What can women do ? Police complaint. Maybe shame the husbands in their societies or should is that not possible ?
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=India&id=091fb616-0865-4711-8be2-43183973f9bf&MatchID1=4932&TeamID1=7&TeamID2=8&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1247&PrimaryID=4932&Headline=Abusing+wife+common+among+GenY+men%3a+Study
If you thought that Generation Y Indian men considered women equals and didn't try to control their wives by battering them or forcefully having sex with them, think again. A six-state study has found that physical and sexual violence is widely prevalent among married youth.
Eighteen to 30 per cent of married women aged 15 to 24 reported physical abuse by their husbands at least once. Fifteen to 24 per cent of the 13,912 women surveyed had experienced violence in the last 12 months, according to the study, which was jointly conducted by the Population Council in Delhi and the International Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai. Bihar recorded highest prevalence of physical violence and Rajasthan the lowest.
Monday, February 23, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Rushdie and the importance of fiction
I am on chapter 2 of Rushdie's "Shalimar the clown". This is where he describes Kashmir and the characters' lives in that setting when the valley is still peaceful. What struck me was how nicely he describes them. Any Indian (maybe not all) is very comfortable with the idea that we can find thoughtful, intelligent, strong people amongst any geographic, economic, religious section of our country. However for people outside of our country, I would think its easy for the stereotypes to guide their understanding of us as a people. Although books analyzing India from all aspects as written by Amartya Sen or Shashi Tharoor or Edward Luce or AL Basham make a lot of sense they never get into the head of an Indian. Salman Rushdie and his ilk do that humanizing job and I think they are doing us Indians a great great service. Any person reading this can immediately connect to an Indian on basic human feelings, emotions and thoughts.
Anyways the importance of fiction just hit me hard today morning.
I am very impressed at the moment :)
Its a shame I havent read more of him so far.
Anyways the importance of fiction just hit me hard today morning.
I am very impressed at the moment :)
Its a shame I havent read more of him so far.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Stimulus bill requires RSS feeds of how the money is spent - Boing Boing
Wow - this is cool. We should check to see even if our young guys like Rahul gandhi and Omar Abdullah can adopt tech well. Where is the incentive though. The incentive is probably recognition from the public for efficiency. Or am I being too naive again.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/21/stimulus-bill-requir.html
Now this is a pretty promising step on the path to open government: the new stimulus bill has a requirement for RSS-based disclosure of funds dispersed:
For each of the near term reporting requirements (major communications, formula block grant allocations, weekly reports) agencies are required to provide a feed (preferred: Atom 1.0, acceptable: RSS) of the information so that content can be delivered via subscription.
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/21/stimulus-bill-requir.html
Now this is a pretty promising step on the path to open government: the new stimulus bill has a requirement for RSS-based disclosure of funds dispersed:
For each of the near term reporting requirements (major communications, formula block grant allocations, weekly reports) agencies are required to provide a feed (preferred: Atom 1.0, acceptable: RSS) of the information so that content can be delivered via subscription.
India Together: Whose economic crisis is it anyway? - 15 February 2009
Sainath doesn't mention anything new. However a couple of random thoughts came to my mind.
- We in India blame the government for all its inefficiencies.
- The brightest amongst cannot think of democratic methods to make the government more efficient.
- Whether its a thin republican type government or a big-fat democratic type government, apathy to the "other" classes/castes seems very innate to us.
- Bill Gates' idea of creative capitalism seems cool - but I don't see how to engineer such thoughts into the majority of the society. There has to be some memetic masala that will help us.
- At an extreme tangent: Given our cultural heritage of inheritance and caste do you think as a society we could be as philanthropic as the americans ?
http://indiatogether.com/2009/feb/psa-crisis.htm#
In India, too, job losses are now finding some mention. When covered in the media, it's mostly about jobs in the IT sector. Or those lost in related fields in the organised sector. While these are not small, only a handful of reports look at the awful hit taken, for instance, by migrant labourers. Millions of these are people who left their villages seeking work when there was no other option. They found it in construction, in laying roads and other poorly paid work. And, keeping afloat in oppressive conditions, many still managed to send something back to their families. Now, as one of them told us: "There is nothing to send back to the village and nothing to go back to the village for." And what about all those small farmers who moved towards growing cash crops for export markets that have collapsed? And do we get to ask questions of the policy experts who brought it all to this point?
- We in India blame the government for all its inefficiencies.
- The brightest amongst cannot think of democratic methods to make the government more efficient.
- Whether its a thin republican type government or a big-fat democratic type government, apathy to the "other" classes/castes seems very innate to us.
- Bill Gates' idea of creative capitalism seems cool - but I don't see how to engineer such thoughts into the majority of the society. There has to be some memetic masala that will help us.
- At an extreme tangent: Given our cultural heritage of inheritance and caste do you think as a society we could be as philanthropic as the americans ?
http://indiatogether.com/2009/feb/psa-crisis.htm#
In India, too, job losses are now finding some mention. When covered in the media, it's mostly about jobs in the IT sector. Or those lost in related fields in the organised sector. While these are not small, only a handful of reports look at the awful hit taken, for instance, by migrant labourers. Millions of these are people who left their villages seeking work when there was no other option. They found it in construction, in laying roads and other poorly paid work. And, keeping afloat in oppressive conditions, many still managed to send something back to their families. Now, as one of them told us: "There is nothing to send back to the village and nothing to go back to the village for." And what about all those small farmers who moved towards growing cash crops for export markets that have collapsed? And do we get to ask questions of the policy experts who brought it all to this point?
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Sunday, February 15, 2009
BBC NEWS | Science & Environment | Vibrations 'could save elephants'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7890919.stm#
It's one of the most fabled talents in the animal world – elephants' ability to "talk" via rumbles in the earth.
Now zoologists in Namibia are trying to harness these seismic social calls - to lure rampaging males back to safety.
"Although this is maybe used to help the elephants it seems cruel in a way to me.
Imagine how noisy we have made their environment by our cars and vehicles if they can pick up rumbles in the ground at distances of 10km. "
It's one of the most fabled talents in the animal world – elephants' ability to "talk" via rumbles in the earth.
Now zoologists in Namibia are trying to harness these seismic social calls - to lure rampaging males back to safety.
"Although this is maybe used to help the elephants it seems cruel in a way to me.
Imagine how noisy we have made their environment by our cars and vehicles if they can pick up rumbles in the ground at distances of 10km. "
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Essays: 'Darwin the abolitionist' by Adrian Desmond | Prospect Magazine
Interesting article via MeFi. Somehow it feels like the author is taking away the sceintific aspect of Darwinswork completely as if the theory was conceived as a political statement or a moral statement with no grounding in science and experiment.
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10581#
Shackled legs, thumbscrews used to crush the fingers of errant female slaves, a six-year-old boy horse-whipped for handing out water in a dirty glass: these sound like scenes from a modern horror story, but all were seen by the young Charles Darwin on his travels with the Beagle around the slave-owning continent of South America. You will find no mention of them in the proudly reasoned, scientific pages of On the Origin of Species. Glance at Darwin's journals, private notebooks and family background, however, and you will find a man immersed in the rhetoric and fervent belief of the anti-slavery movement. Was the public man of science influenced by these private passions? In the light of painstaking archival investigations into Darwin's letters, papers and notes, I believe the answer is a firm "yes." Although he never admitted publicly to so political a motivation, anti-slavery sentiment was the handmaiden of Charles Darwin's great intellectual achievement—the theory of evolution.
http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=10581#
Shackled legs, thumbscrews used to crush the fingers of errant female slaves, a six-year-old boy horse-whipped for handing out water in a dirty glass: these sound like scenes from a modern horror story, but all were seen by the young Charles Darwin on his travels with the Beagle around the slave-owning continent of South America. You will find no mention of them in the proudly reasoned, scientific pages of On the Origin of Species. Glance at Darwin's journals, private notebooks and family background, however, and you will find a man immersed in the rhetoric and fervent belief of the anti-slavery movement. Was the public man of science influenced by these private passions? In the light of painstaking archival investigations into Darwin's letters, papers and notes, I believe the answer is a firm "yes." Although he never admitted publicly to so political a motivation, anti-slavery sentiment was the handmaiden of Charles Darwin's great intellectual achievement—the theory of evolution.
Re: Amazon’s Kindle 2 Will Debut Feb. 9 - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
This ties in with the previous post I made. Interesting read on the free software and ebooks available such that even the kids using the OLPC can benefit. Imagine going back to India and helping kids learn with the OLPC. It'll be an experience. With so much freedom the kids will probably have more questioning and freer attitudes.
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/with-some-polis.html
There are free books to be had, though. The Internet Archive currently has one million books available for free, and the nonprofit continues to add to its library at a rate of 1,000 books a day. There are also thousands of free books available through sites like Gutenberg.org, Manybooks.net and Feedbooks.com.
http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/02/with-some-polis.html
There are free books to be had, though. The Internet Archive currently has one million books available for free, and the nonprofit continues to add to its library at a rate of 1,000 books a day. There are also thousands of free books available through sites like Gutenberg.org, Manybooks.net and Feedbooks.com.
Amazon’s Kindle 2 Will Debut Feb. 9 - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/amazons-kindle-2-will-debut-feb-9/
Mark your calendars, e-book fans: Amazon.com will introduce the next generation of its popular Kindle reader in New York City on Feb. 9.
I am not at all impressed with this device. It just seems so inconvenient to have to buy all the material from the amazon store. We get books from the library, from friends, and thats part of the reading experience for me atleast. If I borrow a book from a friend I will associate the reading experience with him/her. Browsing the public library is a good way to expose ourselves to newer stuff. I dont know, call me old-fashioned but this is not cool at all. Instead of liberating me this gadget is tying me down.
Mark your calendars, e-book fans: Amazon.com will introduce the next generation of its popular Kindle reader in New York City on Feb. 9.
I am not at all impressed with this device. It just seems so inconvenient to have to buy all the material from the amazon store. We get books from the library, from friends, and thats part of the reading experience for me atleast. If I borrow a book from a friend I will associate the reading experience with him/her. Browsing the public library is a good way to expose ourselves to newer stuff. I dont know, call me old-fashioned but this is not cool at all. Instead of liberating me this gadget is tying me down.
Sunday, February 01, 2009
YouTube - The Newshour Debate 'Will Ram Sena pay for it?' Part 1
:(
the images in the background are very sad.
The course of the debate conducted on this channel is also very sad.
The idea of something like the Ram Sena spreading across the nation is very scary.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXhQkVjdBMQ&feature=related
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