Telangana at the Cost of India

UPA's decision to divide Andhra Pradesh is based on narrow political calculations for 2014 Lok Sabha polls and risks prolonged agitations in other states

Amarnath K. Menon and Sandeep Unnithan  August 2, 2013 | UPDATED 10:34 IST


Kalavakuntala Chandrasekhara Rao, 59, the man who fought a bitter 12-year political struggle for a separate Telangana state, was not sure that his battle was about to end. On July 30, KCR, as the founder president of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) is popularly known, remained closeted in his Telangana Bhavan office for four hours. The MP from Mahbubnagar whose 11-day fast unto death in 2009 forced the UPA to first announce statehood, was bewildered by the swift political endgame in the Capital that created the new state within hours. First UPA endorsed the statehood decision, then, a few hours later, the Congress Working Committee (SWS) green-lighted it. India's fourth largest state would jointly share its capital, Hyderabad, with Andhra Pradesh. KCR stepped out of his office to offer a guarded reaction only after Digvijaya Singh, Congress general secretary managing Andhra Pradesh affairs, announced the formation of India's 29th state.

"We have to be cautious until Parliament enacts an appropriate legislation for the state," said KCR, not allowing himself to be overwhelmed by the clouds of pink and crowds of supporters who had broken into riotous celebration. "It's like a dream come true," Ponnam Prabhakar, Congress MP from Karimnagar, said in New Delhi. "I never thought I would see it in my lifetime." Clearly, it was not just trs that was taken by surprise.












Here's what India's 29th state will mean for players in the fray in the next Lok Sabha elections.

"Dividing Andhra Pradesh is for the welfare of the people and not for any political expediency," Digvijaya Singh said on July 30. But the Congress's Telangana plan is simple. Andhra Pradesh voted in the two largest blocks of Congress MPs, 29 in 2004 and 33 in 2009. It laid the foundations for UPA 1 and UPA 2. Faced with a near-total rout in 2014, the party, in an alliance with TRS, hopes to sweep Telangana's 17 Lok Sabha seats. The party hopes to corral N. Chandrababu Naidu's Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy's ysr Congress in coastal Andhra Pradesh where it hopes to gain at least five Lok Sabha seats. Neither YSR Congress nor TDP has been able to consolidate its position in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions which have a total of 25 Lok Sabha and 175 Assembly seats.

Consequence of statehood

The Srikrishna Commission report of 2011, appointed by UPA to suggest a way out of the Telangana imbroglio, recommended a separate state. But with a caveat. Because, "while creation of Telangana would satisfy a large majority of people from the region," the report said, "it would also throw up several serious problems." The Congress decision, driven by pure political survival instinct, came without studying the larger economic and political costs. It ignored home ministry assessments warning of a revival of Naxalism in the new state, the billions of rupees coastal Andhra Pradesh would spend on a new state capital when it moves out of Hyderabad, and recent Intelligence Bureau (IB) assessments warning of public outrage opposing division.


















A July 24 report by the home ministry's internal division warns of at least 21 more demands for new states.

But the biggest fear, a home ministry report of July 24 warns, is of "unrest and prolonged agitations" in other states including Uttar Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal and Maharashtra, where people have been demanding new states. Even before CWC took its final call, Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) called for a 72-hour shutdown in Darjeeling in support of Gorkhaland. In Maharashtra, BJP and Shiv Sena braced themselves to raise the issue of a separate Vidarbha. In Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati upped the ante for carving four states out of Uttar Pradesh.

Andhra Pradesh was the first state created on a linguistic basis when the Telugu-speaking areas of erstwhile Hyderabad state were merged with Andhra state in 1956. Experts predict Telangana could spawn secessionist trends. "This thoughtless decision may lead to a demand for a separate Telugu nation, the 17th largest in the world," says political commentator C. Narasimha Rao.

Rise in militancy











The Ministry of Home Affairs is the nodal agency for the creation of the new state, a process that is likely to take 
approximately between four and six months.

The home ministry report says Telangana could become a bastion for India's gravest internal security threat, the Maoists. The new state, "could become an easy target, considering its proximity to the worst-affected regions of Chhattisgarh's Bastar district and Maharashtra's Gadchiroli district", it notes. Twelve of the 15 members of the Maoists' central committee hail from the new state. The Maoists were driven out of the state by the Andhra Pradesh Police a decade ago. The report predicts Maoists could infiltrate again, taking advantage of the six months it will take to create Telangana.

The Maoist bastion threat is also a scenario advanced by Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy who is opposed to the division. The state police, however, say that in the Telangana districts, the few incidents have been restricted to five sub-divisions in Khammam and Warangal. "Andhra Pradesh is a role model for the rest of the country in fighting Maoists with an exclusive commando force and intelligence-gathering mechanism," explains Andhra Pradesh dgp V. Dinesh Reddy.

There are apprehensions that the demographic changes could result in communal flare-ups. All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) is opposed to the division. "Creating Telangana is going to help only bjp in the long run," says AIMIM president and Hyderabad Lok Sabha MP Asaduddin Owaisi. The party, which has seven MLAs, is wary of its diminishing administrative clout in Hyderabad.

Colossal expense

Creation of new states means the Centre has to provide funds to develop infrastructure. Chhattisgarh is spending Rs.20,000 crore to develop its new state capital, Naya Raipur, besides other administration-related costs. A new capital for Andhra will cost much more unless both states agree to function from Hyderabad. Other investments will include sharing of water and natural resources. This was the reason why Congress leaders such as Union Science and Technology Minister S. Jaipal Reddy endorsed the now-aborted idea of including Kurnool and Anantapur districts in the new state. Telangana would then have the Srisailam dam and reservoir on the Krishna river, and the 1,670 mw hydel station. Unmindful of the consequences, Congress is working on a plan that will please its dynasts. Digvijaya Singh has set a 215-day timeline to complete the formation of the state. The process for creating a separate state will be initiated on August 20-Rajiv Gandhi's birthday-and given a concrete shape by December 9-Sonia Gandhi's birthday.

The decision to split Andhra has horrified the united Andhra 'Seemandhra' supporters within Andhra Pradesh. P.V. Satish Kumar, MLA from East Godavari district, sent his resignation to the Assembly speaker within hours of the Telangana decision. Bandhs were called in coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema. Seemandhra leaders say they are worried about what will happen to them in Hyderabad especially when the state eventually becomes the capital of Telangana.

Several Congress leaders feel betrayed by the bifurcation. "We have paid a terrible price for trusting one family," says another Seemandhra MLA. There are indications that their discontent could spiral into a landslide of resignations to scuttle the resolution on the new state in the Andhra Pradesh Assembly. Home ministry officials say they have readied a Plan B. In case of en-masse resignations, the home ministry will dismiss Kiran Kumar Reddy's government and impose President's Rule. Nothing, it seems, can now come in the way of statehood for Telangana.

with Bhavna Vij-Aurora

Excerpt from: India Today

Gandhi is an old fool and his character is doubtful, Nizam said

Josy Joseph, TNN | Aug 1, 2013, 11.16 PM IST

NEW DELHI: A set of newly declassified files regarding the liberation of Hyderabad in 1948 provides interesting insights into the recent history of Andhra Pradesh, its unification, the end of Nizam's rule and the faultlines that have contributed further to the creation of Telangana.

Several secret coded telegrams sent by the Nizam of Hyderabad over the tense months of 1947-48, after he had declared his intention not to join India and Pakistan, also provide insights into his bitterness and his plan to hire a European prime minister for Hyderabad. The standoff finally ended after India launched Operation Polo to liberate Hyderabad in September, 1948.

"Gandhi has started his fast with the intention of unifying the Muslims but he is an old fool and his character is doubtful," the Nizam says in one of his several telegrams to his legal advisor Sir Walter Monckton, who played a key role in the Nizam's negotiations with Lord Mountbatten after Hyderabad declared its intention to remain independent.

In another telegram, the Nizam tells Monckton to find a European prime minister for Hyderabad, so as to further firm up his declared independence, which was being opposed by the communists, the Congress and the Indian state. "Try for dominion status for Hyderabad within the Commonwealth. Try to get a European prime minister," according to the Nizam's telegram to Monckton.

According to a note of the Intelligence Bureau (IB), these telegrams were sent by the Nizam to Monckton "in code," after the arrival of K M Munshi as India's agent general in Hyderabad and Mahatma Gandhi's fast.

The telegrams show that the Nizam was heavily dependent on Monckton to advice him through the crisis. "Come early, the condition in the state is worsening day by day. India government is trying to strangle Hyderabad and is giving all kinds of difficulties. She is encouraging border incidents. These rascals are unnecessarily creating trouble regarding the Rs 20 crore loan to Pakistan. There was nothing wrong in transferring the Indian securities into Pakistan securities. Hyderabad is prepared for the worst. Give also this information to the authorities in England. Come early," the Nizam wires Monckton.

In another telegram, the Nizam tells his advisor that Mountbatten is likely to come to Hyderabad and force it to accede to the Indian Union. "If he comes here with that intention, the condition here will worsen as the people would not like that. I have already declared my independence and I am not ready to rescind from that position and accede, whatever may happen. My people are also with me," the Nizam says. And then again appeals to Monckton to come early because Mountbatten was expected to visit in February, 1948.

The Nizam also reveals in one of his telegrams that the 'Stand Still Agreement' signed on November 29, 1947 with India was only to "mark time".

Also among the declassified documents are many other intelligence reports that bring out the deep suspicion that Indian agencies had of British officers of the Indian Army. One assessment says they are mostly "pro-Muslim and are creating as much trouble as they can before they quit India next year", and they must be sent back at the earliest.

This particular report — put up by V P Menon for the perusal of Mountbatten — also talks of the need to remove the British brigadier posted in Secunderabad. Among the intelligence reports are also several inputs about the irregular fighters, communists, movement of foreign journalists and others.

As tensions further mounted, in August 1948, the agent general was told in a detailed secret report that "aerial gun running is still going on between Karachi and Hyderabad. The planes are mostly landing at Warangal and occasionally at Bidar. Incidents have been reported of two and even three planes arriving the same day. It is through these planes that emissaries of Hyderabad travel to Pakistan and the places abroad".
On September 18, 1948, Major General Syed Ahmed El Edroos, the commander-in-chief of the Hyderabad State Forces, surrendered his army to Indian troops under Major General J N Choudhuri, who later became the Army chief. Hyderabad became an independent state between 1948 and 1956, and then it was split up among Andhra Pradesh, Bombay — later divided into Gujarat and Maharashtra — and Karnataka.

Excerpt from: The Times of India   

Seemandhra economy set for huge strides

Swati Bharadwaj Chand, TNN | Jul 31, 2013, 06.10 AM IST

HYDERABAD: A blessing in disguise, that's what the split promises to be for Seemandhra. With the growth of coastal Andhra Pradesh and many of its top cities like Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada long stymied, thanks to the overwhelming preoccupation of those in power with Hyderabad, many feel that the region will finally come into its own as an economic powerhouse.

After all, the region is gateway to the state, blessed as it is with India's second longest coastline of around 1000 km that is dotted with several ports. While Vizag already has a major port Visakhpatnam Port Trust and minor port Gangavaram and Nellore has Krishnapatnam port. This even as scores of ports in Kakinada SEZ, Machilipatnam in Krishna district, Bheemunipatnam and Nakkapalli in Vizag district, Meghavaram, Kalingapatnam and Bhavanapadu port in Srikakulam as well as Narsapur in Godavari are in the works.

Already, in the past four to five years several industrialists hailing from coastal Andhra have been pumping their investments into the region, especially in the manufacturing sectors like pharma, chemicals and petrochemicals and the like.

"The next 20 years signal tremendous growth for Seemandhra. It will be a golden period as Andhra will finally be liberated from the clutches of Hyderabad, where all the investment was being made. The split will see a lot of growth centres springing up along the coastline like Visakhapatnam, which has already been rated among one of the fastest growing cities in India, Vijayawada, Nellore and Anantapur," points out former Confederation of Indian Industry, AP Council, chairman Y Harish Chandra Prasad.

What the region also has going in its favour are proposed blockbuster projects like the 140-km long Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR) straddling Vizag and Kakinada. This project has already been acknowledged as the growth engine of Andhra Pradesh, with a Knight Frank report projecting the petroleum sector as the leading light of Andhra Pradesh, fuelling the state's petroleum output to Rs 2.07 lakh crore by 2015-16 from Rs 59,400 crore in 2010-11.

Most of the proposed mega power projects like Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd's 10,000 mw project at Kovada in Srikakulam or the 4,000 mw power project at Krishnapa.

Excerpt from: The Times of India

Telangana timeline

By IANS - HYDERABAD

30th July 2013 06:58 PM

Here is the timeline leading to the announcement on the formation of Telangana state.

1948: The Indian Army annexed princely state of Hyderabad, which had different regions including Telangana.

1950: Telangana became Hyderabad State with appointment of a senior administrator M.A. Vellodi as the chief minister.

1952: First elections were held in Hyderabad State. Burgula Ramakrishna Rao became the first elected chief minister.

Nov 1, 1956: Telangana was merged with Andhra State, which was carved out of Madras State, to form Andhra Pradesh, a united state for Telugu-speaking people.

1969: 'Jai Telangana' movement for separate statehood to Telangana began. Over 300 people killed in police firing.

1972: 'Jai Andhra' movement began in coastal Andhra for separate Andhra state.

1975: Presidential order issued to implement Six-Point Formula, providing some safeguards to Telangana.

1997: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supported demand for Telangana state and in 1998 elections promised 'one vote two states'.

2001: K. Chandrasekhara Rao floated Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) to revive the Telangana movement.

2004: TRS fought elections in alliance with the Congress, won 5 Lok Sabha and 26 assembly seats. The UPA included the issue in its common minimum programme and formed a three-member committee headed by Pranab Mukherjee.

2008: TDP announced support for Telangana demand.

2009: TRS contested elections in alliance with TDP but its tally came down to two Lok Sabha and 10 assembly seats.

Sep 2, 2009: Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy died in helicopter crash, triggering political uncertainty.

Oct, 2009: Chandrasekhara Rao began fast-unto-death for separate Telangana state.

Dec 9, 2009: Centre announced its decision to initiate the process for formation of Telangana state.

Dec 23, 2009: Following protests in Rayalaseema and Andhra regions and en mass resignations of MPs and state legislators, the centre put the process on hold, citing need for consensus.

Feb 3, 2010: Centre set up five-member Srikrishna Committee to look into Telangana issue.

Dec, 2010: Srikrishna Committee submitted its report, suggested six options.

Dec 28, 2012: Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde announced after an all-party meeting that a decision will be announced in a month.

July 1, 2013: Congress leader Digvijaya Singh announced that a decision on Telangana is in final stages.

July 12, 2013: Congress core group met on Telangana to discuss reports by the chief minister, deputy chief minister and state Congress chief.

July 26, 2013: Congress core group held another meeting, Digvijaya Singh said Congress Working Committee (CWC) and UPA will take a final decision.

July 30, 2013: UPA coordination panel and CWC met and decided to carve out Telangana state.

Excerpt from: The New Indian Express

Straight from the heart

By Shevlin Sebastian

19th July 2013 08:07 AM 

 

The son of a Sikh priest, Ravinder was born at Kolkata, brought up in a small town, Burla, in Orissa, did his engineering studies from Bidar, Karnataka and MBA from Hyderabad, and began his career in the IT industry from Pune. 

At 4 am, on February 9, 2007, Khushi was in a happy mood. She had just completed her last day of work at the IT company that she worked for, in Noida, and was returning home in a cab. On Valentine’s Day, February 14, she would be getting engaged to IT professional Ravinder Singh. They had met through the matrimonial website, shaadi.com., and had been going steady for a few months.

While she was sunk in these pleasant thoughts, a truck came and hit the cab at full speed. The car was damaged beyond repair. A greviously wounded Khushi was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit of Escorts hospital, Faridabad, and later, to Apollo, Delhi, where she remained for a fortnight.

“During that time, I was telling God that this is the time I needed Him badly,” says Ravinder. Unfortunately, God did not hear his pleas and Khushi died of her injuries. Not surprisingly, Ravinder lost his faith and walked away from God.

Three months passed. Ravinder was unable to come to terms with what had happened. “I could feel this pressure growing inside me,” he says. “I wanted to do something. At times, I would cry at night.”
During this period, he was living with a friend, in Bhubaneshwar, who happened to be reading a book. Ravinder flipped a few pages, and decided that he would try some writing himself.

“The idea was to share my grief,” he says.

Ravinder started writing... and never stopped. The end result was a book called I Too Had a Love Story, which took the youngsters in the country by storm, and sold lakhs of copies.

Ravinder is perceptive about the success of his first book. “Most probably it was because of the honesty with which it was written,” he says. “Readers tell me that they felt an emotional connect with the hero. They also felt his pain. My fans told me they don’t read my books because of my literary skills or high standard of English. They like my writing because it is from the heart.”

His next two books - Can Love Happen Twice? and Love Stories that Touched my Heart (an anthology) did equally well.

His readership, which was initially young, has now moved to all age groups. “Lots of kids, who read my books, have made their parents read it,” says Ravinder. “I have received e-mails from grandmothers who told me that in this present world, a guy showing a commitment to somebody who is no longer alive touches them a lot. That pushed them to read the book.”

Amazingly, it has healed marital rifts. A woman, Snehalata Rajeev (name changed), said her husband, Surya, had gifted her, I Too Had A Love Story, but she never read it. She was having tensions with him, and was contemplating divorce. That was when a friend told her to read Ravinder’s book. Snehalata told her friend, “What is the connection between reading this book and saving my marriage?”

But eventually she read the book. “After I finished it, I imagined what if my better half was no more in this world,” says Snehalata. “You can never ever get in touch with him ever. By thinking about divorce, was I taking the right decision?” In the end, Snehalatha remained with Surya. And a gratified Ravinder says, “This is the best compliment that I have received. It is beyond the price of the book.”

Like Snehalatha, the fan base keeps growing. When Ravinder set up an e-mail id, itoohadalovestory@gmail.com, he received more than one lakh mails. He  also has 6 lakh fans and readers on Facebook.

One woman who read his first book was the Delhi-based Khushboo Chauhan. “She was probably crying after she read it,” says Ravinder. Thereafter, she went to the Bangla Sahib gurudwara and prayed to God. “This guy deserves a nice girl,” she said. “So please, God, find him a nice girl.” And Khushboo probably could not have imagined that it would be she who would be the ‘nice girl’, who got married to Ravinder, on September, 23, 2012.

Ravinder was in Kochi recently to promote his latest book, Like it Happened Yesterday. These are touching stories from his childhood, again written with intense feeling and sincerity. Asked why the move from romance to sentimental memories, Ravinder says, “I wanted to relive those childhood days one more time. Practically I can’t, so theoretically I did.”

Observing the excited reaction, among the audience, comprising many youngsters, there is a strong likelihood that Like it Happened Yesterday is also going to be a mega best-seller.

The son of a Sikh priest, Ravinder was born at Kolkata, brought up in a small town, Burla, in Orissa, did his engineering studies from Bidar, Karnataka and MBA from Hyderabad, and began his career in the IT industry from Pune.

From the IT industry to best-selling writer is a leap that Ravinder would never have dreamt he would be doing one day.

This article is taken from:  The New Indian Express

The Hut Where the Internet Began

When Douglas Engelbart read a Vannevar Bush essay on a Philippine island in the aftermath of World War II, he found the conceptual space to imagine what would become our Internet.

Alexis C. Madrigal Jul 7 2013, 11:18 PM ET

Let's start at the end point: what you're doing right now. You are pulling information from a network onto a screen, enhancing your embodied experience with a communication web filled with people and machines. You do this by pointing and clicking, tapping a few commands, organizing your thoughts into symbols that can be read and improved by your various correspondents.

There was a beginning to all this, long before it became technically possible.

Well, actually, there were many beginnings.

But one -- maybe the most important one -- traces back to Douglas Engelbart, who died last week, and his encounter with a 1945 article published here at The Atlantic, "As We May Think," by Vannevar Bush, an icon of mid-century science.

The essay is most famous for its description of a hypothetical information-retrieval system, the Memex, a kind of mechanical Evernote, in which a person's every "book, record, or communication" was microfilmed and cataloged.

"It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory," Bush wrote. "It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk."

Bush did not describe the screens, keyboard, buttons, and levers as a "user interface" because the concept did not exist. Neither did semiconductors or almost any other piece of the world's computing and networking infrastructure except a handful of military computers and some automatic telephone switches (the latter were, in fact, one of Bush's favorite examples).

A crucial component of the Memex was that it helped the brain's natural "associative indexing," so "any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another." The Memex storehouse was made usable by the "trails" that the user (another word that did not have this meaning at the time) cut through all the information, paths that could later be refollowed or passed onto a friend.

("There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record," Bush predicted. Consider for a moment that these processes -- at scale -- are exactly what makes Google a good search engine or Reddit a good social news site.)

Bush's essay was a groundbreaking ceremony for the information age. In Bush's own terms, the complexity of the world and its problems required a better system, lest our memories and minds become overwhelmed by all there was to know. And this was not merely a personal, lifestyle problem. The worst war the world had ever known was finally coming to a close, and to a man like Bush, it had begun because of a lack of human wisdom. This is how his essay ends:

The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good. Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome.

What Bush knew when he wrote these words in the months leading up to July 1945 was that the most cruel weapon had been invented: American atomic bombs would not fall on Japan for two more months, but Bush had been intimately involved in their creation and certainly knew their use was a possibility. With that knowledge in his pocket, his answer to the prospective (and then real) horrors of science-enabled nuclear war -- odd as it may seem -- was to imagine a contraption to aid human knowledge acquisition.

For Bush, humans were racing against themselves: understand the complex world or face extinction through war. Those were the stakes at the outset of the information age.

Bush's article went far and wide, and if I can brag for our magazine a little, is considered one of the most influential magazine articles ever published about technology, and perhaps in any field. It even landed inside LIFE Magazine in a condensed format in September of 1945.

The Memex as imagined by a LIFE illustrator.

Millions of copies of the September 10 issue were printed and distributed around the world. LIFE had established itself as the preeminent photo chronicler of World War II and the Red Cross habitually kept reading materials like it around for soldiers. And so it was that a copy of that issue, containing most of Bush's article -- including the whole Memex section and conclusion quoted here -- made its way to a Red Cross library on the (even now, still remote) island of Leyte in the Philippines.

Meanwhile, young Doug Engelbart, a radar technician in the Navy who never saw combat (the war ended as his boat pulled out of the San Francisco Bay), was on his way to the Philippines, too. He was transferred to Leyte, the island, and though the record is not precisely clear on this point, perhaps to the little village called Leyte, too, at the end of a long inlet. It was here that, in the words of John Markoff, Engelbart "stumbled across a Red Cross reading library in a native hut set on stilts, complete with thatched roof and plentiful bamboo." Five years ago, a visitor to Leyte snapped this photograph of the the town of Leyte.



In a hut like this -- and maybe even one of these huts specifically -- Engelbart opened up that issue of LIFE and read Bush's Atlantic article. The ideas in the story plowed new intellectual terrain for Engelbart, and the seeds that he planted and nurtured there over the next twenty years grew, with the help of millions of others, into the Internet you see today.

The Los Angeles Times obituary succinctly summed up his impact on the world: "Douglas Engelbart, whose work inspired generations of scientists, demonstrated in the 1960s what could happen when computers talk to one another." Steve Wozniak went further, crediting Engelbart's 1960s research "for everything we have in the way computers work today." Yes, he invented the mouse, but he also laid out the concepts we'd need to understand the networked world.

So, in one tangible and real sense, the Internet we know now began in that hut across the world. As Bush made new thoughts possible for Engelbart, Engelbart made it possible for us to imagine the rest of it.

Engelbart wrote Bush a letter describing how profoundly he'd been affected by the latter's work. "I might add that this article of yours has probably influenced me quite basically. I remember finding it and avidly reading it in a Red Cross library on the edge of the jungle on Leyte, one of the Philippine Islands, in the fall of 1945," he wrote. "I rediscovered your article about three years ago, and was rather startled to realized how much I had aligned my sights along the vector you had described. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the reading of this article sixteen and a half years ago hadn't had a real influence on my thoughts and actions."

What's fascinating is that Engelbart adopted Bush's frame for the key problems and solutions of modern life. Bush worried that the world had gotten too big to understand, and so did Engelbart. "The complexity/urgency factor had transcended what humans can cope with," he recalled in a 1996 oral history interview. "I suddenly flashed that if you could do something to improve human capability with that, then you'd really contribute something basic."

The problem framed in this way helped Engelbart stay away from the artificial intelligence researchers like JCR Licklider. Instead, he developed a framework for helping human minds to come together to improve themselves. He did not think the machines could or should do the thinking for us. Markoff, a long-time chronicler of computing, sees Engelbart as one pole in a decades-long competition "between artificial intelligence and intelligence augmentation -- A.I. versus I.A." That's because Engelbart's view of computing development retained a privileged place for humans. His academic biographer Thierry Bardini summed up his importance like this:

Many still credit him only with technological innovations like the mouse, the outline processor, the electronic-mail system, or sometimes, the windowed user interface. These indeed are major innovations, and today they have become pervasive in the environments in which people work and play. But Douglas Engelbart never really gets credit for the larger contribution that he worked to create: an integrative and comprehensive framework that ties together the technological and social aspects of personal computing technology. Engelbart articulated a vision of the world in which these pervasive innovations are supposed to find their proper place. He and other innovators of this new technology defined its future on the basis of their own aspirations and ideologies. Those aspirations included nothing less than the development via the interface between computers and their users, of a new kind of person, one better equipped to deal with the increasing complexities of the modern world.

A new kind of person. The words appear unseemly in a reactionary age that reifies the "real world," but consider the root of the desire for a new humanity: Tracing Engelbart back through Bush, we find the horror of World War II and the nuclear weapons that put nearly instant human extinction on the table for the first time in human history. Mere tinkering around the edges of humanity would not have seemed up to the task.

What emerged for Engelbart as a real answer to Bush's statement of the problem was the co-evolution of humans and technology. Knowing that machines could do some thing well, and humans others, Engelbart imagined creating interfaces that would allow both to continue improving. It is an optimistic and hopeful outlook, one that is less brittle than hoping Watson will cure disease or that humans are deracinated by our contact with the digital realm.

It seems to me that we may be sitting at a similar moment in history to the one that Bush considered. Through the first half of the 20th century, physics was generally lauded and assumed to produce societal goods. Then came the bomb, and the field had a lot of questions to answer about what its purpose was, and what its relationship should be to the military-industrial complex.

And, perhaps I'm reaching here, but networked computing technology has had a similar privileged spot in American life for at least 30 years. Networked computers democratized! Anyone could have a voice! They delivered information, increased the variety of human experience, allowed new capabilities, and helped the world become more open and connected. Computers and the Internet were forces for good in the world, which is why technology was so readily attached to complex, revolutionary processes like the Arab Spring, for example.

But a broad skepticism about technology has crept into (at least) American life. We find ourselves a part of a "war on terror" that is being perpetually, secretly fought across the very network that Engelbart sought to build. Every interaction we have with an Internet service generates a "business record" that can be seized by the NSA through a secretive process that does not require a warrant or an adversarial legal proceeding.

The disclosure of the NSA's surveillance program is not Hiroshima, but it does reveal the latent dark power of the Internet to record communication data at an unprecedented scale, data that can be used by a single nation to detriment of the rest. The narrative of the networked age will never be as simple as it once was.

If you're inclined to see the trails of information Bush imagined future scholars blazing as (meta)data to be hoovered up, if you're inclined to see PRISM as a societal Memex concentrated in the hands of the surveillance state, then perhaps, we're seeing the end of the era Bush's article heralded.

At the very least, those with the lofty goal of improving humanity are going to have to explain  why they've chosen networked computing as their augmentation platform of choice, given the costs that we now know explicitly exist. The con side of the ledger can no longer be ignored.

Yet, it seems possible that we have not yet fulfilled the Engelbart's vision. Bush and Engelbart did have distinct visions. For Bush, scientific knowledge itself provided salvation, as if units of wisdom could be manufactured for the preservation of the human race. Engelbart's view was, befitting its time, more cybernetic: people and technology fed one into the other in a spiral of improvement. The Internet is still young, the web younger still. We do not know what form they will take. The current externalities -- now that they are known -- are a new feedback piping into the system, which means they can be accounted for in law or code or both. The co-evolution continues.

And I hope that someone, somewhere heard Engelbart died and found his extensive archive and found her mind aflame with new ideas for how humans, working together, can improve themselves. It's been a rough couple of years for technology, but to quote Bush, "It would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome."

This article is from: The Atlantic

శ్రీ కౌముది జూలై 2013

Warped in caste conundrum

Jun 11, 2013 - Surendra Kumar | Age Correspondent

In early 1960s, at my college, Syed Mubarak Ali, the Art teacher, and Devi Singh, physical training teacher, used to be served food in white porcelain plates at teachers’ lunches while others ate in brass thalis. I thought it must be a reward for their meritorious services; they were two of the most popular teachers. Years later, the retired principal let out the secret: it was an action in pollution control rather than recognition of their talent! According to him, the brass/copper was good conductor not only for transmitting electric current but also for pollution related to caste and religion. If Ali, a Muslim (Mleksha) and Singh a Scheduled Caste (Shudra) were served food in thalis, pollution of a Mleksha and a Shudra would have passed on to other teachers; they could have resigned. So, introduction of porcelain plate was a diplomatic solution: it avoided offending other teachers and also retained the much needed two teachers. I was left speechless at the genius of the scion of a family of Chaturvedis (who had mastered all the four Vedas!)

In late 1960s, at one of Allahabad University’s hostels named after a great Indian educationist, there was no ban on admission of the Muslim/SC students if their marks met the criterion but the students of these two categories seldom opted for this hostel. Once, a Muslim student got admitted. On the very first night, during the harrowing ragging session, the seniors set fire to his pubic hair; he ran for his life without collecting his meagre possessions, never to return again!

An additional secretary in the MEA, on a trip to Hong Kong in late 1980s, won’t initiate a conversation with the first secretary as he couldn’t figure out correctly what caste he belonged to. He rose to become the foreign secretary and died in harness as the governor of an important state!

A former young Turk of the Congress party, while serving as the governor didn’t know what to talk to when he couldn’t make out the caste of the Indian ambassador designate from his name. When his repeated insistence on the full name failed to elicit the most vital information, an exasperated Rajyapal Ji blurted out “OK, then, what is your caste?” He rose to become the vice-president of India!

In 1980s, the vice-president of India (he later became the President) who had graduated from the prestigious Cambridge University of UK felt terribly uncomfortable in talking to the head of the Hindi Service of BBC’s World Service during his visit to London when the Press Counsellor couldn’t tell him in advance the caste of the interviewer!

On the auspicious day of Holi this year, after the time for throwing colour and besmirching faces with gulal was over, one of the retired ambassadors residing in the IFS apartments requested us to drop by for a drink in the evening. Another ambassador, retired recently, had also joined with his wife. While we were chatting about increasing cases of rapes in Delhi, this ambassador turned to me and asked, “So, what is full name?”

Forty years after joining the IFS, I was puzzled by such a question from a fellow ambassador. But to satisfy him, I told him my name as mentioned in my passport.

Not contented, he said, “Let me rephrase my question, if you were to give your full name, what it would be?” I replied, “This is all what it will be; there is nothing more to add or subtract!”

Not to give up his single-minded quest, he added, “Then let me ask you directly: what is your caste?” I couldn’t resist telling him tersely that he reminded me of that AS (AD), the governor, the vice-president & the President of India who were lost for words unless they knew the caste of an individual and that I was wrong in imagining that 38 years in IFS with several postings abroad and the tolerant faith he followed might have made him lose interest in the phenomenon of caste. “Well, I wanted to know out of curiosity’, he responded.

Surprisingly, like that governor 20 years back, he showed no curiosity about the fact that I was India’s ambassador in Libya for five years and had met Col. Gaddafi more than 20 times!

After listening to thumris, dadras and kajris in soulful voice of matchless Girija Devi ji at Azad Bhavan last month, I and my wife were having dinner on the lawns with the renowned art critic, Shanta Sarabjeet Singh. Another lady whose face looked familiar turned towards me and remarked that she had attended some of IAFA events at the IIC including the memorial for late Dr Abid Hussain. Then I realised, she was the wife of a highly respected civil cervant who had spent nearly three decades in the US with an international organisation. Suddenly, this lady turned to my wife and whispered, “Is your husband’s last name Kohli?” “No, it’s Kumar” my wife whispered back. “Kumar? So, what is he?” she couldn’t suppress her curiosity!

Since India took the plunge in favour of economic liberalisation in 1991-92, a lot has changed in India for the better, contrary to the claims of cynics and naysayers. We have a middle class bigger than the total population of the US; cellphone owners number three times the number in the US. From the stage of having to mortgage gold, the outflow of investment from Indian firms today is higher than the annual inflow of FDI. Though industrial production and economic growth have slowed down, India is still one of the fastest growing economies. India’s IT industry, especially software sector, is a force to reckon. With demographic dividend on her side, India is tipped to be a major global player in the knowledge society of tomorrow.

But what might trip India? Near total collapse of moral and ethical values in day-to-day life, governance and management; insatiable obsession with caste (those who claim that caste doesn’t matter to them are simply being hypocrite and dishonest) and rampant corruption at all levels of life. In the US and UK if you told your co-passenger in the metro that you were from a business firm or a university, your introduction was complete; conversation veered around the business firm or the academics of that university. But in India, the mother of all curiosities is the curiosity about one’s caste! Just have a look at the matrimonial columns, some of the brightest young men and women coming from IITs/IIMs and serving in lucrative positions are looking for suitable matches from their respective castes! The sage who said: jati na poochho sadh ki.. was wrong! He should have urged: jati hi poochho sadh ki ...!!

Mera Bharat Mahaan!

Jai ho!

The writer is a former secretary in the ministry of external affairs

This article is from: The Asian Age

Déjà Vu | Lapham’s Quarterly

Déjà Vu | Lapham’s Quarterly


2013: India has joined the U.S. and other Western nations in conscripting the telegram to the pages of history. Later this summer, the nation’s state-run telegram agency will send its last missive, bringing an end to the telegram’s longstanding importance in Indian life. 

Read Blog Déjà Vu | Lapham’s Quarterly full article

New 'Delhi belly' vaccine shows promise, U.K. researchers say

06/10/2013

For some western travellers, "Delhi belly" is an inconvenience, an uncomfortable malady that can cloud the memory of an otherwise perfect vacation to the developing world.

But in Asia, Africa and Latin America, "Delhi belly" -- severe diarrhea -- is far more serious. 

The World Health Organization says: "Diarrhea is one of the leading causes of death among children under five globally. More than one in ten child deaths – about 800,000 each year – is due to diarrhea. Today, only 44 per cent of children with diarrhoea in low-income countries receive the recommended treatment, and limited trend data suggest that there has been little progress since 2000."

Nearly every child in the third world will have "Delhi belly" at least once in his or her lifetime. Sometimes, a child can die in a day from the affliction because of severe and rapid dehydration.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge say they have developed a new vaccine that targets both E. Coli bacteria and salmonella. The vaccine comes in pill form and also promises protection against typhoid.

"The stakes are incredibly high," researcher Krishnaa Mahbubani told the Star in an interview. "Delhi belly is quite dangerous. Several million children under the age of six come down with this. this will be a huge. This isn't just about stopping discomfort for travellers for a few weeks."

Prof. Nigel Slater, who leads a team of scientists at University of Cambridge’s department of biochemical engineering and biotechnology, said trials on mice have yielded positive results.

Human trials are set to begin later this year on a few dozen subjects. Consumers won't be able to buy the pill for at least four or five years, Slater said.

The vaccine's technology is owned by the university and Prokarium, a pharmaceutical company. The British government helped finance the research, which has been in the works for about eight years, he said.

"The trick really was getting this vaccine into tablet form," Slater said. "these bacteria in the vaccine have to pass through walls of intestine to get to lymph nodes where they create the immmunity. There's an issue of cold chain in hot countries like India. 

"So we had to develop a pill form where the bacteria would be rehydrated with water, but wouldn't be killed by the bile in the stomach. It was tricky."

News of the vaccine's promise was first reported by The Telegraph.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

Excerpted from: http://thestar.blogs.com/worlddaily/2013/06/new-delhi-belly-vaccine-shows-promise-uk-researchers-say.html

Lives Lived: Krishna Kumari Sharma, 78 

 

Parnesh Sharma

The Globe and Mail

Published Friday, Jun. 07 2013, 12:00 AM EDT
 

Grandmother, short-story writer, gardener, gentle soul. Born Jan. 12, 1935, in Labasa, Fiji, died April 22, 2013, in North Vancouver of heart failure, aged 78.

Born in a tiny village in Fiji, the only child of a former indentured labourer, Krishna often marvelled at the detours of life that took her from that village to Auckland, NZ, in the late 1960s, back to Fiji, and then to North Vancouver in 1975.

No more improbable than her journey was that of her father, Tribhuwan Dutt Maharaj. His history is dimmer. It is believed that he came from Uttar Pradesh in northern India – but it is known that at the age of 12 he ran away from home to seek his fortune on what he thought would be a grand adventure. Little did he know he had been tricked into servitude to British masters.

Five years of back-breaking bonded labour on sugar plantations in Fiji left him with few kind words for the English. But he emerged with the determination to forge a new life. He refused passage back to India, not wanting to face his family without having realized his fortune.

He struggled at first, but credited the birth of Krishna, his only child and his good-luck charm, with a change in his fortunes that saw him eventually running two thriving general stores and owning several properties – including a sugar plantation.

He instilled in Krishna the value of education. Unusually for that time, she was sent away to boarding school. Later, after her arranged marriage to schoolteacher Rishi Deo Sharma, her father gifted her a two-storey brick house in the Fijian capital of Suva. Later, with a growing family, Krishna adapted to a peripatetic lifestyle – to various postings throughout Fiji when Rishi took a job with the government.

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, Fiji was an idyllic British colony, but the winds of change – an emerging call for independence – had begun to stir, and with them a growing concern about the future of the Indian community, the descendents of indentured labourers – British subjects in name, but lacking substantive rights in reality.

And so it was that in 1975, Krishna, her husband and six young children left a comfortable middle-class life in Fiji to start anew in Canada. In doing so she joined the pantheon of classic immigrant stories of sacrifice and hard work in search of a better future for her children.

For a person who had never worked outside the home, Canada was a new experience. Krishna and Rishi worked various jobs – sometimes two jobs at a time – just to pay the bills before becoming established.

In 1996, within a year of his retirement, Rishi was diagnosed with a terminal illness and died shortly after. Krishna withdrew into a shell. But with the encouragement of her family she emerged stronger and discovered a talent for gardening. She took great pride in it, and just a week before suffering a heart attack she had a plan in place for spring planting. Of her other talents (her short stories were published in Hindi-language papers) she rarely spoke.

Not one for ostentation, she rarely mentioned the successes of her children – among them a university professor, a doctor and a Cambridge and Oxford-educated scholar – or her grandchildren, who include a schoolteacher and an Ivy League-educated lawyer.

What of her garden, now awash with spring flowers? It blooms, as does Krishna’s legacy.

Parnesh Sharma is Krishna’s son.

In Turkey: Days of Anti-Government Protests and Harsh Crackdowns

Jun 2, 2013 | 

 

A protest in Istanbul, Turkey, that began as a relatively small event earlier in the week, erupted into massive anti-government demonstrations across the country following a harsh crackdown by riot police. People had gathered in Gezi Park to prevent the demolition of the last remaining green public space in the center of Istanbul as part of a major renewal project. Pent-up anger against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party flared up after the violent breakup of the Gezi Park protest, fueling the fiercest anti-government demonstrations in years. Yesterday, more than a thousand protesters were arrested in 90 different demonstrations across Turkey. Prime Minister Erdogan has issued several defiant and dismissive messages, urging demonstrators to go home -- which they appear to be ignoring, as thousands have gathered once again in Taksim Square today, starting a third day of protest. [36 photos]

Story and photos: In Focus (The Atlantic)

శ్రీ కౌముది జూన్ 2013