronTexaco. Many of the villagers are allegedly afflicted by strange illnesses caused by dangerous emissions from the oil firm's facilities. For long, the health of many Nigerians have been threatened by reckless dumping of hazardous wastes. The most controversial, perhaps, was the Koko toxic waste dump of 1987/1988. About 18,000 drums of lethal substances were dumped on a piece of land provided by a Koko chief. The substances were so potent that many who came in contact with them suffered burns, partial paralysis and blood vomiting. Early this year, hazardous waste suspected to be chlorine was dumped at Onipepeye in Ibadan. Some people who inhaled the substance ended up in hospital, while surrounding vegetation immediately withered. There was a ray of hope that such stories would abate when, following the Koko episode, the Federal Government, in 1988, set up the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, FEPA, charged with the implementation of the Harmful Waste (Criminal Provisions) Decree 42 of 1988 and other such local and international laws. However, with reports that hundreds of alerts have been received from 1992 to date, involving unscrupulous Nigerian and international businessmen shopping for dump sites for toxic wastes in the country, such optimism seems misplaced. It is quite distressing that the SDPC and other oil firms have been repeatedly accused of facilitating indiscriminate disposal of toxic waste. Can the oil firms and their contractors trifle with the disposal of hazardous wastes in countries where the laws on environmental degradation are strictly applied? The companies are, obviously, exploiting the complacence of the Nigerian Ministry of Environment and FEPA to gamble with the health of the people. In the face of government's insensitivity to the problem, Nigerians, NGOs, and the human rights community should take up the gauntlet. Available laws at home and abroad should be explored to redress clandestine business practices that endanger the people's health and sources of livelihood. Politicians, especially governors, senators, federal and state lawmakers, LG chairmen and councillors, all should resist the lure of betraying their communities for self-serving pursuits. Their claim of serving the people is baseless if they cannot lead the battle to bring companies that toy with the lives of Nigerians to book. The Punch, Thursday June 16, 2005 ============================================================================ = ----- Original Message ----- From: "Rana Dasgupta" To: Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 12:57 PM Subject: [Reader-list] The future of the atmosphere > The Chairman of Shell, Lord Oxburgh, is a pretty interesting person, and > this interview with him is so too. Bizarre that multinational oil > corporations are lobbying governments to regulate oil consumption in > anticipation of ecological catastrophe... > > R > > > > 'The boat is sinking' > > As our appetite for oil hastens climate change, who will speak out for > the alternatives? One possible champion is Lord Ron Oxburgh, the > distinguished geologist who also happens to be chairman of Shell. He > tells Aida Edemariam why the time for complacency is over > > Wednesday June 15, 2005 > The Guardian > > When Lord Ron Oxburgh visited the Hay festival a couple of weeks ago he > arrived during a spell of weather best described as unsettled. A > record-breakingly warm Friday was followed on Saturday by a wild, > gusting wind and, in the festival marquees, a great howling and a > flapping of canvas. > > The lighting rigs creaked with the strain, and pictures of Hay, > projected on to screens behind the performers, bucked and swayed; it was > a glimpse of how it must feel to sail a boat into a storm, and an almost > too appropriate backdrop to chief government scientist David King's calm > laying out of the basic facts of climate change: that since the > industrial period carbon dioxide levels have risen from 270 parts per > million (classical for all previous warm periods) to 379ppm today, and > are rising at 2ppm per year. In 10 years' time they will be at 400ppm; > at 500ppm, Greenland's ice will melt entirely - it's already receding by > 10 metres a year - and the sea level will rise, drowning coastal cities > and entirely changing the contours of the earth. Most scientists now > agree that unless we stabilise the earth's atmosphere by 2050, there > will be no way to halt the disaster. > > Oxburgh, the non-executive chairman of Shell in the UK, on the dias with > Greenpeace executive director Stephen Tindale, listened to King with > increasing impatience, his abundant black eyebrows knitting restlessly > under windblown white hair. As soon as he decently could, he grabbed the > microphone, strode to the front of the stage and launched into his > speech, contemptuous of the lectern, glancing only occasionally at his > notes, leaning in towards the audience as if, like an evangelist, he > wanted to pick everyone up and shake sense into them, just as the wind > was shaking the tent. "We have roughly 45 years. And if we start NOW, > not in 10 or 15 years' time, we have a chance of hitting those targets. > But we've got to start now. We have no time to lose." > > We meet later but, returning to the speech, I suggest to Oxburgh that > there is a certain inconsistency to his position. He heads one of the > biggest petrochemical multinationals in the world; a multinational, > moreover, whose recent track record includes an attempt to scupper the > decommissioned Brent Spar oil platform; a series of North Sea gas leaks; > struggles in the Niger Delta with the Ogoni tribe, who believe Shell's > riches are being acquired at their expense; failure to halt the > execution by the Nigerian government of Ken Saro-Wiwa, who campaigned > for the Ogoni; oil spills and ground-level flaring in the Delta. The > Climate Justice Programme has called this practice "environmental > racism", as it seems only to happen in developing countries; Oxburgh, > somewhat unconvincingly, insists the locals appreciate the flares as a > heat source for drying fish. > > And then there was the unfortunate moment last year when Shell announced > it was downgrading the size of its oil reserves by 20%, greatly > upsetting its investors. Shell was subsequently investigated by the US > Securities and Exchange Commission, and Oxburgh's predecessor lost his > job - though in 2004 Shell somehow also posted the biggest profit of any > British company ever: £9.3bn. So if the logical solution to the trouble > we're in is to stop using oil, surely Oxburgh's comrades at Shell aren't > too happy with him? "I think most of the people I work with talk in the > same way. Though they might not talk about it so publicly." Also, many > of them are, principally, businessmen; "the difference is, I have worked > for a lot of my life as a research scientist. And if I don't say it, > who's going to?" > > Oxburgh always wanted to be a scientist, but despite the support of his > parents, who had themselves left school at 14, his teachers > steamrollered him into classics at Oxford. After five terms he'd had > enough, so he looked around and saw that the head of the geology > department was also the man who had climbed furthest up Everest (this > was before Edmund Hillary), "and I guess because I was a climber" he > joined the geology department. "Geology was an incredibly boring subject > in some ways, but for the fact that it got you out into the mountains." > At Oxford he and his friends climbed every building they could, the > prize being the crumbling cupola of its historic library, the Radcliffe > Camera. There were no indoor climbing walls, so they practised on the > mantelpieces in their rooms. He's 70 now, and doesn't climb any longer, > but he loves orienteering, gleeful that it allows you to rely on your > wits rather than physical fitness, and thus to beat people far younger > than yourself. > > Shell made him his first job offer after he had finished a PhD at > Princeton, where he made major contributions to the discovery of plate > tectonics. But they wanted to wait until he had done military service; > when the military rejected him, Oxford offered him a short teaching > contract. He stayed for 18 years. Since then he has taught at Cambridge, > been Rector of Imperial College London and was chief scientist at the > MoD during the six years in which Russia imploded, the Berlin Wall came > down, and the first Iraq war began. Now a KBE and crossbench life peer > who sits on the House of Lords select committee on science and > technology, he joined Shell as a non-executive director in 1996. He is > tough, but approachable; he gives the impression of idealism, and > smilingly refuses to be drawn into any criticisms of his company. > > But Oxburgh also has a reputation for independence and, in these last > two months before he retires from the chairmanship, a fierce need to > talk about the future. "Look, Shell is an energy company, not an oil > company, and the fact is that neither Shell nor any other energy company > is going to be doing business in the same way in 25 years' time." > Already Shell "can't actually make enough solar panels at the moment to > satisfy demand". So far it has spent $1.5bn, more than any other > company, he says, on renewables. (To put this in context, the cost of > getting one oilfield up and running can reach $10bn, though funding can > come from a variety of sources.) > > But these are early days for biofuels and renewable energy, and early > days too for a method many including Oxburgh tout as a possible eureka: > carbon sequestration, which involves trapping the CO2 produced by > burning fossil fuels and storing it, usually underground, in the > cavities where the oil, natural gas, or coal came from in the first > place. It's a possible option in the North Sea and in the US, but more > difficult in India and China, where abundant cheap brown coal produces > relatively high levels of CO2 but where there are few obvious places to > store it. > > Which brings up another, potentially far greater, problem. As Oxburgh > points out, China, India, Brazil and Mexico are rapidly emerging > markets, and "as countries grow and become more prosperous, they use > more energy. It is a sad fact that if these countries experience the > perfectly legitimate growth in GDP [gross domestic product] that they > have a right to expect, and they do so in the same energy-inefficient > way that we have seen our prosperity grow, then I think we are wasting > our time. Because, frankly, the numbers of people are so large, and the > rate of change is so great, that there will be simply no hope of meeting > our targets by 2050." China, for example, "is opening a new, > old-fashioned, dirty, full-sized power station at the rate of one a > fortnight." (The developing world, not surprisingly, will be most > affected by climate change: Africa is forecast to get warmer at double > the rate of anywhere else and, says David King, will soon be feeling the > effects of climate change at a level rivalling the effects of the HIV > epidemic.) > > This is the sort of issue that must be dealt with at government level, > and governments are notoriously blind beyond the next election, not to > mention worried about upsetting powerful corporations. Yet just a couple > of weeks ago Shell and 12 other signatories, including BP, sent an open > letter to Tony Blair, in which they pointed out that "governments tend > to feel limited in their ability to introduce new policies for reducing > emissions because they fear business resistance, while companies are > unable to take their investments in low-carbon solutions to scale > because of lack of long-term policies," and urged immediate action. > Oxburgh advocates that government uses the controls at its disposal: > "Regulate biofuels. Or subsidise. Or tax" - any incentive really, but > "what we don't want to see is in two years' time the government simply > becoming bored with climate change after we've invested a lot of our > shareholders' money. Remember, those shareholders are pension funds and > other similar organisations." The prospect of big business forcing > government to regulate it would be funny, if it weren't so serious. > > Meanwhile, the price of oil is high at $55 a barrel, and the oil > companies don't see it falling substantially in the near future. At the > current rate of progress, says Oxburgh, "we are going to be really quite > dependent on fossil fuels for another 50 years. And nothing is going to > slow the world economy more, and inhibit our control of the greenhouse > gas problem, than a world recession. So, fundamentally, what we are > trying to do worldwide is to make sure that we have enough of a supply > of oil and gas." Paradoxically, the high price of oil is also good for > renewable energy, as it forces the speedier development of alternatives, > and Oxburgh just views this as a further business opportunity: corn > ethanol, to take the example of a biofuel currently in use, currently > costs nearly as much as oil. > > Shell, therefore, is in no trouble. But the planet is, and Oxburgh sees > no point in mincing words. "The boat is sinking, and we have to use > everything that we possibly can." > _________________________________________ > 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 lawrence at altlawforum.org Thu Jun 16 17:10:36 2005 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 17:10:36 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Survey of Open content usage in South Asia Message-ID: Hi all I am ding a small survey on use of open content projects in South Asia , and the definition of open content includes works that allow for derivation. Will post my results on the lists as well, do let me know of any projects that you are aware to ensure that I don miss out. Lawrence From hilalbhatt at yahoo.co.in Thu Jun 16 19:33:40 2005 From: hilalbhatt at yahoo.co.in (Hilal Bhat) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 15:03:40 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Pilgrim's Progress Message-ID: <20050616140340.16521.qmail@web8408.mail.in.yahoo.com> Dear friends Here is a narrative which tells us how civilians in Kashmir who survive the bullet and the bomb become victims in other lesser-known but infinitely more insidious ways of a protracted condition of violence. and finally how they snap back to the indigenous system for the remedy. Ghulam Hassan, 39-year-old farmer of a village in Kupwara was picked up in 2002 by what he hesitantly calls ‘unidentified gunmen’. He was lucky unlike 12000 other Kashmiris who have undergone similar enforced disappearences and never returned. But the ordeal of Hassan began once he was back home. "I was living a normal life till September 2002 when gunmen forced their way into our house and took me in a gypsy." " For seven days I didn’t see the light of day. Every day I saw a number of people coming to me for an assigned task. The first group beat me with gun butts till I lost consciousness. As I regained my senses another group was ready to torture me with electric shocks. They were beasts. They didn’t spare even my private parts. In the evening, they gave me an injection, " he recalls. He was set free after 7 days. The arduous routine ended but not the suffering. It lengthened with each passing day. Back home Hassan continued to cry in pain. He was taken to a chemist in the neighborhood. The unlicensed chemist-cum-practitioner prescribed Fort Win injection, a pentazocine drug of morphine group with a strong sedative effect. "On the first day the injection was of great relief. Next day I felt the pain again and injected another dose. That is how I started taking injections, " he says. When the affect of injections lessened. Hassan Increased the dosage. In two years time he was taking twenty injections per day. It cost him Rs 1000 per day. Hassan belonged to a relatively well off family. He had a decent income form the apple orchards he owned. But the dependence on Fort Win ruined him physically, financially, mentally and morally. Spending most of his time in the haze of morphine led him to neglect the orchards resulting in the shrinking of his income. Despite his several attempts, Hassan couldn't rid himself of the addiction. "When one of my friends died in front of me. It was a chance for all of us to realize the folly. I forced myself indoors for seven days. On eighth day when I stepped out, I went straight to the chemist and injected another dose. Then someone suggested a de-addiction center in Srinagar and I volunteered to become an inmate.” The only difference it made in his life was a lull of 10 days and thereafter the craving came back. To meet the mounting expenditure he started selling his portable property. When he had nothing to pay for the injections he tried to strike a deal for selling his 16- year-old daughter to a friend. That was the time when relatives and friends heard. A relative took him to Dargah Hazratbal, a historical mosque in Srinagr which houses the holiest relic in Kashmir, a hair from the beard of the Prophet, which consequently is both a mosque and a shrine. On the waterside of the Dal Lake, hundreds of devotees visit the Dargah daily. Here Hassan was initiated unto the power of the spiritual to heal and comfort.This was the beginning of the end of the two-year-old ordeal that had reduced Hassan from being a productive and prosperous individual to being a physical and psychological wreck. Hassan terms the mechanism through which one enters into the realm of healing and vitalization at a sacred place like Dargah as an esoteric and inexplicable phenomenon. But does not shy away from counting certain attributes of a sacred place like dargah which go into the making of such places as thereaupeutic especially for the people suffering from pshychiatric and attitude based disorders. "This is the only place in the city where you won't find the men with Klashankoves slinging to their shoulders. All the people you meet here are victims in one or other way and interacting with them makes you to identify yourself with the troubles of others. Each Friday Hassan visits the Hazratbal mosque in Dargah and spends whole day here. I noticed him here during my two visits to the sacred place in pursuance of I-fellowship. The composure of his countenance and the serene look in his eyes tempted me to initiate a discussion with him. Rgds Hilal Bhat I-Fellow Srinagar ( Kashmir) __________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your friends 'n family snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://in.photos.yahoo.com From cahen.x at levels9.com Thu Jun 16 19:55:26 2005 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 16:25:26 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos letter / 06-11 to 06-16-2005 Message-ID: <019e01c5727f$3d9eaf70$0301a8c0@acerkxw6rbeu2s> pourinfos.org l'actualite du monde de l'art / daily Art news ----------------------------------------------------------------------- infos from june 10, 2005 to June 16,2005 (included) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (mostly in french) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 Job : art teacher Design - P.A.O. option, Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts du Mans, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1787 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 Job : art teacher option DESIGN option, full time, Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts du Mans, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1786 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 Job : art teacher option DESIGN option, Part time, Ecole Superieure des Beaux-Arts du Mans, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1785 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 Workshop : about edition from July 11 to 14, Conception and making photography books, Arles, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1784 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 Workshop : Workshops " WE'RE ALL CYBORGS!", New York, USA. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1783 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 Workshop : Design graphique + Internet + Animation 2D et interactivity, SYNOX, Montreal, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1782 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 Call : study for a project of public work of art,la Teinturerie, Amiens, France. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1780 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 Call : 21st International Short Film Festival, Detmold, Allemagne. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1781 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 Publication : Derives, number 54, esse arts + opinions, Montreal, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1779 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Publication : Spike art quarterly - 04 out now!, Vienna, Austria. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1778 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Publication : PAJ : A Journal of Performance and Art, New York, Usa. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1777 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 Call : 10th Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin, movies festival, video et multimedia, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1776 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Call : Piksel05 - october 16-23. 2005, Bergen, by the Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts (BEK), Norway. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1775 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 Call : themes of the ninth rencontres Traverse Video pour mars 2006, Toulouse, France. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1774 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Call : Saturday june 18, feast/Make Light throughout the world! http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1773 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Meeting : debats, AFRICA REMIX, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1772 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Meeting : Crisis or golden age of photography? Les Rencontres Place Publique, Rencontres Internationales de la Photo d'Arles, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1771 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Meeting : Soutenances "numeriques" - june 16 & 17 2005, Ecole du Louvre, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1770 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Meeting : Park in progress, Pépinières européennes for young artists, Marly-le-Roi, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1769 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Various : Program of 23 th Market of poetry, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1768 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Various : lisen Marcel Proust, editions Thélème and L'echo des Livres association, Theater de l'atelier, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1767 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Various : art-public.com open a permanent service on line documentation, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1766 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Exhibition : la box_interstice.txt, Sabine Macher, Ecole nationale superieure d'art de Bourges, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1765 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Exhibition : " roads of passion ", Antonio Caballero, Galerie Polaris, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1764 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Screening : TheOneMinutes, Videoattitudes, Lucullus, Amiens, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1763 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Exhibition : " Party taken ", Jean Chazy, lagalerie , Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1762 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Exhibition : Urban art from Pacifique, 9 th rencontres d'art contemporain de Saint-Auvnet, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1761 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Exhibition : Gianfranco Gentile, Mana ART espaces asbl, Brussel, Belgium. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1760 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 Program : the letter de visu No. 056 http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1759 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 Exhibition : Why no Iraq Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale? Italy. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1758 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 Program : Manifesto, pointligneplan, dans le cadre du festival movies Paris, L'Entrepot, Paris. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1757 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 Program : mai 14 mai to july 16 2005, international landscape art center of l'île de Vassivière, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1756 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 Exhibition : Genius of the place, Fonds regional d'art contemporain de Bourgogne, Museum des Beaux-Arts de Dijon, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1755 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 34 Call : Video'appart, art video exhibition, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1754 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 Call : CIMATICS.05, Brussels International Festival for Live Audio Visual Arts & VJ'ing, Belgium. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1753 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 36 Call : M/C - Media and Culture, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1752 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Call : STRP art & technology festival , Eindhoven, Netherland. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1751 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 Meeting : Cycle conferences, Invisible city, Les Ateliers de l'Image, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1750 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 39 Various : Open Letter to save the cloister of Carmel, Montreal, Canada. http://pourinfos.org/divers/item.php?id=1749 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 Exhibition : Repetition, 2005, Production still, Artur Zmijewski, Polish Pavillon, 51st Venice Biennale, Italiy. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1748 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 Exhibiton : Hours of great listenings H-GE, Melanie Perrier,3 BIS F, Aix en Provence, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1747 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 Performance : impact point, espace d'arts contemporains, Geneve, Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1746 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 Exhibition : LE VANITà DELL'UCCELLO IN GABBIA, CACT_centro d'arte contemporanea ticino, bellinzona , Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1745 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 Exhibition : Stories of trees, Regional center of Contemporary art, Tremblay Castle, Fontenoy, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1744 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 45 Exhibition : the House Arthur Rimbaud out the walls, est-ce une bonne nouvelle, Rajata Art House, Bangkok, Taïlande. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1743 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 Exhibition : Etienne Bossut - Christophe Cuzin, Parc Saint Léger - Centre d'art contemporain, Pougues-les-Eaux, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1742 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 47 Exhibition : Generation 2005, graduate Students exhibition of the Higher National School of Art Arson Villa, Nice, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1741 From zainab at xtdnet.nl Thu Jun 16 20:58:21 2005 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 19:28:21 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Porous Borders Message-ID: <4609.219.65.14.99.1118935701.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> LANGUAGE, HINDI CINEMA, TELEVISION, ET AL (POROUS BORDERS) I am now on the other side of the border, in Bangladesh, thirty minutes ahead of time. Yet, the differences are not that great. The landscape is similar to that of Bengal. And the culture is essentially Bengali, not Islamic. Bengali language rules here. You either speak the language or no other option. During my first visit, I had learnt that the first revolt which the Bangladeshis had launched against the tyranny of West Pakistan was that of language. The Bangladeshis refused to submit to the authority of Urdu. They blackened all Urdu signs and hoardings, the walls of cities on which Urdu was written. Bangladeshis are proud of their language. From my second visit onwards, I was beginning to perceive that English and Hindi were slowly creeping into the everyday lives of the people there. I started spotting advertising hoardings in English and came to know of the popularity of Hindi television serials and movies. The famous song “Kaanta Laga” had been translated in Bengali. Each day as I would walk the markets of Khulna, I would hear more of Hindi music. One day, the Daily Star, a popular English daily published from Dhaka, carried an article where the author complained of the prevalence of Hindi film music and the decline of Bengali music and poetry. During each of my visit, my various hosts would ask me to speak Hindi, “the way it is spoken in television serials”, they would insist each time. I have always been dumbstruck on this request. I hardly watch the television serials. So I don’t know what kind of Hindi is spoken. Moreover, Hindi is not a homogenous language. It has its dialects, accents and it is spoken differently in different places and regions in India. Hindi TV serials of STAR PLUS, SONY and ZEE are heavily popular among the womenfolk and children. “From Monday to Thursday, 1 PM to 5 PM, it is like a film show for them – all the TV serials they watch,” tells me my host’s brother-in-law in Chittagong. One evening, there was no electricity. In the heat, amidst fanning ourselves, the elder daughter-in-law of the house asked the children to sing and dance to Hindi film songs. Mithila, the little girl, began to sing, as if reciting poetry, ‘if you want to be my lober, lober (lover, lover), if you want to be my lober, lober saaniya dil mein aana re, aa ke phir na jana re ” I was trying to understand whether Mithila understood what she was singing. It strikes that may be she is constantly exposed to the song and has picked it up subconsciously. I think this is an interesting feature of cities – we are constantly amidst sounds and noises. Often, we subconsciously pick up information and often, we don’t filter everything – it’s just about the noise! Hindi films are popular in Bangladesh. But the youngsters tell me that while earlier films were remembered for popular dialogues, today’s films are based on star power. Amitabh Bachan is heavily popular in Bangladesh. Each day when I would pass by the Moila Putta Street in Khulna, I would notice the huge Pepsi hoarding with Amitabh Bachan smiling out of it. The hoarding promised, “Drink Pepsi. Get lucky, meet Amitabh in Kolkatta!” As Amitabh smiled out of this hoarding, I began to realize that Amitabh is not just an icon; he is representative of a nation. He symbolizes the nation itself. He is the nation – he is one face of India to the Bangladeshi people. Pirated VCDs of Hindi films reach Bangladesh before they are released in India. The route is apparently Pakistan where the films are pirated. I remember Aymen Khan, the taxi driver in Amsterdam telling me of his visit to Dubai. “I had been to one of your underworld don’s younger brother’s house. There were suitcases, black ones, piled with film reels. That is how they make their money. Films are released in Dubai by these people.” The experience in Bangladesh and Aymen’s story make me feel that films and Bollywood are an important aspect of the political economy of South Asia. Films, TV, cinema, these in a way contribute to the porosity of borders that exist within South Asia. In 1999, during my visit to Korea, a Pakistani colleague had said to me, “ZEE TV, it is the unifier between India and Pakistan. Else, there was always a distance!” I don’t know in what ways films and television contribute towards the understanding of other. I don’t know how television and cinema reduce distance (or whether they do at all?)? I wonder whether cinema and television assist in making ‘the other’ appear more comprehensible? What???? While I can understand Bangla and if I speak, I wouldn’t be doing a bad job, I feel conscious when I speak the language. Ladies of the houses I would visit would tell me, “Speak Hindi, no problem. We can understand. We watch the television serials.” This time around, a new cellular phone service was being launched in Bangladesh. It is called DJuice and is a service of the popular Grameen Phone service. DJuice advertises in Hindi. Bengali on its advertising pamphlets is written in English. For instance, ‘Khoroch Koto (what are the expenses?)’ is written in English instead of Bengali. One of the boys in the University said to me, “I refuse to patronize DJuice. They are spoiling our language by writing Bengali in English. What impact will it have on the coming generations? Already I see the decline in our language. Given the TV serials and films, I am convinced that the next three or four generations will be Hindi speakers.” I wonder whether borders are porous Are cultural borders in South Asia porous? Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From abshi at vsnl.com Thu Jun 16 21:19:03 2005 From: abshi at vsnl.com (abshi at vsnl.com) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 20:49:03 +0500 Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?Rreminder=3A_Talk_on_17th_June_2005?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_-_=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=AD=ADPAN?= =?iso-8859-1?q?OPTIC_BODIES=3A__BLACK_EUNUCHS_IN_THE_TOPKAPI_PALAC?= =?iso-8859-1?q?E?= Message-ID: <7d3426f7d32ecd.7d32ecd7d3426f@vsnl.net> The PUKAR Gender and Space Project presents a talk by Jateen Lad on ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­PANOPTIC BODIES: BLACK EUNUCHS IN THE TOPKAPI PALACE date: Friday, 17 June 2005 time: 6.30 p.m. place: Max Mueller Bhavan, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai Abstract This lecture engages the disciplines of architecture, philology and theology to explore the notion of the harem as a forbidden and guarded sanctuary in both ritual and palatial contexts. The fantasme of the black eunuch in the Grand Seraglio has been a silent but persistent presence in representations of the imperial harem; either a perverse shadow in the margins of Orientalist representations or the epitome of loyalty in more contemporary readings. This paper enters the labyrinthine passages of the quintessential harem, the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, in an attempt to better understand the body of the eunuch and the nature of the imperial harem as an actual space. There follows a consideration of how the presence, identity and the subtleties of power acquired by the black eunuchs came to be embodied architecturally. In the process, it will be shown how the notions of surveillance and mediation - qualities embodied in the function and body of the eunuch - permeated the enclo sing walls of the harem to infuse deep into its inner structure. Jateen Lad studied architecture at Cambridge, UK and has practised in London, Berlin, Rotterdam and East Africa and is design critic at a number of London schools. As a research fellow with the Aga Khan Program at Harvard and MIT his writings engaged architecture, philology and theology to explore the notion of the harem as a forbidden and guarded sanctuary in both ritual and palatial contexts. He is currently establishing a design studio in Pondicherry and is researching notions of display and multiplicity in the Hawa Mahal at Jaipur. 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 From kranenbu at xs4all.nl Fri Jun 17 02:38:30 2005 From: kranenbu at xs4all.nl (Rob van Kranenburg) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:08:30 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] [ZESTEconomics] The architecture of a sustainable American Indian economy In-Reply-To: <42B129F9.4080305@ranadasgupta.com> References: <42B129F9.4080305@ranadasgupta.com> Message-ID: From: "Vipul Bathwal" Sender: ZESTEconomics at yahoogroups.com List-Id: Date: Sun, 05 Jun 2005 11:02:49 -0000 Subject: [ZESTEconomics] The architecture of a sustainable American Indian economy The architecture of a sustainable American Indian economy By Paul Frits © Indian Country Today | June 02, 2005 http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=96411017 Everyone knows what the important economic question is. And that question applies to all tribes, because we - all our tribes - have experienced more or less the same history. After so many centuries of our lands and resources, our cultural norms and our original social orders and governance systems being assaulted, violated, disrespected, stereotyped, ridiculed, appropriated, misappropriated, substituted, adulterated, misrepresented, persecuted, suppressed, dominated, smothered and, in some cases, snuffed out by the dominant culture, how can Native societies reconstitute themselves to the point of forever leaving behind a dependent survival pattern? The answer may be found in another question: How can the North American tribal community develop a long-term, robust, sustainable and inclusive economy capable of achieving necessary self-government revenues, acceptable employment statistics and desirable growth rates across all (or most all) tribes, towards a collectively secure self-governance tradition and a mutually supportive economic future? This is perhaps the primary defining question that confronts our tribal leaders in rebuilding our collective community of First Nations of the Americas. We are perhaps now, finally, close to seriously addressing this challenge. After more than five centuries following initial contact with the first immigrant settlers in this hemisphere, we are perhaps poised to truly re-develop an ''international'' community of First Nations based on a positive, harmonized, collective momentum of economic initiative, rather than a merely reactive pattern of responses to successive generations of negative external pressures. Historical inter-tribal commerce It is a truism that the North American tribal community constitutes a group of societies whose collective identity is defined by so much more than being simply one member of the contemporary North American community of ''visible minorities.'' Rather, our true collective identity is as much fed by the mythic and historical value of our shared spiritual relationship with the lands of our respective ancestors as by the way we all - every last tribe, from all four directions - weaved the mystical properties of our natural environments into the belief systems and collective rituals that held our communities together, as self-governing and sovereign societies since time immemorial. And yet we may be well-advised to learn some commercial and financial practices from other minorities (visible and otherwise) that were not original inhabitants of the Americas, but who have come here and lifted the economic tide of their respective communities through their own economic behaviors. There are many such minorities whose constituent groups have offered jobs, opportunities and benefits to the surrounding community while benefiting individuals and groups within their specific minority. This has been accomplished in such ways that a greater-than-average per capita percentage of net benefits accrued within that minority in areas where the need was greatest. Such benefit-sharing has been conveyed within these minority groups through the advancement of capital on credit, investment opportunities and co-venturing opportunities, contracting opportunities and job opportunities. And such practices have been of critical importance to the expansion and diversification of economic activity within those minority groups. In this vein, it is worth noting that our collective Native identity has been defined in part by the historic patterns of commercial interaction that existed between our societies, particularly in pre- Columbian times. In that context, we are informed by oral traditions and by the record of archaeological relics that reveal there was an extensive system of interactive trade patterns extending northeast and northwest from Central America across most of North American. A similar trade pattern also extended southeast and southwest from Central America across much of South America. Returning to original economic patterns The modern return to pre-Columbian, inter-tribal economic patterns will, in part, be based on natural preferences favoring the hiring of Native peoples, and the procurement of goods and services from Native-controlled businesses. It will also, in part, be based simply on the networking of tribes and Native individuals with common investment interests, towards co-investing in specialized or general markets. It will be further based on the establishment of commercial Native enterprises, and by tribal governments and non-governmental Native individuals and groups that structure their services and products to reach out to Native markets and facilitate specialized access to goods and services to which access has previously been subject to barriers. In this way, new secondary and tertiary Native industries are more likely to emerge. Facilitating such patterns These themes were addressed to some extent at the annual convention of the National Indian Gaming Association, held in San Diego in April, and expressed principally in two proposed initiatives. The first initiative proposes to encourage the tribal government gaming sector to be active in training and hiring Native individuals, and in exercising purchasing practices which benefit Native companies and companies that have a policy of benefiting Natives through employment and/or subcontracts. The second initiative contemplates the active development of an American Indian Business Network that might facilitate positive results in the first initiative described above, and have other positive effects. The proposed NIGA initiatives echo a theme that has been the subject of initiatives pursued for some time by the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development (NCAIED). These efforts were the subject of many conference sessions and various public addresses made at the NCAIED-organized Res 2005 conference held in February in Las Vegas. In fact, NCAIED has long facilitated, through its networks and its Native business support program, access in favor of Native business (both tribal government and private sector) to U.S. government contracting preferences (under Section 8(a) of the Small Business Act), and similar access to the mainstream private sector business community (particularly public companies having ethnic diversification policies). It is clear that such continued efforts are required. The average poverty rate for members of gaming tribes is still high: 24.7 percent. The rate for non-gaming tribes is 33 percent. In view of these statistics, the desirability of encouraging and facilitating the aforementioned patterns of contemporary Native business practices is unquestionable. But even more significantly, in view of the rapid growth of the American Indian population over the next generation, these commercial patterns are desirable for the expansion and diversification of the broader Native economy. Such diversification is also particularly desirable in view of emerging challenges to any tribe's inadvisable reliance upon a single-industry economy. Adapting the ancient practices There are special reasons for, and approaches to, optimizing the implementation of such remedial collective inter-tribal practices, especially in the case of particular standard tribal government business sectors not limited to gaming - upon which some tribes have become inordinately reliant. Moreover, there are tips to avoiding undesirable complications in the implementation of such practices and efforts. These will be explored in the next installment of this column. Paul Frits is a Mohawk member of the Six Nations of the Grand River. He was a member of the board of his First Nation's Business Development Corporation through most of the 1990s, and continues to be an honorary member of that corporation. Frits practiced Native law for many years and has advised many tribal administrations in their public governance matters and economic development initiatives, including casino/hospitality, financial services, energy, natural resources, services, manufacturing, telecommunications and information technology, cultural and other industries. Frits volunteers his time to research and write perspective columns on matters of interest to the broader Native community. He may be reached at paulfrits at hotmail.com. -- http://www.virtueelplatform.nl/person-1024.25.html&lang=en http://blogger.xs4all.nl/kranenbu/ http://locative.net/blog/mixreality/ 0031 (0) 641930235 From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jun 17 19:50:35 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 19:50:35 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Delhi I-Fellows Message-ID: This is to remind all Delhi I-Fellows that we are meeting tomorrow at the Indian Coffe House at Mohan Singh Place, near Rivoli Cinema in Connaught Place at 5:30 pm. I was there this last Sunday too and must avoid being a regular there... Everyone's invited! Shivam -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured in into my life (-JD) www.shivamvij.com From eye at ranadasgupta.com Sat Jun 18 02:29:06 2005 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2005 02:29:06 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] An essay on hope in the Republic of Georgia Message-ID: <42B3399A.2050108@ranadasgupta.com> This is an essay I wrote some time ago following a trip to Tbilisi. It reports on conversations I had with people about how the future can be imagined in a place where people have become entirely cynical of it. For those who know anything about Bhilai and its steel plant the central character in this essay has fascinating connections to it. The other histories of a place. http://www.ranadasgupta.com/texts.asp?text_id=30 happy reading... R Rana Dasgupta www.ranadasgupta.com THEREAFTERS Trying to imagine the future in Georgia Essay : Republic of Georgia, Tbilisi, politics, history, Soviet Union, Saakashvili, hope, despair Friday, June 17, 2005 13:42 GMT There are people who are citizens of nations about which there is no doubt. This fact is important for their confident, relaxed sense of self. They see a world full of certainties: they talk easily of the past and the future, they suffer no lapses of memory, no aphasia, no persistent misgivings about their own existence. Often they do not acknowledge the origins of their breezy composure, for they have been allowed to grow up believing themselves to be self-created “individuals” (such is the maturity of their nation-parents). All that is left over from this repressed paternity is a general, primordial faith in the benign power of the nation-state. For such people, the myriad uncertainties that arise from being part of a nation that is little more than a phantom are something of a curiosity. Secure within a national fiction that has long ago congealed into fact, they find themselves smiling indulgently at the anxious imaginative turns of more doubtful places: fanaticisms about long-dead heroes, macho fantasies of integrity and purity, neurotic combinations of bitterness and awe vis-à-vis the handful of nations whose triumphant exception is supposed to be the rule. But in a world where the nation-state is the beginning and end of thought, the absence of grand national narratives is experienced as personal lack; and stories of absent greatness rush in to fill the void. David the Builder (1073-1125), whose conquests created an empire extending across the Caucasus, ranks as Georgia’s most glorious long-dead hero. His memory helped to focus a Georgian political consciousness during the nearly eight centuries from the routing of the medieval empire by Genghiz Khan in 1220 to Georgia’s independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 when Georgians never had a state of their own – except for the three years between Russia's loss of the territory in 1918 and its renewed occupation in 1921. Even now, the Georgian government does not have control over large areas of what is considered to be Georgian territory; and its future attempts to occupy these areas could be very bloody. Meanwhile, for most of its short history, the present Republic of Georgia has found itself ruled by stern, predatory business groups that have borne little resemblance to the benign governments that nation states are “supposed” to have. Largely as a result of their power games, nearly everyone in the country has seen their fortunes dwindle and their possibilities shrink since the long hoped-for independence. It is only in this context of national failure and disappointment that it is possible to understand the scale of the hopes aroused by Mikhail Saakashvili’s “rose revolution” of November 2003. A dashing 36-year old with a law degree from Columbia, a Dutch wife, and facility in five languages, Saakashvili had already been battling corruption from the centre of Georgian politics for eight years when he became the figurehead for a wave of public resentment against alleged election-fixing by the much-detested President Edvard Shevardnadze – whose family and immediate circle controlled some 70% of the Georgian economy. In a startling, bloodless coup supported by euphoric street demonstrations, Saakashvili took over as president. Like a modern heir to David the Builder, he pledged to right all the wrongs of history and turn Georgia into a “proper” nation state: he would reclaim the breakaway provinces, oust corruption and make the country part of the international flows of jobs and investment. In the presidential elections that followed two months later, he won over 96% of the vote. It was two months after this, when the posters of the revolution were still on the walls, that I arrived in Tbilisi to do some research for my next novel. It was a country I had been interested in for some time as a setting for a particular character. Tbilisi airport is full of signs showing anxious women accompanied by leather-jacketed good-for-nothings counting dollar bills, and carrying the assurance: “You Are Not For Sale.” These are a reference to Georgia’s world leadership in the domain of human trafficking, and to the great traumas suffered by many of those trying to cross this border in the opposite direction. As a citizen, however, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island, a little-doubted state, I naturally encountered only smiles of welcome as I went through immigration. On my second day in Tbilisi I telephoned Dr Nikoloz Kenchosvili, an academic at the Institute of Oriental Studies. He was not expecting my call. A friend of mine had given me his name just before I set off from home; there had not been any time to warn him of my arrival. The phone was answered after two rings. I explained how I got his details, that I was researching a novel and if he wasn’t too busy...? He burst out laughing. “This is Georgia. Intellectuals are never busy! Shall we have lunch?” We arranged to meet outside Philharmonia, Tbilisi's large, late-60s concert hall. I arrived slightly late: I could see him from a distance pacing up and down, white hair shining in the sun. “Dr Kenchosvili?” “I was beginning to think you were lost! Come: let us find a place where we can talk.” We crossed the road to a small cafe where we ordered beer and ham and khajapuri . He needed little encouragement to tell me about himself. Nikoloz was born into an educated, middle-class Tbilisi family whose members were deeply anti-Communist. During the terrifying and paranoiac 1930s, Beria sent his father’s brother to Siberia for sedition. His father joined the Communist Party in an attempt to protect the family from more such assaults, but their ideological credentials remained shaky, and the young Niko had to abandon his dreams of becoming an opera singer – a career which would have required significant Party patronage. He studied languages and literature in Moscow and returned home to become an academic. (Nikoloz's uncle was to return to Tbilisi in 1948 after eleven years of hard labour. His brother would go through the same ordeal a few years later.) In the early 1960s, Nikoloz applied for a job as interpreter at the recently-built Bhilai Steel Plant in central India. Bhilai was India's first nationally-owned plant, and an epic statement of Nehru's socialist, modernising vision. It was set up with financial and technical assistance from the Soviet Union, which sent a large number of engineers and managers to oversee the project. The frisson of this intimate encounter persists in the town to this day: people still talk about the foreigners who came to stay, they still drive the Ladas that were imported at the time, and still have a few words of Russian. The impact on Nikoloz was electrifying. As for many of his secluded generation, international travel felt truly magical; and he fell in love in a way that was full-blown, adolescent, rapturous, and permanent. There were obstacles, of course – the tedium of constant surveillance, the prohibition on social contact with Indian workers and their families, the obligatory daily readings from Marx and Lenin, the censorship (he was prevented, for instance, from seeing the “anti-Soviet” Dr. Zhivago when it came to India) – but these did nothing to muddle the fixity of his adoration. Though such strictures eventually forced him to give up the job and return to Tbilisi, Nikoloz was to devote the rest of his life to studying Indian culture. To date he has translated fourteen works of Hindi fiction into Georgian, and is the author of a number of papers on Indian folktales and literature. His business card described him as “Leading Scientist (Indologist)”. Niko's vocation relegated him to a lonely, eccentric corner of Georgian life. In the old days he had been able to earn money by translating Marxist Indian writers into Georgian. Now such avenues were closed: Georgian publishing was all but wiped out, and authors who wanted to see their works in print had to pay the publishing costs themselves. Naturally, Niko’s recently-completed Georgian version of Patanjali's second century BC Yoga Sutra lay unpublished. He thought often of giving it all up. “Perhaps I should try some business. What do you think? This indology is getting me nowhere.” We were still sitting in the cafe. “I would naturally like to invite you to my house, but I wanted to meet you first. My place is very small, and I didn't know what kind of person you were.” Niko, like most academics in Georgia, earned a salary of under $30 a month. His wife, a teacher of music theory, earned about the same. They lived in an apartment she had recently inherited from an uncle, which allowed them to supplement their income by letting out their old one. “That's how we survive," says Niko. "Most of my friends cannot even eat. They cannot afford a simple meal like this.” Nikoloz was effusive and dignified, but his conversation circled continually back to the same points of bitterness and anger. “Our consciousness was crushed. This is what is worse than the economic hardship. Young people now have a pure consciousness, but my generation had their minds in a prison. Stalin was a genius but he hated nice men. Intellectuals. He destroyed us and now we have no one who values the intellect. Now the country is run by criminals. They are simple thieves. This Georgian ruling class hates the new President, Saakashvili, because he is a nice man, handsome, intellectual, sincere. He is a genius, and also handsome. I am sure things will get better. But I am sixty-five years old: I have no time to wait.” Meanwhile, he was forced to ask questions of survival. “I am writing a paper in order to qualify for a professorship. Then I would get a pension. But I want to go to India. That is where I belong. But how can I afford it? Do you think I could set up a school to teach Georgian? There must be some people interested in learning Georgian, no? And I will make khajapuri. I can make it very well.” He sensed that history had overtaken him, and that he should try to adapt to a more prosaic, business-minded age, but he struggled when he tried to imagine the practicalities. “I am not a businessman. I am a creative spirit. My spirit must realize itself in creative work. I cannot escape my self. There are people who are born to be businessmen. You can see that they are meant to do it: how effortlessly they make money! I can never be like that, no matter how hard I try.” For most Georgians, the end of Soviet rule was a personal catastrophe. 1991 marked the beginning of a period of collapsed industries, civil war, terrorism, mass poverty and unemployment, declining health and literacy, and organized crime. Cut off from the commercial network of the Soviet Bloc, which had provided a vast, automatic market for Georgian industries, and then reduced by crime and instability to a highly undesirable destination for new investments, Georgia is now a bleak place to try and make a life. Shops in the city have little to sell. There are few jobs. The transit points by the highways outside the city are bustling with men queuing for day labour in construction or transport. The “middle classes” are so defined only by the nature of their work, not by their standard of living, since they too live in poverty. One doctor I met had had to pay a $100 bribe to secure a job in a hospital that paid her $10 per month. Everywhere there are old people begging on the street to supplement the state pension of $7 a month. In contrast to nearly everyone else, the political elite has managed to make good money out of Georgia. As those in power began to see how the end of the Soviet Union would play out, they seized as much as they could of the collapsing state’s assets in order to shore up their position for a new, hardened world. A few individuals consolidated huge fortunes, which made them into significant regional commercial players and turned them inexorably towards organized crime. Unlike the official industrial system of the Soviet Bloc, which was destroyed by its break-up into separate states, the flexible criminal networks that operated out of Moscow and extended all over the world were only strengthened by the collapse of state power: suddenly their international channels faced no competition from “legitimate” ones, the policing of criminal businesses was almost eliminated, and in the new, deregulated climate, powerful organizations were suddenly able to get their hands on amounts of cash that would have been unimaginable under the Communists. Crime paid; and people seeking returns on their wealth built large conglomerates operating in every high-profit sector, whether legal or not: property, construction, hospitality, energy, drugs, prostitution, money laundering, etc. This fact determines the texture of daily life at nearly every level. It accounts for the absurdly high number of casinos in Tbilisi, and for the ghostly feel of prime areas of the city’s real estate, where expensive boutiques and restaurants run empty because their real business is money laundering. It explains the fact that there are newly-built but empty buildings everywhere. It is the reason for the high levels of violence that broke out on Tbilisi streets, particularly in the late 1990s, as large business organizations fought over turf. It explains the pattern of Georgian emigration, which has largely followed the channels opened up for it by the power of criminal organizations, and has therefore been dominated by human trafficking and prostitution. Above all, it explains the sclerotic nature of Georgian politics, which has been taken over by criminal interests, and is systematically, even joyfully, corrupt. If one image can sum up the last few years it is this group of criminal-politicians, people who were often already powerful under the old regime but who are now toughened for the era of gangsterism, and updated with the hysterically festive style of the hyper rich living amid economic apocalypse. What is the relationship between all this and the great talent that Georgians seem to have for discussion and friendship? The cafés and bars are filled with the hubbub of intense debate – love, politics, history – and people treat each other with a rare generosity. When you see the way that the whole city comes out onto the streets on a Sunday to amble slowly with friends and discuss the events of the week, you wonder if this provincial town has preserved unhurried forms of intimacy that have been lost elsewhere to speed and distraction. But it is also possible, despite everything, that there is some humanizing aspect to the experiences of the last few years. You cannot abandon yourself to some sleepy faith in the ultimately benign nature of time – to an idea of inevitable progress – because it has shown itself to be spectacularly whimsical, and even destructive. If the future is to be any better it will have to be constructed so by you, and by those around you. Having seen some posters announcing that the piano students at the Tbilisi conservatoire were giving public recitals, I went one day to listen. The conservatoire was on Griboedov Street near the Academy of Arts; there was a small sculpture garden on the opposite side of the street where stone sculptures had long since toppled over and become overgrown. Inside the conservatoire, a recital was in progress and the doors to the concert hall were closed. I waited in the lobby, where the sound was indistinct; students listened with their ears to the crack between the doors. At length we heard applause from within, and the doors opened. As is well known, the Soviets were great promoters of classical music, and even in these dismal times – or perhaps because of them – there seemed to be a thriving minority of people involved with this conservatoire. Sixty or so people were here to listen: students, teachers and a few parents. At the back of the room sat a distinguished-looking row of whispering judges in half-moon glasses. A Petrof concert grand stood open on the stage; the pale blue walls were decorated with stucco cherubs and lyres. There were busts of Bach and Beethoven and the other great composers. A young woman walked onto the stage: she was perhaps seventeen. She wore a knee-length skirt and glasses; her movements had a teenager’s awkwardness to them. She offered a minimal bow to the audience, walked to the piano and began a Bach Toccata and Fugue. She played with her back stooped right over, so her nose was just above the keyboard. Her performance was expansive and romantic, with a swelling pedal and the sort of heroic self-expression that went out of fashion some time in the 1950s among western performers of Bach. She ended, and the audience waited silently; she moved on to Liszt’s thundering Rhapsodie Espagnole, and then the Prokofiev Toccata. The whole things lasted about forty minutes. It was a performance of astonishing virtuosity, during which her absorption in the music did not break once – until the final applause, at which point she bowed coyly and walked hurriedly from the stage. I had once seen a photograph of this room from 1904, when it was newly built; it still looked exactly the same. There was almost nothing about this whole scene, in fact, which could not have occurred at pretty much any point in the century since then. At the crossroads of east-west routes from the Caspian Sea to the Black Sea, and north-south ones from Russia to Turkey and the Middle East, Tbilisi acquired the status, in the second half of the nineteenth century, of a prosperous little outpost of the Russian empire. Wars with Persia and the Ottomans had expanded the empire into the Caucasus, and Russian administrators had begun to transform Tbilisi with the boulevards, tramlines, expansive squares and public institutions that were the shared vocabulary of nineteenth-century cities across the world. In 1851 an imposing opera house appeared, an exotic fantasy of Islamic arches, which brought companies from Paris and Rome who performed Mozart, Donizetti, Bizet, Puccini and Verdi. Amid all the other kinds of people in this trading town – the Azeri troubadours, the Persian caravan traders – arose a small bourgeoisie that wore the top-hatted, sober uniform of its peers around the world. Merchants and industrialists from Armenia dominated Tbilisi’s economy, building painted mansions with tiled roofs and carved wooden balconies that climbed gaily up the hillsides to look down on the growing town. A generation of Georgian nationalists, educated in Petersburg, returned to the city in the 1860s to work on celebratory Georgian histories and poems about Georgian kings, peasants and warriors that still provide the basis for a Georgian national consciousness. Since many intellectuals and artists from eastward-galloping Russia were in the habit of falling in love with everything that was oriental about their empire, balmy Tbilisi became a frequent destination for them, too: Pushkin, Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy all spent time there, and Lermontov became so passionate about it he has been adopted as a Georgian national hero. Economic development accelerated towards the end of the century when nearby Baku, on the Caspian, went through its meteoric rise under the influence of the Nobels and Rothschilds, who built it into the centrepiece of a European oil empire to rival Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Oil from Baku was needed in western Europe, and the Transcaucasian railway (1883) and the subsequent pipeline (1889) went via Tbilisi for loading onto ships in the Black Sea port of Batumi. Tbilisi also became an important centre of socialist thought and activism: for the marginalization of Georgians from its economy added a nationalist tinge to Marxist critiques that made them extremely compelling, and the de facto Menshevik administration that ruled with widespread support during Russia’s crises of 1905 was the first to do so under such a banner anywhere in the world. Comparatively little of what was built in those dynamic days has been destroyed. If you look down on old Tbilisi from the hills on the other side of the river where the Sheraton Hotel now stands, the view is not very different from what you might have seen in 1900. The steep slopes are still stepped with ornate wooden houses and the occasional polygonal church; above the city the hilltops are still bare. The stone domes of the public baths still cover the square in front of the mosque exactly as they did in Sergei Paradjanov’s 1969 film of eighteenth-century Tbilisi, The Colour of Pomegranates. Close up, however, things are different. The opera house on Rustaveli Avenue, still graceful, is run-down, and large trees grow out through the cupolas on the round billboards outside. Many houses are empty and collapsed: balconies have fallen to the ground and staircases lead up to floors of bare wooden beams. Children play football in courtyards where the glass has broken in the carved window frames, to be replaced by chipboard. Such decay is everywhere, reaching beyond the old city into the more monumental areas built during the Soviet era. Many of the large housing complexes from the 50s and 60s are now only habitable thanks to makeshift repairs with corrugated iron and plastic sheeting. David Agmashenebeli Avenue, a major thoroughfare of the city’s twentieth-century expansion, has become a proletarian mockery of its former affluent self, with signs for currency exchange and second-hand clothes plastered rudely onto the dilapidated façades of what once were theatres and boutiques and cinemas. Old women sit in every doorway selling sunflower seeds, whose husks lie in little piles under their stools, and apples and onions that they bring in plastic bags. The street is full of idle taxis, whose drivers sit together on the curb to smoke. There are graffiti on nearly every wall. “Toyota” invokes the unencumbered power, perhaps, of the Land Cruisers that are standard issue for the city’s gliding diplomatic and UN personnel. The names of British football clubs and American actresses (“Angelina Jolie”, “Jennifer Lopez”) resound with glamour and achievement. Some walls have been decorated painstakingly, with drawings of animals or trees or women’s faces. The most common graffiti, however, are “Tupac” and “Eminem”. Heroes for an in-between age, who stand for no particular set of ideas, but who seem to aim all their monumental masculine media power against the way the world is, and thus provide an ego ideal for bored, frustrated youths who have little to do except rail impotently and play video games in Tbilisi’s many arcades. I sat down to lunch with a young bureaucrat, Vakhtang Maisaia, from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and an American journalist named Jeffrey Silverman. It was a Sunday afternoon, and we were the only ones in the restaurant. In front of us was an enormous spread of barbecued pork and khinkali accompanied by Georgian wine and Borjomi mineral water. “Who’s going to eat all this?” I asked. “We are!” Vakhtang was thirty-one years old, but his air of avuncular warmth and his mouthful of gold teeth made him seem older. “Anyway,” he added, “it doesn’t look nice to have a small amount of food on the table.” We began to eat. There was no elegant way to tackle the khinkali, and Vakhtang discouraged my efforts in this direction. “You have to eat it with your hands. That is the way. Don’t worry if the juice runs down your face. And try this mineral water. Borjomi is very famous. It contains many minerals and is very good for your health.” Jeffrey laughed scornfully. “Every place you go to has a different kind of Borjomi mineral water. They all claim to be the original. Just look into who owns them all and you’ll have a whole new perspective on it.” Jeffrey was a tough southerner married to an Armenian from Georgia. Now in his fifties, he had previously worked for a long time for a tobacco company in the US and, as if in reaction to this experience, now lived in Tbilisi where he spent his time seeking out tales of corruption – especially the sort that involves American corporations. His articles on corporate cover-ups, large NGO funds slipping into personal pockets, arms deals and unexplained murders made him a well-known figure in the city, cursed and adored in equal measure. It was March 14th, 2004. Early that morning President Saakashvili had been barred from entering the province of Ajaria by the troops of its Russian-supported strongman Aslan Abashidze. A military build-up was beginning on both sides, and my lunch companions began to receive a barrage of mobile phone calls. While we talked about Georgia’s political situation they ducked out periodically for urgent exchanges of the latest news. “The day I got my job in the Ministry,” said Vakhtang, “my boss said to me, ‘We will pay you $20 per month. You must earn this money. You have to be at your desk every day and fulfil your duties. Beyond this, you may carry out your own business in any way you wish. I will not interfere.’ He was explaining the ground rules of corruption to me. Corruption is systematic and entirely necessary – for how can you support a family on $20 a month?” Vakhtang was a man of serious intent, exasperated with this reality, who wished the country could be brought to a state of “normality” and who had chosen a line of work in which he could do his bit to move things in this direction. He had a strong sense of mission and, in the wake of the revolution, renewed hope. “This region is still very dangerous. The effects of the break-up of the Soviet Union are still being felt. There are more than forty conflicts over ethnicity or territory that are already violent or may become so; most of these groups are asserting their claims more and more strongly. Meanwhile, Russia still wields undue power in the country. It cuts off our gas supply when it wants to apply pressure. It has provided generous supplies of weapons to the country’s breakaway leaders in order to keep Georgia weak. It’s still not impossible that it could walk in and occupy us again. Now Saakashvili is in power it is at last time to put an end to our fragile situation. We have to quickly reunify the country and forge strong international alliances.” Of such alliances, America, of course, is the most important. And, as it happens, America is exceedingly interested in Georgia right now. At a point when its continued access to Middle Eastern oil is so unpredictable, the extensive deposits in the Caspian Sea have assumed unprecedented importance, and the US is not leaving its supply lines in the region in any doubt. It has fought long and hard to create an oil corridor from the Caspian that will avoid Russian and Iranian territory and pass through countries that are smaller, easier to control, and friendlier. The most visible result, the soon-to-be-completed Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, was one of the most common subjects of conversation and news reporting in Georgia while I was there, and helps to explain why this poor, provincial place is so full of foreign businesspeople, NGOs and diplomats. It gives Georgia significant geopolitical importance at this point in time, making it clear that its future will be determined at least in part by the struggles of the Great Powers, and holding out the possibility that on this single point of foreign interest might be hung a future of international connections, investment, and prosperity. More food kept coming. Jeffrey was on the phone to some diplomat. “Yes I know exactly how they got those arms… “Yes… “Of course we can meet… I can tell you when they got them and from whom… “Tomorrow morning?” For Vakhtang, the ascendancy of the US in the region was probably a good thing. “We are a small country on the doorstep of a giant. Our future will always be insecure if we do not have American protection.” The US is delivering its protection across the region, making it clear that it will not leave its investments exposed to the Caucasian elements. American military bases have recently appeared in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, and are likely to do so in Tajikistan and Azerbaijan. Kazakhstan is setting up a Caspian naval base under US supervision, and US troops have been sent to Georgia to provide training and equipment to its armed forces. All this makes it much less likely that Russia would ever launch a hostile operation against Georgia. But this is only part of the attraction of the American presence. For Vakhtang – and for Mikhail Saakashvili’s government – the imagined “normality” to which Georgia must return is, at this time of neoliberal consensus, a thoroughly corporate one, and American interest is crucial for bringing it about. Georgia, of course, is one of those places where you see corporations at their most rapacious, and many Georgians may not like what they are doing there. The upheaval caused by the building of the pipeline through villages and agricultural land, for instance, will hardly be assuaged by the NGOs employed by BP to calm the social storms in their wake. But the twentieth century’s utopias have destroyed the country to the point where there is no room anymore for fine debate, new visions or private misgivings. All the choices for Georgia’s future amount to just one choice, which is the same one choice enjoyed by everyone else: to usher in the tumult of the global market. The indications are that Saakashvili’s government will do so with an almost unmatched level of fundamentalist passion. Jeffrey finished his phone call and looked at me. “Stick around,” he said. “You may see a war.” He was impatient with Vakhtang’s pro-American sentiments. He did not believe that American interests could ever be made to serve Georgian ones. “The US invokes ‘terrorism’ as an excuse for its military influence in this part of the world. This is exactly the same strategy that Russia has pursued. They both want to keep talking about Chechen fighters in Georgia, to treat the country as a ‘failed state,’ so they can exert their influence on its affairs. But their interest is not terrorists, but energy. The real reason the US troops came here was to train the Georgian army to guard their pipeline. Do you think the US could walk in to a successful democracy like Latvia or Estonia and tell the army what to do? No. It’s very convenient for them right now that the country is unstable and they can set things up the way they want them.” The table was awash with pink napkins drenched in khinkali juice wiped from greasy chins. Jeffrey appealed hotly, “I seriously think it would be better if they put a wall around this country for fifty years and didn’t let anyone in or out. I really believe that would solve Georgia’s problems more quickly.” But the phone calls were becoming only more insistent and lunch was disbanded. Vakhtang had to return to the Ministry. Jeffrey went to check his facts ready for his exchange of intelligence the next morning. After I left the country, the stand-off between Saakashvili and Abashidze ended – without a shot being fired. Abashidze fled to Moscow and Saakashvili entered Ajaria to a euphoric reception. The first obstacle to his reunification of the country had been honourably cleared, and his prestige was sky-high. Vakhtang was proud and excited – doubly so, since he had been appointed Counsellor to the Georgian Diplomatic Mission to NATO, and was going to Brussels for three years. Jeffrey began to write me depressed emails wondering if the Saakashvili administration would not turn out to be more power-hungry and corrupt even than what had gone before. But then his propensity to hang out in the most dangerous Caucasian recesses got him into more trouble than just the usual beating. While trying to work out what was really happening where the official maps read “Here Be Terrorists” he found himself arrested in Azerbaijan under an old warrant he did not know about; his passport was confiscated and his attention became more focussed on gathering money from well-wishers to pay to the Azerbaijani police. Meanwhile, the nearly-complete Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, built by French, American and Indian contractors for the BP-led consortium, buried under concrete and watched at all times by guards and electronic sensors, is as secure as human beings know how to build. Power was in short supply in Tbilisi, and at night most of the streets were in deep darkness. The headlights of an occasional Lada taxi would speed past loudly over the cobbles. Late-night shops spilled light out onto the sidewalks; their simple interiors, with sausages hanging from the ceiling and sacks of flour and potatoes on the floor, seemed cheerful and welcoming in the deep night. Outside, old people sat in the blackness of doorways, and gypsy children trailed passing pedestrians, trying to argue money out of them. A team of men walked the streets with a torch, pasting new posters onto the palimpsest of city walls. A fleet of taxis and gleaming 4x4s jostled outside the Adjara Hotel, whose nightclub was host to some DJ from Paris; rich young men with Gucci shades and model girlfriends were still arriving at 1am to join the crowds of dancers, whose Ecstasy-induced serenity rendered them relatively indifferent to the erotic gyrations of the elongated women up on the stage. A birthday party was happening in one of the restaurants on Perovskaya Street. A large family was packed around a thirty-foot table whose surface was entirely covered, end-to-end, with a couple of hundred of dishes of food. A gypsy band had been hired for the evening: three old men played dances at blistering speed on a violin, accordion and synthesizer. The endless toasts had started – to Georgia, to parents, to women, to love, to memories, to the departed, and so on, and so on – and soon the young people would start to dance wildly until they collapsed with drink. Their seated grandmothers would clap them on to ever-faster footwork, they would leap and reel to the rhythm of the music, and they would end each dance by throwing themselves to the floor and lying in a group on their backs, laughing out loud. Most of the people I met in the bars and cafés were young. Some of them had jobs. One worked for Opel, in the marketing department, while studying for her MBA in the evenings. Another was employed by an American NGO whose values and motives he mistrusted entirely – but the money was good, and for people whose opportunities are so slender there is not much irony to such contradictions. But many were unemployed. They did not order drinks, and came just to talk. The young men all seemed to spend their time writing poetry. It was poetry they knew would never be published, written for themselves and their friends. There was a café in Tbilisi, popularly known as the “Literature Café,” where such people met and discussed politics and literature, and where Georgia’s most famous writer, Dato Turashvili, held court in Sartrean style. These people had a romantic persona based on a deep cynicism about almost anything the wider world had to offer, and the celebration of love, sex and the artistic interiority. They found me artificial. “So you are paid to write books? That is your living?” “Yes.” “So then for you it is a business. You do not write from the heart. You think only of what people will buy.” End of conversation. We talked about other things. It was difficult for these people to believe that any established interest could ever do anything to benefit them. They were young enough to have lived their whole life in a situation of economic and political desperation, and it had become a fundamental condition. They were among those, of course, who had protested during the revolution, and who had had the satisfaction of seeing the old regime removed and humiliated. But their support for Saakashvili was provisional. “We are giving him time. He is new, he is just starting. Let’s see what he does. We will support him for a while. But he is not our saviour. If he does nothing we will fight to get him out of power.” They had a general sense that things must get better. The entrenched interests of the former Communist elite could not survive the new political and economic currents, and one day life would perhaps come closer to the fantasy of “normality” that seemed everywhere to float like a mirage above the apparent aberration of Georgian life. But they did not think anything was happening soon: “Maybe in fifty years, maybe in a hundred. Georgia will become a normal place. Too far away for us.” Dr. Kenchosvili, four decades older than these people, had said a remarkably similar thing. It was as if the future always began just after you had ceased to be able to experience it, no matter when that was likely to be. This was not about real time, but about an inability to imagine oneself living in a certain kind of world: relaxed, and confident. Sometimes only some deus ex machina seemed adequate to transform this reality into that: “We need some nuclear bomb. Destroy everything. Start from zero!” Everyone laughed. But even an image of such total finality was not quite enough. Someone added, “Don’t you think even then our rulers would just get up from the blast, and start putting their cousins in power?” This joke was even better. The laughter was uproarious. Shortly after I left, a young woman from this group who had had a job lost it as a result of post-revolution realignments. It was a well-paying government job, and she was at a loss for how to find something else comparable. At a party she met a recruiter for an American construction company operating in Iraq, and within a few days had departed for Baghdad. On the last day I went to Nikoloz’s house. I turned up, as per his instructions, after 5pm, since that was when the electricity came. He lived on the edge of a teeming market selling cheap goods from China and Iran. There was a small room with two single beds, a television and a piano. In the adjoining kitchen the oven door was open to heat the room. Downstairs was a damp basement that Nikoloz had made habitable by building a stove in the corner and covering the brick walls with plastic panelling. A friend of his, hearing that a foreign visitor was coming, had stopped by in the morning to drop off wooden crates for the fire; they burned very quickly, so the freezing room was filled with periodic bursts of heat. On the wall was a large sheet of paper with the handwritten title, “My journey to India.” It was covered with photographs from Bhilai (“In those days I was an important person. Look how all the workers looked up to me. Now they earn four times what I do.”) and from the three subsequent trips he had made as an academic. The shelves were lined with Hindi volumes and the desk was piled with folders labelled “Letters from Indian friends” and the like. His wife brought down a meal of stew, cheese, ham and beer, and departed. We talked about the same things again: the indignities of poverty, the destruction of a society, the indifference of the world towards his nearly four decades of work. It was time for me to leave. We went upstairs and I played a few notes on the piano. Niko was delighted. He put some scores in front of me. His wife was irritated by his interference: “Just let him play!” She had sat down on the bed to listen. “No, no – play this!” he told me. It was a collection of Italian songs. I started playing the introduction to “O Sole Mio”, and he joined in with a lovely tenor voice. The first time around we were a somewhat shaky ensemble; we performed it once more. It was a strangely beautiful moment: this sugary nineteenth-century love song, this comfortable drawing room sound, here in a proletarian district of a poor Central Asian city, with a slightly out-of-tune piano, Niko’s precise Italian accent, and his unaccustomed voice cracking on the high notes. It felt like a ballad of nostalgia for a genteel past that never existed. I was moved. His wife applauded. I hugged her emotionally, and she waved strenuously from the door. Niko walked me to the subway station telling me that when he had not drunk beer his voice was much better, and did I think his singing could become a little business? From zainab at xtdnet.nl Sat Jun 18 11:05:57 2005 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2005 09:35:57 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Other, Another! Message-ID: <3012.219.65.11.140.1119072957.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> OTHER – OTHER – OTHER/S ANOTHER – AN – OTHER – ANOTHER/S – AN – OTHER/S Fleeting conversations in Bangladesh We are in Dhaka. And we are meeting with my friend’s university professor Mr. Alam. Mr. Alam is a well-traveled person. He enjoys indulging in conversations and discussions. This afternoon, Mr. Alam has invited us to lunch. We are enjoying a sumptuous Bengali lunch. Mr. Alam starts talking with us about the Middle East where he has traveled a bit. “Saudi, Dubai, Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, I have been to these places. Dubai is cosmopolitan. Saudi is conservative and rigid,” he said. “How is it in India? I have heard a lot about North India. How is the food there? What kind of people are Punjabis?” My friend and I start to wonder how to describe North India. Within the region itself there are considerable differences. My friend says, “Punjabis are different people. They are enterprising, gregarious but they can also be aggressive.” I say, “Punjabis are different in different places in India. There are Punjabis in Pakistan as well. If you ask my father, he has a list of biases against Muslims. His top- most dislike and prejudice is against Punjabi Muslims, those in Pakistan.” Mr. Alam sprang up from his seat and said, “That is it! That is it! Punjabis! Even our independence struggle against West Pakistan was really against the dominance of the Punjabis. You know why we won independence from Pakistan? Because we told the Pakistani army that we are mainly against the Punjabis. And they surrendered. Yes, Punjabis it is!” I have often perceived the hatred that Bangladeshis have against Pakistanis. My friend tells me, “In an India-Pakistan match, Bangladeshis will support India because they hate Pakistan. That’s the only reason they will support India.” I think about history, memories, ‘The Other’ and borders We are in Khulna. My friend’s classmate, Shona, and I are talking with each other in her house. We have been invited to a davat, a dinner party. Shona talks to me about Bangladeshis love going to Kolkatta because ‘shopping is very good there.’ Bombay is too distant for Shona. She can imagine it. “There must be many Hindus there, isn’t it?” She has a look of suspicion on her face. I am trying to read beyond the look. What is the suspicion about? “Yes, there are Hindus. Most of my colleagues and friends are Hindus. My cousins and siblings are wedded to Hindus. My origins are from the Hindu lineage,” I tell her. But that does not change her look. I am a Muslim to her. I don’t know what more to tell Shona. Back in India, when people ask me about Bangladesh, I perceive a similar look of suspicion on their faces about Muslims in Bangladesh. “Aren’t Hindus being targeted and killed in Bangladesh?” What do I tell them that the culture in Bangladesh is far from being Islamic? If anything at all, it is truly Bengali culture! Diya, a friend from Dhaka, had narrated this incident to me during my first visit to Bangladesh. “We are a research institute. We had visitors from Delhi. Among them was a Hindu lady Neeta. She had her own perceptions about Bangladesh. She thought that all the women here wore veils. She thought that we are strict about prayers and religious customs and behaviour. When she came here, she was too surprised to see us wearing sarees. She had asked, ‘Sarees? Is it okay to wear sarees?’ I had told her how we Bangladeshi women look for occasions to wear sarees. She was even more surprised to see us wearing bindis (a Hindu symbol on women’s foreheads). And then I informed her that each one of us, men and women, have a Bengali name in addition to an Islamic name. And we are referred to more frequently by our Bengali names. She was too surprised and it was very hard for her to believe what she saw.” I am in Chittagong now. We are sitting in the now famous Foy’s Lake. It’s evening time. Mithu, Shumon and me are chatting and passing our time, watching the crowds and frequently indulging in ice-creams! Something happens and MIthu talks about Mujeeb-ur-Rehmaan. “Yeah, he was your independence struggle leader,” I remark. Mithu is surprised. “How do you know?” “Come on,” I tell him as a matter-of-fact, “We study the Bangladesh liberation war as part of our history syllabus in school and college.” “Is it?” he remarks sarcastically, adding, “Tell me more about what you have studied?” I tell him about the election results where East Pakistan had acquired a majority and General Zia tried to suppress these results and impose the West Pakistani government. And then Mujeeb and others rose in revolt. “And India supported the rebellion and sent its army to help,” I end. “Yeah, India sends its army huh?” Mithu says. For a moment, I am a bit taken aback. But I realize that my tone is one of patronizing and Mithu is not impressed with this. I begin to perceive the big-brotherly aka Uncle Sam attitude which India has on South Asia overall. Mithu reads the same attitude in my narration of history. And he does not like this. On occasions, I have seen a few borders which India has with Bangladesh. We are too close to each other. A few kilometers away from Chittagong, our host takes us to a place where there are hills and waters. There is a golf course there. And it is an army patrolled area. It is now a picnicking spot along with boating and fishing activities. From atop the hill, our host points out to us: “Look, look beyond that boat. That is Bay of Bengal. That is India.” I realize how ‘in the face’ India is to Bangladesh. “We are totally surrounded by India, on all sides,” one of my Bangladeshi friends had said to me during my first visit to Bangladesh. It is the perception of fear, of territory terrorizing and of potential conquest. Wow! Memories, borders, history, identity, territory Other – Other – Other/s – Another – An – Other – Another/s – An – Other/s Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From taranginis at yahoo.com Thu Jun 16 17:25:28 2005 From: taranginis at yahoo.com (Tarangini Sriraman) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 04:55:28 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Re: reader-list Digest, Vol 23, Issue 27, Re: when he was called Pandit Jinnah (Peeyush Bajpai) In-Reply-To: <20050616100005.6BD2928D8C6@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <20050616115528.48144.qmail@web54103.mail.yahoo.com> I couldn't agree more with Peeyush on that. And i was also going to write saying that in jinnah's case a lot of people simply confuse his private atheism with secularism, a strictly public definition. Partha Chatterjee once wrote that there are all kinds of religious and secular types, 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 Partha identifies as the most insidious, as these people themselves dont believe yet can make others believe, Jinnah belongs to this category, Chatterjee says. So Jinnah's ignorance of a religious text not only does not make him secular but makes suspect his later convictions about the two-nation theory. (How can a man who professed atheism suddenly believe that Muslims as a religious community would get a raw deal in what he conceived as HIndu India, when he did not believe in religion, let alone religious distinctions? My point is that fundamentalism cannot be transcendental, there can be nothing self-evident or incontrovertible about it. Jinnah did not seem to have proved his relgious or his secular credentials.Nor has Advani in any real sense, and certainly not by his volte-face recently. Tarangini Sriraman 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] When he was called Pandit Jinnah (Peeyush Bajpai) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 14:14:48 +0530 From: Peeyush Bajpai Subject: [Reader-list] Re:Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah To: reader-list at sarai.net Message-ID: <220f752b05061601446e0b4ba3 at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="ISO-8859-1" Ingonrance of his (Jinnha) own religion or religious text do not make him secular. But utilizing religion to fragment or create discord can only be entitled as communalism. In this context, Advani is as communal as Jinnha, or read backwards both equally secular. Hence Advani did not say anything wrong as he belives himself to be secular too!. peeyush Message: 1 Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 19:36:59 +0530 From: "mihir25" (by way of Monica Narula) Subject: [Reader-list] When he was called Pandit Jinnah To: reader-list at sarai.net Message-ID: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed When he was called Pandit Jinnah RAJNISH Sharma Lucknow, June 5 Hindustan Times http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/5922_1389389,0015002500000000.htm When the former Deputy PM L K Advani described Muhammad Ali Jinnah as a secular man during his early days, he wasn't quite off the mark as it is now a part of recorded history. Though his comments have raised a furore back home, few would know that this man was even referred to as Pandit Jinnah once. And if indifference to religion is any indicator of secularism, the Qaid-e-Azam was probably the biggest of all secular fundamentalists. There are two incidents hitherto not found in any history book which highlight this aspect of his character in a rather comical way which were narrated by none other than the eminent jurist and statesman, Sir Tej Bahadur Sapru. It was told by Sir Tej to his granddaughter's husband Dr IM Chak, Retired Dy Director of CDRI during a meeting with his grandfather Pt. Prithvi Nath Chak, another legal giant of that time under whom Motilal Nehru learnt to practise law. A contemporary of Sir Sapru, Jinnah along with him once visited Egypt during the month of Ramzaan. The Muslim porters there refused to carry their luggage saying they would only carry the luggage of a fellow Muslim. When Jinnah told them to go ahead, the porters decided to test them. They were asked to recite the kalma. While Sir Tej happily recited it with Èlan, he had Jinnah looking sheepishly at him for the wine loving brown sahib didn't know a word of it! Sir Tej had a hard time convincing the porters that Jinnah, who was to later create a separate Islamic State, was indeed a Muslim! The other incident saw these two friends sparring in the court of law in a case that involved elements of religion. The case saw Sir Tej quoting innumerable ayats from Quran in support of his arguments. Jinnah, though a formidable lawyer himself, drew a blank once again on this account. The next day local newspaper headlines screamed Pandit Jinnah vs Maulana Sapru! -- Peeyush Bajpai www.indicus.net ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ reader-list mailing list reader-list at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list End of reader-list Digest, Vol 23, Issue 27 ******************************************* __________________________________________________ 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/20050616/e76f1d4d/attachment.html From vivek at sarai.net Fri Jun 17 13:56:28 2005 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:56:28 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Marcus Westbury, Artistic Director, Next Wave Festival, Melbourne Australia Message-ID: <42B28934.2060506@sarai.net> Please excuse the impersonal nature of this e-mail. Marcus Westbury is the Artistic Director of the Melbourne-based 2006 Next Wave Festival and will be arriving in India on Sunday 19th June. Marcus will be in Mumbai from Sunday 19 to Tuesday 21 and then in Delhi from Tuesday 21 to Saturday 25 June. Marcus will be in Mumbai and Delhi with the intention of meeting as many people as possible to discuss works and artists for potential inclusion within the next festival. Marcus will also be traveling Malaysia and by the time he reaches India he will have been to New Zealand, Canada, Belize, England, Scotland, South Africa, Kenya and Singapore. The theme and title of the next festival is Empire Games and it will take place in March 2006 alongside the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games. The name is an old term for a new time and Marcus is looking for different takes on today’s Empire Games. Marcus is looking for Commonwealth country-based artists under 30 years of age who make-work in the areas of visual arts, theatre, media, film, sound and design. Marcus is particularly interested in: * art that does not fit into typical art categories: work that crosses mediums and artistic disciplines, or new and hard to categorize work * "light-based" projects: anything using light, including projection, digital or video film/animation * all kinds of visual arts, preferably suitable for exhibition outside of typical gallery spaces * theatre/dance/performance work, preferably small-scale and venue-flexible * music/ sound art/sound installation, both small and large scale: DJ‚s and live acts for large venues, as well as small scale musical /sound performances * "new media": all things digital, interactive, and cross-disciplinary * works which involve themes of culture jamming For more information on Next Wave Festival please visit www.nextwave.org.au . If you would like to meet with Marcus or can suggest people with whom he should meet I would be grateful if you could let me know ASAP. Yours sincerely, Rachel Young _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in Mon Jun 20 02:09:35 2005 From: anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in (anupam pachauri) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 21:39:35 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Mr. Jinnah at India Habitat Centre Message-ID: <20050619203935.23483.qmail@web8402.mail.in.yahoo.com> Narender Mohan’s Mr. Jinnah is being staged at India Habitat Centre on Date: June 22, 2005 and June 23, 2005 Time: 7.30 pm Director: Arvind Gaur Music: Dr. Sangeeta Gaur An Asmita Group Production Cheers!! Anupam __________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your friends 'n family snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://in.photos.yahoo.com From stopragging at gmail.com Mon Jun 20 03:44:01 2005 From: stopragging at gmail.com (Stop Ragging Campaign) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 03:44:01 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Hostel as home, college as country? Message-ID: In my previous posting, I had established how the hostel community sees hostel as home – not as an *extension* of 'home', but as a new family. You can read it here: http://stop-ragging.blogspot.com/2005/05/hostel-as-home-ragging-and-pyotr.html This includes, for one, ideas of 'honour': just as one's actions should never let one's family be disreputed, a hostel resident should never do anything that brings shame to the hostel community. This family has its own codes and customs, and ragging is the means of making freshers aware of these codes and agree to them. A fresher does not have the *right* to reject them: ragging is like the 'license' of a software: if you do not accept the terms and conditions of the license, you cannot use the software. You cannot be a part of the hostel 'community' without agreeing to abide by these codes. You cannot be a part of the community in the sense that you will be excommunicated – or even ridiculed, singled out, beaten up. This implies that the rights of the individual are not guaranteed in a hostel space: they are governed and ruled over (in effect violated) by the codes of the hostel community – the greater common good of the hostel. The assertion of individual rights is tantamount to blasphemy. A violation of the code undercuts the very identity of the hostel community and can potentially attack its very foundations. The hostel community will therefore do everything it can to assert itself against individual interest. This is why ragging is so ritualistic: it defines how the fresher should stand, how he should speak, how shall he 'wipe off' his smile in an elaborate ritual assuming that he makes the mistake of smiling at a funny limerick that he's been asked to recite. Ragging therefore is an initiation ritual: initiation into the codes and customs of the hostel community. So if hostel is like home, is college like country? Consider this: 'public schools and colleges structured in the British mould have flags and cadet marches and "sports displays" (like Republic Day parades). They have their founder's days (like Independence day), they have their famous alumni whom they felicitate (like the Bharat Ratnas and the Padma awards). No, this is not a joke: educational institutions even have sovereignty! There is an unwritten law in India that the police do not enter a college campus without the 'permission' of the principal. Just as the Central Bureau of Investigation cannot pursue a case against a minister without taking permission from the state Governor! Even the landmark Supreme Court judgement on ragging (2001 SOL Case No. 431) refers to this: "Students ought not ordinarily be subjected to police action unless it be unavoidable.The students going to educational institutions for learning should not remain under constant fear of being dealt with by police and sent to jail and face the courts." The problem here is that the much-romanticised Indian hostel life has no place for 'learning'. Passing an examination for the sake of a degree is not 'learning'. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, criminals have been taking advantage of this convention by living in university hostels, locally made arms in their pockets. Matters have come to such a pass that universities actually have police stations on campus. In the University of Lucknow you can see more police than students. Ideas of nationhood can be devastating, as those who saw the World Wars will tell you. So you have the Republic of Hindu College pitted against the Republic of Stephania, and the Republic of Bihari-dominated Ramjas seeing the Republic of Jat-dominated Kirori Mal as rivals. Ragging helps in such identity formation. The University, of course, is the world which sees itself as a parallel 'Universe'. The discourse of ragging enjoyed complete legitimacy in society before anti-ragging laws in states and court orders began to corrode it. So there have been cases where a fresher complaining to the principal about ragging would be told that he's timid, and the seniors would be tipped about it, making him the centre of attention before the community which hits back through further ragging. Police officials have often refused to take ragging FIR's seriously, merely informing the principal about it. Parents, relatives, friends, teachers: there's hardly any section of society where you will not find a rejection of the discourse. You will invariably hear: "Ragging, if taken in the right spirit, can be fun." Notice how the onus is on the fresher: it is up to him to 'take it in the right spirit'. You will constantly hear, "Ragging, if kept in limits, can be useful." But crossing the limits is precisely the purpose of ragging: it's designed to shock and awe. The reason why the discourse of ragging has such acceptance is because society is full of raggers: the engineer who builds bridges was once in the hostel of an engineering hostel where he ragged. A fresher who left college because of this was probably not destined to be part of the community. He could not become an engineer: that guilt of not having 'taken ragging in the right spirit' continues to haunt him as a matter of personal failure. Like impotency. And what will the engineer tell his children? "Ragging, if taken in the right spirit, can be fun." * * * So what are the codes of the hostel community? I will explain them in another posting, but briefly: 1) There is no such thing as privacy. 2) Warden? Who's that? 3) Us and Them: the Principal as Enemy No. 1. 4) Alcoholism and substance abuse. 5) Are you a sissy? 6) Never complain. 7) Freshers are slaves. Education? What's that? (Those who don't agree are requested to 'take it in the right spirit'.) -- www.stopragging.org | info at stopragging.org From blarkin at barnard.edu Sun Jun 19 19:22:43 2005 From: blarkin at barnard.edu (Brian Larkin) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 09:52:43 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] report on nigerian video film conference Message-ID: <544ba536724fdb18707ef75b4f53edc1@barnard.edu> for those who might be interested here is a feedback report on the recent conference on nigerian video films (nollywood) held in L.A. and organized by sylvester ogbechie, chike maduekwe and jude akudinobi. brian Report on Nollywood Rising Conference Brian Larkin (n.b. Nollywood refers to feature films that are shot and distributed on video and vcd. The word itself was coined by Western journalists but has since become a standard term used by Nigerians to refer to English language Nigerian video films (NVF)). Nollywood Rising was a conference intended to bring together academics, Nigerian filmmakers and potential financiers and distributors from the U.S., especially those involved in African-American media. This report concentrates more on the academic side of things but there was a strong industry component which is indicative of how Nigerians (and others) are trying to make the NVF phenomena grow in new directions. It was a very vibrant conference and in many ways most of the interesting things were said by the filmmakers themselves. From the beginning these filmmakers have had to develop an aesthetic form and an institutional structure for production and distribution without much of a precedent and their comments expressed this and their ideas about how to develop and expand their market. In many ways academics are trying to catch up with what filmmakers are doing and there was a realization that there is a need to develop new critical and conceptual tools to catch up with what is turning out to be a major transformation of African media. For those who know nothing about the phenomenon, in the last 15 years Nigeria has developed a feature film industry based around video and vcd distribution which has appeared from nowhere and now produces over 600 films a year making Nigeria (in terms of numbers) one of the largest film producing nations in the world. English language films (Nollywood) have become a dominant media form all over the African continent certainly in all Anglophone countries (Kenya, Sierra Leone, S. Africa etc.) and are beginning to cross over into Francophone Africa despite language barriers). The producer Charles Igwe said at the conference that 600,000 vcds are pressed everyday in Lagos (there is no check on the numbers) and that “crates and crates leave on planes everyday for all over Africa”. This makes Nigeria one of the leading digital media content producers and NVF one of Nigeria’s most important exports. The conference raised some basic questions about Nigerian video film, its place in African cinema and where it is going now. Several speakers (Frank Ukadike, Moradewun Adejunmobi, Onookome Okome, Jude Akudinobi) pointed out that the conceptual frame that constituted African Cinema has to be dramatically rethought. African Cinema refers to an art based cinematic practice designed to promote African cultural traditions and to develop authentically African films forms that stand in alterity to Hollywoood and that are both aesthetically and politically vanguardist. As both filmmakers and academics pointed out, these films do well in Western film festivals from Berlin to Paris to New York but are rarely seen in Africa itself outside of the famous festival of FESPACO. Okome refreed to them as “embassy films” because they are only ever screened at Embassies. Nigerian video films, while undoubtedly popular, have been severely criticized for being of poor technical quality and for using themes of witchcraft and ritual abuse (in Africa this is often seen as an exoticising, negative stereotype beloved by Westerners). NVF do not get selected often at Fespaco, they are rarely featured in mainstream Western festivals (with the exception of the Pan-African film festival in LA and the NY African Film Festival) and are sometimes derided by Francophone African filmmakers – critiques that the filmmakers in the audience were well aware of. What was interesting in the filmmakers’ response was a confidence and lack of need to apologise for what they were doing. Charles Igwe argued that from the beginning the main goal of the industry was to gain an audience. Whatever criticisms people can bring, he said, “we possess the Nigerian audience. There is no question about that.” They were equally bullish about the content and style of their films. Unlike African cinema which searched for cultural independence from other forms of national cinema (to look for a truly “African” film form), Nigerian filmmakers borrow from any form that suits their purpose. Zach Orji said that they show witchcraft because that is what many people care about and because it is a real problem for people. But he also pointed out that there are other genres too and the industry functions by riding waves of genres for a while jumping from witchcraft, to love films to comedies depending on what is successful at any moment. The irony is, of course, that in the midst of all this borrowing Nigerian video films have built a truly distinctive film practice. In questions, Charles Igwe pointed out that NVF began with no business (or aesthetic) structure. “Our people took a jump off of a cliff and landed in the middle of the ocean. Then we started building the boats while we were in the water”. He said this to emphasise what they had accomplished so far and also that things were continually developing. Films are technically better now than they were, that they will be even better in the future, he said. Mahen Boneti, who programs the New York African Film Festival later pointed out that some Nigerian filmmakers she spoke to had never seen an Ousmane Sembene film indicating that these films – in structure, content and form – were being developed wholly outside the film school structures of African cinema and the distribution and exhibition structures that dominate global media. The producer Peace Fibererima also took on the critique of NVF asserting its growing international presence, one of the main themes of the conference. She had just returned from South Africa where she argued that satellite television sales were being driven by black South Africans who wanted to get hold of the “African Magic” station screening Nigerian films. Zach Orji, a film star, said that on a recent trip to Sierra Leone the President flew back to meet the filmmakers and that in countries as diverse as Sierra Leone, the Congo and South Africa he cannot walk down the street without being mobbed. Where a few years previously the filmmakers might have been defensive about their shortcomings, here there were no apologies as Charles Igwe said, in a personal comment to me, that “we know the future of African media is with us. Everyone wants to copy Nigerian films”. In this he was supported by Jean-Pierre Bekolo, a major Cameroonian director whose earlier film Quartier Mozart won an award at Cannes and who represented the older cadre of African filmmakers. Bekolo described himself (with tongue in cheek) as “an arrogant French filmmaker” who was taught that each film he made had “to define cinema” and that what they were doing would “change mankind”. He said that he wanted to keep this cultural ambition but at the same time he and all Francophone filmmakers realized that they were detached from any sense of audience and that what Nigerians were doing was extremely dynamic and effective and not reliant on foreign support. “African cinema is in a big crisis” he concluded and he said that all African filmmakers were looking at ways to try and adapt what Nigerians were doing. Jonathan Haynes had an interesting twist on this success as he examined the ways that the rise of Nigerian films had almost destroyed the nascent video film industry in Ghana (built along many of the same lines as its Nigerian cousin). He raised the idea that the success of what has become the Nigerian behemoth might have negative as well as positive consequences for popular filmmaking in other parts of the continent. The name Nollywood came in for some considerable criticism. The first known use of it was in the New York Times and it was quickly taken up as soundbite for Western media sources. Nearly all commentators were unhappy this had become a dominant marketing term but as Jonathan Haynes pointed out, it might have started as a Western term but has quickly been adopted by Nigerian filmmakers themselves because it has a sense of glamour, aids marketing and it “expresses a genuine aspiration of the Nigerian filmmaking community”. What came over in the conference is that idea that Nigeria in particular but Africa in general might become the next generation of media content producers. The actor Zach Orji pointed out that increasingly he is working on co-productions in countries from the Cameroon to the Congo as filmmakers there are trying to develop their own media along the lines of Nigeria (and have to use Nigerian actors to generate sales). “They want to be doing what we are doing and when they start up they are asking Nigerians to come and help”. This suggest that model Nigerian media has developed has great power in developing new media structures. The producer Peace Fiberesima was scathing about the recent attempt to build multiplexes in Lagos which to her was built on an outdated media model. The aim is to screen first run U.S. films aimed at upper middle class viewers. These multiplexes do not screen Nigerian films (because the technical quality is not high) but the consequence has been to ignore the form that is driving media consumption in Africa and as a consequence the multiplexes are failing. She suggested that the only way for western media structures to succeed in Nigeria now is to begin to engage with Nigerian media. Brian Larkin Department of Anthropology Barnard College, Columbia University 3009 Broadway, NY NY 10027 212 854 5402 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: text/enriched Size: 10022 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050619/1e5f760d/attachment.bin From girijaduggal at hotmail.com Mon Jun 20 20:10:48 2005 From: girijaduggal at hotmail.com (girija duggal) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 14:40:48 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] introduction In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Hello all ! This message is a little introduction- to myself, my interests, my dreams... I am Girija Duggal, a resident of Noida. I have recently graduated from Gargi College with a degree in English and a heart sparked by activism. I have been working for the past two years as freelance writer, and also copyeditor and in-house writer with Navdeep Publications. I love media theory, watching documentaries, films and plays,the arts,socioanthropology, linguistics, literature(Eliot and Dickinson are my Gods!), and philosophy(so are Derrida, Foucault and Baudrillard!). I dream of someday being a documentary film-maker in the ranks of Anand Patwardhan, Shohini Ghosh, Rakesh Sharma and Michael Moore and simultaneously pursuing journalistic writing. (I have applied to Jamia Milia Islamia to fulfill this dream...am through the written round...the interview is left...) I hope to learn a lot from the interactions in this list, and at the same time contribute positively to it. Regards, Girija _________________________________________________________________ Having a hard time finding a job? http://creative.mediaturf.net/creatives/timesjobs/hotmail_TOL.htm Log on to TimesJobs.com Click Now! From eye at ranadasgupta.com Tue Jun 21 09:33:42 2005 From: eye at ranadasgupta.com (Rana Dasgupta) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 09:33:42 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] The Tram to Africa Message-ID: <42B7919E.7030004@ranadasgupta.com> Essay with photographs by Monica Narula and text by Rana Dasgupta. This is an old piece, but only just online. http://www.ranadasgupta.com/texts.asp?text_id=31 R From auskadi at gmail.com Tue Jun 21 10:50:15 2005 From: auskadi at gmail.com (martin hardie) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 07:20:15 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] The Tram to Africa In-Reply-To: <42B7919E.7030004@ranadasgupta.com> References: <42B7919E.7030004@ranadasgupta.com> Message-ID: <9959950b0506202220b8640b2@mail.gmail.com> lovely photos Monika...not like my horrible mozambique street scenes on my blog .... http://auskadi.civiblog.org/blog have a look at this it takes up where i left off in sarai 4 http://openflows.org/~auskadi/timemachines.pdf martin http://openflows.org/~auskadi/timemachines.pdf On 6/21/05, Rana Dasgupta wrote: > Essay with photographs by Monica Narula and text by Rana Dasgupta. > > This is an old piece, but only just online. > > http://www.ranadasgupta.com/texts.asp?text_id=31 > > R > _________________________________________ > 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 askshetty at rediffmail.com Tue Jun 21 02:39:07 2005 From: askshetty at rediffmail.com (prasad shetty) Date: 20 Jun 2005 21:09:07 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Stories of Entrepreneurship Message-ID: <20050620210907.21763.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com> Dear All, My 5th posting. There were some questions on the last posting on my choice and framework for cases, definition of entrepreneurs etc. The work is not to do an exhastive listing/identification of enterprenures in the city for any statistical analysis. The 40 cases, that I would be documenting is to understand the newer changes in the economy of the city. Hence the cases would not seem to have a coherent framework for their documentation. That is not the intention. Rather each case documents different and specific characteristics relating to the entrepreneur. These may be larger macro contexts, work conditions, strategies for operation, space utilisation etc. There are some more cases that follow: Case: A Money Transferring Agent I had to urgently collect some money from Western Union transferred from Rotterdam. It was a Saturday evening and the Western Union main offices were shut on Sundays. I checked the Internet and found some 400 agents who transfered money within Mumbai. The website also gave their addresses and phone numbers. I looked up for the nearest address specifically providing the service on a Sunday. After calling up a few places, I found a place that was open on a Sunday. The next day, I visited this place in the morning. The place in called Adarsh Nagar close to the elite Lokhandwala complex in Andheri. . After asking a few people, I managed to locate the Western Union agency. I was surprised to find it in a slum. It was a typical slum with less than 6 feet winding streets and units on both sides. The translucent office door was closed from inside and had a large Western Union Sticker. I had to knock the door. There were people living inside this office, because when I entered, the two young men were just waking up. As soon as I entered, they switched on the air conditioner and asked me to sit. One of the men went outside and the other made some phone calls. Then even this man disappeared. The place was about 10 feet by 12 feet with a floor above. There were two computers and a fax machine. About 10 minutes later, a young woman came and confirmed that she was the one who spoke to me the previous evening. She then, hurriedly went upstairs. Meanwhile one of the men entered – now dressed in the typical peon blue shirt with a large tag called BEST on the chest pocket. I remembered the name of the agency then, which was mentioned on the web page: BEST. Other then small mentions of this name, the rest of the signage was just Western Union. While the space and the experience so far were making me nervous about my money, the large and frequent Western Union signages were the only assurances. The woman came down in a few minutes and gave me Western Union form to fill. While I was filling the form, she made some phone calls to confirm whether the service was open on Sunday. I gave her the form and she asked me for some identification. I gave her my passport. She sent the man to get my passport photocopied. She then faxed my form somewhere and asked me to wait for 10 minutes. I started asking her about the organisation. She told me that the whole place was the office and the boss’s cabin was upstairs. She went upstairs to switch on the air conditioner and clean up the boss’s table. She was new to the place herself and had found the job through a relative some three months ago. Further she told me that actually, the organisation dealt with providing security services and her boss was an ex army official. She gave me a printed profile of the organisation, which also mentioned that they provided courier service, job placement services along with Money Transfer and Security. She then received a phone call and the person on the other side asked her to switch on the fax machine. The confirmation of my transfer and the receipt where I had to sign was expected through the fax. She told me that my transfer was confirmed. The amount was relatively big, and I was wondering if a place like this would keep such an amount. I was curious how they were going to get my money. Meanwhile, the person who had taken my passport to be photocopied came and returned my passport. The fax had started by then. But the print came blank. Both of them soon realised that the fax printing ink was over. She asked the man if he knew any other place where they could receive the fax. The man lazily said he didnt. She then thought for a while and made a phone call to her boss. The boss suggested her to call up the main agent of Western Union and ask for advice. Then she called the main agent. The main agent gave all the details of the transfer and asked her to take a kutcha receipt from me. When she told me this, I did not completely understand this, but agreed to this, as I needed the money soon. She then made another phone call. After the phone call she reluctantly told me that it would take around one and a half hour for her to give me the money and I could either wait or return after some time. I became very nervous, as I had already given my secret code and all other details of the transfer. I became more nervous when she told me that she may not be there later and someone else will give me the money. Without much choice, I decided to come back after some time. I came fifteen minutes early and was happy to find that the woman had not left. The other man who had disappeared in the morning was also there. But now he was in a security- guard uniform and was standing outside. The translucent office door was now completely open. The air conditioner was shut. She told me that her boss would arrive any moment with the money. After a few minutes the boss arrived. He was a hefty man in his late forties, wearing a dark brown safari with two thick gold chains around his neck, one very thick gold bracelet and three fingers in the right hand having gold rings with various colourful stones. As soon as he came he started shouting at the peon for drinking water straight from the bottle and not using a glass. He then gave his car keys to the guard and asked him to park his car. He asked the woman to close the door and start the air conditioner. Finally after all this he sat and started talking to me. While I had all the questions for him, he dominated our conversation asking me rather difficult questions like what I did, where I lived, who was sending me money and things like that. I later realised that he saw me as a potential customer for all kinds of services that he provided. He started telling me about a new service he was about to start – that of local money transfer. He said with confidence that with one phone call, he would be able to manage to transfer of money from anywhere between Kashmir and Kanyakumari in hours. He told me that there were several other money-transferring agents throughout India that he had contacted and they were focusing mainly on rural areas as the demand was high there and money transfer was not easy. He told me that that he had started with an agency only providing security but currently there was stiff competition in this sector. Moreover, the security sector required mobilisation of a large number of people and sometimes this was difficult to manage. There have also been cases where the security guards themselves were involved in thefts and the police now insisted on strict disciplinary measures, proper training and frequent shuffling of the guards. He considers all these as problems and wants to focus only on money transfer. He has acquired the Western Union agency through the contacts of a friend and finds it easy and respectable, as he is working with a multinational. Finally he gave me my money and the woman gave me a hand torn half A4 size hand written receipt to sign. This was the kutcha receipt. Case: The Toilet Operators We were surveying public toilets in slums under the Slum Sanitation Programme of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation. The Slum Sanitation Programme is funded by the World Bank and has three important actors: the NGO, which develops and supports the CBO, the contractor who builds the toilet and the CBO which is supposed to maintain and operate the toilet. The NGO and the contractor jointly write a proposal to build a toilet and forward it to the municipality, the municipality assesses the proposal and approves it and the money for building the toilets comes from the World Bank. Some 350 toilets were built in the first pilot phase and the municipality of Mumbai wanted to extend the programme to build around 1000 more toilets in the city. This is when the World Bank wanted an evaluation of the earlier toilets and we got involved to evaluate the project and give further recommendations on how to improve the programme if there were any limitations. During our survey we assessed some thirty cases where these toilets were built and one of the cases was of Moti Nagar in the Eastern Suburbs. The slum was small with about 80 households adjacent to the newly built Shopper’s Stop. The land value in the area was very high as the area was fast developing with multiplexes, shopping malls and residential towers. During the survey of this case, we found a three-storied toilet, where the ground and first floors had ten toilet seats each and the second floor had a caretaker’s room. The toilet was clean and very well maintained. We interviewed the caretaker and found that he was from Haryana and arrived two years ago with his family, urged by a friend who put him in touch with some Rana Sahab who offered him a caretaker’s job at a toilet. In return, he would get a place to stay and also a small salary of Rupees 1500 per month. Later during the survey we found that this Rana Sahab was involved in arranging caretakers for several toilets. Though we never met Rana Sahab, we found that in some places, he had been appointed as a contractor to maintain and operate the toilets while in others, he was involved in only providing a caretaker for a commission. The programme had outlined that a local CBO should maintain and operate the toilet block. The money for this should be collected from the slum dwellers as monthly charges (who would be issued monthly passes) and also from other users who would pay for using the toilet per use. We found that in places where the toilets were near a road, as in the case of Moti Nagar, the pay users were more and the profits from the toilets were high. In some cases, the profits went upto Rupees 4000 – 5000 per day. In Moti Nagar, it was lesser, around Rupees 900 per day. We also found that Rana Sahab was involved in only places where toilets were close to the roads. In Moti Nagar, Rana Sahab had just provided the caretaker and the CBO was actually involved in maintaining and operating the toilet. We asked the caretaker for the President of the CBO. To our surprise, the President and most of the members of the CBO were not residents of the slum at all. After some time the president arrived. He was a Bihari and was in his early thirties. We asked him how he managed staying outside the slum and still being the President of its CBO. He very generously stated that he wanted to start a movement with various slum communities for their welfare and heads several CBOs in the area. The NGO responsible for building the toilet had approached him with this proposal and he had accepted it because it was beneficial for the people. When we asked him about how he earns his living, he told us that he works as a social worker for the Congress Party and some three years ago, the Home Minister for the state, Kripa Shanker Singh had hand picked him for organising slum communities in that area. We found that in the slum there is a large family of Bihari Rickshaw drivers, which is extremely influential regarding all decisions of the slum. The people in the slum complained about the intimidating attitude of Bihari family and characterised them as goondas. They also confirmed that the President entered the slum through this family. The only two members in the CBO from the slum were from this family. One of the key problems in the Slum Sanitation Programme was organising the electric supply and the water connection. The toilet in Moti Nagar had both. When we asked the President to show us the bills for these, he told us that they do not have any. He had managed to get these services through his political connections through paying bribes to the officials. The connections were not registered with the authorities and that was the reason why there were no bills. When we told him that this was illegal, he defended saying that he was providing service to the people and the Municipality and the World Bank should be grateful for that. We then sat to discuss with him the finances of operating and maintaining. He told us that whatever money came from collection of monthly charges from the slum dwellers went for paying the salary of the caretaker and buying cleaning materials. Then we asked him about the accounts for the pay users. He told us that the caretaker collected it to supplement his income and the pay users being less, the accounts are not maintained. The caretaker earlier had told us that all money collected from the pay users went to the CBO. We did not contradict the opinions of the President as it would bring the caretaker into a difficult situation, but we recorded the discrepancy in the response. We also conducted a loading survey in when we estimated a figure of Rs. 900 from the pay users per day. In a number of cases we found that this programme of the World Bank had given birth to a breed of new entrepreneurs. There were agents like Rana Sahab, there were caretakers who themselves were contractors, and there were the entrepreneur CBOs. In some cases we found innovative methods undertaken by the CBOs to exclude people from the slum and force them as pay-users as pay-users pay four to five times more than the ‘legitimate’ slum dwellers. They would do this by classifying slum dwellers into categories of ‘owners’, ‘renters’, etc. In one instance in Colaba, we found a militant Mahila Mandal, which only allowed monthly-passes for the CBO members and the rest of the slum dwellers were pay users. When we left Moti Nagar, the President urged us to incorporate a recommendation for his work for the next stage and suggested that there were a lot of slums in the area where he operated that required toilets. Case: A Labour Contractor and the Labour A friend graduated with a BSc degree from the University of Mumbai in 1994 as thousands do in the city every year. With no specialisation and a huge pressure of earning, which is typical of the lower middle class families for youngsters who are ‘graduates’, this friend also started looking for jobs that had nothing to do with her qualifications. She would attend an interview for a secretary, or join some classes that guarantee an airhostesses job, or learn typing and basic computers, or even try some cooking classes. While the family’s ambitions remained restricted to get her married to some rich man, she struggled to get some job where she could get some money for the father-less family. Finally she started taking tuitions for small children in the neighbourhood. As two years passed, the family was getting desperate to get her married. Meanwhile she fell in love with a man from a different community and they got married against the wishes of her family. The following year they had a daughter and the man went to some gulf country to earn money. When he came back he was HIV positive. My friend divorced her husband and came back to her family with the daughter. She again started her tuitions. After a couple of years she realised that her tuitions would not be enough to raise her daughter. She started to look for new jobs. It was 2000, and the BPOs were settling in India, as there was a large labour surplus that could speak and write English. My friend started looking for a job with the some BPO companies, but could not get through because of her accent. A neighbour asked her to contact a man who was arranging jobs for a number of people. She contacted this man and he asked her to come for an interview the next week. He was a skilled labour contractor providing services to the corporate sector. By this time the contractual labour policy that allowed people to be hired on contracts was already in place. He placed her with the Airtel Company as data entry personnel. She started her job in October 2000 on a salary of Rupees 2500 per month. She found that the same contractor had supplied all the staff in her department. She also learnt that Airtel did not want any unionisation of staff and wanted freedom in hiring and firing staff as per their requirement and this contractor was performing very well. Soon there was a gossip in the department that the contractor was earning Rs 2500 on every personnel he had provided and the actual salary of every data entry person was Rs. 5000. People who tried to raise this issue were sacked from their jobs immediately. Most of the employees in the department were in a similar situation as my friend – they were in a serious need of a job to fulfil some social obligations. There was one girl who had recently lost her father; another was a young girl living in a slum whose mother was an old household maid; another had an unemployed father; another had recently come to Mumbai from a rural place in Maharashtra and was living with her relatives, etc. Most of them came in touch with the contractor through some neighbourhood or family links. Some of them had contacted the contractor directly after seeing an ad on a railway platform wall, which said: ‘URGENTLY NEED MALE AND FEMALE PERSONS FOR OFFICE WORK. ATTRACTIVE SALARY IS ASSURED. PLEASE CALL 9820912744’. Such ads could be seen everywhere in the city, on railway platforms, inside train compartments, in buses, on trees and walls on the streets etc. Sometimes these are even distributed along with newspapers. I tried calling several of them and found similar offers between Rupees. 2000 and 4000 for eight hours per day, for six days a week. Sometimes, there were contractors who were ready to give work on task basis that one could take home. The payment here was on unit of work completed. I found several kinds labour demands, from making papad and achar to entering hard data into a soft format. My friend worked with Airtel for six months, after the excitement of the office job had perished and she wanted more money. She again applied to a BPO: Intelenet that was close to her house. In the same month, Intelenet was taken over by the Housing Finance Institution, HDFC that wanted to diversify its activities. Incidentally, Intelenet had a large work order to become back office staff for some American Credit Card holders, and required staff that could handle such work. The accent for this job did not matter, and with six months experience at Air Tel, my friend got appointed for this job with a salary of Rupees 10100 per month. This was her highest monthly income so far. Her working hours and holidays were adapted to the other continent and she would go to work at strange hours. Though she stayed very close to her office, an office vehicle would pick her up everyday. There were also several corporate office behavioural patterns that she was new to – there were parties at five star hotels, there were special days when everyone had to do something strange like wearing a red dress, etc. Moreover, she was getting to know a lot about American Credit Card Holders and their problems: like there were people who had got cards from their spouses and were now divorced and nobody was ready to pay the bills! I think she had started enjoying her job and the office environment. There were several incidences she use to tell us: about a colleague’s suicide attempt, about a fire in the office, about some foreigners visiting her office and examining their works and then visiting fashion street to buy cheap clothes. Then came some cost cutting measures by the company. They changed the office timings to accommodate the possibility of workers able to get last trains and stopped door-to-door pick up and dropping service. Now the employees had to assemble at some railway station and then they would be picked up from there. This measure did not disturb my friend’s schedule as she lived very close to the company office. But it put a lot of scepticism in the minds of a lot of her colleagues who used to otherwise think that the BPOs are the best things to happen. People who had real problems of travelling during odd hours started complaining. When the complaints grew out of proportion, the company sacked a number of employees. The company could afford this with a large labour market in the city, with skilled people, just waiting for any job they could get. By now it has been four years since my friend joined Intelenet. She does not find the job very secure and has decided to enter into a joint venture with a friend. They have both decided to buy a TATA Sumo pick up car on a loan. Their plan is to rent this car to Intelenet on contractual basis for Rupees 45000 per month. Since they have been working within Intelenet for some time now, they have established very good relations with officers who deal with staff transportation. It is on an advice of one of the officers that they have decided to take up this venture. Their mathematics is very simple: Rupees 4000 for the driver, Rupees 10000 for the fuel, Rs. 8000 for maintainance and Rupees 4000 for the loan. They would still save some 19000 Rupees. They further plan to invest this in buying another car within a year. 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/20050620/506aa6c6/attachment.html From askshetty at rediffmail.com Tue Jun 21 02:41:18 2005 From: askshetty at rediffmail.com (prasad shetty) Date: 20 Jun 2005 21:11:18 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Some more Stories of Entrepreneurship Message-ID: <20050620211118.27963.qmail@webmail28.rediffmail.com> Dear All, My sixth posting, for those who read the earlier ones and want to read more... Case : A Multimedia Projector Maintainance Agent Since the late 1980s this Multimedia Projector Maintainance Agent, worked with Videocon Electronics, specialising in household electronics. In the mid 1990s, Videocon entered into an agreement with Toshiba, Japan to market the new multimedia projectors in India. It was a time when the Indian industries – small and big were all entering into competition and marketing products required high sophistication. This sophistication in marketing brought in the age of Power Point Presentations with a simultaneous requirement for equipments that could handle these presentations. The multimedia projectors in the market were expensive. We in the Architectural Institution had an experience, where we smuggled a four lakh worth machine from New Bombay into Mumbai to avoid an Octroi tax of about thirty two thousand. This was the first time I met this man in his early thirties. He was one of the twenty-two employees from Videocon who went to Japan to undergo a training programme for marketing, maintaining and servicing the multimedia projector. After coming back from Japan, he visited several institutions and corporate offices to market these products. He was also able to sell some 26 projectors in the first six months. His job description also included maintaining, servicing and repairing small problems with these projectors. Along with problems such as dust accumulating on the lens, minor problems of electric supply, damaged tilt screws, damaged fans etc, one of the major problems in the machines, was bulb- damage. Intense care had to be taken of these bulbs as they got damaged due to overheating and heavy wear and tear. Since most clients were Institutions and Corporations, where multiple people handled the projector, the bulbs invariably got damaged. Our agent was called to replace these bulbs. These being extremely expensive, the clients started complaining. Though at that time, several other agents who were marketing some cheaper bulbs approached him, he was forced to use the expensive Toshiba make due to the agreement between Videocon and Toshiba. Until 1998, the small sized, portable Toshiba multimedia projectors had competition only from the other smuggled brands. But soon after that, several other companies came into the Indian market with small and sleek multimedia projectors giving a stiff competition to Toshiba. Several small maintenances and servicing agencies started business using smuggled spare parts that were also cheaper. Toshiba projectors did not stand a chance with other projectors, as they were not only highly priced, but the company-provided maintainance was also expensive when compared to services given by other agencies. As demand for the Toshiba projectors started decreasing, the relationship between Toshiba and Videocon also severed, and Videocon stopped marketing and servicing Toshiba projectors in late 2000. Since his mobile phone number was available to a number of his earlier clients, they started calling him for repairing the Toshiba projectors. I met him again in 2002, when we made this phone call to him on his mobile phone to repair our multimedia projector at the institution. He told me that he was no longer a Videocon employee, but would come and repair our projector. After the Videocon-Toshiba break up in 2000, our agent found himself shifted to another wing of Videocon that dealt with Televisions. There was also a cut in his salary. In partnership with another employee, who was in a similar situation, he decided to start an agency to service the projectors independent of Videocon as they were both receiving a number of calls for projector repair. They decided to use cheaper spare parts and provide service at half the price that Videocon gave. They both started marketing their agency by visiting various institutions and corporate offices offering their service. In mid 2001 both of them left their jobs at Videocon and settled as a multimedia projector maintainance agency. They did not have an office or a workshop, but operated from our agent’s house. They had to cut costs in all sectors as they did not have the cushion of Videocon reimbursing their travel and food costs. Moreover, travelling within the city increased, as they had not only to visit the clients, but also spare part dealers. The mobile phone bills also increased steeply. They had to encroach into their earlier savings for the first few months. Also the security of a monthly salary that arrived in the beginning of every month was gone and the family members started worrying. But they realised that the demand was very high for this specialised service, and they had made a right decision. Money started coming abruptly. They started getting used to borrowing and credits. Sometimes money would come equalling the amount of four month of the earlier salary, while other times, it would just trickle to cover the essential costs. Within six or seven months, things started stabilising and contracts with institutions and corporates started getting finalised and they soon found that they were unable to handle the volume of jobs themselves. In early 2003, they decided to rent a small room in Vikroli in a slum as their workshop cum office and hired two persons who were appointed through their informal contacts. These boys were college dropouts and were trained in computer hardware from some local private training centre. Our agent and his friend took these two boys with them to the clients and trained them in servicing and maintaining the projectors. With the boys also having knowledge of computer hardware, the group decided to extend their agency into offering services in computer maintainance. They also started selling assembled computers. The group soon hired four more persons and now the enterprise consisted of six persons. While the boys would take care of the computer wing, the two older agents would take care of the multimedia projector sector. There is no strict job description and all employees work across all sectors. One of the employees is hired to run errands for the enterprise as several trips are required not only to gather and handover products and spare parts; but also deliver invoices and collect cheques. They are now in need of a larger space in a building, as the space in Vikroli is small and is in a slum, where they cannot invite their institutional and corporate clients. They are contemplating on whether to buy a new place with a loan or to rent a place. With cheap and easy loans, the buying option seems better as this would be a fixed asset and they seem to lean towards this. They have also hired a chartered accountant to maintain their accounts. This was not simply to pay their taxes, but to help them with acquiring a loan! Case: A Soft Toy Maker She graduated from Ruia College in Central Mumbai and got married in 1988 to a man who had a family-run business, manufacturing and selling plastic household products. While her maiden house was in Central Mumbai, the husband bought a new one-room kitchen house in the Western Suburbs after separating from a joint family staying in the Eastern Suburbs. He had bought the house before marriage with some help from his brothers. The new bride came into this house. The plastic factory was in Taloja, around 80 km from Mumbai and her husband being incharge of the factory workings would spend a lot of time in Taloja. Sometimes he did not come for a couple of days and during this period, she spent her time in her mother’s house. After a year of marriage, they had a girl child and she started spending more time at her mother’s house. She left her job after the child was born. Before her marriage, she had learnt to make soft toys from her neighbour. During her stay at her mother’s house, she started investing more time on making these toys. She would buy old books from second hand shops, buy fur from the market and make toys. Within two years, her brother got married and family pressures forced her to spend more time at home. Here in the western suburbs she started teaching other women to make toys. Later she was invited to a women’s gathering to take toy-making classes. She saw a potential of making some money by teaching people this craft. She printed some cheap pamphlets to advertise her teaching and got them circulated through a local newspaper delivery boy. She got some few students and she would charge them Rs. 100 per session (few sessions were required to master the craft) plus the material cost. She started preparing small kits for making toys with cardboard cut forms and would distribute them amongst her students. A neighbour at her mother’s place, who was a merchant in textiles, advised her that she could sell her kits as well as her toys at a mass scale to stores. He also offered to find her some owners of such stores who could be her clients. She met her first client soon and gave him all the kits and toys that were already prepared during all these years. The toys and the kits got a very good response and soon the shop owner started asking for more. The textile merchant neighbour advised her to diversify her clients and approach more shop owners. She did the same and got a few more orders. The savings and the money from the earlier sales were used to buy the material for the new jobs. She approached the neighbouring women to help her make these toys. They agreed on a payment per piece. Soon the whole building became an industry with various toy body parts being produced in various houses. One of the houses undertook assembling all these body parts. She realised that she was not the only one in the business and there were quite a few number of women supplying soft toys to various shops in the city. She had to become more innovative, re-strategise her clients and produce for a lower price. She started advertising her toys being made of imported fur that were less harmful for small children and this was the big step she took. Soon she had to find a supplier who would provide her with imported fur. The textile merchant neighbour helped her get in touch with such suppliers with whom she started making deals for her requirements for imported fur. She also started contacting large stores and other companies that were involved in the business. While Archies and other stores gave her some orders, she found that companies like Bubbles that produce soft toys work with outsourcing their work to smaller manufacturers who produce toys for them. She got in touch with one of the higher officials of Bubbles through a shopkeeper friend and got some orders to produce large quantities of toys. Her workforce from her neighbourhood was becoming small for undertaking such an activity. Meanwhile, her husband had some differences with his brothers and had severed business relations with them. The family business broke down and each brother walked away with his share. The husband decided to help her with her growing enterprise. They decided on investing the money they got from the husband’s share in a small workshop in a slum, which they rented, with a deposit of Rs. One lakh. They were now searching for a tailor who could manage the running of their workshop. From the contacts of the textile merchant neighbour, they got in touch with a tailor who worked with a garment-manufacturing agent. He was from UP. He was ready to work with her and give up his job with the garment-manufacturing agent and make toys. She brought him to the workshop and gave him a tailoring machine to start work. He would live in the same workshop. The workshop was close to their house and all the raw material and the finished products were stored in the same place. The enterprise started growing with the workshop and the workforce from the neighbourhood unable to handle the demand. The tailor offered bringing some of his relatives from UP for assistance. She and her husband agreed and rented another house in the same slum for the new work force to stay. The tailor now no longer has remained a mere employee, but a friend and an advisor for all technical matters. He also started coordinating between various women who were producing different parts of the toys. They soon bought a Maruti Van to transport their raw materials and the husband learnt driving. Their one room kitchen house was becoming too small to accommodate all the activities of a household industry as well as the needs of a growing child. While they were confident of mobilising money for a new house, they were not sure if they could develop the same network in the new neighbourhood that would become the workforce. Her father who was a real estate agent advised her to invest on a house at that time (1999) as property prices in Mumbai were at their lowest at that time. They started looking for a new house and chose one in a newly developed building. They thought that it would be difficult for them to mobilise the workforce in the new neighbourhood as it had a higher class staying there with most women members working. They decided to work with the same old neighbourhood, but shift their residence to a new place. The tailor has bought his family to Mumbai and has shifted to larger house in a same slum. They have also bought a larger workshop and have hired several workers. The network in their old neighbourhood has slowly dissolved as several families from the older neighbourhood also shifted residences. Now all the work of making toys is being handled at the workshop. Their daughter is now fifteen years old and they in their late forties. Their current focus is on getting their daughter to pass her tenth grade examination with a very good score so she gets to study in a good college. 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/20050620/5f012db5/attachment.html From j_sharma2002 at yahoo.com Tue Jun 21 09:15:52 2005 From: j_sharma2002 at yahoo.com (jaideep sharma) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 20:45:52 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?=5BReader-_List=5DReaders=92_Views_?= =?iso-8859-1?q?on_Kalyan_and_the_Religious_Feelings?= Message-ID: <20050621034552.38427.qmail@web32401.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Rajendra Yadav, famous litterateur recounts his childhood days when they used to receive Kalyan regularly at home and no one used to read it. He remembers once having refused the vendor to receive it. The vendor laughed and asked him to keep it otherwise it would be a sin on his part. He asked him not to pay for it and that the vendor would pay himself. Thus, there was a religious feeling associated not only with buying but also selling it. Such a feeling would not have been associated with any other Hindi magazine. The large distribution of Kalyan is not only due to its contents but also the religious sentiments associated with it. This was confirmed when other readers of Kalyan in Gorakhpur and Devariya were interviewed. In the views of Professor Sadanand Shahi, Director, Premcahnd Sahitya Sansthan, Kalyan, once used to be very popular among the ladies of middle class families. It is not so now. There are reasons like changing readers’ tastes. Now ladies prefer magazines like Sarita or Griha Shobha and other magazines related to ladies. Television has also made an impact on reading habits of people. They prefer viewing programmes on the variety of channels available on the TV. We can conclude that the contents of Kalyan may not have changed much but certainly the readership graph of Kalyan does’nt remains the same. Jitendra Srivastava Independent Fellow Sarai Jaideep Sharma, Reader, Faculty of Library and Information Science School of Social Sciences Indira Gandhi National Open University Delhi-110068 Tel No. 0120-3099513 --------------------------------- Yahoo! Mail Mobile Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050620/c32803ac/attachment.html From sam at myspinach.org Mon Jun 20 19:22:33 2005 From: sam at myspinach.org (s|a|m) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 23:52:33 +1000 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcement] New Stories at SIGNATURE and SOUNDPLAY Message-ID: <42B6CA21.4000607@myspinach.org> *::: Hello * New stories available at SIGNATURE and SOUNDPLAY (see below) * ::: at SIGNATURE* http://spinach7.com/signature *To Burqa with my Father* by RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH "As soon as we arrived we were overwhelmed to find that here a person's roots were all that counted. From the hotel concierge in Jerusalem, to the people that sat beside us in the buses we rode, everybody here understood that there is dignity in being able to claim heritage; in being able to derive identity from an olive tree, a rocky hill, a winding mountain road." RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH travels to the Palestinian village her father was forced to leave 35 years ago. http://www.spinach7.com/signature/sig-stories.php?id=421 *Friendly Fire* by MARNI CORDELL Douglas Wood is not the first Australian to be kidnapped by insurgents in Iraq -- and escape. SBS Journalist John Martinkus was outside the Australian Embassy in Baghdad last year when he was taken at gunpoint by Sunni militants and held for 20 hours. On his return to Australia his terrifying experience was publicly undermined by both the Minister for Foreign Affairs, and large parts of the Australian media. "The Australian Government tried to discredit me because my assessment of the situation in Iraq was directly contradictory to theirs," he tells MARNI CORDELL. http://www.spinach7.com/signature/sig-stories.php?id=436 *Behind the 'Boom'* by EVE VINCENT On June 3, mining heavyweight BHP Billiton concluded the biggest corporate takeover in Australia's history, assuming formal control over WMC Resources with a cool $9.2 billion bid. According to the business pages, BHP Billiton couldn't have acquired the world's largest uranium deposit -- Olympic Dam mine, at Roxby Downs in South Australia -- at a better time. Signature talks to DAVE SWEENEY, anti-nuclear campaigner with the Australian Conservation Foundation about the Australian uranium mining industry. more http://www.spinach7.com/signature/sig-stories.php?id=417 *Music from the streets* by REBECCA HENSCHKE REBECCA HENSCHKE meets the hip-hop crews of Yogyakarta, Indonesia. http://www.spinach7.com/signature/sig-stories.php?id=440 *Tuvalu* Photos by GIORA DAN Funafuti, the main island of Tuvalu, surprises you as it emerges out of a seemingly endless Pacific Ocean. The island chain's central atoll appears just in time to provide somewhere dry for our Air Fiji flight to land. http://www.spinach7.com/signature/sig-stories.php?id=443 *::: at SOUNDPLAY* http://spinach7.com/soundplay* LONESOME HOME* by DAN RULE Having written and released three acclaimed records whilst living in LA and London - and toured with the likes of Ken Stringfellow, Willard Grant Conspiracy, Hayden, Paul Kelly, Richard Buckner and Joanna Newsom - it's safe to say that Toby Burke and his band Horse Stories have 'made it' overseas. But after six years abroad, will the Melbourne singer-songwriter's lo-fi country arrangements and classic American musical sensibilities manage to have the same impact in his hometown? Dan Rule investigates. http://spinach7.com/soundplay/all-stories.php?id=469 *A QUESTIONABLE HERO* by LUCY MORIESON Melbourne artist Barrage likes to keep listeners at a safe distance - as Lucy Morieson finds out. http://spinach7.com/soundplay/all-stories.php?id=463 *SMILES AND WAVES* by JON TJHIA Jon Tjhia rummages through the diary of Liquid Architecture 6 - National Sound Art Festival. http://spinach7.com/soundplay/all-stories.php?id=462 *POWER ON* by DAN RULE Axes, the new record from Electrelane, signifies a return to more comfortable waters for the British quartet. Multi-instrumentalist and occasional vocalist Verity Susman tells Dan Rule of the journey. http://spinach7.com/soundplay/all-stories.php?id=458 *PLUS *lots of new music reviews!!! http://spinach7.com/soundplay/all-reviews.php -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050620/b383b958/attachment.html From pradeepdas4 at yahoo.com Mon Jun 20 11:30:33 2005 From: pradeepdas4 at yahoo.com (Pradeep Das) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 23:00:33 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] A SPECIAL SCREENING OF DOCUMENTARY FILM ON WRITER VISHNU PRABHAKAR Message-ID: <20050620060033.75470.qmail@web52005.mail.yahoo.com> A Special Screening of "YUG SHRASHTA VISHNU PRABHAKAR" (A Interview-based documentary film on famous writer VISHNU PRABHAKAR. Interviewer : Shri Pankaj Bisht) PRODUCED & DIRECTED BY SANJAY JOSHI Date: Tuesday, 21 June 2005 Time: 6.30 p.m. Place: Rajendra Bhavan, 220 Deendayal Upadhaya Marg, New Delhi - 1 ALL ARE CORDIALLY INVITED --------------------------------- Yahoo! Sports Rekindle the Rivalries. Sign up for Fantasy Football -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050619/c4a45ddb/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From oishiksircar at hotmail.com Tue Jun 21 20:17:18 2005 From: oishiksircar at hotmail.com (Oishik Sircar) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 14:47:18 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] MINDSPEAK: A discussion forum in Kolkata Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050621/3ee17cdf/attachment.html From anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in Wed Jun 22 02:04:17 2005 From: anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in (anupam pachauri) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 21:34:17 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Mr. Jinnah banned! Delhi Police turns into Censorboard!! Message-ID: <20050621203418.80409.qmail@web8407.mail.in.yahoo.com> The Delhi Police today declined to issue NoC to Asmita Group's production titled Mr. Jinnah just a day before the scheduled date i.e., June 22. The police demanded the script of the play on June 16 which was immediately provided by the director. Since then the learned team has been unable to find time to read the script and now they(DCP-South District's Office) have declared that the script is illegible. This is the same script which all the artists of Mr. Jinnah and Asmita group have been discussing and researching on since last two months. Law and order agencies have possibly presumed without discussing with the author and the director that the name 'Mr. Jinnah' is enough reason to ban staging of an artist's interpretation of a person, who was a leader, a father , a lover, a friend etc. Why Delhi Police is trying to become Censor Board? Can someone possibly answer? Kya hum pushton tak sankuchit mansikta aur galatfahmiyon ka shikar baney rehney ke liye abhishapt hein? :-( :-( anupam pachauri _______________________________________________________ Too much spam in your inbox? Yahoo! Mail gives you the best spam protection for FREE! http://in.mail.yahoo.com From oishiksircar at hotmail.com Wed Jun 22 11:10:59 2005 From: oishiksircar at hotmail.com (Oishik Sircar) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 05:40:59 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] MINDSPEAK Film Screening, Today Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050622/d6308d29/attachment.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Wed Jun 22 19:54:40 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 19:54:40 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] 'PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Of Fact And Fiction' Message-ID: PUBLIC SCHOOLS: Of Fact And Fiction By INDRANI BARUA The Statesman | 21 June 2005 http://www.thestatesman.net/page.arcview.php?clid=3&id=108602&usrsess=1 Children studying in day schools often wonder what it would be like to live in school even at night! Would there be secret parties at midnight? Pillow fights and ragging from older boys and girls? Would there be adventures in the dark corridors or eerie playgrounds? Delicious meals and serious slogging too? Such thoughts are but natural for urban children belonging to the elite and their parents brought up on a diet of Enid Blyton's school series — Malory Towers and St Clare's. These things happen every other day in her wonderful stories of the O'Sullivan twins. Blyton created residential schools in which one worked hard, had fun, lazed and was scolded; where children could play innocent tricks on their unsuspecting teachers, such as Mamzelle, who shared in the joke if it was funny and did not victimise them. Teachers in such schools were understanding, loving and strict. The naughtiest child turned over a new leaf at the end of the term, the virtuous were rewarded and the wicked punished. I wonder what Dame Blyton would have said had she faced the kids of the 21st century who have problems ranging from severe depression to nervous breakdowns, who flirt with sex and end up in mobile-scandals among other things! Letters The residential schools that she created were so liked by children and parents alike that in those days she used to receive loads of letters inquiring about the whereabouts of the schools from parents intending to send their children to such boarding schools. Truly, Enid Blyton was perhaps a great educationist. The schools she created on paper may have simplistic but they upheld all the virtues that are so sought after in today's residential or public schools. The self-rule, the camaraderie, the cooperation that she talks of in her school series are very much a part of the public schools of today. The term "public school" emerged in the 18th century in England when a group of institutions educating secondary-level students began taking in students whose parents could afford residential fees and thus became known as public in contrast to local schools. Their tradition was aristocratic, exclusive, formal and classical. Their main goal was to develop "leaders" for service in public life. The first book on public schools — "Tom Brown's School Days" by Thomas Hughes and about life at Rugby, a famous public school in England in the early 19th century — eulogised residential schools and probably did much to further the establishment of similar institutions in the countries under British domination. Even today most public schools in India are run on the principles of honour, glory and competition. Whether such competition is healthy or not remains unanswered by the fiction of most writers. JK Rowling, following in the footsteps of Blyton, creates a wonderful world of make-believe for her young readers. Codes are strict but one need not feel the pressure to excel in everything one did. But since Rowling is after all talking to children of the 21st century she also does not deny the fact that sometimes such competitions can create jealousies and rivalries and even lead to death. For the reality, one has to go to the autobiographies of Roald Dahl or Ruskin Bond. Disadvantages Dahl, a Norwegian by birth, had to undergo long years in British public schools and learnt all about the "stiff upper-lip", "bonhomie" and "do-or-die attitude". Reading Dahl makes one realise that perhaps the system that has been so praised by Hughes may have its disadvantages. He talks of corporal punishment, lack of proper food, extreme ragging and masters bent on breaking the spirit of children. Dahl is extremely critical about such schooling. He first went to boarding school in 1925 called St Peter's in South Wales and he says: "An English school in those days was purely a money-making business owned and operated by the headmaster. It suited him, therefore, to give the boys as little food as possible himself and to encourage the parents in various cunning ways to feed their offspring by parcel-post from home". Both Roald Dahl and Ruskin Bond met teachers who were cruel, sadistic and could have had better job satisfaction in a butcher's shop. Ruskin Bond had his schooling in a public school of Dehra Dun and had his own taste of bitter experiences of teachers who are insensitive and are in simple terms "bullies". However, all is not darkness in such schools. There is a sort of bonhomie, of friendships through-thick-or-thin that could help one to overcome pain and sorrow. It is undoubtedly true that public schools make you tough in spirit. In the stories of Bubla Basu who again writes from her own experience of teaching, one learns why such schools leave a lasting effect in moulding children the right way. Bubla Basu talks of teachers who discover the worth of each child in the school and who believe that no child is intrinsically "bad". She feels that with love and guidance any problem child can be brought back to the mainstream and that is what a good public school should do. The recent boom in residential and "international schools" in India advertising undreamt of facilities for the students and charging mind-boggling fees makes one wonder whether education has finally arrived as a lucrative business. Will it be the same as the schools founded by great thinkers, educationists and seers such as Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Krishnamurthy or Sosaku Kobayasi, who thought of education not in terms of leading to a cushy job but to the development of an individual so that he understands himself and the world around him. Opposed to the education system of the British, Tagore established his school in Santiniketan as an alternative. It was based on the tradition of the gurukul systems of the Vedic ages where students came to live and study in the teacher's house amidst sylvan surroundings but without a fee. Education had not then become the bastion of the elite. Patha Bhavana, Tagore's dreamchild, had been established on these ideals. It is still a school with a minimum fee structure getting the help from the central government and is still not a profit-making institution. However, that is but half the story. Supriyo Tagore, in his book, Ananda Bhavana, merges fiction and fact and builds his story of an ideal residential school around some characters. Rigid rules But the heartbeats of his story are the same ideals and vision that founded and guided the original school. Only in "Totto Chan" written by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, a famous TV personality in Japan, does fiction echo fact. The dream that was dreamt by Sosaku Kobayasi, a leading educationist of Japan, found fruition in his school where Tetsuko had studied when she was a child. This too is the story of a little girl, imaginative and unusual, who hates the regular school with its rigid rules and regulations. Nurtured in this atmosphere of trust and openness, of freedom, Tetsuko or Totto Chan (as she prefers to be called) learns to enjoy studies. Kobayasi's school was not the residential school or public school of today's world with AC rooms and classrooms and swimming pools and golf courts and room service and intercoms and cold drinks in small fridges in the library. It was rather simple and the classrooms were in a converted railway compartment. But the spirit that guided it can only find some resemblance in the alternative schools of Krishnamurthy or Aurobindo. If the modern era is one of child-centric education these schools have really focused on building the character and psyche of a child. Their focus is not on producing efficient workers for the civil-service or other white-collared jobs. They are intent on producing men and women who are confident because they have come to terms with themselves as well as the world around them and who enjoy the freedom to choose and if needed build their future themselves. (The author is assistant lecturer, Patha Bhavana, Visva-Bharati) From anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in Thu Jun 23 09:48:55 2005 From: anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in (anupam pachauri) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 05:18:55 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Mr. Jinnah arrives at Police Station Message-ID: <20050623041855.68781.qmail@web8410.mail.in.yahoo.com> The cast, the director, the scripwiter of the play Mr. Jinnah accompanied by many supporters staged protest on June 22 outside Lodi Road police station. While the team was staging parts of the play on street, the police interrupted the performance and threatened to arrest the Director Mr. Arvind Gaur. This went on for quite some time after which the protestors signed a resolution denouncing the attempt of the police to curb freedom of artistic expression by declining issuing NoC to the team to stage Mr. Jinnah. __________________________________________________________ How much free photo storage do you get? Store your friends 'n family snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://in.photos.yahoo.com From vijender_chauhan at hotmail.com Thu Jun 23 09:51:49 2005 From: vijender_chauhan at hotmail.com (vijender chauhan) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 09:51:49 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] City, Cityscape and City i-fellows Message-ID: Hi, I am sitting here, the 'historical' coffee house at the terrace of Mohan Singh Place at C.P. This visit of mine is not first visit to this place. Though this one is after a long interval- some years I suppose. The giant twin parabolas of McDonalds casting a shadow on coffee house as Khalid pointed out are not so old. Still the fact remain that by very location this coffee house has braved many such shadows in the past. This meeting of i-fellows lasted for about two and half hours and deep inside I was happy. Centre of Delhi' cityscape, adequate temporal span of two and half hours and ten odd enlightened city minds- anybody working on time and space of the city cant ask for more. It was perfect symphony of 'mauqa' and 'dastur'. So when Khalid and Shivam suggested that they were taking home their next posting- they didn't know they gave a lot more, thanks Khalid thanks Shivam thanks you all. Vivek did ask but I couldn't tell. Sometime I feel captive of 'place natinalism'. 'mein aur mera desh' studied way back in ninth standard taught us that pointing shortcomings of the place you belong is attacking its sense of beauty and strength. Its treason as well as blasphemy. Another obvious reason why I could not point out what I consider the omni present feature of this city was language. Vivel as per his own estimate is only 10-12% Hinditrate at best and I am no more Englitrate then the same percentage. So, I could not tell him that one element that is equally present in Delhi' time and space is Ashankaa (Anxiety). It is a city of anxiety. I was anxious too. Amongst co-fellows 'flowing' in english- I was somewhat cunningly looking for mockery in their eyes when they looked at me-It wasn't there- But I was anxious anyway. In this city anxiety is omnipresent. In fact it co-occur with disparity and hence distrust. Mahesh was sharing with his trademark enthusiasm how he was trapped in a five course-six wine dinner. I am pretending to be knowing how white wine is different from sweet wine- Though I am anxious that they know that I don't know. I belong to that time and space of the city where wine-beer-whisky all are same-'Daru' i.e. a liquid used to muster courage to beat wives. I have a feeling that fellows sensed my cognition- did you friends? Yes!! Mahesh...come again. Vijender _________________________________________________________________ Having a hard time finding a job? http://creative.mediaturf.net/creatives/timesjobs/hotmail_TOL.htm Log on to TimesJobs.com Click Now! From anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in Thu Jun 23 12:19:14 2005 From: anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in (anupam pachauri) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 07:49:14 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <20050623064914.12055.qmail@web8410.mail.in.yahoo.com> As you all may be aware by now that Asmita's play "Mr. Jinnah" has been banned from being staged for no rhyme or reason by the delhi police. It is not just an authoritarian, an undemocratic decision but also a direct attack on the intellect and experience of well known author Dr. Narendra Mohan and director Arvind Gaur. We all remember the impactful play ' Final Solutions' directed by Arvind. Don't we? Please read the Hindu, HT, TOI, Jansatta, for latest updates. Not allowing staging of the play is also an attempt to culture policing and moral policing of the artists of this city. the police so far have not been able to cite a proper cause for the ban yet they agree that there is nothing objectionable in the play. on the other hand they say that they have pressure "from ABOVE". Yesterday, June 22, 2005 as a symbolic silent protest the writers and dramatists, authors, artists, actors, filmmakers, theatre lovers, and other intellectuals, historians and general public staged a portion of the play in front of the lodi road police station, and which gave lots of boils and blisters to the police. It is no longer a matter of just a play, because it is obvious now that the govt. & authorities are trying to censor our thoughts and speech. we seek the support of all artists, film makers, actors, writers, theatre lovers, and other intellectuals who feel that they will not let the police take away our "FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT OF SPEECH AND CREATIVE EXPRESSION." A resolution regarding the same was signed and passed by all the people present there. IF YOU FEEL that you have got the hatred for Pakistan as a heritYge and do not want to pass on this hatred to the next generations. And if you feel the to make friends with pakistan more than buses and trains what we need today is to revisit history and forgive and forget and carry on as good neighbours then read on. If you really think that the burned bridges can be built and it will heal the mass anger and hurt by taking another perspective at the events which were just a part of our history books. And if you are optimistic enough to accept that to love or hate a person first you need to know about him, then please come and see Mr.Jinnah. I am not saying this because I am part of the cast, but because I feel that they are taking away my fundamental rights. ironically they didn't let us perform a street theatre on the street, tomorrow they might ask for a NOC for walking on the street or thinking. We request all creative people to --- Please try to generate awareness and be open to revisit history, because we really now need to look into our country, our govt. and our basic rights as artists. And we being the generation of today, if we don't stand up now then we will leave our next generatios mentally and creatively crippled. at one hand the present govt. is advancing towards "friendship with Pakistan" on the other hand they are running scared that "Mr.Jinnah" will open too many truths. The lead actor of 'Mr. Jinnah', Mr. Susan Brar was aggrieved due to demise of his mother yesterday morning. We expres our heartfelt condolences to Susan. Though it was tough but Susan decided to stand by the team in joining the protest. I could then feel the pain Jinnah as a person must have felt when his wife died or his when his daughter left his house. But the leader maintained a brave face. Susan left yesterday night to attend his mother's funeral today morning. Anupam Pachauri for Asmita Contact us for the details, mail us at anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in or at arvindasmita at yahoo.com and You can also visit us to view rehearsals of Mr. Jinnah. _______________________________________________________ Too much spam in your inbox? Yahoo! Mail gives you the best spam protection for FREE! http://in.mail.yahoo.com From anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in Thu Jun 23 12:19:14 2005 From: anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in (anupam pachauri) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 07:49:14 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <20050623064914.12055.qmail@web8410.mail.in.yahoo.com> As you all may be aware by now that Asmita's play "Mr. Jinnah" has been banned from being staged for no rhyme or reason by the delhi police. It is not just an authoritarian, an undemocratic decision but also a direct attack on the intellect and experience of well known author Dr. Narendra Mohan and director Arvind Gaur. We all remember the impactful play ' Final Solutions' directed by Arvind. Don't we? Please read the Hindu, HT, TOI, Jansatta, for latest updates. Not allowing staging of the play is also an attempt to culture policing and moral policing of the artists of this city. the police so far have not been able to cite a proper cause for the ban yet they agree that there is nothing objectionable in the play. on the other hand they say that they have pressure "from ABOVE". Yesterday, June 22, 2005 as a symbolic silent protest the writers and dramatists, authors, artists, actors, filmmakers, theatre lovers, and other intellectuals, historians and general public staged a portion of the play in front of the lodi road police station, and which gave lots of boils and blisters to the police. It is no longer a matter of just a play, because it is obvious now that the govt. & authorities are trying to censor our thoughts and speech. we seek the support of all artists, film makers, actors, writers, theatre lovers, and other intellectuals who feel that they will not let the police take away our "FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT OF SPEECH AND CREATIVE EXPRESSION." A resolution regarding the same was signed and passed by all the people present there. IF YOU FEEL that you have got the hatred for Pakistan as a heritYge and do not want to pass on this hatred to the next generations. And if you feel the to make friends with pakistan more than buses and trains what we need today is to revisit history and forgive and forget and carry on as good neighbours then read on. If you really think that the burned bridges can be built and it will heal the mass anger and hurt by taking another perspective at the events which were just a part of our history books. And if you are optimistic enough to accept that to love or hate a person first you need to know about him, then please come and see Mr.Jinnah. I am not saying this because I am part of the cast, but because I feel that they are taking away my fundamental rights. ironically they didn't let us perform a street theatre on the street, tomorrow they might ask for a NOC for walking on the street or thinking. We request all creative people to --- Please try to generate awareness and be open to revisit history, because we really now need to look into our country, our govt. and our basic rights as artists. And we being the generation of today, if we don't stand up now then we will leave our next generatios mentally and creatively crippled. at one hand the present govt. is advancing towards "friendship with Pakistan" on the other hand they are running scared that "Mr.Jinnah" will open too many truths. The lead actor of 'Mr. Jinnah', Mr. Susan Brar was aggrieved due to demise of his mother yesterday morning. We expres our heartfelt condolences to Susan. Though it was tough but Susan decided to stand by the team in joining the protest. I could then feel the pain Jinnah as a person must have felt when his wife died or his when his daughter left his house. But the leader maintained a brave face. Susan left yesterday night to attend his mother's funeral today morning. Anupam Pachauri for Asmita Contact us for the details, mail us at anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in or at arvindasmita at yahoo.com and You can also visit us to view rehearsals of Mr. Jinnah. _______________________________________________________ Too much spam in your inbox? Yahoo! Mail gives you the best spam protection for FREE! http://in.mail.yahoo.com From grade at vsnl.com Wed Jun 22 23:39:27 2005 From: grade at vsnl.com (Rakesh) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 23:39:27 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Of Gods and Demons:Jinns and Sanghs/Jinnah and the Sangh References: <20050620210907.21763.qmail@webmail18.rediffmail.com> Message-ID: <004a01c57755$9a2ea1c0$9c0d130a@user378> OF GODS AND DEMONS: JINNS AND SANGHS/ JINNAH AND THE SANGH by Rakesh Shukla Like well executed ballet moves, the Sangh parivar and its members have been adept at the task of taking forward their core Hindutva philosophy. Vajpayee the moderate - Advani the hawk; Advani the moderate- Modi the hawk; Modi the moderate - Togadia the hawk and so on in an endless charade. And of course leading a rath yatra sparking off communal tensions and blood baths along the route culminating in the demolition of Babri Masjid and then discovering that it is the "saddest day" in ones' life is am sure a humbling experience and good for the soul. Ditto the tear or two in Vajpayee's eyes, depending on the audience, re the post-Godhra massacres. All these have effectively served the purpose of lending a wider acceptability to a fringe Nazi-party like ideology with its' nominated Sarsanghachalaks and "virile but celibate" sons of Bharatmata embodied in the Pracharaks. This time around the Jinnah controversy has set things awry. 'Traitor', 'Exhortations to go back to Pakistan', 'Resolutions asking Advani to take Sanyas from politics' are no part of some well orchestrated choreography. The virulent response provoked in the 'parivar' merits closer examination. Crucial to the agenda of fascist and communal ideologies is the successful demonising and 'othering' of a section, a community, a people. Nazi propaganda portraying Jews as seducers and rapists of Aryan girls sounds remarkably similar to stories, that Muslims took "our" women and have "violated" at least 100 women in the village, which were used to mobilize mobs of 25-30000 for attacks on the minority community in the Gujarat violence. In Gujarat, long before any killings began, women's bodies were used to successfully polarize the two communities. The existence of Babri Masjid built by Babar the Cruel, himself, as a phallic symbol which colonises Mother India and emasculates the virile sons who failed to protect her was forcefully played upon to spread hate and venom during the Ranjanmabhoomi rath yatra. Starting the Yatra from Somnath invoking the plunder of the temple, which looting and destruction had nothing to do with Indian Muslims and ending it at Babri Masjid was a masterful exercise in invoking past-trauma as if it happened now leading to intensifying of emotions and justifiable anger against "them". The culmination in the demolition of the Masjid restored Hindu male virility and symbolic Hindu feminine purity. Goebbels a master of this genre successfully demonised Jews as the cause of all ills from unemployment to polluting racial purity, debauching, sapping the energy, breaking the strength and humiliating mother Germany. In a similar vein white supremacist racist discourse constructs the black male as essentially beast-like and therefore easy to kill without compunction which one may feel in the case of a fellow human being. The conflation of Muslim rulers like Taimur, Changez Khan, Babar from the past invading 'Mother India' and violating 'pure' Hindu girls and women in the past with contemporary stories of Muslim men abducting, raping and mutilating our 'mothers and sisters' leads to the successful demonising of Muslims into the 'Other'and instigation of violence against them. Infact, Gujarati dailies on 28th February 2002 carried headlines like "Helpless women struggling to escape the grip of Saitans (Devils)". Rapes and sexual violence against Muslim girls and women seems to get transformed into an act to save the 'honour' of your own mothers and sisters, simultaneously emasculating the rapacious Muslim males and 'dishonouring' the entire community. The successful implanting of beliefs which have little basis in facts like 'Hindus are being persecuted in their own country', 'Hindus will soon be in a minority in their own country', 'Muslims have 4 wives and 64 children' require a high degree of demonisation. of the community. Just as it is necessary for the Sangh to have heroes and honour "the victory over the 800 year old oppressive rule of the Muslims under the virile leadership of Shivaji", it is imperative to have a pantheon of demons. Just as Hindu motherhood is to be glorified, Muslim women are to be projected as baby-producing factories out to make the 'population bomb' or as 'luring' Hindu men into the community through conversions. Integral to demonisation is the denial of any virtue in the persona. Unlike Ravana, who could be permitted certain virtues like that of being learned, the process of demonisation requires a total 'othering' and transformation into a beast-like creature with no human attributes or positive qualities. The connivance of the administration, the chief minister, the prime minister in the 2002 Gujarat massacres and the victory of the BJP in the subsequent assembly elections makes it clear that the fears of a minority of not getting equal treatment and being overrun by the majority community, which played a crucial role in partition and in shaping Jinnah's attitudes, cannot be said to be entirely unfounded. Advanis's reference to Jinnah as a 'great man' and as having visualised Pakistan as a secular state hits at and undercuts at the core of the process of the 'othering' of a community whose patriotism is to be always held to be suspect and which at best can enjoy a second-class status in a Hindu nation. Demons like Babar, Changez Khan, Aurangzeb, Behram Khan, Jinnah are crucial to the spewing of venom and prejudice against the 'Enemy Other'. Rakesh Shukla -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050622/f14ac82f/attachment.html From isast at leonardo.info Thu Jun 23 06:49:08 2005 From: isast at leonardo.info (Leonardo/ISAST) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 18:19:08 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy -- now available Message-ID: <20050623011908.09E3528DDB6@mail.sarai.net> NEW from The Leonardo Book Series and MIT Press CODE: Collaborative Ownership and the Digital Economy Edited by Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Open source software is considered by many to be a novelty and the open source movement a revolution. Yet the collaborative creation of knowledge has gone on for as long as humans have been able to communicate. CODE looks at the collaborative model of creativity -- with examples ranging from collective ownership in indigenous societies to free software, academic science, and the human genome project -- and finds it an alternative to proprietary frameworks for creativity based on strong intellectual property rights. Intellectual property rights, argues Rishab Ghosh in his introduction, were ostensibly developed to increase creativity; but today, policy decisions that treat knowledge and art as if they were physical forms of property actually threaten to decrease creativity, limit public access to creativity, and discourage collaborative creativity. "Newton should have had to pay a license fee before being allowed even to see how tall the 'shoulders of giants' were, let alone to stand upon them," he writes. The contributors to CODE, from such diverse fields as economics, anthropology, law, and software development, examine collaborative creativity from a variety of perspectives, looking at new and old forms of creative collaboration and the mechanisms emerging to study them. Discussing the philosophically resonant issues of ownership, property, and the commons, they ask if the increasing application of the language of property rights to knowledge and creativity constitutes a second enclosure movement -- or if the worldwide acclaim for free software signifies a renaissance of the commons. Two concluding chapters offer concrete possibilities for both alternatives, with one proposing the establishment of "positive intellectual rights" to information and another issuing a warning against the threats to networked knowledge posed by globalization. To order this book and to learn more about other titles in the Leonardo Book Series please visit the Leonardo Book Series website at: http://lbs.mit.edu Member Discount! Leonardo/ISAST Associate Members are eligible for 20% off all Leonardo Book Series titles and also receive a number of other membership benefits! See http://leonardo.info/members.html for more details. _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From cahen.x at levels9.com Thu Jun 23 18:47:08 2005 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 15:17:08 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] pourinfos letter / 06-17 to 06-23-2005 Message-ID: <011f01c577f5$dee4b2f0$0301a8c0@acerkxw6rbeu2s> pourinfos.org l'actualite du monde de l'art / daily Art news ----------------------------------------------------------------------- infos from june 17, 2005 to june 23, 2005 (included) ------------------------------------------------------------------- (mostly in french) ------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 Call : major public art competition, Belfast, Irland. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1834 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 Call : transmediale.06 festival for art and digital culture, Berlin, Germany. http://pourinfos.org/candidature/item.php?id=1833 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 Call : Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art, Yerevan , Armenia. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1832 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 Call : Staple Crops : Collaboration : Moneytheism, Brooklyn, USA. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1831 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 Call : International Video-Performance Art Festival, INPORT, Tallinn, Estonia. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1830 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 Call : No Forms/No Deadlines, Microcinema International, San Francisco, USA. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1829 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 Appel à particiaption : The 2nd International Festival of Audio-Visual Arts VIDEOLOGIA,Volgograd, Russia. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1828 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 Job : Visual Art teacher, MJC de la Vallee, Chaville. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1827 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 Publication : Truthfulness: Objectivity/Subjectivity, Issue 3 , Framework: The Finnish Art Review, Helsinki, Finland. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1826 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 Publication : ch-arts, une nouvelle plateforme Internet pour les arts contemporains, Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1825 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 11 Exhibition : Art=life=game, Marcel Marien, Rock'n'roll Charity Hospital association, University of Littoral Cote d'Opale et le Frac Nord - Pas de Calais, City of Dunkerque, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1824 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 12 Exhibition : Olivier Leroi, 2nd Episode, la box _bourges , ecole nationale superieure d'art de Bourges, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1822 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 13 Exhibition : Open studios, Cite Internationale des Arts Montmatre, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1821 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 14 Exhibition : cneai editions, marche de la poesie, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1820 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 15 Exhibition : Contree , Cordeliers museum, Saint-Jean d'Angely et Hotel Saint-Simon, FRAC Poitou-Charente, Angouleme, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1819 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 16 Exhibition : Javier Perez, La Criee contemporary art center, Rennes, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1818 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 17 Exhibition : Caroline Boucher / Ingrid Luche, Le Dojo, Nice, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1817 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 18 Performance : Oeil-Ocean, Anne-Sarah Le Meur, Atelier Schoffer, Villa des Arts, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1816 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 Exhibition : The window of Splendor Hotel, Cabaret Aleatoire, Friche le Belle de Mai, Marseille, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1815 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 20 Performance : Pascal Lievre, Rodolphe Cintorino, Betonsalon, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1814 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 21 Exhibition : Return of residences, visual arts center Albert Chanot de Clamart, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1823 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 22 Performance : Micro-Evenement n°28 /Honey Honey Sugar and The Secretaries, Tsuneko Taniuch, Point Ephemere , Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1813 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Job : The Academy of Arts in Halle, Halle, Allemagne. lien http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1812 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 24 Job : Visual arts teacher(M/F) spéciality " print image ", Ecole superieure de l'image, site d'Angouleme, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1811 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 25 Job : Visual arts teacher "illustration"(M/F), Ecole Superieure des Arts Decoratifs de Strasbourg, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1810 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 26 Job : Visual arts teacher clay/ceramique(M/F), Ecole superieure des Arts decoratifs de Strasbourg, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1809 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 27 Job : Visual arts teacher for iron studioet and new materials(M/F), Ecole superieure des Arts décoratifs de Strasbourg, France. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1808 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 28 Job : Technical assistant Photograph, Ecole superieure des beaux-arts de Geneve, Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1807 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 Job : Technical assistant wood and iron studio, Ecole superieure des beaux-arts de Geneve, Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1806 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 30 Job : Teaching Art / Installation-spaces, Ecole superieure des beaux-arts de Geneve, Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1805 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 31 Job : Teaching Art, Art / Research and Experimentation, Ecole superieure des beaux-arts de Geneve, Switzerland. http://pourinfos.org/emploi/item.php?id=1804 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 32 Call : Call for video submissions CultureTV, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1803 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 33 Call : videolisboa #5, Lisbon, Portugal. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1802 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 34 Call : Long Night of the Museums in Berlin in January 2006, Berlin, Germany. http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1801 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 35 Call : Video'appart, Search for apartment in Paris, France. lien http://pourinfos.org/participation/item.php?id=1800 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 36 Publication : " to supervise closely, to punish sometimes ", le bleu du ciel editions, Bordeaux. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1799 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 37 Publication : JHON n°10, Portfolio bimestriel & Artbook, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/publications/item.php?id=1798 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 38 Meeting : ZKM/symposium/40yearsvideoart.de - Digital Heritage, Karlsruhe, Germany. http://pourinfos.org/rencontres/item.php?id=1797 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 39 Exhibition : Petits formats, Galerie Quang, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1796 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 40 Screening : Video Garden Party, in G.Wen & Marjorie David's garden, Montreuil, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1795 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 41 Exhibition : Pierre Vadi at la Salle de Bains, Lyons, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1794 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 42 Exhibition :" target " LO-renzo, helys-œuvre garden, Saint Medart d'Excideuil, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1793 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 43 Play : CASA DO BONECO, Epee de Bois theater- Cartoucherie, Vincennes, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1792 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 44 Exhibition : Archipel, Brussel, Belgium. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1791 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 45 Screening : performance, Homage to the Pavel photographer. M, Point Ephemere, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1790 ------------------------------------------------------------------- 46 Exhibition : stone to the metal and the interactivity... Jubilee of cybernetic art Nicolas SCHÖFFER, Paris, France. http://pourinfos.org/expositions/item.php?id=1788 From shivamvij at gmail.com Fri Jun 24 16:59:39 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 16:59:39 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] help - Holi, 1984 Message-ID: Hi, I would be grateful to anyone on this list if you could help me obtain a copy of the 1984 film 'Holi' as also the contact information of playwright Mr Mahesh Elkunchwar. The film was directed by Ketan Mehta, and the script was based on a script by Elkunchwar. Primary information about the film can be had at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087417/ Thanks, Shivam Vij Delhi From oishiksircar at hotmail.com Fri Jun 24 23:48:48 2005 From: oishiksircar at hotmail.com (Oishik Sircar) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 18:18:48 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] MINDSPEAK: Film Screening on June 28 Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050624/54b7d747/attachment.html From radiofreealtair at gmail.com Sat Jun 25 11:07:37 2005 From: radiofreealtair at gmail.com (Anand Vivek Taneja) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 06:37:37 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. Message-ID: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, Woke up to the horrifying news in this morning's Hindustan Times that the Sunday Book Bazaar in DaryaGanj is going to be shut down by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. (See, 'Sunset for Sunday Book Bazaar', Hindustan Times, Saturday, June 25 front page, Delhi edition.) The Sunday Book Bazaar has, despite the occasional threat of closure (1992, 2001), and one shift of venue, been around in Delhi for the past forty years. It should count as a venerable institution. Especially since in the virtual absence of good public libraries in Delhi, this is one of the very few places where people can get quality books at affordable prices. For all students, and for all lovers of books, and for everybody in the city, the closure, if we let it happen, is going to be a terrible loss. The MCD and Police decision to shut the book bazaar needs to be challenged. This mail is just to get some ideas going. How do we go about this? Should those who want to save the Sunday Boook Bazaar do some form of demonstration or sit-in in front of the Daryaganj Police Station, across the road from the book bazaar? Ideas, suggestions, action! Cheers, Anand Ph - 93122-62109 Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. (with apologies to Dilbert) http://www.synchroni-cities.blogspot.com/ Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that without a sense of humour you're basically pretty f***ed anyway. (with apologies to Walter Benjamin) http://www.chapatimystery.com/ From sdatta at MIT.EDU Sat Jun 25 13:26:01 2005 From: sdatta at MIT.EDU (S Datta) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 03:56:01 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. In-Reply-To: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> References: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Yes, absolutely appalling. In Calcutta, the College Street booksellers (admittedly, on somewhat firmer legal grounds than the guys at Daryaganj) are now recognised as a heritage site, and in Delhi, this. Some preliminary ideas: >From the article in the HT, it appeared to me that the prime movers behind this are the MCD rather than the Delhi Police. So I'm not sure a dharna at the Daryaganj PS would achieve much. A petition? Signatures? Not sure how much this would help, but it may be something to begin with. It seems important to demonstrate to the people in charge that opposition to this is not simply motivated by the need to protect the booksellers' interests, but comes from a wider cross-section of citizens. I think a combination of voicing our protest with the MCD (perhaps a group of people could try and meet the people in charge to hand over a petition), getting a lot of media attention to this (those on this list who are journalists could try and write pieces), and perhaps enlisting the aid of some delhi-based writers (i'm sure Kushwant Singh, Ruchir Joshi, VIkram Seth etc would be willing to participate in something like this?) might be a good way to go. Also, if anyone knows Madhu Kishwar, sahe might be a good person to contact because she has been a long-time advocate of hawkers' rights in general, and this fits right in. the point should be made that this is something of a delhi institution and a landmark (let's invoke the god of tourism where it can help) and also that the usual arguments against hawkers (mess, rubbish, traffic jams) don't apply here: this creates no rubbish, uses only pavement space, and happens on a day when the market is closed. unfortunately i'm not sure arguments, howsoever cogent, are the way to win battles against the MCD, but someone's got to try and stop this, right? something needs to happen fast, though. i have a feeling that people higher up in the delhi administration are probably the best bet: this decision has presumably been taken by some random MCD person, but I'm sure the Shiela Dixits of this world will at least recognise the significance of the book market. So if enough people make enough noise about this, I think it might be stoppable. On Sat, 25 Jun 2005, Anand Vivek Taneja wrote: > Dear All, > > Woke up to the horrifying news in this morning's Hindustan Times that > the Sunday Book Bazaar in DaryaGanj is going to be shut down by the > Municipal Corporation of Delhi. > (See, 'Sunset for Sunday Book Bazaar', Hindustan Times, Saturday, June > 25 front page, Delhi edition.) > > The Sunday Book Bazaar has, despite the occasional threat of closure > (1992, 2001), and one shift of venue, been around in Delhi for the > past forty years. It should count as a venerable institution. > Especially since in the virtual absence of good public libraries in > Delhi, this is one of the very few places where people can get quality > books at affordable prices. For all students, and for all lovers of > books, and for everybody in the city, the closure, if we let it > happen, is going to be a terrible loss. > > The MCD and Police decision to shut the book bazaar needs to be > challenged. This mail is just to get some ideas going. How do we go > about this? Should those who want to save the Sunday Boook Bazaar do > some form of demonstration or sit-in in front of the Daryaganj Police > Station, across the road from the book bazaar? > > Ideas, suggestions, action! > Cheers, > Anand > Ph - 93122-62109 > > Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and > taste good with ketchup. > (with apologies to Dilbert) > http://www.synchroni-cities.blogspot.com/ > > Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in > the past who is firmly convinced that without a sense of humour you're > basically pretty f***ed anyway. > (with apologies to Walter Benjamin) > http://www.chapatimystery.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 shivamvij at gmail.com Sat Jun 25 16:06:45 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 16:06:45 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. In-Reply-To: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> References: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: They did the same in Mumbai recently. What, just what, is wrong with these guys? Sarkari monsters who work at the "municiopal corporation" seem especially berserk. "Municipal corporation(s)" have special teams to withdraw the menace of cows and rabid dogs from the city. These teams are equipped with a huge van and nets and what not. I suggest establishing a paralell municipal corporation (with maoist help from nepal, if you please) and putting our cattle-catching team after these sarkari monsters. May I float a conspiracy theory? Has the MCD been requested, pressurised, bribed by Daryaganj's publishers and booksellers into doing this? sv On 6/25/05, Anand Vivek Taneja wrote: > Dear All, > > Woke up to the horrifying news in this morning's Hindustan Times that www.shivamvij.com From oishiksircar at hotmail.com Sat Jun 25 21:01:54 2005 From: oishiksircar at hotmail.com (Oishik Sircar) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 15:31:54 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Daryaganj Action Plan! Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050625/3a2c1208/attachment.html From anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in Sun Jun 26 02:22:05 2005 From: anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in (anupam pachauri) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 21:52:05 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Police defers Mr. Jinnah: Editorial Message-ID: <20050625205205.60174.qmail@web8403.mail.in.yahoo.com> THE TIMES OF INDIA, NEW DELHI EDITORIAL OPINION FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2005 MUZZLING DISSENT DELHI POLICE BANS PLAY ON JINNAH It’s the timing which has landed it in trouble. The play would have probably sailed through smoothly had L K Advani raised so much heat and dust on Jinnah’s persona. With all the attention focused on Pakistan’s founder, Arvind Gaur’s play, Mr. Jinnah, ran into rough weather. A day before it was to be staged at the India Habitat Centre in the capital, the Delhi Police asked for its script and even though it was promptly submitted, the play was ‘deferred’. The police say that the script was submitted late, it was illegible and that the IHC auditorium’s licence had expired. The police may even argue that it was only playing safe given the kind of passion Jinnah has been evoking in recent weeks. Such arguments are specious. The police action is outrageous. It’s a sinister assault on creative freedom. “Especially since it is not a political portrayal, the script revolves around the personal life of Jinnah”, says Gaur. But even if it was, the police have no business proscribing or even vetting the play. Are they competent to do so? The police’s role is to maintain law and order. They cannot ban a play anticipating trouble. Of course, this is not the first time a play has been banned. Earlier, Vijay Tendulkar’s Sakharam Binder and Ghasiram Kotwal and Vijay Apte’s Mi Nathuram Godse Boltoy were stopped being staged. Few will disagree that orchestrated disruption of law and order to get a work of art banned is becoming a regular feature of our social life. The dogmatism which seeks to suppress artistic and creative expression is gaining ground. Giving in to such demands only encourages and strengthens the forces of intolerance. In the process the citizen’s constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of expression is trampled. The most reprehensible aspect of such suppression of artistic liberty is that the threat of public violence and the official action to counter it end up serving the same objective-of silencing dissent and stifling creativity. _______________________________________________________ HINDUSTAN TIMES THE EDIT PAGE FRIDAY, JUNE 24, 2005 THEATRE OF THE ABSURD There’s something to be said about Delhi Police’s commitment to duty. What else could have prompted such swift action to stop staging f a play on Mohammad Ali Jinnah? We have been told that the script was confiscated not because of its contents, but because the auditorium that would host the play had its commercial-use licence suspended. This is rather absurd. The pendencey of licence renewal hadn’t stopped other plays from being staged at the same venue. So where was the need for drama? Whether the police are trying to score brownie points or simply latching on to the latest intellectual fashion statement-Jinnah-bashing-we still don’t quite know yet. But why at all it is the police’s job to ‘inspect’ works of entertainment? The law says that the police can stop the staging of a play if it threatens to ‘upset’ public morality or creates an unmanageable traffic situation or is liable to spark off law and order problems. The theatre goers as well s civil libertarians eagerly await the police’s confirmation as to what prompted the seizure. The nebulous reasons cited for cancelling the play only go to show just how robbed we are as a society of any sense of moderation. The police will be shocked if we were to charge it for harbouring a colonial type mindset. But that is pretty much what the police action has been about. Again, it is an equally curious deal if our law does require the police to vet, prior to public viewing, form of entertainment. A society that boasts of its democratic tradition and temperament cannot possibly allow-very literally- the moral police to decide what can or cannot be put on the stage. If the police does have the power to censor, it must use it with caution and sensitivity in the larger interests of a democracy’s right to free expression. Compiled by Anupam Pachauri for Asmita P.S. Please forward it to all concerned to safeguard right to free expression __________________________________________________________ Free antispam, antivirus and 1GB to save all your messages Only in Yahoo! Mail: http://in.mail.yahoo.com From joasia at i-dat.org Sun Jun 26 03:06:36 2005 From: joasia at i-dat.org (joasia) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 22:36:36 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] DATA browser 02 Message-ID: The second book in the DATA browser series has just been released. -- DATA browser 02 ENGINEERING CULTURE: ON ŒTHE AUTHOR AS (DIGITAL) PRODUCER¹ edited by Geoff Cox & Joasia Krysa Publisher: Autonomedia (DATA browser 02) all texts released under a Creative Commons License 2005. ISBN: 1-57027-170-4 Pages: 240, Paper Perfectbound Price: $15.00 in US / £14.99 Europe order from http://www.data-browser.net/ or http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/ Social change does not simply result from resistance to the existing set of conditions but from adapting and transforming the technical apparatus itself. Walter Benjamin in his essay ŒThe Author as Producer', written in 1934, recommends that the Œcultural producer¹ intervene in the production process in the manner of an engineer. The term Œengineer¹ is to be taken broadly to refer to technical and cultural activity, through the application of knowledge for the management, control and use of power. To act as an engineer in this sense, is to use power productively to bring about change and for public utility. This collection of essays and examples of contemporary cultural practices asks if this general line of thinking retains relevance for cultural production at this point in time - when activities of production, consumption and circulation operate through complex global networks served by information technologies. Contributors: The Institute for Applied Autonomy | Josephine Berry-Slater | William Bowles | Bureau of Inverse Technology | Nick Dyer-Witheford | etoy | Matthew Fuller | George Grinsted | Harwood | Jaromil | Armin Medosch | Raqs Media Collective | Redundant Technology Initiative | Pit Schultz For more information see The DATA browser series presents critical texts that explore issues at the intersection of culture and technology. The editorial group are Geoff Cox, Joasia Krysa, Anya Lewin, Malcolm Miles, Mike Punt & Hugo de Rijke. This volume is produced in association with Arts Council England and University of Plymouth. From radiofreealtair at gmail.com Sun Jun 26 11:45:16 2005 From: radiofreealtair at gmail.com (Anand Vivek Taneja) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 07:15:16 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] Daryaganj Action Plan! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <8178da9905062523154df471fd@mail.gmail.com> Dear All, Thanks for the prompt and thoughtful responses. Moyukh Chatterjee, a student and a regular at the Sunday Book Bazaar, who knows a few of the booksellers personally, has volunteered to brave the rain and go to the Sunday Book Bazaar today, to find out what it's like on the ground, how soon they are going to be removed etc. Oishik, thanks for the detailed action plan. I think we need to get into action asap, and your plan is just the way to do it! Shivam, Jane - many of the books sold at daryaganj are remaindered books which have been disposed off in bulk by publishers and distributors. it could be argued that the distributors and publishers also need the sunday book bazaar to sell slow moving stock - so the publishers should also be included in the campaign. Cheers, Anand On 6/25/05, Oishik Sircar wrote: > > > I guess, we gotta move on three fronts: > > 1. A signature petition for sure... and that's got to be the prerogative for > those in Delhi... along with an email petition if possible... and as one of > the mailers suggested, getting people like Khushwant Singh, Ruchir Joshi, > Vikram Seth... and why not William Dalrymple involved in the petition... > > 2. Second, along with Madhu Kishwar, one needs to get in touch with the > Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN) in Delhi... Miloon Kothari's the guy > there... he's the UN Special Rapporteur on Housing Rights... he can give > some leads... and then it's Colin Gonsalves at the Socio-Legal Information > Centre... but this needs to be done by those in Delhi... there are a barrage > of other people who must be contacted and asked to lend solidarity... Usha > Ramanathan, Brinda Grover, Nandita Haksar, Adv. S. Muralidhar, Ravi Nair... > some kind of collective voice of dissent must be initiated... Ah, there's > another organisation in Delhi that work's exclusively on economic freedom... > The Centre for Civil Society... the contact persons are Parth Shah or Manali > Shah... > > 3. Third, and I dunno how one will arrange this... if it's possible to hold > a people's tribunal/ hearing/meet with the booksellers doing the talking... > and get some newspaper people and people from the judiciary to attend it... > you never know... the agenda could be to make the court take suo moto > cognizance and issue a stay... > > 4. And for those planning to draft the petition... look into Olga Tellis vs > Bombay Administration... a Supreme Court judgment upholding the right to > livelihood as a fundamental right to life under Article 21 of the > Constitution... > > And yes, if people need any help from Kolkata... especially with the > Hawkers' Unions here... lemme know... > > Oishik > > > "You are only given a little spark of madness. You mustn't lose it." > - ROBIN WILLAMS > > OISHIK SIRCAR > > oishiksircar at hotmail.com > oishiksircar at justice.com > > > ________________________________ > Test Your Memory and Win Amazing Prizes! DVD Players, Digicams & more! > > > > > _________________________________________ > 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 not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. (with apologies to Dilbert) http://www.synchroni-cities.blogspot.com/ Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that without a sense of humour you're basically pretty f***ed anyway. (with apologies to Walter Benjamin) http://www.chapatimystery.com/ From oishiksircar at hotmail.com Sun Jun 26 18:39:13 2005 From: oishiksircar at hotmail.com (Oishik Sircar) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 13:09:13 +0000 Subject: [Reader-list] MINDSPEAK: Info on Benaqaab Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050626/c764d02f/attachment.html From faraazmehmood at yahoo.com Sun Jun 26 20:09:39 2005 From: faraazmehmood at yahoo.com (faraaz mehmood) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 07:39:39 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Changing banking practices in udaipur Message-ID: <20050626143939.13426.qmail@web31805.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Picasso paws away petty cash It is a common practice in banks across the country to hold a certain amount of money in cash reserve for the daily expenses of running the branch. This is called petty cash & it is given in charge of an employee. The branch buys diesel for the genset, stationery, cleaning materials, pantry supplies, postage & other extra-ordinary miscellaneous expenditures. Even the audit parties benignly ignore the nitty-gritty of petty cash spending. A margin sometimes narrow sometimes wide can always be allowed. The twist in the tail forms when Picasso steps in!! Picasso is a art & craft center situated in the bank building. It has a wide variety of objects in glass, wood, metal, rare handicrafts & exquisite paintings. My bank regularly deals with Picasso while handing out gifts to elite clients on diwali & New Year occasions. The bank relationship with Picasso is more than meets the eye. Some things elicit goes on between the curios store & the top-notch of the bank branch. Since no auditing is done of petty cash reserves one cannot say off hand how much amount of this loose reserve is pawed away in the name of Picasso store. The bank environs bare a steady business like look. Sleek ness & efficiency adorn the huge walls of the bank floor. If we believe the amount of money, which is being stashed away to the Picasso coffers, is for real then the bare walls of the main floor would have covered with admirable beauty in a carpet like fashion. This is not to be so. The question remains where the money is being drained out when it is being credited to Picasso? As it becomes the operations head of the branch Maithili Bhanawat is a shrewd woman, money-wise & worldly wise. Whenever there is a shortage or a deficit in the daily dealings on the cash counter, Maithili has to step in. if the teller or the tellers’ are not to her liking then she reprimands them with snide remarks, a few threats & eventually make them pay the deficit after a long wrangling match. But when the tellers belong to her camp, loyal followers with meek submissions then the scenario gets changed. First they make a great show of counting, re-assessment & accountability. The two or three chaps doing the sorting on a meager salary of Rs. 2200 are put under the scanner. They are physically checked, minutely questioned & instructed to be more careful in the future. When the rituals are over then Maithili quietly summons bharti, the person in charge of petty cash & a teller herself. She is asked to credit the exact amount of day’s deficit to the Picasso store. In turn the Picasso store sends bills of that exact amount. The day’s deficit is settled without the bare walls of the bank getting any richer. So much for Picasso! Bhavesh bares the brunt!! Private commercial banks treat their high net worth clients as celestial beings. Their foibles & follies are always connived at & their tantrums are borne with good humor. This is a rule rather than an exception in my bank branch. A client with score of lakhs stashed away in the vault can ask for the stars & the prediction is he will always get it. The irony lies in the fact that the price of the stars has to be paid by employees slithering on the lowest rung of existence. The other day in the middle of the rush hours, an elite client stepped in to deposit a few lakhs. He had kept away 1000 rs. In ten rupee notes in a black plastic bag. Conveniently he forgot to pick up the bag when he had dealt with the teller. The bag remained in the cash counter for some time before it ignited a ruthless incident in the branch. Bhavesh from the sorting team stepped in at that moment. He picked up the bag, counted the notes & made inquires about it with the persons standing in the queues. On not getting satisfactory replies he tiptoed over the cash counter & tried to catch attention of Bharti sitting as a teller. Bharti was too busy to take any interest, she shooed him away & called up the next person in the queue. Bhavesh decided to keep the money with him for the time being & would give away to Bharti after 4 p.m. when the cash counter was closed. This was no to be so. After an hour or so the worthy client turned up with an injured look asking for those Rs. 1000 he had lost in the bank. He inquired among the persons in the queue, had a verbal match with bharti & went up the operations head Maithili for a speedy redressal of the grievance. As her post demands Maithili always carries a sturdy umbrella to protect high net worth individuals. She immediately stepped in to fish in the troubled waters. Elaborate inquires were made about a black plastic bag. When no clues sprung up then Maithili turned her glare towards the sorting team busy at the back of the cash department. On inquiring bhavesh readily admitted to finding a bag & keeping the bundle of Rs. 1000 in his pocket for a safe-keep. All hell broke lose. Bhavesh was dragged out in the open floor space & was kicked by the high net worth client. Speedily Maithili threw away the suave corporate mask she was wearing. She abused bhavesh, threatened to fire him right away & then rang the outsourcing agencies who had sent bhavesh as a member of the sorting team. The employer Khotla arrived & started kicking the vulnerable boys in his buttocks & in the pit of his stomach. The cash queues started wavering & then receded to give space to the whole show. I was at the back of the bank looking after the clearing with my colleagues I ran to the center of the hall to rescue bhavesh but it was of no aware. The poor boy of eighteen, the sole earner for his family had mortal fear for his job. He was in fits, shouting incoherently & would not get still even for a moment. While his trauma lasted for an hour, the corporate ruthlessness came out in full flow. Eventually bhavesh was fired & sent home. No one ever thought of blaming the idiocy of the elite client, the Picasso convenience nor the petty cash reserve, which could have pulled a poor family from the brink of starvation MF __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in Sun Jun 26 18:14:44 2005 From: amitrbasu50 at yahoo.co.in (Amit Basu) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 13:44:44 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. In-Reply-To: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20050626124444.37795.qmail@web8510.mail.in.yahoo.com> Anand, Thanks for this posting. In Kolkata we could not react strongly so the book-bazar was short lived. But Daryaganj Sunday Book-Bazar seems to me uncomparable in the country by both its variety and quantity. It must be prevented from closing down. Count my protest if there is any signature campaign. In Solidarity. Amit Basu Anand Vivek Taneja wrote: Dear All, Woke up to the horrifying news in this morning's Hindustan Times that the Sunday Book Bazaar in DaryaGanj is going to be shut down by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. (See, 'Sunset for Sunday Book Bazaar', Hindustan Times, Saturday, June 25 front page, Delhi edition.) The Sunday Book Bazaar has, despite the occasional threat of closure (1992, 2001), and one shift of venue, been around in Delhi for the past forty years. It should count as a venerable institution. Especially since in the virtual absence of good public libraries in Delhi, this is one of the very few places where people can get quality books at affordable prices. For all students, and for all lovers of books, and for everybody in the city, the closure, if we let it happen, is going to be a terrible loss. The MCD and Police decision to shut the book bazaar needs to be challenged. This mail is just to get some ideas going. How do we go about this? Should those who want to save the Sunday Boook Bazaar do some form of demonstration or sit-in in front of the Daryaganj Police Station, across the road from the book bazaar? Ideas, suggestions, action! Cheers, Anand Ph - 93122-62109 Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. (with apologies to Dilbert) http://www.synchroni-cities.blogspot.com/ Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that without a sense of humour you're basically pretty f***ed anyway. (with apologies to Walter Benjamin) http://www.chapatimystery.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: --------------------------------- Free antispam, antivirus and 1GB to save all your messages Only in Yahoo! Mail: http://in.mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050626/082d5af7/attachment.html From dark_is_beautiful2 at yahoo.com Fri Jun 24 16:32:49 2005 From: dark_is_beautiful2 at yahoo.com (vanessa :)) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 04:02:49 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] =?iso-8859-1?q?Members=2C_One_of_Another=3A_Gender?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_Equality_and_Justice_in_Islam=94?= Message-ID: <20050624110249.13935.qmail@web52103.mail.yahoo.com> Sameer arshad wrote: Members, One of Another: Gender Equality and Justice in Islam” By Riffat Hassan Department of Religious Studies University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky Introduction What I will say may surprise both Muslims who "know" women's place and non-Muslims who "know" what Islam means for women. It is this: I am a Muslim, a theologian, and a women's rights activist, and while I am critical in a number of ways of the life that most Muslim societies offer to women, twenty years of theological study, as well as my own deepest faith, convince me that in real Islam, the Islam of the Qur'an, women and men are equals. Liberating ideas lie at the heart of most enduring faiths, and Islam shares in these. Two themes in particular strike me as being of the highest importance. The first is the fundamental equality of humans before God. The other is religion's revolutionary aim of human liberation. From religion should come freedom to seek understanding of the will of God and life's purpose, and freedom to honor God's creation through self-development and striving toward God's ends. Unfortunately, most Muslim societies also mirror a fault that has been noted by feminist theologians in cultures shaped by other religions: the gap between rhetoric of equality and the reality of profound inequality between the lives of women and men. While Muslim women continuously hear the refrain that Islam has given women more rights than any other religious tradition, they continue to be subjected to grossly unequal treatment. Most Muslims -- women and men -- consider it self-evident that men are superior to women. Going further, they justify many manifestations of inequality as inherent in Islam. In fact, women are regarded in a number of contemporary Muslim societies as less than fully human because it is widely believed that in some contexts (such as inheritance or witnessing to contracts), one man is equal to two women. Most Muslim females, learning their culture's assumptions even before they learn language, and denied the opportunity to become educated, also internalize this belief. The dominant, patriarchal interpretations of Islam have fostered the myth of women's inferiority in several ways. They have used sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad (including disputed sayings) to undermine the intent and teachings of the Qur'an, which Muslims regard as the Word of God. They have taken Qur'anic verses out of context and read them literally, ignoring the fact that the Qur'an often uses symbolic language to portray deep truths. And they have failed to account for the overriding ethical values of the Qur'an, which stresses that human beings -- women as well as men -- have been designated to be God's "khalifah" (vicegerent) on earth and to establish a social order characterized by justice and compassion. A refutation of the whole mosaic of arguments for women's lesser place would fill a book. It might require a second book to explicate, proactively, the Qur'an's vision of women's equality with men and what it might mean in day-to-day life. For now, my hope here is simply to shake false certainties about women in Islam and stimulate additional study for the sake of empowering Muslim women. The central question is whether, according to normative Islam, women and men are equal or unequal. It is clear to me that, according to the perspective of the Qur'an, women and men are equal, and that women are entitled to an equal opportunity along with men for the actualization of their human potentialities. In fact, because of its protective attitude toward all downtrodden and oppressed classes, the Qur'an is particularly concerned about safeguarding the rights of women, and much Qur'anic legislation is designed to ensure that women are treated with justice in the home and in society. Islam Seeks Liberation The Qur'an holds before us a sublime vision of our human potential, our destiny, and our relationship with God. Its vision of human destiny is apparent in the exalted proclamation: "Towards God is thy limit" [Surah 53:An- Najm:42]. With this attitude, the Qur'an seeks to liberate all persons so that we may realize our potential fully. If all Muslims were to pursue the values of the Qur'an, they would create a Paradise of justice and peace on earth. The means and ends of human liberation are foundational themes of the Qur'an: justice and the duty to strive for it, compassion for all things, the need to strive continuously for the cause of God ("jihad fi sabil Allah"). The most important form of "jihad" for contemporary Muslims is "ijtihad," or the exercise of rational judgment to understand the essential message of the Qur'an and to apply it to particular circumstances. Central to this message is an ethic of responsibility for our lives, for nature, and for the elimination of all inequities and injustices from human society. According to the Qur'an, justice is a precondition for peace: Without justice -- between men and women, as between classes and between nations -- there can be no peace in the world. Indeed, a large part of the Qur'an's concern is to free human beings from the chains that bind them -- above all, authoritarianism and the blind following of tradition. "Let there be no compulsion in religion," says the Qur'an [Surah 2:Al-Baqarah:256]. God tells the Prophet Muhammad, "We made thee not one to watch over [others'] doings, nor art thou set over them to dispose of their affairs" [Surah 6:Al-An'am:107]. The greatest guarantee of personal freedom lies in the Qur'anic decrees that no one but God can limit human freedom [Surah 42:Ash-Shura:21] and that "Judgment is Allah's alone" [Surah 12:Yusuf:40]. As the eminent jurist Khalid M. Ishaque pointed out, "The Qur'an gives to responsible dissent the status of a fundamental right."(1) Our right to freedom includes the freedom to tell the truth, as one sees it. Without this, other freedoms are a charade and a just society is impossible. According to the Qur'an, truth is one of God's most important attributes, and the Qur'an emphasizes that standing up for the truth is a right and a responsibility that no Muslim may disclaim, no matter how hard the truth may be to tell [Surah 4:An-Nisa':135]. Further, the Qur'an forbids others to harm those who testify to the truth [Surah 2:Al-Baqarah:282]. The right to freedom of thought and expression was exercised by Muslims in the early centuries of Islam and was pivotal in the creation of an Islamic civilization characterized by outstanding achievements in diverse fields of knowledge. The early Muslims celebrated cultural diversity and engaged in rigorous intellectual discussion. Here, it is apt to mention Wilfred Cantwell Smith's comment that, whereas the original Muslims believed in God, modern Muslims believe in Islam.(2) Centered in God and self-critical, the original Muslims believed that although God had given them the Qur'an and the Prophet had exemplified its teachings, it was their responsibility to implement its message in the "Islamic" societies that they were creating. These Muslims read the Qur'an as an "open," rather than a "closed," text and strove continually to understand its deeper meaning. This intellectual striving ("ijtihad") -- which Allama Muhammad Iqbal, poet-philosopher of Pakistan, calls "the principle of movement" in history(3) -- made the Muslims of the first three centuries dynamic and creative peoples who paved the way for the European Renaissance. It is a profound tragedy and irony that today's Muslims, in large numbers, regard Islam in monolithic terms and regard the "shari'ah" (the code regulating all aspects of a Muslim's life) as fixed. In much of the contemporary Muslim world, we see the substitution of traditionalism for the exercise of ijtihad -- even a denial of the right of ijtihad. To me, being a Muslim means renewing the cry of the modernists, "Back to the Qur'an and forward with ijtihad." In the same vein, it means acting on these words of Iqbal: "The teaching of the Qur'an that life is a process of progressive creation necessitates that each generation, guided but unhampered by the work of its predecessors, should be permitted to solve its own problems."(4) These are useful guidelines today for the liberation of all Muslims, especially women, from traditional authoritarianism. Human Rights in the Qur'an The Qur'an strongly guarantees all fundamental human rights, without reserving them to men alone. These rights are so deeply rooted in our humanness that their denial or violation is tantamount to a negation or degradation of that which makes us human. These rights came into existence with us, so that we might actualize our human potential. These rights not only provide us with the opportunity to develop all of our inner resources, but they also hold before us a vision of what God would like us to be, what God deems to be worth striving for. The renunciation of a God-given right would be no more virtuous than the refusal to utilize a God-given talent. The first and most basic right emphasized by the Qur'an is the right to be regarded in a way that reflects the sanctity and absolute value of each human life. Each person has the right not only to life but also to respect, not by virtue of being a man or a woman, but by virtue of being a human being. "Verily," states the Qur'an, "we have honored every human being" [Surah 17:Al-Isra':70]. Human beings are deemed worthy of esteem because, of all creation, they alone chose to accept the "trust" of freedom of the will (Surah 33:Al-Ahzab:72). Human beings can exercise freedom of the will because they possess the rational faculty, which is what distinguishes them from all other creatures (Surah 2:Al-Baqarah:30-34). Although human beings can become "the lowest of the low," the Qur'an declares that they have been made "in the best of moulds" (Surah 95:At-Tin:4-6), having the ability to think, to have knowledge of right and wrong, to do the good and to avoid the evil. Thus, on account of the promise which is contained in being human, namely, the potential to be God's vicegerent on earth, the humanness o fall human beings is to be respected and considered an end in itself. Flowing from this primary right is the right to be treated with justice and equity. The Qur'an puts great emphasis on the right to seek justice and the duty to do justice. Justice encompasses both the concept that all are equal and recognition of the need to help equalize those suffering from a deficiency or loss. Yet justice is not absolute equality of treatment, since human beings are not equal as far as their human potential or their human situation is concerned. While each person's humanness commands respect, the Qur'an also establishes the right to recognition of individual merit. Merit depends not on gender or any other characteristic, but only on righteousness. Righteousness consists of "just belief" plus "just action," including faith, prayer, wealth- sharing, equitable and compassionate behavior, and patience in the face of hardship or difficulty. Of importance to women in the Muslim world today is the Qur'anic idea that justice takes into account the unequal conditions of different groups of people. This idea stems from the Qur'anic ideal of community, or "ummah," a word deriving from the root "umm," meaning mother. Like a good mother with her children, the good community cares about the well-being of all its members, offering particular support to the downtrodden, oppressed, and "weak" classes. This includes women, slaves, orphans, the poor and infirm, and minorities. As discussed earlier, another fundamental right is the right to be free of traditionalism and authoritarianism. Instrumental here is the right to seek knowledge, which the Qur'an emphasizes perhaps more than any other right. Acquiring knowledge is a prerequisite for evaluating the conditions of life and working toward the creation of a just world. Denied knowledge, Muslim women are denied justice. Additionally, with great implications for the status of Muslim women, human beings possess the right to work, to earn, and to own property. This right is not the monopoly of men. In Islam, everything belongs to God, not to any person, and so every human being has the right to a means of living. Given the Qur'an's recognition of women as persons in their own right and not as adjuncts to men, the right to earn a living is of great importance to women, and the Qur'an entitles both women and men to the fruits of their labors. Human beings also have the right to develop their aesthetic sensibilities and the right not only to survive but to thrive, to enjoy "the good life." This requires self-actualization or development, which is not possible without social justice. Not only an end in themselves, women's rights are a basic component of social justice and a fundamental aspect of creating a just society, in which all people can actualize their God-given potential. It is often said that rights entail responsibility, meaning the responsibility not to use rights to justify destructive behavior. Rights also entail another kind of responsibility: the duty not to neglect them. Rights given to us by God ought to be exercised, since everything that God does is for "a just purpose," as pointed out by a number of Qur'anic verses. In short, as beings in a covenantal relationship with God, we must strive to secure and guard the rights which God has given us and which, therefore, cannot be revoked by any temporal authority. Sexism Is Not Islam Given the human rights established by the Qur'an, how is it that Muslim women are among the most voiceless and powerless "minorities" in the world? One answer is that women's oppression -- including their "protection" -- in the name of Islam is based on pre-Qur'anic, non-Qur'anic theological assumptions and on patriarchal impulses camouflaged in the language of popular piety. It also consists of the simple fear of change. The belief that women are inferior to men derives, in my judgment, from three fundamental theological assumptions or ideas that have played pivotal roles not only in the Islamic, but also in the Christian and Jewish, tradition. These three assumptions are: 1) God's primary creation is man (Adam), since woman (Eve) is believed to have been created from man's rib and is, therefore, ontologically derivative and secondary. This idea has been the most damaging to women throughout history, for if it is believed that man and woman were created unequal by God, then they cannot become equal essentially, at a subsequent time. 2) Woman (Eve) was the primary agent of "man's Fall," or man's expulsion from paradise. With enormous implications for women's sexuality, this story undergirds the myth of feminine evil. Consequently, women have been regarded as "the devil's gateway" -- a phrase adopted from the early Christian Tertullian -- and treated with hatred, suspicion, and contempt. 3) Woman was created not only from man, but for man. Her existence, therefore, is instrumental and not of fundamental importance. Common though these assumptions are, a correct reading of Qur'an does not support them. The idea that Eve was created second, and is derivative -- which is found in the creation story in Genesis 2 -- is not found in the Qur'an. In its thirty or so passages about human creation, the Qur'an always speaks of the creation of humanity as a whole ("an-nas," "al-insan," "al-bashar"). The term "adam" (borrowed from Hebrew, in which "adam" derives from "adamah," meaning "earth") occurs twenty-five times in the Qur'an. In twenty-one instances, it refers not to a specific person but to human beings when they reach the stage of moral autonomy and become capable of being God's vicegerents on earth. In the Qur'an, "Adam" represents humanity, not just a male person. It is important to note that there is no "Eve" in the Qur'an. According to the Qur'an, God created woman and man simultaneously, of like substance, and in like manner. Several verses state that God created man and women from a single life-cell or being. Both man and women have male and female components [Surah 49:Al-Hujurat:13], and both together form the human species. It is a clear teaching of the Qur'an that man and woman are equal in the sight of God, and the Qur'an uses both feminine and masculine terms and imagery to describe the creation of humanity from a single source. As for the second assumption, the Qur'an does not state that Eve tempted and deceived Adam, causing his "Fall" and expulsion from paradise; as noted, Eve is not even mentioned by name in the Qur'anic text. In Islam, the story of humanity's first act of disobedience is not even the tale of a "Fall." Instead, as Iqbal writes, it shows "man's rise from a primitive state of instinctive appetite to the conscious possession of a free self, capable of doubt and disobedience."(5) God approved of this development of human will and therefore forgave this first transgression. Finally, woman was not created to serve the ends of man, nor vice versa: both were created to serve God's purpose. Both are called upon equally to be righteous, and women and men are "members" and "protectors" of each other. In the face of this truth about the Qur'an, how do Muslims rationalize the commonly held theological misconceptions used to justify women's secondary status? The answer is, largely, through the prevalent norms of Muslim culture, which has incorporated the many sayings attributed to the Prophet Muhammad that make up the Hadith literature, a leading source of Islamic tradition. While the Qur'an has absolute authority as God's Word and is therefore the primary source of Islam, the Hadith literature has been the lens through which the Qur'an has been interpreted through the ages. Reflecting the culture of the seventh- and eighth-century Arab world, the sayings voice the cumulative biases, against women, of the Jewish, Christian, Hellenistic, and pre-Islamic Bedouin Arab traditions. To take one example, it is through the Hadith literature that the idea of Eve's creation from Adam's rib entered the Muslim world. Throughout Islamic history, certain "ahadith" (the plural of "hadith," a saying) have been used by patriarchal Muslim culture to undermine the aim of the Qur'an to liberate women from the status of chattels and make them free and equal to men. As important as the Hadith literature is, controversy surrounds every aspect of it, from the authenticity of individual sayings to the literature as a whole. In theory, all Muslim scholars agree that they must reject any hadith that contradicts the Qur'an. Nevertheless, the ahadith invoked to justify women's secondary status not only are retained, but they enjoy overwhelming popularity among Muslims in general. The belief of most Muslims that the first woman was created from Adam's rib shows that, in practice, the Hadith literature has displaced the teaching of the Qur'an on women's creation. It is no wonder: throughout most of Muslim history, the sources of Islamic tradition have been interpreted only by Muslim men who have arrogated to themselves the task of defining the ontological, theological, sociological, and eschatological status of Muslim women. The challenge for contemporary Muslim theologians who uphold gender equality and justice is to analyze and refute time-honored understandings of certain Qur'anic verses and ahadith that have been used against women. Their task is to reinterpret these texts in the light of the cardinal Islamic belief that God is just and that God's word must reflect God's justice. Indeed, the Qur'an is full of verses affirming the equality of women and men. I defy patriarchy's theologians to reconcile these verses with any bias against women or even relegation of women to a sheltered -- that is, inferior -- status. To wit(6): Never will I suffer to be lost The work of any of you, Be he male or female: Ye are members, one of another [Surah 3:Al-'Imran:195] If any do deeds of righteousness, -- be they male or female -- And have faith, They will enter Heaven, And not the least injustice Will be done to them. [Surah 4:An-Nisa':124] The Believers, men And women, are protectors, One of another: they enjoin What is just, and forbid What is evil: they observe Regular prayers, practice Regular charity, and obey God and His Apostle. On them will God pour His mercy: for God Is Exalted in power, Wise. God hath promised to Believers, Men and women, Gardens Under which rivers flow, To swell therein, And beautiful mansions In Gardens of everlasting bliss. But the greatest bliss Is the Good Pleasure of God: That is the supreme felicity. [Surah 9:At-Tawbah:71-72] Whoever works righteousness, Man or woman, and has Faith, Verily, to him will We give A new Life, a life That is good and pure, and We Will bestow on such their reward According to the best Of their actions. [Surah 16:An-Nahl:97] For Muslim men and women, -- For believing men and women, For devout men and women, For true men and women, For men and women who are Patient and constant, for men And women who humble themselves, For men and women who give In Charity, for men and women Who fast (and deny themselves), For men and women who Engage much in God's praise, -- For them has God prepared Forgiveness and great reward. [Surah 23:Al-Mu'minum:35] Men and women are created as equal creatures of a universal, just, and merciful God whose pleasure is that they live, in harmony and in righteousness, together. Manifestations of Inequality Denying women the right to interpret the Qur'an and the other sources of Islam, patriarchal authorities have distorted the truth of Islam almost beyond recognition. They have made Islam a means of keeping women in bondage, physically and spiritually. The most gross violation of human rights in Muslim societies is that of the rights of women, who are deprived of the freedom to be fully human. Female children are discriminated against from the moment of birth. Many girls are married when they are still minors, although marriage in Islam is a contract and presupposes that the contracting parties are both consenting adults. (The phenomenon of child marriages gives special importance to the human right, recognized by the Qur'an, to move freely and to emigrate from oppressive conditions.) Ironically, while the Qur'an often notes women's rights in marriage, the culture regards a husband as his wife's gateway to heaven or hell. This is not only tragic, but also ironic, as Islam rejects the idea of any intermediary between a believer and the Creator. While Islam may have abolished female infanticide, "honor killings" of women by their husbands remain common in certain Muslim countries. Although the Qur'an presents the idea of "no-fault" divorce and speaks of divorce nonjudgmentally, Muslim societies make divorce legally and socially hard on women. One means is the denial to mothers of custody of their children. Similarly disempowering to women are pseudo-Islamic practices with regard to inheritance. The Qur'an allowed women to inherit wealth and receive similar gifts, but Muslim societies have discouraged gifts to women and favored the circulation of wealth among men. Modernity has not brought justice to most Muslim women. Since the 1970s, several countries have enacted laws in the name of "Islamization" that reduce women's status, mathematically, to less than full humanity. Such oppression of women serves to reinforce cultural identity and express rejection of Western corruption. Controlling women is a proxy for controlling sexuality, licentiousness, and the family structure in which patriarchy is invested. Keeping women at home, subservient and dependent, is both means and end. More intensely than many other societies, Muslim communities tend to divide the world into private (women's) and public (men's) spheres. This structure segregates the sexes. Women must wear veils to make themselves "faceless" in public because women's intrusion into male space might disrupt, if not destroy, the fundamental order of things. Segregation and enforced veiling -- together, the tradition of the "curtain" -- exemplify both the twisting of Qur'anic ideas and the adoption of pre-Islamic traditions oppressing women. For instance, the purpose of the Qur'anic statements about women's dress and conduct was to enable women to transact business in the public realm, free from sexual harassment or molestation. Zealous and patriarchal Muslims, however, place form over substance. In the name of protecting women's chastity (what about men's chastity?) women are veiled and even confined to their homes -- at the expense of their freedom and ability to engage in gainful work or other activity in the public sphere. This grossly distorts the Qur'anic directive, in which confinement was not the norm for chaste women, but the punishment for unchaste ones. The pre-Islamic roots of this tradition also give the lie to the argument that secluding women is a Qur'anic ideal. Veiling is part and parcel of discriminatory ideas about women rooted in the Jewish and early Christian traditions. These words of St. Paul are an example: Christ is the source of every man, man is the source of woman, and God is the source of Christ. For a man to pray or prophesy with his head covered is a sign of disrespect to his source. For a woman, however, it is a sign of disrespect to her source if she prays or prophesies unveiled; she might as well have her hair cut off. If a woman is ashamed to have her hair cut off or shaved, she ought to wear a veil. A man should certainly not cover his head, since he is the image of God and reflects God's glory, but woman is the reflection of man's glory. For man did not come from woman, and man was not created for the sake of woman, but woman was created for the sake of man. [I Corinthians 11:3-9] Family Planning and Abortion Control of women centers largely on control of women's bodies. Beliefs that identify women with the body, to the exclusion of the mind and spirit, remain a common feature of many religious, cultural, and philosophical traditions. Islam is no exception. Moreover, while women are identified with the body, in these traditions they are not seen as "owners" of their own bodies. To control women's sexuality is a means of controlling their bodies, and to control (or deny) family planning is to govern women's sexuality. This is why the matter of who controls women's bodies -- whether it is men, the church, the state or community, or women themselves -- was a significant underlying issue of the United Nations Conference on Population and Development in 1994, and why it will resurface at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. Women in most Muslim societies have minimal access to reliable means of contraception. This reflects the influence of conservative Muslims who proclaim from public platforms and preach from the pulpits of the mosques that family planning is against Islam. Like the traditions of veiling and confinement, denial of family planning supports male ownership and control of women, both directly and symbolically. The Qur'an does not directly address contemporary family planning issues -- a silence that in itself indicates neither support nor opposition nor a lack of relevant principles. Instead, the open text of the Qur'an establishes an ethical framework in which it is appropriate to discuss family planning questions. (The Qur'an does include both pronatal verses and verses directed toward population control. Of the three, mutually contradictory ahadith concerning the withdrawal method of contraception, two imply that it is acceptable.) Given Islam's religious and ethical framework, family planning itself should be seen as a fundamental human right, especially for masses of disadvantaged Muslim women. \ Among the principles supporting women's access to family planning services are the equality of women with men, the entitlement to respect for one's humanity, the right to justice and equity, the right to be free of traditionalism and authoritarianism, the right to privacy, the right to gain knowledge and use one's reason, the right to work and earn and own property, the right to move freely, and the right to enjoy life. Family planning helps women and men to secure and exercise these fundamental human rights. The rights to respect and freedom from authoritarianism, suspicion, and slander, in particular, also respond to the belief, still held by some, that contraceptives make it possible for women to engage in licentious behavior without penalty. Several additional Qur'anic principles support those who choose to use family planning. First, each individual is responsible for his or her actions. Although the Qur'an calls God the sustainer of all creation, it does not absolve individuals or communities of responsibility for their survival and well-being. Rather, it reminds human beings that we are responsible for our deeds -- indeed, for our souls [Surahs 74:Al-Muddaththir:38 and 52:At- Tur:21: "for itself lies every soul in pledge"]. Similarly, the Qur'an notes that reason is what elevates us above other creatures, that righteous belief demands righteous action, and that God asks us to change ourselves as a precondition of changing our conditions. All these ideas support human responsibility where reproduction is concerned. Finally, the Qur'an does not make a requirement of marriage or childbearing. Nor does it follow pre-Islamic traditions that sanctify sperm itself as the equal of human life. The quality, or righteousness, of people is more important than their quantity. A review of Muslim jurisprudence shows that many jurists have considered abortion to be permissible within the first 120 days of pregnancy for a number of reasons. Traditionally, scholars have distinguished between the impermissible abortion of an ensouled fetus and the permissible abortion of a fetus not yet ensouled. There are differences among the authorities as to whether a compelling reason is required for abortion and what constitutes a compelling reason. Pursuing Justice The Qur'an not only offers women justice, but requires all Muslims to seek justice, including their own rights. It is not enough merely to appreciate one's rights in theory. Muslims are called upon, in oppressive conditions, to strive to make possible the exercise of the rights given by God. Male-centered and male-dominated Muslim societies assert, glibly and tirelessly, that Islam has given women more rights than any other religion. Meanwhile, they keep women in physical, mental, and emotional confinement, depriving them of the opportunity to actualize their human potential. A deeply symbolic and pragmatically devastating case in point is that, while literacy rates are low in many Muslim countries, literacy rates of Muslim women -- especially in the rural areas where most of the Muslim people live -- are among the lowest in the world. It is only because the masses of Muslim women are steeped in poverty and illiteracy that oppressive ideas have been accepted and tolerated for so long. Until recent times, the vast majority of Muslim women have remained wholly or largely unaware of their "Islamic" (in an ideal sense) rights. Even privileged, educated Muslim women -- like women of other religious traditions -- have been denied systematically the opportunity to acquire the critical tools for examining the roots of their tradition and discovering how they became so disadvantaged. Their exclusion disables their response. The negative ideas about women that prevail in Muslim societies are rooted in certain theological ideas. Until we demolish the theological foundations of Muslim culture's misogynistic and androcentric tendencies, Muslim women will suffer discrimination despite statistical improvements in education, employment, and political rights. Islamic tradition will remain rigidly patriarchal until we break the chains of ignorance in which women are shackled. Ultimately, it will be up to Muslim women, once educated about Islam and their rights, to articulate in a proactive fashion the meaning of their lives, their selves. Reacting against the Western model of liberation no longer suffices. What is required is a positive formulation of their own goals and objectives, individually and collectively. Although prevailing conditions seem to be far from desirable, I believe strongly that there is hope for the future. There are indications that an increasing number of Muslims are, in fact, returning to the Qur'an and attempting to apply its teachings to reform Muslim practices. With the efforts of women and human rights activists who are striving to actualize the liberating vision of the Qur'an -- and with the help of God -- more and more Muslim women will become educated and aware. As this happens, they will reject the myths and arguments by which religious hierarchs imprison their bodies, hearts, minds, and souls. Then they will grow into whole human beings, free of guilt and fear, secure in the knowledge that they are equal to men in the sight of God and that, therefore, they must not be unequal to men in any human society. Notes 1. K.M. Ishaque, "Islamic Law -- Its Ideals and Principles," in A. Gauher, ed., The Challenge of Islam (London: The Islamic Council of Europe, 1980), p. 157.Back to Text 2. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Islam in Modern History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). Back to Text 3. Allama Muhammad Iqbal, The Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam (Lahore: Shaikh Muhammad Ashraf, 1962); the quotation here is from Lecture 6, "The Principle of Movement in the Structure of Islam." Back to Text 4. Ibid., p. 168.Back to Text 5. Ibid., p. 85. Back to Text 6. The translations of the five passages quoted here are from 'Abdullah Yusuf 'Ali, The Holy Qur'an, New Revised Edition, (Brentwood, MD: Amana Corporation, 1989).Back to Text __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com focus on the details, they make all the difference. __________________________________________________ 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/20050624/7372c4ec/attachment.html From himanshusamvad at yahoo.co.in Sat Jun 25 19:57:14 2005 From: himanshusamvad at yahoo.co.in (himanshu ranjan) Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 15:27:14 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Placing Hindi in the democratic-federal setup (Posting 6) Message-ID: <20050625142714.78002.qmail@web8508.mail.in.yahoo.com> Placing Hindi in the democratic-federal setup (Posting 6) Now, presenting the sixth and the last posting, I am really in a fix. Getting badly involved in hotch-potch studies, collecting reference material that are contradictory enough to puzzle one and oscilating historically between the two thorny poles of 1857 and 1947, it is I, an untrained and, rather anarchist fellow for such an inter-disciplinary academic venture! There is already a demarcating clue in the subject that gives particularity and restricts me to the domain. The growth and role of Allahabad as a cultural centre of modern esteem fall exactly in the span of the first half of thelast century. The nineteenth century renaissance is the backgrounder and the period after partition that makes roads to the present, is the aftermath extention that needs deep instrospection. Particularly, the sixth decade is a crucial one that depicts the real face of independence and that of the fractured culture -conscience of the new modern nation-state. And this also precipitates on the very spot, Allahabad! Identity-politics, based on religion and language, was the main under-current of our national movement. Factors of secularism and democracy were there, but the former being very diluted and the latter being dictated by the peculiar moral vision of Gandhi. Some more radical ideologies like socialism and communism certainly helped and checked the right deviations, but they were not so assertive and capable enough to play decissive roles. The whole spectrum was doomed to fall in the lines of religious nationalism and its communal deformations. Yes, the prolonged efforts of that failed radicality, at least, saved democracy in India and paved the way for its more radical multi-dimentions to grow on. The Hindi movement of nineteenth century intertwined with the cow-protection movement culminated in the naked manipulations of the constituent assembly debates and won the state-language status. But it was the tragic end of 'Godan', forecasted very early by Premchand! The Constitution provided a federal structure for our democracy, but a centralistic one. Hindi of the Hindu-Brahminical order just fitted into this centralistic line of governance. But the constituents of a state machinery are not the same as those of a language or state-language. The state can exploit the otherwise means by force which the state language cannot. It has to work within the autonomous and intrinsic capacities of its own. Coming back to my formulations, I am trying to derive a system out of the fluctuating and diversified developments of the whole phenomenon. Restricting myself to this field of language development, whose inward and outward dimentions would encapsulate the varied socio-political and cultural aspects of this Hindi-Urdu belt in particular I think, I am in the process of preparing five to six cahpters of my desertation. The Hindu-Hindi saw the house-divided and threw Urdu in the hands of the Muslim separatists. But, as stated before, language cannot be completely a state-affair. Urdu is, and must remain, still here, in this Hindi-Urdu belt. Similarly, the numerous small nationality languages, cut to size of dilects, are also here to fight against the hegemoney of Hindi, to develop themselves and also to extend their cultural support to the enrichment of Hindi and Urdu both. Other full-fledged national languages of India, regarded as provincial ones, deserve and demand the democratic fraternal relations with this state language Hindi in this federal structure. Lastly, the emperial English is in the position of the shrewd monkey in the fable of quarreling cats. Why bilinguism, placing English necessarily at one end? Why not multi-linguism first, placing different national languages of India at different ends, interacting one to one bilineally and secondly, repeating the same process with foreign languages including English prominently. Himanshu Ranjan An independent CSDS Fellow --------------------------------- Free antispam, antivirus and 1GB to save all your messages Only in Yahoo! Mail: http://in.mail.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050625/44c41832/attachment.html From manish.jain at gmail.com Sun Jun 26 21:06:24 2005 From: manish.jain at gmail.com (Manish Jain) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 08:36:24 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. In-Reply-To: References: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: Arundhati Roy ? Didn'y she go to school in Delhi(close to Darya Ganj, ITO) I think a combination of voicing our protest with the MCD (perhaps a group > of people could try and meet the people in charge to hand over a > petition), getting a lot of media attention to this (those on this list > who are journalists could try and write pieces), and perhaps enlisting the > aid of some delhi-based writers (i'm sure Kushwant Singh, Ruchir Joshi, > VIkram Seth etc would be willing to participate in something like this?) > might be a good way to go. > > Also, if anyone knows Madhu Kishwar, sahe might be a good person to > contact because she has been a long-time advocate of hawkers' rights in > > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050626/ca68ec64/attachment.html From moyukhchatterjee at rediffmail.com Fri Jun 24 21:08:53 2005 From: moyukhchatterjee at rediffmail.com (Moyukh Chatterjee) Date: 24 Jun 2005 15:38:53 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Space and Violence in Vatva, Ahmedabad Message-ID: <20050624153853.27151.qmail@webmail50.rediffmail.com>   Posting may-June 2005 In this posting, we have attempted an oral history of the area under study: a neighbourhood that encompasses two old colonies – an OBC basti of Vaaghris (Subcaste-Chunars) and a Saiyid Muslim mohalla, both of which are flanked on either sides by new and old neighbourhoods of Hindus/Muslims. The violence of 2002 links all these neighbourhoods together in contemporary times, but on the other hand and in other times, as their own history reveals, there existed centuries old relationships of interdependence and hoary legends of syncretism between communities which have undergone a tremendous transformation. Whether traced back to changes in local-level politics, livelihood patterns, processes of industrialisation/urbanisation – our effort is to first make an inventory of these traces of change in that nebulous zone of consciousness – memory. It is in this regard that our latest trip to Ahmedabad has been intensive both in terms of our fieldwork and collection of data, as well as in terms of the direction our research has taken. We discovered many connections and linkages that we had not fully realised in previous trips; these have caused us to shift the focus of our project considerably. We present here the few major areas of concern that we identified. Methodology- We collected most of our data through informal conversations and freewheeling interviews with the residents of the colonies; we stressed on the older generation to construct the ‘history’ part of the narratives and the relatively younger generation gave us the ‘felt’ experience’ of changing relationships between the Muslims, OBC’s and the Hindus. Those who were willing had their interviews recorded while the others accepted copious notes being taken as they spoke. With a few we just spoke as we walked from one colony to the other. Our method for the interviews on the whole was ‘conversational’ and conducted with minimum direction; asking our interviewees to narrate their life history, we were surprised to find out, in the end, the rich yarn of struggles against adversity and the enmeshing of the memorable and the mundane, the fantastic and the material, and some life histories, at least to us, so deep and confusing that they merit undivided attention, as separate entities. We also collected some official data on the areas from the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC), local Municipal corporators, political workers and NGO’s working in the area. We met academics and journalists who have worked in the area of communalism and mobilisation of backward classes and gained some very useful insights and pointers. History of Vatva Gaam (village) - Vatva is a huge industrial area on the outskirts of Ahmedabad. Originally agrarian farmland it was acquired by the Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC, set up in 1962) in the early 60’s. Following that a number of industries were set up on this land leading to the settlement of new residential colonies in the area. Our work is restricted mainly to three such colonies Navapura (a new migrant colony of Muslims from the inner city as well as from U.P. and Bihar settled in the 1980’s, mostly post- 1985), Sayyidvada and Vaaghrivaas (old/original colonies of Muslims and Vaaghris settled for more than 700 years- according to the oral narratives of its residents). We also briefly looked at Rabaarivaas - a colony of Bharwaads (cattle herders/ breeders/ keepers who sell milk to the local population and dairy owners). The Bharwaads, the Saiyyid Muslims and the Vaaghris are the oldest ‘original’ communities of the area. When investigating the history of inter-community relations in the colonies we discovered a curious legendary history explaining the origins of the settlement. Each community provides different versions of the history of the area, converging at some points and diverging at others. All three communities – Saiyyid Muslim, Vaaghris and Bharwaads traced the begining of their settlement in Vatva to a Sufi saint called Hazrat Saiyyid Jalaluddin Bukhari- Makhdum Jahaniyan- Jahangast. Makhdum Jahaniyan (1307-1383) was a Sufi saint, part of the Suhrawardi Silsila. Born at Uch Sharif in Pakistan he was widely travelled and thus called 'jahangast' or a world traveller. The lineage of the saint is traced to the Prophet through his daughter Fatima. We were told that he came to what is today called Vatva during his travels around the world. Bharwaad History: - According to the Bharwaad narrative - Vatva, originally a jungle was the site for a small Bharwaad settlement. The jungle was full of wild animals that regularly attacked the cattle, proving to be quite a menace for the Bharwaads. One day an old man- a pir came to the jungle. This was Makhdum Jahaniyan. He approached a young boy grazing a bacchhdi (calf) and asked for a cup of milk. The boy explained that the animal was a calf and couldn’t possibly produce milk; instead he offered to take the man to his settlement in the evening where cows were kept and give him milk there. The old man however insisted on getting the milk from the cow and the boy began to think that the man was senile. The old man then stroked the calf with his hand and when the boy milked the calf, the cup became full of milk. The boy excited, reported this miracle to the elders of his community who decided to pay a visit to the “mahatma”. They visited him in his cottage where they saw him surrounded by “vaagh-bakri” (tiger and goats). He told them not to worry and come in. (This seems to tie up with an account of Makhdum Jahaniyan's miraculous powers, told to us by Muslims, of how he made a tiger kiss his feet). The Bharwaad then told the pir that the wild animals ate their cattle and made their living difficult and asked him to tell them where they should settle. The pir shot an arrow and told the Bharwaads to reside where it landed; that is how the Bharwaadvaas (literally colony of Bharwaads) came to be. Makhdum Jahaniyan also told the Bharwaads that two peedhis (generations) later people would come from ‘Arbastaan’ and these people would be the ‘jodidaar’ (partners) of the Bharwaads. These were the Saiyyid Muslims. The pir also instructed them to serve (sewa) Qutb-e-Alam, Jahaniyan's grandson also a Sufi saint, who would come to this area and settle down. Thus, with Qutb-e-Alam came the colony of Saiyyid Muslims that settled down in Saiyyidvada. According to the Bharwaad narrative one Vaatwa Bharwaad, who pleased Jahaniyan pir with his services, was promised by the pir that the village would be named after him. (And thus it was called Vatva instead of 'Qutubabad' after Qutb-e-Alam). Vaaghri History: - The Vaaghris are currently counted as an OBC (Other Backward Castes) community but were listed as a ‘Criminal Tribe’ during British rule in India. The colony that we are studying is known both as Vaaghrivaas and Chunaravas. The peetajaati or caste of the residents is Vaaghri and their atak (surname/ subcaste) is Chunaaraa. According to the Vaaghri narrative Vatva was originally a jungle where 900 years ago four men came and settled down. These were “Qutb-e-Alam Baba, Kesariya Bhangi, Vatva Bharwaad and the Vaaghri/Chunar ancestor Bavjibhai Bhootkhaya.” (Known as 'the one who ate ghosts' to indicate his fearlessness). Qutb-e-Alam was a fakir and Vatva Bharwaad was a cattle driver. There were lots of wild animals in Vatva and a tiger used to eat the cattle. The Chunar ancestor was a tribal who "used to carry bows and shoot tigers". Qutb-e-Alam told Bhootkhaya the Vaaghri ancestor to live there and protect the villagers and "he (Qutb-e-Alam) gave him (Bavji Bhootkhaya) a gun"(!). The British gave the land upon which these settlements came to be and Qutb-e-Alam would not collect any taxes from the Chunars or the Bharwaads or the Bhangis – a privilege reserved for the original settlers/communities.families. The first Chunara family is said to have come from Soongadh. Th families make a distinction between two Soongadh's- one in Rajasthan and the other near Surat. The Chunaras say that they were originally Adivasis, or huntsmen and did no farming. It is said that the first Chunaras to come to Vatva were two brothers, one of whom was impotent. One day he had a bitter fight with his sister-in-law and went to commit suicide. On the way he saw a Raawad who had seven children, he adopted one of his children and that is how the tribe expanded. Saiyyid Muslim History: - The Saiyyid Muslims make up the colony called Saiyyivada and attach themselves to Qutb-e-Alam. Qutb-e-Alam the grandson of Makhdum Jahaniyan Jahangast and son of Saiyyid Naseeruddin was born at Uch Sharif. It is said that Jahaniyan pir chose/ prophesised Vatva to be the place where Qutb-e-Alam and his followers would reside. When he came upon the site where the tomb of Qutb-e-Alam currently lies, he picked up a handful of soil off the spot and said he could smell the sweet scent of the bones of his progeny in that soil. ("Merey aulaad ki haddiyon ki khushboo aa rahi hai" according to one informant). Today around the tomb lies the residential colony of the Saiyyid Muslims. According to a legend told to us by a non-Saiyyid resident from Navapura, (the significance of the identity of the speaker will become clearer after we explore the dynamics between the old/original inhabitants- jooney log, and new/migrant population- navey log) Jahaniyan pir arrived in Vatva and encountered the Bharwaads who reared cattle in the area. A tiger that regularly ate the cattle of the Bharwaads was a great menace. Jahaniyan pir made the tiger kiss his feet and in return asked for the Saiyyids to be accommodated in the area. Some residents of Saiyyidvada also corroborated the legend of Jahaniyan pir making a calf produce milk as also the naming of Vatva afer Vaatva Bharwaad. Thus, with Qutb-e-Alam’s arrival with his followers, Saiyyidvada came up. Ahmedabad was founded by Ahmedshah in 1411. His father Zafar Shah Muzaffar (later Muzaffarshah I) was the Governer of Gujarat under the Delhi Sultanate when Delhi was sacked by Timurlane in 1398. Taking advantage of lack of authority in Delhi, Zafar Khan proclaimed himself Sultan of Gujarat thus establishing the Muzaffarid dynasty that ruled over Gujarat from 1391-1583 when it was taken over by the Mughals. Muzaffarshah was a disciple of Makhdum Jahaniyan Jahangast and was blessed by the pir who predicted that he would get the Baadshaahi of Gujarat. It was Muzaffarshah who after becoming the ruler of Gujarat invited Qutb-e-Alam from Uch Sharif to Patan, then capital of the kingdom. After Ahmedshah built Ahmedabad he invited Qutb-e-Alam to his city from Patan and gave him the land and villages of Vatva. The exact number of villages was never constant but at one point they included Isanpur, Vaasna, Naroda (neighbouring areas in Ahmedabad) as well as lands in Kheda district. The British recognized the Saiyyid descendents of Qutb-e-Alam as the legitimate owners of these lands under the Saiyyid Act of the Bombay State and it was only later in 1952 that the Inaamdaari of Vatva was abolished. While the Muslims accept that the Bharwaads and Chunaras are along with them the original communities of the area, the 'originating myth' of the Chunaras differs in Muslim narratives and is less heroic. The Chunaras (initially only four) were brought by the Saiyyids to Vatva to work on their lands. Soon their lot expanded and thus was settled Chunaravas. This is the history of the three colonies/neighbourhoods that constitute the area of our focus. Even a cursory analysis of these histories – which move seamlessly between myth/legend and ‘real’/social aspects – shows that the dynamics between these three communities evolved with newer levels of engagement – from employer/employed relations in farms, to fellow industrial workers and now even as independent bootleggers – the relationship between the Muslims and the OBC’s ( chunaraas) and its subsequent deterioration in the last decade will be investigated in later postings. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050624/14423c5d/attachment.html From s_bismillah at yahoo.com Sun Jun 26 21:23:09 2005 From: s_bismillah at yahoo.com (syed bismillah) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 08:53:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Kashmiri Encounter Message-ID: <20050626155309.86775.qmail@web31015.mail.mud.yahoo.com> The Kashmiri Encounter It is usual to look at each human experience as unique. Every person has different kinds of experiences, especially living in metropolitan cities like Delhi. People coming from different parts of India to Delhi go home with different kinds of stories. But my interviews with the Kashmiri Muslims living in Delhi have been very revealing. They all sound alike. Even the words with which they describe their experiences. For instance when a Kashmiri is faced with a problem that would require assistance from a policeman he would not even think of going for help to a police station. In ordinary every day cases when the Delhiwalas would unhesitatingly approach a policeman the Kashmiri would rather suffer injustice than risk going to the police. I interviewed Aijaz, a business man living in Delhi for many years. He is in his thirties. He told me that once he and his friend were going out for a walk and two people on a mobike came and rammed into them. They shouted at the mobike riders. Instead of being defensive the mobike riders got down from their bike and beat up the two Kashmiris, even kicked them and abused them. They were drunk but probably not that drunk that they didn’t recognize them as Kashmiris so easy target for their aggression. I asked Aijaz and his friend about what they did do, how did they react? He replied, "what could we do, we went home." I asked why you did not report to the police?" He laughed and said how could we go to the police, we would become targets of their suspicion. When they find out we are Kashmiris they would start making inquiries about us instead of looking into our complaint The Delhi police has passed an order that all landlords must give the names of their tenants along with their photos at the local police station. Kashmiris feel very uncomfortable about this rule. They have all begun to feel a constant insecurity and that is the permanent part of living in Delhi, far away from Kashmir. And they wonder why they left the valley at all? __________________________________________________ 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/20050626/d0f3bee4/attachment.html From shivamvij at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 00:55:20 2005 From: shivamvij at gmail.com (shivam) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:55:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] help - Holi, 1984 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Abhijeet, Thanks for the information. I did manage to get in ouch with Mr Elkunchiwar, thanks to a member of the Reader-List. The film, though, is still elusive. Mr Elkunchiwar says that he has never seen the film, and if I get a copy, I should send him one as well! You wrote: > With due regards to the anti-ragging campaign, HOLI was not a > straightjacketed "anti ragging play". I would be grateful to you if you could find any article/essay/post by me in which I have claimed so. Unfortunately, the anthology you mention will not be accessible to me as it is in Marathi. As for 'mob mentality' - ragging does have something to do with it. I have referred to it in one of my research postings. Thanks, Shivam On 6/27/05, Abhijeet Tamhane wrote: > Dear Shivam, > All the best in your efforts... > For the record, even before Ketan Mehta directed the film, HOLI was a play > in Marathi which was staged (actually they managed without a proper stage) > also in college campuses...? > With due regards to the anti-ragging campaign, HOLI was not a > straightjacketed "anti ragging play". It aslo opened a discussion on the mob > mentality, the plight of an underdog etc... a mention of one such discussion > in the IIT Mumbai (after staging of the play, where the director, Vijaya > Mehta, was present) can be found in Sankalp, a collection of > autobiographical writings of some 20-odd dalit/leftist/socialist youth > movement leaders in Maharashtra. The book, now out of print, is in Marathi. > > -- abhijeet tamhane -- I poured reason in two wine glasses Raised one above my head And poured in into my life (-JD) www.shivamvij.com From shekhar at crit.org.in Mon Jun 27 04:05:13 2005 From: shekhar at crit.org.in (Shekhar Krishnan) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 04:05:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Careers in New Media Festival, 1-3 July 2005 Message-ID: <4AD8F4EC-7BC7-4693-95B5-A6A609340DCD@crit.org.in> Dear All: Apologies for cross-posting. Please forward to interested individuals and organisations. For more information and to register, contact Sonia Nazareth at +91.22.2382.1893 or +91.98199.39820 or write to sonia at cometmedia.org Best, S.K. _____ Comet Media Foundation presents CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA seminar and exhibition interactive presentations with the finest minds on the hottest topics in New Media DATES: FRIDAY 1st, SATURDAY 2nd and SUNDAY 3rd July 2005 TIME: 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. Daily VENUE: Bosco Hall St Andrews Church Compound, Hill Road Bandra West, Mumbai 400050 a COSMOS foundational event CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA is a festival composed of a seminar, an exhibition and scope for many interactions. It aims to create awareness among students about the new and viable professional options unleashed by emerging information and communication technologies. Friday 1 July 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR COMMUNICATIONS Seminar 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. Saturday 2 July 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR A NEW WORLD Seminar 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. Friday 1 July, Saturday 2 July and Sunday 3 July NEW MEDIA Exhibition 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA will have an inter-disciplinary approach, with experts and established professionals from a wide variety of work areas sharing their experiences and visions of the future. This is an unique opportunity for students to interact with experts in order to make a strategic career choices. COSMOS is a recently-launched initiative of the Comet Media Foundation in Mumbai, exploring the complex and densely woven field in which science, technology and society overlap. The educational programme of COSMOS is scheduled to be operational by 2006. For more information on the Comet Media Foundation visit http://www.cometmedia.org The CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA festival is open to all. Entry to the exhibition is free. The seminar presentations require pre- registration, as seats are limited. The registration charges are Rs 200. For more information and to register, contact Sonia Nazareth at +91.22.2382.1893 or +91.98199.39820 or write to sonia at cometmedia.org FRIDAY 1 JULY 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR COMMUNICATIONS Seminar (25 minute presentation will be followed by 15 minute question and answer sessions) 10:00 to 10:15 Introduction CHANDITA MUKHERJEE Comet Media Foundation, Documentary Film-Maker 10:15 to 10.45 Keynote Address "the unfolding new media scenario " NINA SABNANI Head, Department of New Media Studies National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad 10.50 to 11:30 "Making it in the games industry" REENA GEORGE Human Resources Manager, Indiagames Ltd, Mumbai HRISHI OBEROI Head of 3D and Console Games, Indiagames Ltd, Mumbai 11:30 to 11.45 BREAK 11:50 to 12:30 "Animation as a career for the future" SHILPA RANADE Faculty Member, Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai 12:35 to 1:15 "Can writing be a viable career? Exploring web-journalism" KIRAN JONNALAGADDA Blogger and Information Architect, Seacrow Labs, Bangalore 1.20 to 1.30 "The power of the portal: a case study" Z. ANSARI rediff.com 1:30 to 2:15 LUNCH 2:20 to 3:00 "Entrepreneurship in the age of new media: entertainment and commerce" TOBY MORNING Chairman, Urban Technology Ventures, Los Angeles, U.S.A. 3:05 to 3:20 BREAK 3:25 to 4:05 "Opportunities in audio-visual post-production" NEIL SADWELKAR Editor and Editing System Consultant, Technical Consultant to Pixion Studio 4:10 to 4:30 Concluding Remarks NIRMALENDU JAJODIA Software Developer, Board Member, Comet Media Foundation SATURDAY 2 JULY 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR A NEW WORLD Seminar (25 minute presentation will be followed by 15 minute question and answer sessions) 10:00 to 10:20 Introductory Note NIRMALENDU JAJODIA 10:25 to 11:05 "Emerging careers in the new information age" GURUNANDAN BHAT Chief Technologist, Synapse, Goa 11:10 to 11:50 "Future prospects for sound specialists" P. BALARAM Audio Engineer, Audeus Studios, Mukta Arts, Mumbai 11:55 to 12:10 BREAK 12:15 to 12:55 "Careers in e-learning" RUPESH GOEL Head, Simulations, Tata Interactive Systems 1:00 to 1:40 "GIS (Geographic Information Systems) applications" VINEET SHROFF Founder-Director, Biond Software, Mumbai 1:40 to 2:25 LUNCH 2:30 to 3:10 "New media as an area of research and training" NISHANT SHAH Research Scholar, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore 3:15 to 3:30 BREAK 3:35 to 4:15 "ICTs, social development and business models" JAYALAKSHMI CHITTOOR Editor, I4D Magazine, Centre for Science Development & Media Studies (CSDMS), New Delhi 4:20 to 4:30 Vote of Thanks INDRANIL CHAKRAVARTY Film-Maker and Project Director, COSMOS New Media Initiative, Comet Media Foundation, Mumbai ABOUT THE SPEAKERS NINA SABNANI teaches Communication Design at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. After a degree in Fine Arts from Baroda, she studied animation at NID and in the UK. Later, she did a post graduate programme in Television & Film from the USA on a Fulbright Fellowship. She has evolved with the times to embrace a wide range of subjects in her profile. At present she teaches courses in Visual Scripting for Animation, Interaction Design, Linear and non-linear story telling, Games design, Illustration and Multi-sensory Design. http://www.nid.edu REENA GEORGE currently Manager Human Resources at Indiagames, had extensive experience in the IT industry. A part of the dynamic industry of wireless gaming, Reena has taken Indiagames from an 80 member team to over 250 employees in the past one year. She is an active member of the HR Infotech Association, Mumbai. http://www.indiagames.com HRISHI OBEROI is currently Head of the 3D & Console games at Indiagames. He has specialised in computer graphics and animation and has designed and programmed 2D and 3D games for mobile phones. Hrishi is currently producing a console named "Ashoka". He is active in the International Game Developer's Association, Mumbai chapter, organises gaming events like WCG India and speaks in technical forums concerned with games development in India. http://www.indiagames.com SHILPA RANADE is a faculty member at the Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. A gold medallist from Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art, she did her Masters in Visual Communication from IDC, IIT, Mumbai and subsequently completed an M.Phil in Animation from the Royal College of Art, London. Her animation film Mani’s Dying won the critics award at the Bombay International Short Film Festival, 1996 and was nominated for the best British short film award at the British Short Film Festival, 1995. http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in KIRAN JONNALAGADDA is a writer and programmer who works at the crossing of media, technology and the web. Currently a consultant technologist at various organisations, he is also an Independent Research Fellow at Sarai, studying how the user interface affects online communities. He is also a collaborator on the Mumbai Free Map Project of CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai, a member of the Plone Foundation, and a trustee of the Tapovan School in rural Bangalore. An observer and participant in blogging, Kiran is also an occasional journalist and a keen photographer. http://www.seacrow.com http://www.freemap.in TOBY MORNING is an entrepreneur who heads Urban Technology Ventures, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. This group of internet-based companies aims to leverage technology and “serve as a catalyst for creating a more peaceful, healthy, prosperous planet for future generations”. Toby’s passion for music has taken him from event promotion to music distribution and concert promotion to the Internet radio portal djunion.com. Toby’s focus is on developing the company’s internet services, and he is in India investigating various fresh business opportunities with Indian partners. http://urbantechnologyventures.com NEIL SADWELKAR spends most of his waking hours as an editor and edit system consultant, currently at a large post production house called Pixion. Neil started out making sky shows in the Planetarium, moved to 16mm film and then followed video through its evolution as a professional medium. Neil has been associated with documentary and feature film-making in all the possible capacities—sound recordist, editor, camera person, director. He has been a contributing editor at Misenscene, and forum host at the DMN Forums’ Final Cut Pro forum. http://www.sadwelkar.com GURUNANDAN BHATT enjoys working on applications that allow people to organise, share and disseminate data and collaborate in useful, productive and innovative ways. Currently Chief Technologist at Synapse, Goa, a company that “partners with clients to solve their business problems through information-based initiatives” Gurunandan has worked extensively on designing and developing complex yet inexpensive information systems. An ardent proponent of Open Source software, he regularly speaks at events, has authored several books and writes for technology magazines. http://www.plusthought.org BALARAM PONDENKANDATH graduated from FTII Pune in sound recording and sound engineering. He has designed, installed and worked as a recordist at a number of leading sound studios such as Sargam Studio, Audio Bytes of Mumbai, VGP Digital Studios, ABM Digital Studio, Maryan Digital Studio of Chennai and Navodaya of Trivandrum, Jeevan TV satellite channel of Cochin and the dubbing and DTS mixing studios for Easwary Films, Banglore. Currently Balaram is the chief recording engineer at Audeus Studio for Mukta Arts. He consultants with the Music Archive at St. Paul's, Bangalore and does sound engineering for musical shows in India and abroad. http://www.muktaarts.com RUPESH GOEL is Head, Simulations, Tata Interactive Systems, a large developer of custom e-learning solutions. It has a multi-disciplinary team of over 700, including content developers, 3-D animators & modellers, software engineers and instructional designers. TIS e- learning programmes cater to the needs of diverse sectors in the corporate, educational and government arena. Its offerings include business and educational simulations, enterprise applications training, adaptive assessments, story-based learning objects, game- based learning, teacher tools and teaching aids and a host of other applications. http://www.tatainteractive.com VINEET SHROFF trained in aeronautical engineering at IIT Powai. He founded Biond Software in 1994 with Milind Dalvi. Biond is in the space of creating GIS datasets or digital maps for India. His expertise includes procurement and analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery, vectorisation and CAD work, physical field survey and application software development. Vineet is also the founder director of Newreka Chemicals and CEO of Standard Engineers. His special interests include growing exotic fruits. NISHANT SHAH is a researcher in contemporary culture and new digital media based at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore. His interests are in looking at the formation of online communities in the third world through blogging. The construction of identities online and the patterns of social structure that arise due to these activities are of immediate interest to him. Nishant has been designing and teaching courses in contemporary digital cultures for undergraduates at Christ College and St. Joseph's College, Bangalore. His work has been published in various poetry anthologies and he dreams of writing a novel some day. http://www.cscsban.org JAYALAKSHMI CHITTOOR has written extensively on gender, consumer issues, ICT4D, mountain issues and natural resources management and has experimented with new electronic media for community building and networking. Heading the i4d programme of the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, she brings out the monthly magazine “i4d” and coordinates two research studies. She also works as regional Asia advisor to Bellanet International, promoting ICT tools to provide opportunities to disadvantaged communities and for providing democratic space in the world of the Internet. http://www.i4d.csdms.in http://www.i4donline.net From shekhar at crit.org.in Mon Jun 27 04:09:04 2005 From: shekhar at crit.org.in (Shekhar Krishnan) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 04:09:04 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Careers in New Media Festival, 1-3 July 2005 Message-ID: <4B6EFD98-DB23-484A-9597-6315ECCBC75E@crit.org.in> Dear All: Apologies for cross-posting. Please forward to interested individuals and organisations. For more information and to register, contact Sonia Nazareth at +91.22.2382.1893 or +91.98199.39820 or write to sonia at cometmedia.org Best, S.K. _____ Comet Media Foundation presents CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA seminar and exhibition interactive presentations with the finest minds on the hottest topics in New Media DATES: FRIDAY 1st, SATURDAY 2nd and SUNDAY 3rd July 2005 TIME: 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. Daily VENUE: Bosco Hall St Andrews Church Compound, Hill Road Bandra West, Mumbai 400050 a COSMOS foundational event CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA is a festival composed of a seminar, an exhibition and scope for many interactions. It aims to create awareness among students about the new and viable professional options unleashed by emerging information and communication technologies. Friday 1 July 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR COMMUNICATIONS Seminar 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. Saturday 2 July 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR A NEW WORLD Seminar 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. Friday 1 July, Saturday 2 July and Sunday 3 July NEW MEDIA Exhibition 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA will have an inter-disciplinary approach, with experts and established professionals from a wide variety of work areas sharing their experiences and visions of the future. This is an unique opportunity for students to interact with experts in order to make a strategic career choices. COSMOS is a recently-launched initiative of the Comet Media Foundation in Mumbai, exploring the complex and densely woven field in which science, technology and society overlap. The educational programme of COSMOS is scheduled to be operational by 2006. For more information on the Comet Media Foundation visit http://www.cometmedia.org The CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA festival is open to all. Entry to the exhibition is free. The seminar presentations require pre- registration, as seats are limited. The registration charges are Rs 200. For more information and to register, contact Sonia Nazareth at +91.22.2382.1893 or +91.98199.39820 or write to sonia at cometmedia.org FRIDAY 1 JULY 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR COMMUNICATIONS Seminar (25 minute presentation will be followed by 15 minute question and answer sessions) 10:00 to 10:15 Introduction CHANDITA MUKHERJEE Comet Media Foundation, Documentary Film-Maker 10:15 to 10.45 Keynote Address "the unfolding new media scenario " NINA SABNANI Head, Department of New Media Studies National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad 10.50 to 11:30 "Making it in the games industry" REENA GEORGE Human Resources Manager, Indiagames Ltd, Mumbai HRISHI OBEROI Head of 3D and Console Games, Indiagames Ltd, Mumbai 11:30 to 11.45 BREAK 11:50 to 12:30 "Animation as a career for the future" SHILPA RANADE Faculty Member, Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai 12:35 to 1:15 "Can writing be a viable career? Exploring web-journalism" KIRAN JONNALAGADDA Blogger and Information Architect, Seacrow Labs, Bangalore 1.20 to 1.30 "The power of the portal: a case study" Z. ANSARI rediff.com 1:30 to 2:15 LUNCH 2:20 to 3:00 "Entrepreneurship in the age of new media: entertainment and commerce" TOBY MORNING Chairman, Urban Technology Ventures, Los Angeles, U.S.A. 3:05 to 3:20 BREAK 3:25 to 4:05 "Opportunities in audio-visual post-production" NEIL SADWELKAR Editor and Editing System Consultant, Technical Consultant to Pixion Studio 4:10 to 4:30 Concluding Remarks NIRMALENDU JAJODIA Software Developer, Board Member, Comet Media Foundation SATURDAY 2 JULY 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR A NEW WORLD Seminar (25 minute presentation will be followed by 15 minute question and answer sessions) 10:00 to 10:20 Introductory Note NIRMALENDU JAJODIA 10:25 to 11:05 "Emerging careers in the new information age" GURUNANDAN BHAT Chief Technologist, Synapse, Goa 11:10 to 11:50 "Future prospects for sound specialists" P. BALARAM Audio Engineer, Audeus Studios, Mukta Arts, Mumbai 11:55 to 12:10 BREAK 12:15 to 12:55 "Careers in e-learning" RUPESH GOEL Head, Simulations, Tata Interactive Systems 1:00 to 1:40 "GIS (Geographic Information Systems) applications" VINEET SHROFF Founder-Director, Biond Software, Mumbai 1:40 to 2:25 LUNCH 2:30 to 3:10 "New media as an area of research and training" NISHANT SHAH Research Scholar, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore 3:15 to 3:30 BREAK 3:35 to 4:15 "ICTs, social development and business models" JAYALAKSHMI CHITTOOR Editor, I4D Magazine, Centre for Science Development & Media Studies (CSDMS), New Delhi 4:20 to 4:30 Vote of Thanks INDRANIL CHAKRAVARTY Film-Maker and Project Director, COSMOS New Media Initiative, Comet Media Foundation, Mumbai ABOUT THE SPEAKERS NINA SABNANI teaches Communication Design at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. After a degree in Fine Arts from Baroda, she studied animation at NID and in the UK. Later, she did a post graduate programme in Television & Film from the USA on a Fulbright Fellowship. She has evolved with the times to embrace a wide range of subjects in her profile. At present she teaches courses in Visual Scripting for Animation, Interaction Design, Linear and non-linear story telling, Games design, Illustration and Multi-sensory Design. http://www.nid.edu REENA GEORGE currently Manager Human Resources at Indiagames, had extensive experience in the IT industry. A part of the dynamic industry of wireless gaming, Reena has taken Indiagames from an 80 member team to over 250 employees in the past one year. She is an active member of the HR Infotech Association, Mumbai. http://www.indiagames.com HRISHI OBEROI is currently Head of the 3D & Console games at Indiagames. He has specialised in computer graphics and animation and has designed and programmed 2D and 3D games for mobile phones. Hrishi is currently producing a console named "Ashoka". He is active in the International Game Developer's Association, Mumbai chapter, organises gaming events like WCG India and speaks in technical forums concerned with games development in India. http://www.indiagames.com SHILPA RANADE is a faculty member at the Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. A gold medallist from Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art, she did her Masters in Visual Communication from IDC, IIT, Mumbai and subsequently completed an M.Phil in Animation from the Royal College of Art, London. Her animation film Mani’s Dying won the critics award at the Bombay International Short Film Festival, 1996 and was nominated for the best British short film award at the British Short Film Festival, 1995. http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in KIRAN JONNALAGADDA is a writer and programmer who works at the crossing of media, technology and the web. Currently a consultant technologist at various organisations, he is also an Independent Research Fellow at Sarai, studying how the user interface affects online communities. He is also a collaborator on the Mumbai Free Map Project of CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai, a member of the Plone Foundation, and a trustee of the Tapovan School in rural Bangalore. An observer and participant in blogging, Kiran is also an occasional journalist and a keen photographer. http://www.seacrow.com http://www.freemap.in TOBY MORNING is an entrepreneur who heads Urban Technology Ventures, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. This group of internet-based companies aims to leverage technology and “serve as a catalyst for creating a more peaceful, healthy, prosperous planet for future generations”. Toby’s passion for music has taken him from event promotion to music distribution and concert promotion to the Internet radio portal djunion.com. Toby’s focus is on developing the company’s internet services, and he is in India investigating various fresh business opportunities with Indian partners. http://urbantechnologyventures.com NEIL SADWELKAR spends most of his waking hours as an editor and edit system consultant, currently at a large post production house called Pixion. Neil started out making sky shows in the Planetarium, moved to 16mm film and then followed video through its evolution as a professional medium. Neil has been associated with documentary and feature film-making in all the possible capacities—sound recordist, editor, camera person, director. He has been a contributing editor at Misenscene, and forum host at the DMN Forums’ Final Cut Pro forum. http://www.sadwelkar.com GURUNANDAN BHATT enjoys working on applications that allow people to organise, share and disseminate data and collaborate in useful, productive and innovative ways. Currently Chief Technologist at Synapse, Goa, a company that “partners with clients to solve their business problems through information-based initiatives” Gurunandan has worked extensively on designing and developing complex yet inexpensive information systems. An ardent proponent of Open Source software, he regularly speaks at events, has authored several books and writes for technology magazines. http://www.plusthought.org BALARAM PONDENKANDATH graduated from FTII Pune in sound recording and sound engineering. He has designed, installed and worked as a recordist at a number of leading sound studios such as Sargam Studio, Audio Bytes of Mumbai, VGP Digital Studios, ABM Digital Studio, Maryan Digital Studio of Chennai and Navodaya of Trivandrum, Jeevan TV satellite channel of Cochin and the dubbing and DTS mixing studios for Easwary Films, Banglore. Currently Balaram is the chief recording engineer at Audeus Studio for Mukta Arts. He consultants with the Music Archive at St. Paul's, Bangalore and does sound engineering for musical shows in India and abroad. http://www.muktaarts.com RUPESH GOEL is Head, Simulations, Tata Interactive Systems, a large developer of custom e-learning solutions. It has a multi-disciplinary team of over 700, including content developers, 3-D animators & modellers, software engineers and instructional designers. TIS e- learning programmes cater to the needs of diverse sectors in the corporate, educational and government arena. Its offerings include business and educational simulations, enterprise applications training, adaptive assessments, story-based learning objects, game- based learning, teacher tools and teaching aids and a host of other applications. http://www.tatainteractive.com VINEET SHROFF trained in aeronautical engineering at IIT Powai. He founded Biond Software in 1994 with Milind Dalvi. Biond is in the space of creating GIS datasets or digital maps for India. His expertise includes procurement and analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery, vectorisation and CAD work, physical field survey and application software development. Vineet is also the founder director of Newreka Chemicals and CEO of Standard Engineers. His special interests include growing exotic fruits. NISHANT SHAH is a researcher in contemporary culture and new digital media based at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore. His interests are in looking at the formation of online communities in the third world through blogging. The construction of identities online and the patterns of social structure that arise due to these activities are of immediate interest to him. Nishant has been designing and teaching courses in contemporary digital cultures for undergraduates at Christ College and St. Joseph's College, Bangalore. His work has been published in various poetry anthologies and he dreams of writing a novel some day. http://www.cscsban.org JAYALAKSHMI CHITTOOR has written extensively on gender, consumer issues, ICT4D, mountain issues and natural resources management and has experimented with new electronic media for community building and networking. Heading the i4d programme of the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, she brings out the monthly magazine “i4d” and coordinates two research studies. She also works as regional Asia advisor to Bellanet International, promoting ICT tools to provide opportunities to disadvantaged communities and for providing democratic space in the world of the Internet. http://www.i4d.csdms.in http://www.i4donline.net From ish at sarai.net Mon Jun 27 09:44:26 2005 From: ish at sarai.net (ISh) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 09:44:26 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. In-Reply-To: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> References: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <42BF7D22.5070503@sarai.net> a friend told me yestreday that the market is going to re-open near Raj Ghat. I m not very sure about this info. It needs some cross checking. Anand Vivek Taneja wrote: >Dear All, > >Woke up to the horrifying news in this morning's Hindustan Times that >the Sunday Book Bazaar in DaryaGanj is going to be shut down by the >Municipal Corporation of Delhi. >(See, 'Sunset for Sunday Book Bazaar', Hindustan Times, Saturday, June >25 front page, Delhi edition.) > >The Sunday Book Bazaar has, despite the occasional threat of closure >(1992, 2001), and one shift of venue, been around in Delhi for the >past forty years. It should count as a venerable institution. >Especially since in the virtual absence of good public libraries in >Delhi, this is one of the very few places where people can get quality >books at affordable prices. For all students, and for all lovers of >books, and for everybody in the city, the closure, if we let it >happen, is going to be a terrible loss. > >The MCD and Police decision to shut the book bazaar needs to be >challenged. This mail is just to get some ideas going. How do we go >about this? Should those who want to save the Sunday Boook Bazaar do >some form of demonstration or sit-in in front of the Daryaganj Police >Station, across the road from the book bazaar? > >Ideas, suggestions, action! >Cheers, >Anand >Ph - 93122-62109 > >Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and >taste good with ketchup. >(with apologies to Dilbert) >http://www.synchroni-cities.blogspot.com/ > >Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in >the past who is firmly convinced that without a sense of humour you're >basically pretty f***ed anyway. >(with apologies to Walter Benjamin) >http://www.chapatimystery.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 majorod22 at yahoo.com Mon Jun 27 13:26:41 2005 From: majorod22 at yahoo.com (Mario Rodrigues) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:56:41 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] The political sociology of golf in South Asia (6) -- posting Message-ID: <20050627075641.9814.qmail@web51701.mail.yahoo.com> The Political Sociology of Golf in South Asia (6) Last month, I had drawn attention to the excesses and illegalities that had marked golf development in South-East and East Asia, and also the struggles against golf and lifestyle projects in these regions. These have been mimicked almost in toto in India, forcing golf-course opponents to often take the legal route, sometimes successfully. Now, for a just few examples nationwide: * Last October, a two-judge bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court comprising Chief Justice B K Roy and Justice Surya Kant acted in response to a PIL, and ordered the demolition of the Forest Hill Golf and Country Club at Karoran village off Chandigarh. They directed the CBI to probe its construction and the nexus between its promoters and top public servants, because the project had come up in blatant violation of the Forest Act and other land laws. The club had shot into the news when 25 judges of the high court went on a strike a few months earlier, after Roy had pulled up two of them for accepting free membership of the FHGCC. It further emerged that Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and other ministers, top bureaucrats, police officials and other individuals in positions of power and influence had likewise accepted honorary membership of the 380-acre club floated by NRI Colonel B S Sandhu, who ran an immigration consultancy to Canada. In an ironic development, Roy was subsequently transferred out of the state. * In January 2004, a division bench of the Supreme Court stayed the further development of an 18-hole golf course in the Goregaon West suburb of Mumbai, when environmental activists alleged that hundreds of acres of eco-sensitive mangrove protected by Coastal Regulation Zone regulations had been destroyed for the purpose. The stay was granted on a special leave petition filed by the Bombay Environmental Action Group. The Rs 200 crore-plus project being developed by the Usha Madhu Development Cooperative Housing Society would have covered from 170-550 acres of land owned by the Behramji Jejeebhoy group. * Last July, the Bombay High Court stayed the development of a 9-hole golf course plus seven-star hotel, convention centre and service apartments on a portion of the Royal Western India Turf Club-administered 226-acre Mahalaxmi Race Course, acting on a PIL filed by the Public Concern for Governance Trust. The petitioners claimed that the project was a blatant attempt to commercially exploit public land by the RWITC and the developer, Pegasus Clubs and Resorts. RWITC allegedly entered into a deal with Pegasus for a minimum of 30 years, the PIL claimed, although its lease on the land was valid only till 2013. It also signed the deal with Pegasus without any consent from the Bombay Municipal Corporation or the state government from whom the land was leased – for racing only. Pegasus had paid RWITC an advance of Rs 10 crore and took all responsibility to secure all permissions for the project. * Sahara India Parivar’s plans to build a casino, golf course and five-star hotels on four islands on the Sunderbans, the world’s biggest mangrove swamp, has drawn protests from opponents who claim it would result in the “total destruction” of the pristine delta system. Sahara has already acquired 2250 hectares of land for this purpose. UNESCO designated the Sundarbans a World Heritage site in 1987. The project has been opposed by many including environmentalist Bittu Sahgal, editor of the green magazine, Sanctuary, and writer Amitav Ghosh. Sahara India’s Amby Valley lifestyle project near Lonavla, a hill station in Maharashtra, is another controversial project which had to wade through legal challenges, but has now forged ahead. A Professional Golf Association of India-sanctioned tournament was even staged on its golf course recently. Incidentally, Amby Valley were the title sponsors of the just concluded PGAI Tour for 2004-05. * Over 4,000 trees were allegedly cut down in the old forest area to pave the way for Royal Springs Golf Course in Srinagar, a project for which the then Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Dr Farooq Abdullah, leader of the National Conference (NC), drew a lot of flak in the media. The course, designed by Robert Trent Jones at a cost of Rs 25-32 crore, has been rated as the best and the most beautiful in India, but has been flayed as “nothing but a symbol of obscenely warped priorities in public spending, and a monument to malgovernance ” by critics. Ironically, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) opposed the development when it was in the opposition as a folly imposed on the state by the NC; but once in power, the PDP Chief Minister, Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, has become an enthusiastic promoter of golf to lure tourists to the embattled state. * A couple of years ago, activists scuttled a move to build golf courses in each drought-affected district of Rajasthan as part of the ‘food-for-work’ programme envisaged by the previous Congress regime. This decision, taken by the then state government, to build golf courses as part of drought relief works was indeed strange – considering that golf courses themselves consume a lot of water and Rajasthan is a chronically drought-affected state. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com From burbano at alleati.com Mon Jun 27 18:36:23 2005 From: burbano at alleati.com (burbano at alleati.com) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 06:06:23 -0700 (PDT) Subject: [Reader-list] World Anthropologies Network In-Reply-To: <20050627075641.9814.qmail@web51701.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20050627075641.9814.qmail@web51701.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <49179.200.118.7.27.1119877583.squirrel@www.alleati.com> WAN - World Anthropologies Network RAM - Red de Antropologías del Mundo http://www.ram-wan.org/ English: En/redar-se: Networking in/with/for World Anthropologies The purpose of the present web page is to support the formation of a self-organizing world anthropologies network. Conceived as a process we hope that the network will constitute a dialogic space for discussing 'anthropology' in its relation to a multiplicity of world-making processes and events. We hope that the network will contribute to the development of a plural landscape of world anthropologies that is both less shaped by metropolitan hegemonies and more open to the heteroglossic potential of unfolding globalization processes. We define this as en/redar-se. Modified from the Spanish "to self-entangle," we suggest that this practice should constitute the underpinning philosophy/activity of the network: the constant, planetary interlocking of locally significant notions aimed at producing shared, yet differentiated, anthropological practices. Eventually, the network should move towards planetary modes of inquiry while enabling plural, place-centered political/theoretical visions and concerns and without imposing uniform agendas or styles. Necessarily multilingual, and organized and effected virtually as well as through concrete (and hopefully intentionally unorthodox) events, the network will also aim at producing alternative research and funding practices, emphasizing collective research agendas and authorship, while remaining sensitive to place-based particularities. From monica at sarai.net Tue Jun 28 02:18:58 2005 From: monica at sarai.net (Monica Narula) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 02:18:58 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] MGM vs Grokster decision - MGM won by unanimous court Message-ID: (Also hear on http://www.morpheus.com/mp3/20050608113189.mp3 the hour-long MP3 of Grokster press-conference, held jointly by EFF, StreamCast/Morpheus, Grokster, Public Knowledge, Compter and Communications Industry Association, and the Consumer Electronics Association) (From www.boingboing.net: Here's a link to a BitTorrent distribution of the decisions in Grokster, today's Supreme Court decision that established a new copyright thoughtcrime: "inducing" your users to infringe by failing to employ restrictions that you believe will reduce copyright infringement. BitTorrent is a P2P software application that was not designed to reduce infringement. Many BitTorrent users use it to pass around infringing copies of movies and music. Many also use it to distribute Supreme Court decisions) Below is the full text of the main opinion. The other two concurring opinions can be found here: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?court=US&navby=case&vol=000&invol=04-480 ========================= METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER STUDIOS INC. et al. v. GROKSTER, LTD., et al. certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit No. 04-480.Argued March 29, 2005--Decided June 27, 2005 Respondent companies distribute free software that allows computer users to share electronic files through peer-to-peer networks, so called because the computers communicate directly with each other, not through central servers. Although such networks can be used to share any type of digital file, recipients of respondents' software have mostly used them to share copyrighted music and video files without authorization. Seeking damages and an injunction, a group of movie studios and other copyright holders (hereinafter MGM) sued respondents for their users' copyright infringements, alleging that respondents knowingly and intentionally distributed their software to enable users to infringe copyrighted works in violation of the Copyright Act. Discovery revealed that billions of files are shared across peer-to-peer networks each month. Respondents are aware that users employ their software primarily to download copyrighted files, although the decentralized networks do not reveal which files are copied, and when. Respondents have sometimes learned about the infringement directly when users have e-mailed questions regarding copyrighted works, and respondents have replied with guidance. Respondents are not merely passive recipients of information about infringement. The record is replete with evidence that when they began to distribute their free software, each of them clearly voiced the objective that recipients use the software to download copyrighted works and took active steps to encourage infringement. After the notorious file-sharing service, Napster, was sued by copyright holders for facilitating copyright infringement, both respondents promoted and marketed themselves as Napster alternatives. They receive no revenue from users, but, instead, generate income by selling advertising space, then streaming the advertising to their users. As the number of users increases, advertising opportunities are worth more. There is no evidence that either respondent made an effort to filter copyrighted material from users' downloads or otherwise to impede the sharing of copyrighted files. While acknowledging that respondents' users had directly infringed MGM's copyrights, the District Court nonetheless granted respondents summary judgment as to liability arising from distribution of their software. The Ninth Circuit affirmed. It read Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 464 U. S. 417, as holding that the distribution of a commercial product capable of substantial noninfringing uses could not give rise to contributory liability for infringement unless the distributor had actual knowledge of specific instances of infringement and failed to act on that knowledge. Because the appeals court found respondents' software to be capable of substantial noninfringing uses and because respondents had no actual knowledge of infringement owing to the software's decentralized architecture, the court held that they were not liable. It also held that they did not materially contribute to their users' infringement because the users themselves searched for, retrieved, and stored the infringing files, with no involvement by respondents beyond providing the software in the first place. Finally, the court held that respondents could not be held liable under a vicarious infringement theory because they did not monitor or control the software's use, had no agreed-upon right or current ability to supervise its use, and had no independent duty to police infringement. Held: One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, going beyond mere distribution with knowledge of third-party action, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties using the device, regardless of the device's lawful uses. Pp. 10-24. (a) The tension between the competing values of supporting creativity through copyright protection and promoting technological innovation by limiting infringement liability is the subject of this case. Despite offsetting considerations, the argument for imposing indirect liability here is powerful, given the number of infringing downloads that occur daily using respondents' software. When a widely shared product is used to commit infringement, it may be impossible to enforce rights in the protected work effectively against all direct infringers, so that the only practical alternative is to go against the device's distributor for secondary liability on a theory of contributory or vicarious infringement. One infringes contributorily by intentionally inducing or encouraging direct infringement, and infringes vicariously by profiting from direct infringement while declining to exercise the right to stop or limit it. Although "[t]he Copyright Act does not expressly render anyone liable for [another's] infringement," Sony, 464 U. S., at 434, these secondary liability doctrines emerged from common law principles and are well established in the law, e.g., id., at 486. Pp. 10-13. (b) Sony addressed a claim that secondary liability for infringement can arise from the very distribution of a commercial product. There, copyright holders sued Sony, the manufacturer of videocassette recorders, claiming that it was contributorily liable for the infringement that occurred when VCR owners taped copyrighted programs. The evidence showed that the VCR's principal use was "time-shifting," i.e., taping a program for later viewing at a more convenient time, which the Court found to be a fair, noninfringing use. 464 U. S., at 423-424. Moreover, there was no evidence that Sony had desired to bring about taping in violation of copyright or taken active steps to increase its profits from unlawful taping. Id., at 438. On those facts, the only conceivable basis for liability was on a theory of contributory infringement through distribution of a product. Id., at 439. Because the VCR was "capable of commercially significant noninfringing uses," the Court held that Sony was not liable. Id., at 442. This theory reflected patent law's traditional staple article of commerce doctrine that distribution of a component of a patented device will not violate the patent if it is suitable for use in other ways. 35 U. S. C §271(c). The doctrine absolves the equivocal conduct of selling an item with lawful and unlawful uses and limits liability to instances of more acute fault. In this case, the Ninth Circuit misread Sony to mean that when a product is capable of substantial lawful use, the producer cannot be held contributorily liable for third parties' infringing use of it, even when an actual purpose to cause infringing use is shown, unless the distributors had specific knowledge of infringement at a time when they contributed to the infringement and failed to act upon that information. Sony did not displace other secondary liability theories. Pp. 13-17. (c) Nothing in Sony requires courts to ignore evidence of intent to promote infringement if such evidence exists. It was never meant to foreclose rules of fault-based liability derived from the common law. 464 U. S., at 439. Where evidence goes beyond a product's characteristics or the knowledge that it may be put to infringing uses, and shows statements or actions directed to promoting infringement, Sony's staple-article rule will not preclude liability. At common law a copyright or patent defendant who "not only expected but invoked [infringing use] by advertisement" was liable for infringement. Kalem Co. v. Harper Brothers, 222 U. S. 55, 62-63. The rule on inducement of infringement as developed in the early cases is no different today. Evidence of active steps taken to encourage direct infringement, such as advertising an infringing use or instructing how to engage in an infringing use, shows an affirmative intent that the product be used to infringe, and overcomes the law's reluctance to find liability when a defendant merely sells a commercial product suitable for some lawful use. A rule that premises liability on purposeful, culpable expression and conduct does nothing to compromise legitimate commerce or discourage innovation having a lawful promise. Pp. 17-20. (d) On the record presented, respondents' unlawful objective is unmistakable. The classic instance of inducement is by advertisement or solicitation that broadcasts a message designed to stimulate others to commit violations. MGM argues persuasively that such a message is shown here. Three features of the evidence of intent are particularly notable. First, each of the respondents showed itself to be aiming to satisfy a known source of demand for copyright infringement, the market comprising former Napster users. Respondents' efforts to supply services to former Napster users indicate a principal, if not exclusive, intent to bring about infringement. Second, neither respondent attempted to develop filtering tools or other mechanisms to diminish the infringing activity using their software. While the Ninth Circuit treated that failure as irrelevant because respondents lacked an independent duty to monitor their users' activity, this evidence underscores their intentional facilitation of their users' infringement. Third, respondents make money by selling advertising space, then by directing ads to the screens of computers employing their software. The more their software is used, the more ads are sent out and the greater the advertising revenue. Since the extent of the software's use determines the gain to the distributors, the commercial sense of their enterprise turns on high-volume use, which the record shows is infringing. This evidence alone would not justify an inference of unlawful intent, but its import is clear in the entire record's context. Pp. 20-23. (e) In addition to intent to bring about infringement and distribution of a device suitable for infringing use, the inducement theory requires evidence of actual infringement by recipients of the device, the software in this case. There is evidence of such infringement on a gigantic scale. Because substantial evidence supports MGM on all elements, summary judgment for respondents was error. On remand, reconsideration of MGM's summary judgment motion will be in order. Pp. 23-24. 380 F. 3d 1154, vacated and remanded. Souter, J., delivered the opinion for a unanimous Court. Ginsburg, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Rehnquist, C. J., and Kennedy, J., joined. Breyer, J., filed a concurring opinion, in which Stevens and O'Connor, JJ., joined. -- Monica Narula [Raqs Media Collective] Sarai-CSDS 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 054 www.raqsmediacollective.net www.sarai.net From anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in Tue Jun 28 01:09:37 2005 From: anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in (anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in) Date: 27 Jun 2005 19:39:37 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Read this story Message-ID: <20050627193937.30187.qmail@indexp117.expressindia.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050627/14baa0c2/attachment.html From abhitamhane at gmail.com Mon Jun 27 00:44:57 2005 From: abhitamhane at gmail.com (Abhijeet Tamhane) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 00:44:57 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] help - Holi, 1984 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear Shivam, All the best in your efforts... For the record, even before Ketan Mehta directed the film, HOLI was a play in Marathi which was staged (actually they managed without a proper stage) also in college campuses...? With due regards to the anti-ragging campaign, HOLI was not a straightjacketed "anti ragging play". It aslo opened a discussion on the mob mentality, the plight of an underdog etc... a mention of one such discussion in the IIT Mumbai (after staging of the play, where the director, Vijaya Mehta, was present) can be found in Sankalp, a collection of autobiographical writings of some 20-odd dalit/leftist/socialist youth movement leaders in Maharashtra. The book, now out of print, is in Marathi. -- abhijeet tamhane On 6/24/05, shivam wrote: > > Hi, > > I would be grateful to anyone on this list if you could help me obtain > a copy of the 1984 film 'Holi' as also the contact information of > playwright Mr Mahesh Elkunchwar. The film was directed by Ketan Mehta, > and the script was based on a script by Elkunchwar. > > Primary information about the film can be had at > http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087417/ > > Thanks, > Shivam Vij > Delhi > _________________________________________ > 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: > -- http://www.geocities.com http://artword.blogspot.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050627/6e934b38/attachment.html From announcer at crit.org.in Mon Jun 27 03:44:13 2005 From: announcer at crit.org.in (Comet Media Foundation) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 03:44:13 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Careers in New Media Festival, 1-3 July 2005 Message-ID: <2DA87B21-01D6-49F7-AE01-192444A86118@crit.org.in> Comet Media Foundation presents CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA seminar and exhibition interactive presentations with the finest minds on the hottest topics in New Media DATES: FRIDAY 1st, SATURDAY 2nd and SUNDAY 3rd July 2005 TIME: 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. Daily VENUE: Bosco Hall St Andrews Church Compound, Hill Road Bandra West, Mumbai 400050 a COSMOS foundational event CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA is a festival composed of a seminar, an exhibition and scope for many interactions. It aims to create awareness among students about the new and viable professional options unleashed by emerging information and communication technologies. Friday 1 July 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR COMMUNICATIONS Seminar 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. Saturday 2 July 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR A NEW WORLD Seminar 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. Friday 1 July, Saturday 2 July and Sunday 3 July NEW MEDIA Exhibition 10.00 A.M. to 5.00 P.M. CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA will have an inter-disciplinary approach, with experts and established professionals from a wide variety of work areas sharing their experiences and visions of the future. This is an unique opportunity for students to interact with experts in order to make a strategic career choices. COSMOS is a recently-launched initiative of the Comet Media Foundation in Mumbai, exploring the complex and densely woven field in which science, technology and society overlap. The educational programme of COSMOS is scheduled to be operational by 2006. For more information on the Comet Media Foundation visit http://www.cometmedia.org The CAREERS IN NEW MEDIA festival is open to all. Entry to the exhibition is free. The seminar presentations require pre- registration, as seats are limited. The registration charges are Rs 200. For more information and to register, contact Sonia Nazareth at +91.22.2382.1893 or +91.98199.39820 or write to sonia at cometmedia.org FRIDAY 1 JULY 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR COMMUNICATIONS Seminar (25 minute presentation will be followed by 15 minute question and answer sessions) 10:00 to 10:15 Introduction CHANDITA MUKHERJEE Comet Media Foundation, Documentary Film-Maker 10:15 to 10.45 Keynote Address "the unfolding new media scenario " NINA SABNANI Head, Department of New Media Studies National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad 10.50 to 11:30 "Making it in the games industry" REENA GEORGE Human Resources Manager, Indiagames Ltd, Mumbai HRISHI OBEROI Head of 3D and Console Games, Indiagames Ltd, Mumbai 11:30 to 11.45 BREAK 11:50 to 12:30 "Animation as a career for the future" SHILPA RANADE Faculty Member, Industrial Design Centre (IDC), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Mumbai 12:35 to 1:15 "Can writing be a viable career? Exploring web-journalism" KIRAN JONNALAGADDA Blogger and Information Architect, Seacrow Labs, Bangalore 1.20 to 1.30 "The power of the portal: a case study" Z. ANSARI rediff.com 1:30 to 2:15 LUNCH 2:20 to 3:00 "Entrepreneurship in the age of new media: entertainment and commerce" TOBY MORNING Chairman, Urban Technology Ventures, Los Angeles, U.S.A. 3:05 to 3:20 BREAK 3:25 to 4:05 "Opportunities in audio-visual post-production" NEIL SADWELKAR Editor and Editing System Consultant, Technical Consultant to Pixion Studio 4:10 to 4:30 Concluding Remarks NIRMALENDU JAJODIA Software Developer, Board Member, Comet Media Foundation SATURDAY 2 JULY 2005 NEW MEDIA FOR A NEW WORLD Seminar (25 minute presentation will be followed by 15 minute question and answer sessions) 10:00 to 10:20 Introductory Note NIRMALENDU JAJODIA 10:25 to 11:05 "Emerging careers in the new information age" GURUNANDAN BHAT Chief Technologist, Synapse, Goa 11:10 to 11:50 "Future prospects for sound specialists" P. BALARAM Audio Engineer, Audeus Studios, Mukta Arts, Mumbai 11:55 to 12:10 BREAK 12:15 to 12:55 "Careers in e-learning" RUPESH GOEL Head, Simulations, Tata Interactive Systems 1:00 to 1:40 "GIS (Geographic Information Systems) applications" VINEET SHROFF Founder-Director, Biond Software, Mumbai 1:40 to 2:25 LUNCH 2:30 to 3:10 "New media as an area of research and training" NISHANT SHAH Research Scholar, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore 3:15 to 3:30 BREAK 3:35 to 4:15 "ICTs, social development and business models" JAYALAKSHMI CHITTOOR Editor, I4D Magazine, Centre for Science Development & Media Studies (CSDMS), New Delhi 4:20 to 4:30 Vote of Thanks INDRANIL CHAKRAVARTY Film-Maker and Project Director, COSMOS New Media Initiative, Comet Media Foundation, Mumbai ABOUT THE SPEAKERS NINA SABNANI teaches Communication Design at National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad. After a degree in Fine Arts from Baroda, she studied animation at NID and in the UK. Later, she did a post graduate programme in Television & Film from the USA on a Fulbright Fellowship. She has evolved with the times to embrace a wide range of subjects in her profile. At present she teaches courses in Visual Scripting for Animation, Interaction Design, Linear and non-linear story telling, Games design, Illustration and Multi-sensory Design. http://www.nid.edu REENA GEORGE currently Manager Human Resources at Indiagames, had extensive experience in the IT industry. A part of the dynamic industry of wireless gaming, Reena has taken Indiagames from an 80 member team to over 250 employees in the past one year. She is an active member of the HR Infotech Association, Mumbai. http://www.indiagames.com HRISHI OBEROI is currently Head of the 3D & Console games at Indiagames. He has specialised in computer graphics and animation and has designed and programmed 2D and 3D games for mobile phones. Hrishi is currently producing a console named "Ashoka". He is active in the International Game Developer's Association, Mumbai chapter, organises gaming events like WCG India and speaks in technical forums concerned with games development in India. http://www.indiagames.com SHILPA RANADE is a faculty member at the Industrial Design Centre, Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay. A gold medallist from Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art, she did her Masters in Visual Communication from IDC, IIT, Mumbai and subsequently completed an M.Phil in Animation from the Royal College of Art, London. Her animation film Mani’s Dying won the critics award at the Bombay International Short Film Festival, 1996 and was nominated for the best British short film award at the British Short Film Festival, 1995. http://www.idc.iitb.ac.in KIRAN JONNALAGADDA is a writer and programmer who works at the crossing of media, technology and the web. Currently a consultant technologist at various organisations, he is also an Independent Research Fellow at Sarai, studying how the user interface affects online communities. He is also a collaborator on the Mumbai Free Map Project of CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust), Mumbai, a member of the Plone Foundation, and a trustee of the Tapovan School in rural Bangalore. An observer and participant in blogging, Kiran is also an occasional journalist and a keen photographer. http://www.seacrow.com http://www.freemap.in TOBY MORNING is an entrepreneur who heads Urban Technology Ventures, Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. This group of internet-based companies aims to leverage technology and “serve as a catalyst for creating a more peaceful, healthy, prosperous planet for future generations”. Toby’s passion for music has taken him from event promotion to music distribution and concert promotion to the Internet radio portal djunion.com. Toby’s focus is on developing the company’s internet services, and he is in India investigating various fresh business opportunities with Indian partners. http://urbantechnologyventures.com NEIL SADWELKAR spends most of his waking hours as an editor and edit system consultant, currently at a large post production house called Pixion. Neil started out making sky shows in the Planetarium, moved to 16mm film and then followed video through its evolution as a professional medium. Neil has been associated with documentary and feature film-making in all the possible capacities—sound recordist, editor, camera person, director. He has been a contributing editor at Misenscene, and forum host at the DMN Forums’ Final Cut Pro forum. http://www.sadwelkar.com GURUNANDAN BHATT enjoys working on applications that allow people to organise, share and disseminate data and collaborate in useful, productive and innovative ways. Currently Chief Technologist at Synapse, Goa, a company that “partners with clients to solve their business problems through information-based initiatives” Gurunandan has worked extensively on designing and developing complex yet inexpensive information systems. An ardent proponent of Open Source software, he regularly speaks at events, has authored several books and writes for technology magazines. http://www.plusthought.org BALARAM PONDENKANDATH graduated from FTII Pune in sound recording and sound engineering. He has designed, installed and worked as a recordist at a number of leading sound studios such as Sargam Studio, Audio Bytes of Mumbai, VGP Digital Studios, ABM Digital Studio, Maryan Digital Studio of Chennai and Navodaya of Trivandrum, Jeevan TV satellite channel of Cochin and the dubbing and DTS mixing studios for Easwary Films, Banglore. Currently Balaram is the chief recording engineer at Audeus Studio for Mukta Arts. He consultants with the Music Archive at St. Paul's, Bangalore and does sound engineering for musical shows in India and abroad. http://www.muktaarts.com RUPESH GOEL is Head, Simulations, Tata Interactive Systems, a large developer of custom e-learning solutions. It has a multi-disciplinary team of over 700, including content developers, 3-D animators & modellers, software engineers and instructional designers. TIS e- learning programmes cater to the needs of diverse sectors in the corporate, educational and government arena. Its offerings include business and educational simulations, enterprise applications training, adaptive assessments, story-based learning objects, game- based learning, teacher tools and teaching aids and a host of other applications. http://www.tatainteractive.com VINEET SHROFF trained in aeronautical engineering at IIT Powai. He founded Biond Software in 1994 with Milind Dalvi. Biond is in the space of creating GIS datasets or digital maps for India. His expertise includes procurement and analysis of high-resolution satellite imagery, vectorisation and CAD work, physical field survey and application software development. Vineet is also the founder director of Newreka Chemicals and CEO of Standard Engineers. His special interests include growing exotic fruits. NISHANT SHAH is a researcher in contemporary culture and new digital media based at the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society (CSCS), Bangalore. His interests are in looking at the formation of online communities in the third world through blogging. The construction of identities online and the patterns of social structure that arise due to these activities are of immediate interest to him. Nishant has been designing and teaching courses in contemporary digital cultures for undergraduates at Christ College and St. Joseph's College, Bangalore. His work has been published in various poetry anthologies and he dreams of writing a novel some day. http://www.cscsban.org JAYALAKSHMI CHITTOOR has written extensively on gender, consumer issues, ICT4D, mountain issues and natural resources management and has experimented with new electronic media for community building and networking. Heading the i4d programme of the Centre for Science, Development and Media Studies, she brings out the monthly magazine “i4d” and coordinates two research studies. She also works as regional Asia advisor to Bellanet International, promoting ICT tools to provide opportunities to disadvantaged communities and for providing democratic space in the world of the Internet. http://www.i4d.csdms.in http://www.i4donline.net _____ CRIT (Collective Research Initiatives Trust) Announcements List announcer at crit.org.in http://lists.crit.org.in/mailman/listinfo/announcer From carlos.katastrofsky at gmx.net Tue Jun 28 00:08:39 2005 From: carlos.katastrofsky at gmx.net (carlos katastrofsky) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 20:38:39 +0200 (MEST) Subject: [Reader-list] [ann][mov][art] SINS pt.3 - fashion Message-ID: <31660.1119897519@www40.gmx.net> SINS part 3 - fashion dear all, part 3 of the video series SINS (stands for Sins Is Not Surface) is now online. find it here: http://aqua.subnet.at/carlos/projekte/media/sins :::: the video series SINS deals with different concepts of human “layers”. each of the five parts of SINS focuses on one of the following terms: surface, skin, fashion, architecture and screen. the footage of each movie has been exclusively extracted from the web by means of searchengines and consists of approx. 1500 pictures as well as numerous audio- and videofiles. the short movies are - according to their thematical focus - technically constructed as tense representations of the www - material. :::: comments are welcome! regards, carlos -- Weitersagen: GMX DSL-Flatrates mit Tempo-Garantie! Ab 4,99 Euro/Monat: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl From prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com Tue Jun 28 09:31:11 2005 From: prashantpandey10 at rediffmail.com (Prashant Pandey) Date: 28 Jun 2005 04:01:11 -0000 Subject: [Reader-list] Dare 2 Daryaganj Message-ID: <20050628040111.26389.qmail@webmail50.rediffmail.com> Hi all Thanks Anand for sounding out. I am in Bombay otherwise I could have joined you guys for the cause of Booksellers and consumers. I have written to Parth and Mana ( Centre for Civil Society) and Gurcharan Das. Gurcharan Das has written back that he will try his best. you all can meet these people. Cheers Prashant -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050628/77aa4c67/attachment.html From sabirhaque at yahoo.co.in Mon Jun 27 14:16:01 2005 From: sabirhaque at yahoo.co.in (Sabir Haque) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 09:46:01 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] The Akshardham files: Interview with AK JAIN (DDA) Message-ID: <20050627084601.58807.qmail@web8606.mail.in.yahoo.com> Research Topic: "Developments on the Eastern Banks of Yamuna - its future implications" We found ourselves very honoured when the Commissioner Planning DDA, agreed to give us an interview. The first day, he met us only for a minute, he had an elaborate office to say, with more than a barrier to get across to him. A middle ages lady introduced herself as his secretary and there other scary looking people doting his front office, such a change from immaculate feminine presence in front office of other corporate houses. He kept looking down while he was working ,and said " I can give you only fiveteen minutes tomorrow, but don't be late", we introduced ourselves as college students making a film on role of DDA on Delhi's development. And I guess, we were pretty convincing. We reached ten minutes earlier the next day, and went up to the front office, It was good to see that they were awaiting us, but with an unwelcome message that today is a holiday and Mr. AK Jain might come only for some urgent work only, so, we should not really expect an interview with him. So, we instantly rolled the camera and gave a Aaj Tak types P2C. It felt like we will unearthen some breaking news with just the camera on, and Mr AK Jain not present. Soon half an hour passed, and a tall guard escorted us after lots of security checks to 5th Floor, Mr AK Jain's office. We could sense that the people out there were generally excited with the camera around, what they didn't knew was that I was rolling with the tally light off. He seemed to be busy at the onset, but with the friendly camera around, he came out of his mould, and gave us an interview. His body language was confident, and he answered with pregnant pauses. This was because, we asked him all the comfortable questions like - why so much congestion at Delhi roads and etc etc. Excerpts from the interview: Question: What do think, what went wrong with Yamuna? Your observations. Answer: Yamuna river is the life life of the city, in terms of it supplies to the whole city and is centrally situated... But unfortunately, what happenned after the planning started in Delhi, 1957, river has been treated like a drain. Most of the power stations, flyash dumping, sanitary landfill sites etc have come up along the banks of Yamuna. Another mistake is the high intensity traffic ring road that has been constructed along Yamuna. That has cut off the population from the river which was very much connected to the river. so, what we are doing now is that we are trying to connect the population to the river Yamuna. But Yamuna is a very ecosensitive zone. We are not doing any building on River Yamuna. We are very careful that the quality of the river is improved. Sanitary landfill sites are removed and there are developed into parks and green and we have plan to develop river Yamuna in a big way, but basically in terms of greenery. Question: Have you chalked out any plans for cleaning the River Yamuna. Answer: We have identified four areas for river yamuna, which need very focused attention, one is the pollution control, second is the water supply augmentation, third is the flood control and drainage and fourth is of couse linking the population to the river Yamuna. This four areas we are working out a comprehensive plan, the implementation depends on the concerned body. Question: With the commonwealth Games coming up in Delhi, what are your future plans? Answer: Commonwealth games is an opportunity to take a turn around to the city of Delhi. When we say commonwealth games, we are not restricting our vision to that, we are also aspiring to have asian games and also Olympic games. And that kind of thing. Question: There was this controversy regarding the commonwealth games site, do you have any contingency plan, if you are not given the go ahead at the same site. Answer: So far, it is happenning at the same place. But at the same time, we also have a contingency plan. But if we have any unexpected trouble about the site. What we are going to do? This contingency plan is very internal to DDA, otherwise, if we say, the courts and the NGO will say ( that we should change the site) drop the site and go to other site. Which has its own problem because this site we have been working since one and a half years. The olympic, commonwealth association have also approved based on the avalability of this site. So this will put the clock back, not only the matter of the prestige for DDA but for the whole country, if the commonwealth games are withdrawn. It will very embrassing for the whole country. THE TROUBLE BEGINS After this initial heist of easy questions, Nidhi started treading not quite comfortable territory of Akshardham temple. And this reflected on Mr AK Jain's body language, he sat back, and his hand movement became more vigorous, he started rolling his eyes towards the ceiling and avoided directed contact with the camera lens. The trouble began as we moved on to the controversial questions of concrete construction on Yamuna bank, and the ownership conflict of Eastern Banks of Yamuna. The questions were : Question: Don't you think, with the construction of Akshardham temple, you are channelising the river Yamuna. Answer: No one is channelising the river. I don't think, I don't know, where did you get the idea of channelisation. No one is channelising the river and we are totally against this, channelisation business. It is not a canal that can be channelised. It has to have its own flood plane area. Question: Your focus has been more on the jhuggi clusters on the Yamuna Banks rather than big players like Akshardham sect. Your comments. Answer: We have too much Democracy, so lots of unauthorised colonies have come up in the river Yamuna, all this Zakir Nagar, all this area are full of such colonies. And sometimes, DDA had gone for Demolition or removal of such places, there are pressures, why this poor people and this should be regularize, So we are living in democracy, we don't get 100% sucess, we cannot be dictators. But as per as we are concerned we don't allow any department either do any construction within the flood plane area. And it is a very complex systems, it is not only DDA, it is the body which can allow or disallow, there is a Yamuna Commitee comprising the Central water commission, Ministry of Water Resources comprising of all the state Govt. having river Yamuna flowing them. Thay have also to get approval from Urban Earth Commission. So approval are not given so easily, so every construction coming up in a unauthorised manner it is done after evaluation, government analysis etc. But many times we can't help it. Unauthorised colonies come up without any approval. Question: Any observation on Yamuna Pushta. Answer : Ya, it is all Jhuggi clusters, they were removed. They also had political patronage. But it was removed because of the order from the Supreme court for clearing the area from the slums. Question: Because of Akshardham temple, new bunds were erected which is a violation. This is a clear case of channelising the river. According to your Master plan, there is no mention of this new bunds. Answer: It is like this that the flood plane has never been defined. Masterplan has defined the 'O' Zone, Zone 'O' is a very broad area, which is not between the bunds. But as far as bunds are concerned, it is the matter of Irrigation and flood department. After a lot of analysis and studies. So, broadly whatever is between the bunds is taken up as flood plane, by the DDA. But these bunds are creation of the irrigation dept not the DDA. Question: What about Akshardham? Does its constructon come under your preview. How can be such a huge structure was allowed to come up on the flood plane. Answer: If fact, Akshardham is also under the supreme court, this thing. But as far as I can tell us, Akshardham is one organisation that has taken all the approval. Not only from the DDA but from the Urban Earth Commission, they got a detailed study done from NEERI. They have got done the studies from CWPRS, Pune, again a govt. body and they got building plans approved from the Urban Earth Commission. The plans were approved by DDA after they got all the approvals and far as I can see there was about two years that study is being done before the approval were allowed. Question: Don't you think, concretisation of the yamuna flood plane will prevent water recharge system? Answer: I think there is lot of misconception, why do you want to do water recharge on the river bed. On the contrary, river bed is have to some....some....some....tube wells to discharge the water. So, the water table is released, because of the increasing water table. So water recharge is not the issue for river bed. Question: Your comments on the ownership issue between DDA and UP Irrigation dept. who exactly own the Yamuna river flood plane. Answer: This is all government land, and then it is tranferred to the DDA long time back, and it was also leased out to the peasent co-operative societies long time back. I don't remember, and then the temporary lease has expired and then they were asked to vacate the river, and they vacated while other went to the court. But the lands belongs to the goverment. It might be DDA, might be some other. Some are to MCD for infrastructure projects. But no land belonging to private hands by and large. Question: What about UP Irrigation Department Answer: No, UP is having some lands, UP is having some lands. There were more, but we have presented what is vital to our research. Now, you have to reflect on the above inteview, and tell us what you think about it. By the time we reached the end of the interview, Mr. AK Jain got really restless, and started asking where we will be using the footage. Before he started throwing more question, we were out of there. coming next on Akshardham files is : >>Sikandar Paswan's interview - who is he? a majdoor working on the commonwealth games village site. counting day, when he will be thrown out. >>The systematic way on how Akshardham trust captured more 30 illegal acres of land, >>The law, its presence or rather the absence in the Akshardham case. Thankx, Sabir Haque with Nidhi Bal Singh & Leena Rani Narzary Sabir Haque [New Media Evangelist] 35,Mashigarh, Jamia Nagar New Delhi - 25 sabir at ndtv.com www.whatasight.bravehost.com www.oddexistenz.blogspot.com ph no: 9891408334 Nidhi Bal Singh nidhib at ndtv.com ph no: 9891627733 Leena Rani Narzary leenar at ndtv.com ph no: 9891495886 --------------------------------- How much free photo storage do you get? Store your friends n family photos for FREE with Yahoo! Photos. http://in.photos.yahoo.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050627/8816faa2/attachment.html From wrc at chintan-india.org Tue Jun 28 12:01:17 2005 From: wrc at chintan-india.org (wrc at chintan-india.org) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 12:01:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <20050628063208.6208.qmail@ngblhost1.netgables.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050628/f9d17a70/attachment.pl -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050628/f9d17a70/attachment.html From anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in Tue Jun 28 13:41:31 2005 From: anupam_iase at yahoo.co.in (anupam pachauri) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 09:11:31 +0100 (BST) Subject: [Reader-list] Quaid-e-Azam Jinxed: Ban on Artistic Freedom Message-ID: <20050628081131.74700.qmail@web8409.mail.in.yahoo.com> Quaid-e-Azam Jinxed: Ban on Artistic Freedom Dear Reader, We start this article with a recollection of events and sharing of what Asmita Art Group artists went through the course of events in last few weeks after deference of staging of Mr. Jinnah by Delhi Police. This article is addressed to anyone who believes in values of democracy. Arvind Gaur received a script on Jinnah written by Dr. Narendra Mohan about seven months ago. The script of the play focuses on scriptwriter’s interpretation and narration of an introspective dialogue of a leader who influenced masses, had the intelligence and courage to withstand political course of events-rise and downfalls. This script and portrayal of Jinnah intrigued Arvind Gaur, the Director of the play ‘Mr. Jinnah’, so much that he, along with his team of artists, started research work and discussions on Mr. Jinnah about six months ago. Long discussions and debates followed among the team members which, interestingly, comprises of people with various ideological inclinations and orientations. As all the team members would recall, it was not merely reading of a script but an intellectually stimulating exercise where a person’s political life along with his personal life--projected as well as un-projected self --were discussed at length to find out possibilities of interpretation and visual representation on stage. Several meetings followed with the scriptwriter where he shared and discussed his viewpoint and interpretation not only with the Director but also with the team of Mr. Jinnah. Following this, almost two months ago, the team started with ‘on floor’ rehearsals of ‘Mr. Jinnah’. Fortunately or unfortunately, as it would seem to any individual reader, it’s a coincidence that Asmita announced the staging of the play on Jinnah when Mr. Advani’s statements on the leader, held responsible for the partition and the events following 1947, have been in hot debate since last month among various political circles, in news columns-online as well as in print, on various discussion forums. However, what is most unfortunate is how the system of a democratic nation treated a work of art, in the name of maintenance of law and order. You may be aware that Asmita's play "Mr. Jinnah" has been ‘banned’ from being staged. The ‘ban’ word is probably missing from the official letter issued by Delhi Police South District Office but the meaning is all the more same. The play was "deferred" by the Delhi police on the plea that they were not able to scrutinise the script as it was not legible. Asmita had applied for various clearances on May 22 about a month ago. The clearance from the traffic police and the entertainment tax office was duly procured, however, the south district police asked for a script of the play, which was immediately submitted on June 16. But, the permission was denied on June 21, a day before the announced date of the show, without assigning any clear reason. The police so far have not been able to cite a proper cause for the ban, though they agree that there is nothing objectionable in the play. Is not allowing staging of the play an attempt to culture policing and moral policing of the artists of this city, the capital of a democratic nation? The TOI editorial, June 24, also mentions,” The police action is outrageous. It’s a sinister assault on creative freedom”. On June 22, 2005 as a silent protest the writers and dramatists, authors, artists, actors, filmmakers, theatre lovers, and other intellectuals, historians and general public symbolically staged a portion of the play in front of the Lodi Road police station. The lead actor of 'Mr. Jinnah', Mr. Susan Brar was aggrieved due to demise of his mother the same morning. Though it was very tough but Susan braved the time and decided to stand by the team in joining the protest. On June 23 the protest was again staged by the team where the theatre artists, writers, journalists, students were invited by the team of Mr. Jinnah to view a portion of rehearsal of the play. Following this a silent candle lit protest march was carried out from the venue of the rehearsal to the Delhi Police Headquarters at ITO. The protesters placed the candles outside PHQ and again staged several portions of the play. However many questions crop up about the colonial type mindset of the police and the system? We say this because; the ordeal of the team of ‘Mr. Jinnah’ does not end here. The team has been approaching many of the famous auditoriums in Delhi to hold its performance however; none of them has agreed so far to allow booking for staging of ‘Mr. Jinnah’. As if, Jinnah’s Djinn would start haunting the place. One auditorium manager even asked the director to get no objection certificate from several political and religiously affiliated organizations!! Why does a psychodrama need religious sanctions? And, that too, when none of such organizations has till now raised any sort of objections against Mr. Jinnah. It seems two hundred years of colonial experience has converted us into Macauley’s children for generations to come. We are so scared of ourselves, as unsure of our convictions and values as a democratic nation and have become so much used to an outsider being our master that we as a nation can not muster enough courage to look up into eyes of our past. Is America listening? We can be the next Iraq. You are most welcome. The right of the citizen of a democratic nation is being blatantly trampled by our own colonized minds. We do not actually need an East India Company to do that to us. It seems to be a suicidal attempt by a nation which has declared itself to be a democratic republic. With events like this, the issues of social relevance in the artistic fields would soon take a backseat and a mindless entertainment would emerge which takes no responsibility of society and has no concern with civil liberty. Are we ready to pay heed to the slow poison killing democracy? It’s high time that all of us who have even slightest concern for India as a democratic nation and democracy and civil liberty as a value, must come forward, hold hands together for the freedom of expression. It is now just not a matter of how the police treated an artistic expression, it is also a matter of what we are doing to ourselves by resurrecting baseless fears and inviting any sort of self styled religious representation to take decision for ourselves. Coming back to the play, like most great tragedies, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello the play is more of a psychological scrutiny than a political retrospective or a historical docudrama. The visual treatment of the play is unconventional. The director has chosen a visual depiction of Jinnah’s introspection, his pain, regret and sorrow as out of body projections. The facets of his character, emotional outbursts are simultaneously expressed through his body, heart, mind and soul, played by four actors other than Jinnah himself. Let us all join hands together so that democracy may live and our future generations breathe not in a colony but in a democratic nation. Let us safeguard what is every citizen’s right to free expression in India. Contact us at: 9312233561(Arvind Gaur); 9868577411(Anupam Pachauri) Or e-mail us at arvindasmita at yahoo.com; anupam.pachauri at gmail.com Anyone interested in visiting us to view rehearsals of ‘Mr. Jinnah’ is most welcome. The play would soon be staged at a University in Delhi. This write up is submitted with a request to the reader to forward it to friends all over the globe. It’s just not a matter of Censorship by Police in India. As a human, do you believe in right to free expression? Decide for yourself and act today. Regards, Anupam Pachauri For Asmita P.S. This write up is submitted with a request to the reader to forward it to friends all over the globe. Its just not a matter of Censorship by Police in India. As a human, do you believe in right to free expression? Decide for yourself and act today. __________________________________________________________ Free antispam, antivirus and 1GB to save all your messages Only in Yahoo! Mail: http://in.mail.yahoo.com From schatte2 at ncsu.edu Mon Jun 27 14:04:00 2005 From: schatte2 at ncsu.edu (schatte2 at ncsu.edu) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 04:34:00 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [Reader-list] Investigating Environmental Child Friendliness for Children in Nizamuddin Basti In-Reply-To: <20050627075641.9814.qmail@web51701.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20050627075641.9814.qmail@web51701.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <60145.61.246.22.122.1119861240.squirrel@webmail.ncsu.edu> Investigating Environmental Child Friendliness for Children in Nizamuddin Basti Sudeshna Chatterjee These past six months I had collected data from a wide cross-section of Muslim children, their families and teachers in and around Basti Nizamuddin. In addition I also interviewed DDA officials and park gardeners and groundkeepers who collectively were responsible for creating and controlling ‘designed’ public places around the basti. I had adopted the strategies of participatory field research to study children’s perception of a “friendly” environment, and the meaning of children’s friendship with place. An honest confession: in trying to be a participant-observer, I never succeeded in playing both roles simultaneously, i was either a participant, or an obseerver. The study is very much a work in progress. But certain patterns have emerged from my indepth interviews with children, which when isolated and held up for scrutiny may provide a new way to think about cities in general for the marginalized and vulnerable populations, and municipal spending for children and youth environments in particular. Environmental care, or its lack in play areas for poor children Places that children respect for the intrinsic qualities, are not the MCD parks specifically designed for children with slides etc. Rather the children of Nizamuddin almost unanimously value a neighborhood park on the outskirts of the basti in Nizamuddin West. What does this park have to offer? It is clean and well-maintained, with rules that are enforced by not keeping the slum kids out, but by including them in the park. It has no play equipment, but a beautifully designed landscape with pretty flowers, grass, paths, seating etc. Yet rules are obeyed and the place enjoyed. The lesson for designers and city fathers from this example is to not under-estimate the needs of poor people, and not to write them off as vandals. What would be ideal is to include the children in the environmental management and care of beautiful facilities to which they have ready access in collaboration with appointed caretakers. That would be the ideal bhagidari or participatory approach. As many children said, “I beautiful place should be kept beautiful. One shouldn’t spoil it.” However, after interviewing the deputy director of landscape in DDA and the gardeners responsible for looking after the DDA parks in Nizamuddin, I found out that the dominant cultural narrative that governs public spaces and their use by the poor seems to be: provide the cheapest, tackiest equipment or else they will steal, doesn’t matter if they get hurt or injured; don’t waste money on trashcans, what’s the point they will litter anyways; shoo children away if they engage in ball games asking them to go to designated sports fields even if you know there are none, but its not your headache as long as they leave your territory. Many of the children during their interviews with me revealed that they had internalized these negative stereotypes as part of their community image. They reinforced what the DDA deputy director and the gardeners had said about the vandalism within poor communities, when they told me that however much they crave for better play facilities in their parks and open spaces, their neighbors would come and steal the equipment. The other fallout of this negative cultural stereotyping is focused attempts by youth to get even, or to defy authority. Twelve-year old Zaheer who had been thrown out of the DDA park for wielding a cricket bat several times, sneaked back at night with his friends and smashed every light on posts with his deadly strokeplay. He proudly told me, “I hit every light with a sixer. It was not as if I had climbed on the pole to smash the lights!” I want to further probe and understand to what extent their self-image is linked to these dominant cultural narratives, and if at all, they carved out self-identities based on more positive community narratives. NGOs working with the community could facilitate more trusting relationships between researchers, evaluators, and the community through collaborative teamwork to incorporate multiple perspectives, share new narratives, challenge old narratives that are damaging, and create new ones together (Harper et al 2004). How safe are places for children’s play? The only play injury I have witnessed in my observation sessions in Nizamuddin since February 2005, was on a rickety slide put by DDA on a barren piece of land in front of the local MCD primary school in an attempt to “provide” a playground for poor children. I recount the incident here from my fieldnotes from the day of the accident. We were close to the slides now. I asked the boys to pose for a group shot. Suddenly we heard a loud scream. We turned to the slide closer to the school and saw that a boy was stuck mid-way in the slide. His left foot was wedged in between the tin-clad slab of the slide and the round metal pipe that served as a handrail, three inches above the slab. I was scared and dumbstruck. We all raced toward the trapped boy. Asha with her training in dealing with this community for the last eleven years was the first to spring to action. She started easing the foot while massaging it. The boy wailed uncontrollably, and resisted Asha as she tried her best not to hurt his foot in trying to straighten it. After struggling for about five minutes, Asha managed to slide the foot out of the gap. The boy slid down crying. He testily placed his bare foot on the ground. Picked up his slippers by hand, put them on and gradually stood up. He was still crying and wiped his face with muddy hands as he walked away from the slide. I had often wondered about injuries in this community. I had seen children walking barefoot through rubbles, sand and filth. I have seen small children; probably less than five walking down the streets behind loaded carts with sharp edges protruding exactly at their eye levels. I have seen older siblings circling furiously with smaller children at full speed, on not very smooth grounds, till I felt giddy watching. When the smaller kids got released their eyes looked drunk, but smiles hovered around their lips. But witnessing an injury first hand, which could even had led to the boy breaking his anklebone, left me shaken. Everyone in the group except Julie (my young American student) and me, the two outsiders, thought since the child walked away, he was all right. I asked who had installed the slides, MCD or DDA. Asha said, “this is a DDA park. See the board over there.” So this was an example of providing what the poor thieves deserve—the worst specifications, and no design inputs at all to make the equipments safe. As long as something looked like a slide, it was all right. The seesaws near the school were even more terrible. The bars on which children balanced themselves were badly truncated metal pipes. One of them had hooks to hold on to as kids balanced on either end. The other one must have lost the hooks through extensive use. The dimension of safety in play areas poses a special challenge to evaluators. The cultural nature of human development makes the issue of judging safety of play areas tricky. For example, children’s judgment and coordination to perform adult tasks such as handling sharp knives safely are culturally mediated (Rogoff 2003). An Efe baby of 11 months is allowed to cut fruit with a machete under the watchful eye of a relative. In contrast, middle-class US adults often do not trust children below about age 5 with knives. Similarly, the children of Nizamuddin regularly play in places that are filled with sharp edges, hard uneven surfaces, open staircases etc. This is the environment in which they have grown up. These conditions would be considered very inappropriate and unsafe in western cities as well as in middle-income neighborhoods in New Delhi. My own observation of the accident in a badly designed slide, made me look up the literature on playground equipment injury. Data from the US show that 76% of all play equipment related injuries happen in public playgrounds, of which 79% of all injuries result from falls (Tinsworth & McDonald 2001). All fall injuries are accounted for by equipments such as climbers (53%), swings (19%), slides (17%), seesaws and others (11%). Landscape experts acknowledge that the way playground features are programmed, managed, and maintained inevitably reflect the values of the adults who create, manage and operate these play areas (Moore 2005). Though playgrounds are the setting for many injuries including death, they play an important role in the healthy development of the child through gross-motor activities, cultural and perceptual learning through games, exploratory and risk-taking behavior. Appropriate equipment design and maintenance with careful attention to heights of equipments, walking and landing surfaces, help minimize the risk of injury (Moore 2005). All the DDA designed playgrounds in Nizamuddin, had slides high enough for adolescents to enjoy in barren rubble-strewn ground. In a place, where inter-generational sharing of limited resources is crucial, special attention needs to be paid to the needs of the young child who are most vulnerable in such environments. I will be sending the rest of my emerging patterns in subsequent posts. From turbulence at turbulence.org Mon Jun 27 19:52:33 2005 From: turbulence at turbulence.org (Turbulence) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 10:22:33 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Turbulence Commission: "Fallout, Part I: An Open Repository" Message-ID: <42C00BA9.6010704@turbulence.org> June 27, 2005 Turbulence Commission: "Fallout, Part I: An Open Repository" by Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga http://turbulence.org/works/fallout "Eleven of us shared beds, floor, and one tiny bathroom as the Somoza dynasty came to an end in 1979. When I returned to Masaya, the town was terribly damaged. The streets and the Spanish stucco facades of homes were bullet ridden and marked with the silhouette of Sandino. Although the popular revolution succeeded, the economic and political rebuilding of the republic never has. Why is this so?" Today, Nicaragua is once again on the brink of political and economic disaster. "Fallout" is a two part project: the first--an open database of personal accounts--will later inform part 2, an online game. Initiated by requesting personal commentary from individuals representing several generations of a single family, "Fallout, Part I: An Open Repository" is now open for submissions by anyone concerned with Nicaragua or other similarly imperiled nations. The site presents a written and graphical history for those not familiar with Nicaragua and utilizes collaborative software to investigate the enigma of the Nicaraguan national character. "Fallout" potentially serves as a case study of the lasting effects of globalization and U.S. interventionist policies upon developing nations. "Fallout" is a 2005 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc. (aka Ether-Ore). It was made possible with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. BIOGRAPHY Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga grew up between Nicaragua, and San Francisco. Although his formal education has been within the borders of the United States, his personal perspectives and ideology have been molded by a bicultural reality, consisting of such polar elements as Disneyland and the Nicaraguan Leftist Revolutionary movement. A bicultural upbringing tied to a multidisciplinary education has lead to work that attempts to cultivate interaction with the viewer and includes performance, sculpture, video and audio, the Internet or a combination of all. The principle behind the work is communication as a creative process. Project Credits: Conceptualization, Development, and Programming: Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga Written History: Reynaldo Miranda Zuñiga Conceptualization and Development Assistance: Karen, Mauricio, and Oscar Padilla Web Programming Assistance: John Kuiphoff For more Turbulence Commissions, please visit http://turbulence.org/ -- 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/20050627/d181f49a/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From wrc at chintan-india.org Tue Jun 28 12:01:17 2005 From: wrc at chintan-india.org (wrc at chintan-india.org) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 12:01:17 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] (no subject) Message-ID: <20050628063208.6208.qmail@ngblhost1.netgables.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050628/f9d17a70/attachment-0001.pl -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050628/f9d17a70/attachment-0001.html From cahen.x at levels9.com Tue Jun 28 14:23:06 2005 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:53:06 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Actu. / Day of the European Constitutional Treaty referendum in France. Message-ID: <004201c57bbe$cd267720$0301a8c0@acerkxw6rbeu2s> ::::::: Actu. /des photos pour infos – pictures for news :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::: Day of the European Constitutional Treaty referendum in France / Journee du referendum sur le Traite Constitutionnel Européen en France (Paris, le 29 mai 2005 - Paris, may 29, 2005). ::::::: http://www.levels9.com/artprog1/actu/document_actu/referendum_05_29_05 File / fichier: 13.8 Mo length to be entirely downloaded, works with sound / long a telecharger entierement, fonctionne avec du son ::::::: Or / ou http://www.levels9.com/light/actunews.html Or / ou http://www.levels9.com/actu ::::::: ::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Day of the European Constitutional Treaty referendum in France :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::> Version française ci-dessous Sunday May 29, 2005, day of the referendum on the Constitutional Treaty European. After long and strong political Campaign around the European Constitutional Treaty, the French had to go to the ballot boxes and to vote Sunday May 29, 2005. This same day, I travelled with my bicycle and I photographed the electoral panels and vintage posters, I furrowed my district, the 9 th, the 10 th and the 18 th district of Paris. I sought to testify to the nonofficial or individual activities of the inhabitants of the city around this posting campaign, of all these small personal interventions, wild gluings, lacerations, writings reflecting the state of mind of their authors... I sought to show in what the contemporary artists and artistic practices had taken as a starting point these popular demonstrations. Indeed, it was impossible not to think of the sight of its lacerated posters, from Raymond Hains or Jacques Villeglé, impossible to forget Jean-Michel Basquiat or Cy Twombly with its erasures, its scratches or even Barbara Kruger her militant method of its environments... This diaporama wished to be an homage to all these anonymous authors of urban space. The other reason was more "sociological", I hoped to perceive by the means of some indices, the state of mind of my fellow-citizens, registered in public space, without passing by an institute of survey or media, and that a few hours before the official result... In comparison with the photographs taken with the wire of this walk, without spirit of equity or equality, without to have made the turn, nor the totality of the streets and places of postings, it was easy to note that there was a vigorous confrontation between YES and NOT. If the space of posting were often partially unoccupied but practically unlimited thanks to the walls of the city, the opposition proceeded on the same territory. Gluing was done on the poster of the predecessor and the comments and interventions directly on the initial message, thus revealing a fight for the monopoly of the image and the information... it could be easy to note as there were no political parties nor of posters saved by these interventions. It was very exceptional to even find a virgin poster of some parties that it is... Today, we know all the national results of this referendum, with a strong participation of the voters and the victory of NO to 54,87 % against that of YES to 45,13 % and 30,26 % of abstention. This national result is in strong opposition with the result of the town of Paris, which voted very mainly for YES, result which relates to also the three districts of my walk *. To the sight of these results, the political analysts and all the national political parties hastened to draw the conclusions... to sometimes underline the probable return of the concept of class struggle, sometimes the dispute of a political power in place, or the fear of the future, xenophobia, or it social trouble because the employment crisis in France... If the analyses are debatable, the result on the other hand is not it, it testifies to a great distrust for the dominant political community, of right-hand side like left, testimony which one also finds in this diaporama. Without being visionary, this distrust already present at the presidential elections of 2002, with the weak socialist result, but also of the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement), lets predict for the next national elections of great political upheavals. Either the end of the principle of voters « subjected » to parties, or the emergence of new sensitivities, new forces of representations... The other surprising aspect of this photographic testimony it is that it does not reflect the result of the ballot boxes of the districts concerned. Indeed, if in this part of the city and on these photographs, a balance in the report/ratio of force between YES and NOT seems equal, it is not the faithful reflection of the result in favour of YES in these three districts... Then, where these intervening anonymities of the streets of Paris passed which we do not find in the ballot boxes? Was this only the business of some active militants? Were abstentionnists? Or were they without voice...???? Paris on June 22, 2005 Xavier Cahen *results by Parisian district: 9 th: 72,12% for YES, 27,88% for NO and 23,74 % of abstention; 10 th: 62,66 % for YES, 37,34 % for NO and 26,41 % of abstention; 18 th: 57,8 % for YES, 42,2 % for NO and 27,99 % of abstention... ::::::: ::::::: ::::::: Automatic translator :::::::::::::::::::: ::::::: ::::::: ::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Journée du référendum sur le Traité Constitutionnel Européen en France :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Version française Dimanche 29 mai 2005, journée du référendum sur le Traité Constitutionnel Européen. Après une longue et vive campagne politique autour du Traité Constitutionnel Européen, les Français ont été appelés à se rendre aux urnes et à voter le dimanche 29 mai 2005. Ce même jour, j’ai pris mon vélo et j’ai photographié les panneaux électoraux et les affiches, j’ai sillonné mon quartier, le 9 ième, le 10 ième et le 18 ième arrondissement de Paris. Je cherchais à témoigner des activités non officielles ou individuelles des habitants de la cité autour de cette campagne d’affichage, de toutes ces petites interventions personnelles, d’encollages sauvages, de lacérations, d’écritures reflétant l’état d’esprit de leurs auteurs Je cherchais à montrer en quoi les artistes et les pratiques artistiques contemporaines s’étaient inspirées de ces manifestations populaires. En effet, il était impossible de ne pas penser à la vue de ses affiches lacérées, à un Raymond Hains ou Jacques Villeglé, impossible d’oublier Jean-Michel Basquiat ou Cy Twombly avec ses ratures, ses griffures ou même Barbara Kruger pour les placardages et la méthode militante de ses environnements Ce diaporama souhaitait rendre hommage à tous ces auteurs anonymes de l’espace urbain. L’autre raison était plus « sociologique », j’espérais percevoir par le biais de quelques indices, l’état d’esprit de mes concitoyens inscrit dans l’espace public, sans passer par un institut de sondage ou un média, et cela quelques heures avant le résultat officiel Au regard des photos prises au fil de cette promenade, sans esprit d’équité ou d’égalité, sans avoir fait le tour, ni la totalité des rues et lieux d’affichages, il était facile de constater qu’il existait une vigoureuse confrontation entre le OUI et le NON. Si l’espace d’affichage était souvent partiellement inoccupé mais pratiquement illimité grâce aux murs de la ville, l’opposition se déroulait sur le même territoire. L’encollage se faisait sur l’affiche du prédécesseur et les commentaires et interventions directement sur le message initial, faisant ainsi apparaître une lutte pour le monopole de l’image et de l’information On pouvait aussi constater qu’il n’y avait pas de partis politiques ni d’affiches épargnées par ces interventions. Il était même très exceptionnel de trouver une affiche vierge de quelques partis que ce soient Aujourd’hui, nous connaissons tous les résultats nationaux de ce référendum, avec une forte participation des électeurs et avec la victoire du NON à 54,87 % contre celle du OUI à 45,13 % et 30,26 % d’abstention. Ce résultat national est en forte opposition avec le résultat de la ville de Paris, qui a voté très majoritairement pour le OUI, résultat qui concerne aussi les trois arrondissements de ma promenade*. À la vue de ces résultats, les analystes politiques et tous les partis politiques nationaux se sont empressés de tirer des conclusions De souligner tantôt le retour probable de la notion de lutte des classes, tantôt la contestation d’un pouvoir politique en place, ou encore la peur de l’avenir, la xénophobie, ou le malaise social face à la crise de l’emploi en France Si les analyses sont discutables, le résultat en revanche ne l’est pas, il témoigne d’une grande défiance à l’égard de la classe politique dominante, de droite comme de gauche, témoignage que l’on retrouve aussi dans ce diaporama. Sans être visionnaire, cette défiance déjà présente aux élections présidentielles de 2002, avec le faible résultat socialiste, mais aussi de l’UMP, laisse présager pour les prochaines élections nationales de grands bouleversements politiques. Soit la fin de la soumission des électeurs aux principes de partis, soit l’émergence de nouvelles sensibilités, de nouvelles forces de représentations L’autre aspect surprenant de ce témoignage photographique c’est qu’il ne reflète pas le résultat des urnes des arrondissements concernés. En effet, si sur le terrain et sur ces photos, un équilibre dans le rapport de force entre le OUI et le NON semble perceptible, il n’est pas le reflet fidèle du résultat très net en faveur du OUI dans ces trois arrondissements Alors, où sont donc passés ces anonymes intervenants des rues de Paris que nous ne retrouvons pas dans les urnes ? Était-ce seulement l’affaire de quelques militants actifs? Étaient-ils des abstentionnistes ? Ou étaient-ils sans voix ???? Paris le 23 juin 2005 Xavier Cahen * résultats par arrondissement parisien : le 9 ième : 72,12% pour le OUI, 27,88% pour le NON et 23,74 % d’abstention; le 10 ième : 62,66 % pour le OUI, 37,34 % pour le NON et 26,41 % d’abstention; le 18 ième : 57,8 % pour le OUI, 42,2 % pour le NON et 27,99 % d’abstention ::::::: ::::::: ::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: levels9.com Xavier Cahen cahen.x at levels9.com Paris France http://www.levels9.com From ravig1 at vsnl.com Tue Jun 28 15:08:55 2005 From: ravig1 at vsnl.com (Ravi Agarwal) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:08:55 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. References: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <031101c57bc5$40012dc0$6801a8c0@ToxicsLink.local> Dear all, I will be happy to participate and / or help in taking this forward. We should consider a range of options, including legal remedies, media, street protest, letters to mcd...but first we must also we should ask the street book sellers what their view on this is..... ravi ----- Original Message ----- From: "shivam" To: "Anand Vivek Taneja" Cc: "Reader List" ; Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2005 4:06 PM Subject: Re: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. They did the same in Mumbai recently. What, just what, is wrong with these guys? Sarkari monsters who work at the "municiopal corporation" seem especially berserk. "Municipal corporation(s)" have special teams to withdraw the menace of cows and rabid dogs from the city. These teams are equipped with a huge van and nets and what not. I suggest establishing a paralell municipal corporation (with maoist help from nepal, if you please) and putting our cattle-catching team after these sarkari monsters. May I float a conspiracy theory? Has the MCD been requested, pressurised, bribed by Daryaganj's publishers and booksellers into doing this? sv On 6/25/05, Anand Vivek Taneja wrote: > Dear All, > > Woke up to the horrifying news in this morning's Hindustan Times that www.shivamvij.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 bharati at chintan-india.org Tue Jun 28 18:26:46 2005 From: bharati at chintan-india.org (Bharati) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 18:26:46 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. In-Reply-To: <031101c57bc5$40012dc0$6801a8c0@ToxicsLink.local> References: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> <031101c57bc5$40012dc0$6801a8c0@ToxicsLink.local> Message-ID: <1177.68.34.105.165.1119963406.squirrel@mail.chintan-india.org> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050628/52d802de/attachment.html From radiofreealtair at gmail.com Wed Jun 29 09:23:26 2005 From: radiofreealtair at gmail.com (Anand Vivek Taneja) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 04:53:26 +0100 Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. In-Reply-To: <1177.68.34.105.165.1119963406.squirrel@mail.chintan-india.org> References: <8178da990506242237422c7a7e@mail.gmail.com> <031101c57bc5$40012dc0$6801a8c0@ToxicsLink.local> <1177.68.34.105.165.1119963406.squirrel@mail.chintan-india.org> Message-ID: <8178da9905062820533c77204b@mail.gmail.com> Hi All, Once again, thanks for all the responses. And a brief, and secondhand update on what happened last Sunday. This is from a telephonic conversation with Moyukh Chatterjee, who is a regular at the Sunday Book Bazaar, and who knows some of the booksellers quite well - has their telephone numbers etc. becuase of the rain and the uncertainity, only some of the booksellers set up shop, and only with some of their stock. Apparently, when they were setting up, they were asked to leave by the Police, but becuase of the presence of many news camera crews and journalists, the police let off, and the market went on. (Which explains the next day's TOI report.) The market is apparently supposed to be shifted to the road behind the Indira Gandhi Indoor stadium and the New Secretariat, near the powerplant. This is where the 'Chor Bazaar' has been shifted to. I think it is called Velodrome Road. But those who spoke to Moyukh were very upbeat about setting up shop in Daryaganj next Sunday. I agree with Ravi, we need to speak to book sellers before we start any campaign. Let us seen what next Sunday brings. Perhaps all of us who are concerned about this should just turn up at Darya Ganj next Sunday. Shuddha Sengupta has suggested talking to the booksellers, and documenting and archiving the history of the Daryaganj Sunday book bazaar... And there are a lot of other things we can do. Daryaganj on Sunday, then. Cheers, Anand On 6/28/05, Bharati wrote: > > > hi all, > > many of the book sellers are also part time kabaris. a collegue of mine has > been asking them what they hope to do and htier plans. i will keep you > informed. > > bharati > > > Dear all, > > > > I will be happy to participate and / or help in taking this forward. We > > should consider a range of options, including legal remedies, media, > > street > > protest, letters to mcd...but first we must also we should ask the street > > book sellers what their view on this is..... > > > > ravi > > > > > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "shivam" > > To: "Anand Vivek Taneja" > > Cc: "Reader List" ; > > > > Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2005 4:06 PM > > Subject: Re: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. > > > > > > They did the same in Mumbai recently. What, just what, is wrong with > > these guys? Sarkari monsters who work at the "municiopal corporation" > > seem especially berserk. "Municipal corporation(s)" have special teams > > to withdraw the menace of cows and rabid dogs from the city. These > > teams are equipped with a huge van and nets and what not. I suggest > > establishing a paralell municipal corporation (with maoist help from > > nepal, if you please) and putting our cattle-catching team after these > > sarkari monsters. > > > > May I float a conspiracy theory? Has the MCD been requested, > > pressurised, bribed by Daryaganj's publishers and booksellers into > > doing this? > > > > sv > > > > > > On 6/25/05, Anand Vivek Taneja wrote: > >> Dear All, > >> > >> Woke up to the horrifying news in this morning's Hindustan Times that > > > > > > www.shivamvij.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: > > > > _________________________________________ > > 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 not meddle in the affairs of dragons, because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup. (with apologies to Dilbert) http://www.synchroni-cities.blogspot.com/ Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that without a sense of humour you're basically pretty f***ed anyway. (with apologies to Walter Benjamin) http://www.chapatimystery.com/ From indradg at icbic.com Wed Jun 29 10:32:44 2005 From: indradg at icbic.com (indradg at icbic.com) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 01:02:44 -0400 Subject: [Reader-list] Koha 2.2.3 (GPLed Integrated Library Mgmt System) LiveCD published Message-ID: <1120021364.42c22b744c2ad@webmail.icbic.com> Hi all, L2C2 Technologies (www.l2c2.org) has published a LiveCD featuring the latest version (2.2.3) of Koha (http://www.koha.org) - The World's first Opensource Integrated Library System (ILS). It can be freely downloaded from Koha's Sourceforge site. The download URL is : http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=16466&package_id=58674 About the Koha LiveCD --------------------- The Koha Live CD is designed to provide the potential user with a "feel" of what Koha is like, without requiring the user to actually install anything in the computer's hard disk. To use the CD, one has to simply put it in one's CD-ROM drive, and reboot. A fully featured version of Linux loads off the CD-ROM and one can easily check out and play around with Koha via the Mozilla Firefox web browser provided in the Linux desktop environment that starts up. The CD comes with a sample dataset of about 1000 titles to enable the users to get a feel of the day-to-day operations. For example, one can create a new user and try out the circulation module which supports keyboard-wedge style barcode readers . The core components inside the Koha Live CD (version 1.0), all of which work together to provide the ultimate end user with the experience of Koha are: * Koha (version 2.2.3) * Apache HTTP Server (version 2.0.53) with mod_perl support * Perl (version 5.8.4) * MySQL (version 4.1.10a) * XFCE4 Desktop Environment (version 4.1.10a) * Mozilla Firefox Web Browser (version 1.0.2) * Kbarcode barcode generation software (version 1.8.0) * GLabels label designer (version 2.0.1) With best regards, Indranil Das Gupta, Chief Technology Architect L2C2 Technologies E-Mail: indradg at l2c2.org Phone : (0)-98300-20971 L2C2 Technologies --=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-- [Innovations that make a difference] --=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-- www.l2c2.org ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program. From cahen.x at levels9.com Tue Jun 28 14:16:25 2005 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 10:46:25 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] Actu. / Day of the European Constitutional Treaty referendum in France. Message-ID: <003b01c57bbd$fc39f7e0$0301a8c0@acerkxw6rbeu2s> ::::::: Actu. /des photos pour infos – pictures for news :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::::::: Day of the European Constitutional Treaty referendum in France / Journee du referendum sur le Traite Constitutionnel Européen en France (Paris, le 29 mai 2005 - Paris, may 29, 2005). ::::::: http://www.levels9.com/artprog1/actu/document_actu/referendum_05_29_05 File / fichier: 13.8 Mo length to be entirely downloaded, works with sound / long a telecharger entierement, fonctionne avec du son ::::::: Or / ou http://www.levels9.com/light/actunews.html Or / ou http://www.levels9.com/actu ::::::: ::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Day of the European Constitutional Treaty referendum in France :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: ::> Version française ci-dessous Sunday May 29, 2005, day of the referendum on the Constitutional Treaty European. After long and strong political Campaign around the European Constitutional Treaty, the French had to go to the ballot boxes and to vote Sunday May 29, 2005. This same day, I travelled with my bicycle and I photographed the electoral panels and vintage posters, I furrowed my district, the 9 th, the 10 th and the 18 th district of Paris. I sought to testify to the nonofficial or individual activities of the inhabitants of the city around this posting campaign, of all these small personal interventions, wild gluings, lacerations, writings reflecting the state of mind of their authors... I sought to show in what the contemporary artists and artistic practices had taken as a starting point these popular demonstrations. Indeed, it was impossible not to think of the sight of its lacerated posters, from Raymond Hains or Jacques Villeglé, impossible to forget Jean-Michel Basquiat or Cy Twombly with its erasures, its scratches or even Barbara Kruger her militant method of its environments... This diaporama wished to be an homage to all these anonymous authors of urban space. The other reason was more "sociological", I hoped to perceive by the means of some indices, the state of mind of my fellow-citizens, registered in public space, without passing by an institute of survey or media, and that a few hours before the official result... In comparison with the photographs taken with the wire of this walk, without spirit of equity or equality, without to have made the turn, nor the totality of the streets and places of postings, it was easy to note that there was a vigorous confrontation between YES and NOT. If the space of posting were often partially unoccupied but practically unlimited thanks to the walls of the city, the opposition proceeded on the same territory. Gluing was done on the poster of the predecessor and the comments and interventions directly on the initial message, thus revealing a fight for the monopoly of the image and the information... it could be easy to note as there were no political parties nor of posters saved by these interventions. It was very exceptional to even find a virgin poster of some parties that it is... Today, we know all the national results of this referendum, with a strong participation of the voters and the victory of NO to 54,87 % against that of YES to 45,13 % and 30,26 % of abstention. This national result is in strong opposition with the result of the town of Paris, which voted very mainly for YES, result which relates to also the three districts of my walk *. To the sight of these results, the political analysts and all the national political parties hastened to draw the conclusions... to sometimes underline the probable return of the concept of class struggle, sometimes the dispute of a political power in place, or the fear of the future, xenophobia, or it social trouble because the employment crisis in France... If the analyses are debatable, the result on the other hand is not it, it testifies to a great distrust for the dominant political community, of right-hand side like left, testimony which one also finds in this diaporama. Without being visionary, this distrust already present at the presidential elections of 2002, with the weak socialist result, but also of the UMP (Union for a Popular Movement), lets predict for the next national elections of great political upheavals. Either the end of the principle of voters « subjected » to parties, or the emergence of new sensitivities, new forces of representations... The other surprising aspect of this photographic testimony it is that it does not reflect the result of the ballot boxes of the districts concerned. Indeed, if in this part of the city and on these photographs, a balance in the report/ratio of force between YES and NOT seems equal, it is not the faithful reflection of the result in favour of YES in these three districts... Then, where these intervening anonymities of the streets of Paris passed which we do not find in the ballot boxes? Was this only the business of some active militants? Were abstentionnists? Or were they without voice...???? Paris on June 22, 2005 Xavier Cahen *results by Parisian district: 9 th: 72,12% for YES, 27,88% for NO and 23,74 % of abstention; 10 th: 62,66 % for YES, 37,34 % for NO and 26,41 % of abstention; 18 th: 57,8 % for YES, 42,2 % for NO and 27,99 % of abstention... ::::::: ::::::: ::::::: Automatic translator :::::::::::::::::::: ::::::: ::::::: ::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Journée du référendum sur le Traité Constitutionnel Européen en France :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Version française Dimanche 29 mai 2005, journée du référendum sur le Traité Constitutionnel Européen. Après une longue et vive campagne politique autour du Traité Constitutionnel Européen, les Français ont été appelés à se rendre aux urnes et à voter le dimanche 29 mai 2005. Ce même jour, j’ai pris mon vélo et j’ai photographié les panneaux électoraux et les affiches, j’ai sillonné mon quartier, le 9 ième, le 10 ième et le 18 ième arrondissement de Paris. Je cherchais à témoigner des activités non officielles ou individuelles des habitants de la cité autour de cette campagne d’affichage, de toutes ces petites interventions personnelles, d’encollages sauvages, de lacérations, d’écritures reflétant l’état d’esprit de leurs auteurs Je cherchais à montrer en quoi les artistes et les pratiques artistiques contemporaines s’étaient inspirées de ces manifestations populaires. En effet, il était impossible de ne pas penser à la vue de ses affiches lacérées, à un Raymond Hains ou Jacques Villeglé, impossible d’oublier Jean-Michel Basquiat ou Cy Twombly avec ses ratures, ses griffures ou même Barbara Kruger pour les placardages et la méthode militante de ses environnements Ce diaporama souhaitait rendre hommage à tous ces auteurs anonymes de l’espace urbain. L’autre raison était plus « sociologique », j’espérais percevoir par le biais de quelques indices, l’état d’esprit de mes concitoyens inscrit dans l’espace public, sans passer par un institut de sondage ou un média, et cela quelques heures avant le résultat officiel Au regard des photos prises au fil de cette promenade, sans esprit d’équité ou d’égalité, sans avoir fait le tour, ni la totalité des rues et lieux d’affichages, il était facile de constater qu’il existait une vigoureuse confrontation entre le OUI et le NON. Si l’espace d’affichage était souvent partiellement inoccupé mais pratiquement illimité grâce aux murs de la ville, l’opposition se déroulait sur le même territoire. L’encollage se faisait sur l’affiche du prédécesseur et les commentaires et interventions directement sur le message initial, faisant ainsi apparaître une lutte pour le monopole de l’image et de l’information On pouvait aussi constater qu’il n’y avait pas de partis politiques ni d’affiches épargnées par ces interventions. Il était même très exceptionnel de trouver une affiche vierge de quelques partis que ce soient Aujourd’hui, nous connaissons tous les résultats nationaux de ce référendum, avec une forte participation des électeurs et avec la victoire du NON à 54,87 % contre celle du OUI à 45,13 % et 30,26 % d’abstention. Ce résultat national est en forte opposition avec le résultat de la ville de Paris, qui a voté très majoritairement pour le OUI, résultat qui concerne aussi les trois arrondissements de ma promenade*. À la vue de ces résultats, les analystes politiques et tous les partis politiques nationaux se sont empressés de tirer des conclusions De souligner tantôt le retour probable de la notion de lutte des classes, tantôt la contestation d’un pouvoir politique en place, ou encore la peur de l’avenir, la xénophobie, ou le malaise social face à la crise de l’emploi en France Si les analyses sont discutables, le résultat en revanche ne l’est pas, il témoigne d’une grande défiance à l’égard de la classe politique dominante, de droite comme de gauche, témoignage que l’on retrouve aussi dans ce diaporama. Sans être visionnaire, cette défiance déjà présente aux élections présidentielles de 2002, avec le faible résultat socialiste, mais aussi de l’UMP, laisse présager pour les prochaines élections nationales de grands bouleversements politiques. Soit la fin de la soumission des électeurs aux principes de partis, soit l’émergence de nouvelles sensibilités, de nouvelles forces de représentations L’autre aspect surprenant de ce témoignage photographique c’est qu’il ne reflète pas le résultat des urnes des arrondissements concernés. En effet, si sur le terrain et sur ces photos, un équilibre dans le rapport de force entre le OUI et le NON semble perceptible, il n’est pas le reflet fidèle du résultat très net en faveur du OUI dans ces trois arrondissements Alors, où sont donc passés ces anonymes intervenants des rues de Paris que nous ne retrouvons pas dans les urnes ? Était-ce seulement l’affaire de quelques militants actifs? Étaient-ils des abstentionnistes ? Ou étaient-ils sans voix ???? Paris le 23 juin 2005 Xavier Cahen * résultats par arrondissement parisien : le 9 ième : 72,12% pour le OUI, 27,88% pour le NON et 23,74 % d’abstention; le 10 ième : 62,66 % pour le OUI, 37,34 % pour le NON et 26,41 % d’abstention; le 18 ième : 57,8 % pour le OUI, 42,2 % pour le NON et 27,99 % d’abstention ::::::: ::::::: ::::::: :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: levels9.com Xavier Cahen cahen.x at levels9.com Paris France http://www.levels9.com From Dgaekwar at aol.com Tue Jun 28 15:51:20 2005 From: Dgaekwar at aol.com (Dgaekwar at aol.com) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 06:21:20 EDT Subject: [Reader-list] future mumbai.... Message-ID: <1f7.c96ab5e.2ff27ea0@aol.com> Attn.: Arvind Lodaya Gentleman: Someone brought to my attention your WEB article. I am puzzled by your comments. You seem to ignore the fact that Shivaji is a symbol of Freedom worldwide! City of San Jose has installed a statue of Shivaji in one of their gardens. It is worth your while one book a month on India's History. It will shed some light to you. Please note Mumbai was made up of seven islands. It was filled by hard labor of native Marathi people before EIC shifted it's HQ from Surat to Mumbai. They were traders & they changed the demography of Mumbai by shifting the population of Zaveri (Gujarati) & Parsee from Surat & Billimora since they wanted to sell Gold ingots to Zaveri & use Teak wood of Dang Forrest to build war ships with the help of Wadia & hard labor of Marathi people. Morarji Desai then CM of Bombay had issued "Shoot on Site" orders to kill marathi people & he did cause death of innocent people since police did kill 107 marathi people! Is this Gandhian notion of nonviolence practiced by jesuit Wilson college educated Morarji ? Was it democracy? Do you want me continue educating? It is time out for you to withdraw your article from the internet since it reflects very badly on a mis-guided soul! Sincerely, Dilip I think there are plenty of books to read on this subject. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050628/d15dcb6e/attachment.html From cahen.x at levels9.com Wed Jun 29 14:52:52 2005 From: cahen.x at levels9.com (xavier cahen) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:22:52 +0200 Subject: [Reader-list] // Daily fictions //// / Fictions quotidiennes /// 2005 / / Paris 8 University / Universite Paris 8 / Message-ID: <009b01c57c8c$2389db70$0201a8c0@acerkxw6rbeu2s> ///////// FICTION QUOTIDIENNES //// / DAILY FICTIONS // New works / nouveaux travaux /// 2005 / / // chanel 14 / canal 14 // on left menu / menu de gauche // 2005 // http://www.arpla.univ-paris8.fr/index.html // Alfonso Alcan // Alice Cuvelier // Aurelia Mazoyer // Beatriz Toledo // Belinda Delmaire // Catherine Ramus // Cecile Dupuis // Celine Denel // Chi Yung Wong // Erika Recher // Guillaume Stevens // Hsui Ling Wang // Laurent Lacotte // Max Zippel // Qi Chen // Rafael Hess // Reyhong Lin // Richard Hernandez // Sang Min Lee // Sheng Nan Fan // Solene Legendre // Tanya Karagyozova // Vassilia Soro // Students : Beginners or not, 3 rd year.... // Etudiants : debutants ou pas, 3 eme annee.... // Directed by / animé par // Xavier Cahen //// ///// // / / / /// / / // Dont forget to visit other chanels / N’oubliez pas de visiter les autres // canaux // Paris 8 University / Universite Paris 8 // Visual department / Arts-Plastiques // New medias / nouveaux-medias // 2, rue de la Liberte // 93526 SAINT-DENIS cedex 02 FRANCE. // Phone / Tel : 33 (0)1 49 40 67 89 // http://www.univ-paris8.fr/ ----------- levels9.com Xavier Cahen cahen.x at levels9.com Paris France http://www.levels9.com From zainab at xtdnet.nl Wed Jun 29 15:03:21 2005 From: zainab at xtdnet.nl (zainab at xtdnet.nl) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 13:33:21 +0400 (RET) Subject: [Reader-list] Help needed Message-ID: <2353.202.88.213.38.1120037601.squirrel@webmail.xtdnet.nl> Dear All, I am looking for a book titled "Squatter and Developers? - Slum Redevelopment in Mumbai" by Vinit Mukhija, 2003, Ashgate Publications. Anybody who has a copy, pls write back. Thank you. Cheers, Zainab Zainab Bawa Bombay www.xanga.com/CityBytes http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html From bharati at chintan-india.org Wed Jun 29 19:35:32 2005 From: bharati at chintan-india.org (Bharati) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 19:35:32 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] book bazar action Message-ID: <1238.68.34.105.165.1120053932.squirrel@mail.chintan-india.org> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050629/cb7b6bec/attachment.html From bharati at chintan-india.org Wed Jun 29 19:41:46 2005 From: bharati at chintan-india.org (Bharati) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 19:41:46 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] book bazar action Message-ID: <1252.68.34.105.165.1120054306.squirrel@mail.chintan-india.org> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050629/470bdc0d/attachment.html From nisha2004 at gmail.com Wed Jun 29 22:45:11 2005 From: nisha2004 at gmail.com (Nisha .) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 20:15:11 +0300 Subject: [Reader-list] Fwd: Jinnah at the India Habitat Centre In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <299c77840506291015e006c28@mail.gmail.com> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: nisha2004 at gmail.com "Seagullindia" india.com> cc: Subject: e-stq/004/Jinnah 29/06/2005 13:59 :16 Kb e-STQ / 004/ 29.6.05 Jinnah was scheduled for performance at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi on 22 and 23 June 2005. With a month to go for their performance of Jinnah, Arvind Gaur's group Asmita, like all other theatre groups in Delhi, applied to the police and other relevant authorities of the establishment for necessary permissions / clearances, which is the norm for theatre groups. On 15 June 2005 Gaur received a phonecall from the DCP (South) asking for the script to be submitted. What followed was a carefully worked out strategy for deliberate harassment of the group, with the police 'requesting' the group to 'defer' their performance, amounting to refusal of permission to perform.] Yes Sir, CENSOR! By Keval Arora So, tell me, why isn't everyone laughing? The mess the Delhi Police created last week when it denied Asmita, a local theatre group, permission to stage its latest play Jinnah is just the kind of stupidity we'd find funny had it not been a long time coming. But, what else can one expect in a city that requires every theatre group to apply to the police for permission to perform? The police issue the licence in the form of a No Objection Certificate after they are satisfied that the theatre production constitutes no threat to law and order, does not violate public morality, poses no traffic hazard, and does not offend religious, political and social sensibilities. It's tough being a policeman, I tell you! But, can you imagine any play worth its salt doing none of these? Funnily enough, the most reasonable of the police's concerns?that performances pose no traffic hazard?is administered by the Delhi Police in the most illogical manner. Groups are asked by the office of the DCP (Traffic) to furnish information about the number of vehicles expected and parking arrangements at venues that wouldn't even have been built had their facilities not already been inspected and approved by the relevant civic agencies! (That this is a cruel trick to play on theatre performers facing the prospect of dwindling urban audiences is lost on our police friends, maybe because Dirty Tricks is chapter and worse in their police manual.) I can't think of too many plays constituting a threat to law and order. Not unless, that is, the plays are to be held accountable for the shenanigans of organised protestors who take umbrage at the slightest pretext and threaten violence if the performance is allowed to proceed. By that count, shouldn't the police also blame me, when my wallet is stolen, for having carried money in the first place? Surely mine was the criminal provocation! Better still, shouldn't the police ban all Republic Day celebrations, seeing the trouble they anticipate whenever that time of year comes round? The problem with our police forces is that they are inadequately trained to recognize the freedoms that need to be cherished in civil society, and that is why they invariably take the shortest route to 'order' by targeting the innocents. The only freedom of expression they end up thereby protecting is that of lumpens to express threats of wanton violence to property and persons. What of those other perniciously vague clauses regarding offence to public morality and causing hurt to religious, political and social sensibilities? I say 'pernicious' because any cultural work that interrogates or even explores its environment with any honesty can be said to 'offend' someone or the other. Take any well-known play, peg its critique to contemporary social groupings, and hey presto, you have an aggrieved constituency on whose behalf the police feels itself duty-bound to display its censorious sensitivity. Remember George Bernard Shaw's praise of Ibsen's plays for their 'immoral tendency'? 'Immorality,' Shaw wrote, 'does not necessarily imply mischievous conduct: it implies conduct, mischievous or not, which does not conform to current ideals.' Undoubtedly, this is a grey area, one man's meat being another man's poison. But, silencing is no antidote. Let the laws of the land governing slander and so on be applied to offenders, if and after the offence has been committed. So what have our custodians of public morality been doing when confronted by a serious theatre that aims to provide more than an evening of titillatory entertainment? It's done nothing most of the time, which is about the sanest thing it can do. But these clauses exist, and are unfortunately brought out of the closet as and when it suits the police's purpose, or when some official lacks the courage to let things be. As a result, consistency has been the first casualty. I can think of many, many other performances that should have been stopped by the police if Jinnah is everything they imagine it to be. Surely, as The Times of India argued in an editorial denouncing the police decision, it is the Advani storm in the BJP cup that has prompted some over-zealous police official to say 'Jinnah yahan, to marna yahan'. The story so far. When Arvind Gaur, the director of Jinnah, was asked to submit a script with just a week to go for its opening on 22 June '05, he did so despite the fact that in the past the police had not ever asked to see his playscripts. Even in the case of productions such as Final Solutions (on the Bombay riots) or Hidden Fires (on the Gujarat carnage). Apparently, the police can do so, though it had ceased this practice on the intervention of eminent theatre persons several years ago. On 21 June, a day before Jinnah was to open, the police 'requested' Asmita to defer its shows on the grounds that the script it received was in an illegible hand and had been submitted too late. The latter complaint was strange considering that it was the police who had delayed things ? their request for the script came a full 3 weeks after they had received Asmita's application. Also, Gaur points out that only 5% of this typewritten script was handwritten, and that too because these were the changes which had been made during rehearsals. ACP Anil Shukla's insistence that the police was merely 'requesting' a postponement and wasn't 'banning' the play was too clever by half?after all, Asmita didn't have the freedom to treat the police's request as just that and turn it down. The police obviously chose the word 'request' because it's difficult to actually ban a play when you also claim that its script is unreadable! Gaur's offer to have the script read aloud or even performed at the police station was turned down. He was informed that a committee, whose members' names would not be disclosed, rather than the police was looking into the matter. As the protests multiplied from various quarters, the police tried to clinch their case by trotting out their discovery that the annual municipal licence which permits the IHC to host performances was still under (routine) process, and therefore the IHC had technically no authority to rent out its auditoria. That other plays had already been staged at the IHC despite the pendency of the licence's renewal didn't bother the police since the business of the licence was evidently their alibi rather than their grouse. The result: IHC pulled down its shutters on all events as a precautionary measure. Some strange arguments have emerged from all this. Gaur's claim that his play bears no relation to the current controversy about Jinnah is not the point. So what if it were? Do we really believe that it's all right for editors and columnists to have their say, but theatre and cinema should be denied the practice of persuasion? Protests against censorship cannot be founded upon claims to inoffensiveness or sanitised innocence. Similarly, Gaur's comment that even a local Shiv Sena bigwig found nothing offensive in Jinnah is unpalatable. If constitutional policing creates so many problems, do we believe that accessing unconstitutional authority won't? Hey, what would Gaur have done if our SS worthy had complaints about the script? Don't get me wrong, I do not advocate a free-for-all, unregulated space for the public exchange of ideas, be they through cultural forms or otherwise. (Such freedom, mechanically safeguarded, can easily be abused?by purveyors of hate speech, for instance.) But, surely, our regulatory methods ought not to be blindly mechanical or unaccountable, as those adopted by the police in the present instance. Cultural policing is never a good idea, regardless of the cut of the khaki cloth that its practitioners wear. Keval Arora teaches at Kirori Mal College, Delhi University, and can be reached at keval.arora at gmail.com From kuttylakshmi at gmail.com Wed Jun 29 19:17:02 2005 From: kuttylakshmi at gmail.com (Lakshmi) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 19:17:02 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] Re: 'Squatters and Developers' References: <20050629100004.A27D728D930@mail.sarai.net> Message-ID: <000001c57ce6$0b018b20$0201a8c0@abcc60485a4bf7> zainab, there's a copy of this book in the mumbai university, kalina campus library. i think u can get a 3-day library card issued for reference purposes. lakshmi. > Dear All, > I am looking for a book titled "Squatter and Developers? - Slum > Redevelopment in Mumbai" by Vinit Mukhija, 2003, Ashgate Publications. > Anybody who has a copy, pls write back. > Thank you. > Cheers, > Zainab > > Zainab Bawa > Bombay > www.xanga.com/CityBytes > http://crimsonfeet.recut.org/rubrique53.html > > > > ------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > reader-list mailing list > reader-list at sarai.net > https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/reader-list > > > End of reader-list Digest, Vol 23, Issue 52 > ******************************************* From isast at leonardo.info Thu Jun 30 01:03:11 2005 From: isast at leonardo.info (Leonardo/ISAST) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 12:33:11 -0700 Subject: [Reader-list] [Announcements] Leonardo Editorial Office moves to San Francisco Art Institute Message-ID: <20050629193318.1897628D8E3@mail.sarai.net> Leonardo's San Francisco Editorial Office is moving! The new office space, on the main campus of the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, is part of a partnership secured this spring between Leonardo and SFAI. The partnership includes internships for SFAI students, collaborations on lecture series and symposia, and other joint endeavors still under consideration. As of July 8, 2005 the new address for the Leonardo Editorial office will be: Leonardo/ISAST c/o SFAI 800 Chestnut Street San Francisco, CA 94133 More information about the Leonardo-SFAI partnership can be found on the Leonardo website: http://www.leonardo.info/isast/sfai_partnerannounce2004.html _______________________________________________ announcements mailing list announcements at sarai.net https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/announcements From lawrence at altlawforum.org Thu Jun 30 12:04:20 2005 From: lawrence at altlawforum.org (Lawrence Liang) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 12:04:20 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. In-Reply-To: <031101c57bc5$40012dc0$6801a8c0@ToxicsLink.local> Message-ID: Hi all Just to follow up on Ravi's suggestions, I am thinking aloud on the kinds of strategies that one may think of. One of the usual strategies, if one sees past judicial strategies when it comes to asserting rights of street hawkers/ vendors has been a right to life and right to trade argument. And again apart from a few 'sympathetic' sweet nothings, the SC has generally rejected these fundamental rights arguments. It however be interesting in terms of a campaign to argue, apart form a livelihood argument, an argument of a violation of freedom of speech and expression. Since the SC has held in favour of right to information, it would be useful to start thinking of the question of infrastructures of information in addition to the question of access. This can also be pursuasive given that a large number of the book sellers sell basic text books. While the question of the link between infrastructure and freedom of speech has thus far been used only by large media players (the Indian express case argued that costs of news print can affect freedom of speech), how do we start using these arguments to speak of infrastructures for common people? I am also interested in looking at the connections between these urban cleansing programs and the question of the emerging regimes of information, such as copyright. I am not sure if there is a linkage that is being made here , or any pressure that is asserted by say, the Indian Boo Publishers Association, because a few years ago I was in a meeting organised by the IBPA and one of the things that they were advocating was stringent action against street book sellers. Lawrence On 6/28/05 3:08 PM, "Ravi Agarwal" wrote: > Dear all, > > I will be happy to participate and / or help in taking this forward. We > should consider a range of options, including legal remedies, media, street > protest, letters to mcd...but first we must also we should ask the street > book sellers what their view on this is..... > > ravi > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "shivam" > To: "Anand Vivek Taneja" > Cc: "Reader List" ; > Sent: Saturday, June 25, 2005 4:06 PM > Subject: Re: [Reader-list] sunday book market faces closure. > > > They did the same in Mumbai recently. What, just what, is wrong with > these guys? Sarkari monsters who work at the "municiopal corporation" > seem especially berserk. "Municipal corporation(s)" have special teams > to withdraw the menace of cows and rabid dogs from the city. These > teams are equipped with a huge van and nets and what not. I suggest > establishing a paralell municipal corporation (with maoist help from > nepal, if you please) and putting our cattle-catching team after these > sarkari monsters. > > May I float a conspiracy theory? Has the MCD been requested, > pressurised, bribed by Daryaganj's publishers and booksellers into > doing this? > > sv > > > On 6/25/05, Anand Vivek Taneja wrote: >> Dear All, >> >> Woke up to the horrifying news in this morning's Hindustan Times that > > > www.shivamvij.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: > > _________________________________________ > 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 vivek at sarai.net Thu Jun 30 11:51:38 2005 From: vivek at sarai.net (Vivek Narayanan) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 11:51:38 +0530 Subject: [Reader-list] And the winner is... Message-ID: <42C38F72.5020704@sarai.net> More evidence for the infinite wisdom of polls? V. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4631421.stm Reagan voted 'greatest American' * Former US President Ronald Reagan has been voted the "greatest American" of all time by his fellow citizens. * Mr Reagan, who died last year aged 93, topped a list of 10 contenders, which featured six former presidents. He edged out Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King. Some of the most notable names of US history such as Albert Einstein and Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the Moon, did not make the top 10. Talk show host Oprah Winfrey is the highest ranked female contender at ninth place, making her the greatest American woman. George Washington, the first US president who is considered the father of the nation, comes in at fourth place. Current US President George W Bush and his predecessor Bill Clinton, whose presidency was tarnished by the Monica Lewinski sex scandal, are both in the top 10. Top 10 greatest Americans 1 Ronald Reagan 2 Abraham Lincoln 3 Martin Luther King 4 George Washington 5 Benjamin Franklin 6 George W Bush 7 Bill Clinton 8 Elvis Presley 9 Oprah Winfrey 10 Franklin D Roosevelt More than 2.4 million Americans cast their vote by phone, text or e-mail in the poll, organised by the Discovery Channel and AOL. Some observers suggest the image of Mr Reagan, who was criticised as an intellectual lightweight during his presidency, has been enhanced following his death as millions of Americans cast a rose-tinted look back at his presidency. His two terms in office (1981-1989) coincided with a period of economic prosperity, the crumbling of the Soviet bloc and a renewed sense of pride among Americans still reeling from the Vietnam War. * Other greats * In a similar exercise held in the UK in 2002, wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was voted the greatest Briton. More than one million votes were cast to select the final 10 which included inventor Brunel and scientists Darwin and Newton. In France, where former President Charles de Gaulle finished first in April 2005, the final list also contained two scientists, Louis Pasteur and Marie Curie. In a poll held in Germany in 2003, former Chancellor Konrad Adenauer beat Reformation monk Martin Luther and political thinker Karl Marx into second and third place in a top 10 that included Albert Einstein and the inventor of the printing press Johannes Gutenberg. From bharati at chintan-india.org Thu Jun 30 20:08:03 2005 From: bharati at chintan-india.org (Bharati) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 20:08:03 +0530 (IST) Subject: [Reader-list] july 7th book bazar dharna In-Reply-To: References: <031101c57bc5$40012dc0$6801a8c0@ToxicsLink.local> Message-ID: <1667.68.34.105.165.1120142283.squirrel@mail.chintan-india.org> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050630/b701aa44/attachment.html From soudhamini_1 at lycos.com Thu Jun 30 11:39:56 2005 From: soudhamini_1 at lycos.com (sou dhamini) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 12:09:56 +0600 Subject: [Reader-list] Madurai Message-ID: <20050630060956.00545E5BC7@ws7-2.us4.outblaze.com> An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: not available Url: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20050630/e0ad728f/attachment.pl -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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