Ever since I got interested in foreign policy issues during my high school days, there has been one strident demand by India’s Ministry of External Affairs: to get a permanent membership in the Security Council of United Nations. Today, India re-entered the Security Council by being elected as a non-permanent member, a post it will hold for the next two years. This has been greeted with euphoria in the country, and some are hoping that the clout of this position can help India to bargain for a permanent seat in the Security Council with its veto power. India has consistently […]
Vivek Srinivasan
1 A few fond memories of working with the legendary bureaucrat, Mr. S.R. Sankaran.
Remembering the legendary S. R. Sankaran
1 A few months ago, I got the criticism that my work is not original, and that most of what I have to say has already been said, and that my arguments are evident to the point of being tautological. When I got the criticism, I felt that there is a ring of truth to it, in a sense that there is practically no argument within my scheme of things that has not already been made by others. At one point, I even started questioning if there is any value to the work I did. Since it is a feeling that […]
The place of originality in academic writing
I discovered that the papers that I had written with a lot of hard work were cited only once in the last four years. A note on the academic peril of working hard in writing what will probably be never read by any one. To publish is to perish. Read on.
Publish and perish
With 15 minutes to go for the Jaipur-Delhi bus, I decided to give the toilet a try. I was directed to dark and damp room with an Indian styled pit-toilet. After finding the only dry spot to stand on, I precariously balanced my pants on my shoulders with nowhere else to hang them. Just when I was to get into business there was a loud crashing sound on my door, and the sound repeated itself in every five seconds along all the doors in the toilet complex. It was a muscular man in a hurry. “Are you mad”, shouted my […]
All in a day’s trip
This is a desperate attempt to create a story where none exists. As a young man who has freshly returned from the United States after announcing his white girlfriend, I expected some fireworks when I got home; but all was calm on the eastern front. I thought, perhaps an announcement that I will be moving to LA with her could create excitement; that did not help. Will it help if the cause if I make it clear that we have not decided to marry? That did not either. I am sorry to tell you, my reader, that I have no […]
Creating history
2 Death needs preparation. Preparation, especially for those who will be left behind, and I have started preparing for the death of a close one. She has been my bedside companion for many years, and the holder of my most intimate thoughts. She has been a part of my conversations with friends, my work and my leisure. She is the one I turned to when I woke up, and she put me to sleep for many a year. It looks like she may die soon. When she dies, she will take with her a part of me – naturally. A friend […]
Preparing for the death of a close one
There is almost an invariant formula for a Tamil television serial: a catchy title song with an amateurish dance, three units of sentiment, one unit of crying (with joy or sorrow), and one unit of suspense towards the end. The formula gets repeated at least ten times a day across television channels. Where is imagination? — The schizophrenia of the production houses between producing movies and television is fascinating. Women in Tamil television come through as strong, thinking, acting characters. The woman of the movies is typically a diva in trouble dependent on the hero to be rescued. Heroes have […]
Thoughts on Tamil television
Grandma reminds me of the “grandma proof” Lenovo ad these days. She uses my laptop screen as a prop when she wants to lean, and sprinkled water all over my screen earlier today. I am not sure if this laptop is going to survive my summer… — It’s summer and my cousins have been playing Thayam a lot (a dice based game) with grandma. I am surprised at how smart her moves are at 83. She would be a force to contend with if she remembers which coins are hers. — Grandmother believes that attack is the best form of […]
Grandma diary
For the purpose of this post, I’ll call her Dr. K. She is not one of those real doctors, the kind that I will be. She is the kind that deals with medicines and treats people one-by-one. Her speciality, I am led to believe, involves slashing people’s throats regularly and whipping people’s faces into shapes that she desires. In fancy words, she is an ENT and facial plastics surgeon. She is an avid reader, a pilot, compulsive shopper and (to borrow her friend’s words) her sunscreen budget rivals the GDP of small nations. Despite her sunscreen budget and a thousand […]
Dr K
Last year Joe the plumber prophetically announced that if Obama were elected there would be socialism in the United States. Looking back at 2009, I am convinced that socialism has arrived. Consider the following: I post on facebook that I misplaced my house key and I get a couch to stay in. I need to go shopping, and I get free shuttle service that too with charming chauffeurs. I wish for food and my housemates respond, and I feel like drinking and I get invited within two minutes of writing it on facebook. Cupcakes and cookies appear magically in the […]
2009: Towards socialism
It is often assumed that Teaching Assistants are powerful, vested with institutionalised power to instruct, monitor and evaluate. No doubt, these represent power over the students. But this is nothing compared to the power that students have over the TA; a kind of power that is silent but brutal. When a hundred notebooks close silently, it can bring the mightiest professor to a halt. A few glances at the clock or one row of blank expressions can freeze the vulnerable TA and crush his ego at the same time. There is no experience more humbling that the knowledge that you […]
Reflections of a retiring TA
My hair-stylist this time was a veteran soldier who had just returned from the war in Afghanistan. It was his fourth month at the hair-styling school and he was learning his skill with volunteer-customers like me who went there for low-cost haircuts. Learning that I was an Indian he said, “I was near there man”, and he told me about his experiences in Afghanistan as he washed my hair preparing it for the job. Our chat was mainly about big guns. I was in the areas bordering Pakistan and we often had issues with Pakistani soldiers, he said. “Did that […]
A soldier turning hair-stylist
It was a beautiful girl from Europe this time. She eyed me curiously as I sat down with an uneasy comfort watching her examine me carefully. She went around me and slowly ran her hand through my hair and said softly, “Oh my god, it’s so long”. “Chop it”, came a chorus of voices from the side in a unanimous agreement. She nodded and they came to an agreement on what to do with my hair. I was reduced to a bystander in their decision about my hair, but not for long. In seconds I stopped feeling like an unwanted […]
Yearning to play
Thanksgiving was originally celebrated in New England when European settlers were helped by Indians to raise native crops that helped the settlers to survive the harsh winter of this region. Two white American friends of mine decided to remember the original spirit of Thanksgiving this season by inviting Indians for dinner, and we responded in style. Two carloads of us joined Melody and Chris, invited by the prospect of a truckload of yummy food. The duo had made so much food that I (a foodie) ended up trying more new varieties of food in one day than I have done […]
Thanksgiving dinner in its original spirit
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is primarily a programme aimed at creating public assets that would be useful for the society at large. When NREGA was created, it relaxed this principle by allowing projects in private lands of selected marginalised communities including SCs and STs. The Minister for Rural Development is now trying to extend this by permitting works in private lands owned by small and marginal farmers who are not SCs and STs. This proposal has been welcomed by some like Mihir Shah and has been sharply criticised by Aruna Roy and Jean Drèze among others. I believe […]
Asset creation in private lands using NREGA: Problems & opportunities
The temptation and pressure to confirm in one’s research topic is tremendous – especially if you are a PhD student. In the course of the last 3 years many of my friends have asked me to include some quantitative element in my research. When I tell them that it does not suit my question they’d add, perhaps do what you do and then add some statistical work to it. When my (descriptive) interviews were almost done another friend goaded me to code it and regress it. The notion that regression is what makes a study authoritative is so deeply rooted […]
Friendships and “research methods”
The explosion of digital information about all aspects of our lives, the places we live in, etc. will radically transform the way we write history in the future. Read on.
History in the future
The Minister for Rural Development, Mr C P Joshi has announced that he will revamp NREGA with some major changes, and the new scheme of things has been informally labelled “NREGA-2”. News reports have indicated that the new scheme will be unveiled on the birthday of Rajiv Gandhi. As of now the Ministry has not made available for public discussion the set of changes that will be made, but some ideas have been making their way to the media periodically. This article synthesizes these ideas, and provides links to articles debating the so-called NREGA-2.
What is NREGA-2?
1 Zotero is a free-software to manage bibliographies and citations with advanced functions and an easy interface As a doctoral student a lot of my time goes into managing my references. Thankfully there are many tools around to help me manage my references and to speed up the process of inserting citations while I write my papers. After a lot of trial and error I settled on Refworks that I was really happy with. Unfortunately it is a paid software with a stiff fee that I may not be able to afford once I leave the university. Thankfully, a friend told […]
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