[sadhuji]

The kids on the song and dance reality shows are really cute samples of our future generations. Not only can they mouth the difficult-to-pronounce words of the lyrics and even imitate the physical body movements associated with the dances, they hold themselves up on the stage with confidence that was seldom witnessed in kids of the last decade. The icing on the cakes is the length to which the parents go to deck up their darlings in costumes befitting to the occasion. As the kids move up the ladder of popularity, they get sponsors to enter the fray with their bits so that when the kid emerges on top, it has a whole range of goodies lined up.

In comparison, when I was a boy in the early years of college, I and my fellow boys, let alone the girls could never imagine such freedom. I remember when our group was involved in the Durga pujas for the first time. Our fathers and uncles were the organizers and we were the instruments to carry out the assigned tasks like bringing the idols from Kumartuli, purchasing the daily requirements of fruits, sweets, flowers etcetera. We also had to be volunteers in the evening cultural programs that consisted of senior ladies singing Rabindra sangeet or devotional songs. Then there would be the one act plays where those who possessed acting abilities showcased their programs. In between, to keep up the lively atmosphere, songs would be aired – those were the days of the 78 rpm records that ran on manually operated gramophones where the needle had to be changed after every record was played.

When I was entrusted with the task of arranging this part, I set out to search for a person who would give the record player with sufficient number of records on hire for the four days. Fund was no problem because that would be borne by the puja committee – the problem was to lay hands on a set of records that met the basic criterion of good culture. No cheap songs, the elders had cautioned, and no Hindi songs.  And, that is what we did. We were in our mid teens and the strict codes had to be honored. Therefore, when the fathers and uncles retired for their afternoon snooze, we youngsters would quietly disconnect the loudspeaker and listen to the forbidden songs. Youngsters of today might not believe it but in our times, those who sang or even hummed Hindi songs were treated as ‘gone cases’. Their parents and relatives used to write them off.

[jyotirmoy]

Absolutely right Dada. Some times we were told not go around with some one who was known to see Hindi films. Even whistling at home was forbidden.

[gautam]

Jyotida,

This one's for you:

http://www.newagebd....tra_inner4.html

[jyotirmoy]

Onek dhanyobad bhai Gautam....
‘e bishshokey shishur bash joggo kore jabo ami — nobojatoker kachey e amar dhrihro ongikar’.

If only all of us thought this way.

[gautam]

JD,

Also, think of all the sacrifices of these people that we entirely have forgotten and chosen to have done so in Bengal, especially thanks to our marxist fools who till this day still are strongly devoted to the cause of China. How very strange, this peculiar and faithful loyalty to a region, nation and culture that long has deserted the ideals they believed in common: one can only describe this as a type of disease of the mind and spirit, las only too often seen in the threads of India tree also. Slavish devotion to whatever has been inserted into the minds of the hotobhagas and hotobhagyas by unsavory people: this inability to think for oneself, the inability to rise above this enforced deracination. This too is a degradation, not just of values but of the wholescale degradation of individuals who have been taught to hate everything about their culture, their traditions and religion while knowing exactly nothing and understanding even less about these things.

While carping about everyone else and everything under the sun, it is sad that such people cannot see the shameful spectacle they make of themselves, revealing their utter mental bankruptcy, absence of intellect, to say nothing of learning or good taste: it is like watching the pitiful spectacle of a simian who believes itself to be a pundit, cavorting naked in the compancy of decent people, unable to rid it self of simian compulsions such as public defecation or autofellation, yet convinced that it  is imparting vast wisdom to that human assemblage.

That has become the ill infecting not just the marxists in bengal but all manner of individuals, glorying in the absurd rubric of "secular liberals" we happen to meet everywhere.

So, for the marxist, the cant is that the freedom fighters were some sort of fascists, especially Netaji. on whom Jyoti Basu, consistently spied throughout the pre-independence period, and admitted so. In France, the Vichy collaborators were hanged. We celebrate them, Nehru, Basu and the rest. I have lived and interacted extensively with the late, and honorable, Benoy Dasgupta, formerly of Lucknow, in whose home Netaji hid out after fleeing from Kolkata. The tremendous sacrifices and sheer decency of that generation born in the late 19th century continue to inspire me. Not that every one was a saint; far from it. But when I see the current crop of armchair wiseguys, commenting life fools about things they understand nothing about, i feel sickened. They are chuchundars, squeaking from corners with malice, and sneaking away. Pin them down to any substantive issue that requires any sacrifice or effort on their part, and they are alike feces under the noonday sun: shrivel and stink.

I have a challenge for all who just talk : for years I have broken myself trying to get certain agricultural development issues done in India. It all depends on people knowing influential people or money talking. I don't want money or influence, just to see certain research streams set in motion in India or abroad before i die. Who will step up to the challenge, to help with their time, with whatever they may have in terms of effort, physical help [NOT MONEY], contacts and so for. Substantive. Let me guess: Zero.

Edited by gautam, 19 January 2008 - 11:25 PM.

[Hyderabadi]

gautam, on Jan 19 2008, 10:18 AM, said:

I have a challenge for all who just talk : for years I have broken myself trying to get certain agricultural development issues done in India. It all depends on people knowing influential people or money talking. I don't want money or influence, just to see certain research streams set in motion in India or abroad before i die. Who will step up to the challenge, to help with their time, with whatever they may have in terms of effort, physical help [NOT MONEY], contacts and so for. Substantive. Let me guess: Zero.

I may still be just 'talking'. My family clings on to some agricultural property ....And I have not sounded out the people who would probably, actually, do this.

Any suggestions for Mahbubnagar Dist. in AP, (not one of the best articles on Wikipedia, but has enough info) I can pass on to those interested.

There is also a Yahoo group that I belong to, NRIs from Mahbubnagar who do a lot of work in this drought prone, migrant labor district, who may be of help.

[gautam]

Thank you very much for your kind offer. We indeed should start a thread, because one never knows how words spread, how people contact one another. You know this modern saying about 6 degrees of interaction or some such: everyone knows everyone withing 6 powers of some function.

For example, there is a very creditable group called the Deccan Development Society that concerns itself with such issues. People like Anil and his wife, who are decent, forward thinking individuals, with a lot of voice in the upper echelons, are the types who can get things done, because monies already are allocated and are lying around. That is not the issue. Getting things organized and running on a smooth institutional track in India is the challenge. Yet once achieved, the results are amazing. ICRISAT is an example. Within it a small example may be the use of biological or more precisely, IPM [integrated pest management] in cotton in AP. The results are fabulous, cutting down pesticide use to negligible proportions.

Our people have tremendous heart, intelligence and spirit if treated with dignity, honor, and the right types of inputs. You and I can agree 100% on this matter: we have our cricket team before our eyes: irfan Pathan and Munaf Patel, both from impoverished Muslim families, one rural one urban, others from backgrounds no one cares to deliberate upon, each respected and given the same advantages, and see the results. And you have seen the same positives happen with our farmers, and the negatives where this approach has failed. All the money for Anti-naxalite this or that is functionall unproductive, has NO economic multiplier, or rather, a multiplier of less than 1. That shrinks economic growth, to say nothing of retrograde social relations.

We have a varied population, climate, soils etc. The monsoon type of rainfall by nature is subject to great fluctuations. Various historical, and social trends have been exacerbated that enhance "distorted development", distorted terms of trade between urban and rural, farm and industry, region vs region. As a result, 35% of our population, more than the combined population of bangladesh and pakistan have refused the social contract of their civilian administration. That is very serious, and is bound to grow. I am speaking here as a professional, not a newspaper analyst. Unless industry and policy makers recognizes that agriculture remains the largest, and the default employer, the employer of last resort, and will continue to do so for a long time to come, into the 2050s, and that immiserization of the lowest 20% has vicious results, there is little hope of india really moving ahead.

Farm policy is in a shambles because there is no trained corps of agriculturists and biologists in addition to economists who now are the sole arbiters and creators of food and agricultural policy. I have been and am in contact with all those who do so, have pleaded personally with them, included Advisors to the Finace Ministry et al., but there is no sense of the urgency. Sanjaya Baru, the PM's spokesman, is very learned in some of these issues, but has chosen a different role for himself, and so a very valuable asset has been lost, who has access and credibility at the very top. The PM himself is very much aware of quite a few of these gdangers and has spoken aboutthe need of totally reorganizing the thrust of agriculture, a Second Green Revolution, but he is nullified by the dead mass around him. he by his own initiative opened up the liberalisation in 1991 that has led to India's current flowering. I believe that one can do worse than also taking his ideas seriously in the latter respect. So it is not just crazy me, but the PM of India who also is pleading for the exact same types of change. And he has a better track record, you will have to agree!! His hands are tied by inertia of the system, that too you can understand. So it is here that private initiative must step forward and save the day.

Many by now have profited immensely and done well. This is their time to give back to India. They need to hear from, and take seriously, the suggestions of those who are immersed in the agricultural and socio-economic issues of rural India. The latter have no need for money or any power or earthly rewards. That is not what compels them to work. They have other motivations. So, they need to be part of a functioning team, like our cricket set-up, well-organized and effective in reaching stated goals without friction and infighting.

[Hyderabadi]

Six degrees of seperation - http://en.wikipedia....s_of_separation

Quote

We indeed should start a thread, because one never knows how words spread, how people contact one another. You know this modern saying about 6 degrees of interaction or some such: everyone knows everyone withing 6 powers of some function.

What do you think the thread should be called?

I know/heard of DDS and recognize a couple of names on there.

[gautam]

We have a section on Charity and social work in IT. We could tentatively start a thread and name it " A Modest Proposal": Agriculture & Environment in South Asia. That might be sufficiently broad. The first, A modest proposal is reflects Swift's essay about food scarcity, wherein he suggests people eat children. It is a satire writte most effectively, and this title should suggest to many, including the Western members of our audience, what might be contained in the thread. Agriculture and environment are topics that might engage the attention of many, e.g. Helga, a Belgian biologist. what I have to say eventually also concerns the banana research program at the Catholic University at Leuven, Belgium, for example. Here is a place where the 6degrees of separation can play a role, as it has when we mtwo met and found common friends who have the potential to influence events in India.

Essentially, a few big people talk to each other, and elites determine the fates of billions. The whims and fancies of these few can change the lives of many for better or worse in an instant. A mere word from George Bush, or someone in the decison making chain will immediately reallocate  X amount within USDA for sugar date palm research because date palm genome already is a major goal of that organization. It is in process. I know and am in contact with the leader of that group. A million is budget dust, and because the genomes are almost identical, it will be of incalculable benefit to both the USA, India and the world if this minor add-on is approved.

Because of increasing infirmity, I, for examole, would appreciate an intern, for the summer. It can be a long-distance electronic job or a resident. I can provide basic lodging, and credit with my fledgling non-profit research organization. It would be a dhynamic go-getter, able to contact people and mobilize resources, a people person, which I definitely am not. Someone who can digest the technicalities and present them in an brief, interesting and topical fashion to the internet community of Indian environmentalists etc. I have many acquaintances including Vandana Shiva, and friends at various levels in the Indian caninet etc. but I am very much a technical person, interested in getting the program off the ground. Therefore I become very irascible and cannot go with the flow necessary in dealing with complex personalities, especially Indians, but Americans too. It is like the Front of the House and the Back of the house in a restaurant operation: division of labor is needed.

I would hope that there are some altruistic people left in the world who might do things for pure goodness. for love. So many people claim to be good, but I see them traveling here and there all over the world for long periods, essentially satisfying their own passions, whatever they may be. All the rest is only talk, a fig leaf of respectability to justify their unalloyed, non-stop self-indulgence. Ask for a tiny bit of true sacrifice and watch them disappear. I don't mean you at all. But so many people here write so many things about India that need improving, and place themselves on a superior plane, and describe how they are involved in this or that charity or social work.  But that is all giving from one's sufficiency, if you remember the parable Jesus told, of a rich man and a poor widow going to the Temple and each offering what they had brought. When it comes to giving from themselves, goodbye. People make their own choices and the same death awaits us.

All these voices joined together have real power in their respective countries, far more than they realize. Power in government circles, NGOs. churches, communities. What I want now is very simple. Some groups sponsor a graduate student in their own countries to do advanced studies in a particualr project i shall define. It will benefi all: the country, the student's academic career, the department concerned, etc. No money changes hands, everything remains in the society where it originated. All we seek is the surplus knowledge gained. This is not particularly greedy, I hope.

Holland, Norway, Australia, etc. all have excellent biology/agriculture faculties. They have liberal foreign aid outlooks. here is a win-win situation. Do advanced plant biology of immediate, direct benfit, indeed extra-ordinary benefit, by choosing as the model plant(s) the  2 species  i shall nominate. Share the knowledge with us. Do the whole spectrum of research, from molecular biology to yield physiology. That will require a whole gamut of different labs and institutions.

Australia in aprticualr stands to benefit in extraordinary fashion. So do Argentina, brazil, South Africa, China. These are just the richer countries I have mentioned as potential stake holders. Let us take  just Australia's case. It is now destroying more than 55,000 ha of virgin tropical forest/annum  to grow sugarcane. Its cane fields in Qland simulataneously are suffering soil sickness of indeterminate aetiology that costs AU at least $200 million annualy in lost sugar exports. With drought constraining other ag exports, this value becomes even more important in this region of assured minimum rainfall.  With appropriate research, the sugar producing area could be pushed down into the low-frost region, i.e. away from the tropical forests. Much lower water use, much higher productivity, carbon use efficiency , carbon trading rights.

Tata could get rich in india on the carbon trading rights alone, combined with the funds for Wastelands Development waiting to be spent.

So on. I have hundreds of pages already written with bibliography. Very dry and off-putting to the people who really need to hear all this. For example, they won't have the patience to hear and learn the difference between yield and productivity, a mistake continually comitted by ag scientists in India. I need someone to rewrite all of this in brief topical thingies, not this huge, lumbering, monographic format that bludgeons people on the head with hundreds of references and dry, relentless, boring academic style guaranteed to put everyone to sleep. People, quite naturally, are least interested in yield physiology, least interested in pursuing logic chains over 200 pages, or even over 4 detailed tables illustrating why something is relevant and important. They need everything in one page, in chatty New Scientist style, full of hope, and extravagant promises.

We need serious commitment. There is a slow famine out there in South Asia, that is getting worse now, especially this year, and will worsen next. I can suggest a recent IFPRI report. The food situation is not good in South Asia. Even in China, the CPI  has a 1/3 weight for food inflation, and that moiety has risen more than 18% in the past year, for a total inflation of 6.9. But as you go down the income ladder, the importance of food price increases.

Whereas the Vedic code continually stressed the shunning of falsehood, treachery, and evil, one feels troubled at the absence of the exact synonymfor "loyalty" in any comon Indic North indian language. There is devotion, etc. but no term for loyalty. Not that it does not exists, but the term does not; so much so that they had to re-invent one for the CRPF or some such, Home Guards, I think: Seva aur Bhavit.

We have very little long-term, bull-terrier like commitment among the elites or upper classes in India, presumably the very same people whom we are asking to help. The same probably is true of their counterparts in the West, all creatures of whim and emotional jags: today the Dalai Lama, tomorrow Krishnamurti, after that who knows what. Whatever is fancy and salves the conscience, without any effort.