Q&A with Amy Waldman

Amy Waldman, the India reporter for the New York Times, did a long four-part series built around the common theme of the Golden Quadrilateral, the ambitious highways program that is being implemented now.

Links to all the four stories are available in a previous post.

She answers some of the questions posed by the readers (of this particular series) here. The questions range from the particular (the working conditions in the diamond cutting industry in Surat) to the general (cultural and linguistic homogenization).

I found the multimedia associated with the series to be brilliant. If you just want the impressions conveyed by Waldman (without the rich details in the written version), this short presentation is probably worth a look.

Both Amardeep Singh and Reuben seem to like this series. Bradford DeLong, on the other hand, doesn't like at least one of the stories (the second one, that talked about the auto boom in India). His post had a general point about how terrible the MSM news outlets have become in the US (including NYTimes and the Washington Post), and picked Waldman's story at random, and went on to trash it. Quite a few readers, including me, pointed out that it was a part of a longer series, but he hasn't budged (so far). Some of the comments there give links to several other stories that NYTimes and other newspapers have done in the recent past on India.

Simon Singh

Remember this post from two weeks ago? Well, Simon Singh finally visited IISc to give a popular lecture yesterday. To me it was more than a lecture. It was a Show! And what a wonderful show it was!

I have a write up about the Simon Show here.

Yes, this is probably as good a time as any other to announce that I launched my new blog called nanopolitan 2.0 about a week ago. I now have a full featured blog on the WordPress platform. I chose it mainly because WordPress is an open source blog program. That it is also a full featured blog is another reason. In terms of ease of use, I still have to get over some rough edges over there. When I become fully comfortable, I expect to move to nanopolitan 2.0. Until then, posts will be shared between the two.

Please post your comments over there at nanopolitan 2.0.

An elusive Nobel

I am not an expert, but whatever I have read so far tells me that this one is unfair.

Quite a few physicists have written to the Nobel Committee that decided the Physics Prize that the contribution of E.C.G. Sudarshan, a physicist of Indian origin and currently at the University of Texas, Austin, has not been given due recognition in its decision to award one half of this year's Prize to Roy Glauber of Harvard University. The half that went for the theory of quantum optics, they have contended, should at least have been shared by both Roy Glauber (who got it) and Sudarshan (who didn't). The other half was shared by two experimental physicists.

Here is a little connection between IISc and Prof. Sudarshan: he was the founder chairman of IISc's Centre for Theoretical Physics, which has recently morphed into the Centre for High Energy Physics.

The details are set out in these two pieces by R. Ramachandran: Frontline and Hindu.

The version in the Hindu gives a long list of names of people who have signed that letter to the Committee. This story has made it to some of the outlets in the US as well: Inside Higher Ed, and the Harvard Crimson. The story in Inside Higher Ed (by David Epstein) also gives a short (and probably not exhaustive) list of similar occurrences in the history of the Nobel Prize.

NASSCOM asks for government help

Yes. Can you believe this?

[Begin Rant]

Here we are, thinking that the Indian software industry is a great success story and a role model. This news makes us -- me, at the least -- wonder why Kiran Karnik, the IT industry's major leader and figure-head seeks more help from the government.

It is good to recall the crucial help IT industry has received from the government in at least three ways: exemption from corporate taxes for N years (N = 10?), improvement in telecom infrastructure, and a policy non-interference in many other matters.

Let's look at the kinds of help he wants. Use of existing infrastructure in the government labs, and funds for filing patents. If you, like me, had any impression that IT industry has a solid VC culture, where good ideas will always be rewarded funded (along with a whole lot of bad ones too), just erase those impressions. Karnik wants government help!

If private players are unable to see something as patentable, just how will the government be able to decide? Using a committee of secretaries? If infrastructure is a problem, is it too much for someone with a great product idea to get enough VC funding to collaborate with labs as an equal partner? Just why should the government be spending more and more money on private initiatives, when public infrastructure -- roads, power, ports -- is crying out for attention.

Finally, government funding comes with government interference as well. Does Karnik want the latter too?

* * *

Just look at this editorial in yesterday's Hindu, which points to the "dismal scenario ... that only about 40 per cent of graduates from engineering colleges are employable". Why? Lack of qualified teachers.

Imagine a fresh engineer recruited by an IT company such as Infosys or Wipro. If his/her prior training is poor, the company spends extra money for remedial training. Instead of this mode of functioning, doesn't it make sense to spend some money on training the faculty? Of course, individual companies would not be able to do this, because each company is not sure that the benefits would accrue to it. But, a collective of IT companies -- NASSCOM! -- can certainly do it, with funding coming from its members. This collective could also publish manuals and other teaching aids.

Instead of taking up steps which are (a) entirely within its circle of influence, and (b) likely to result in a broadbased improvement in quality of human resources (IT industry is a Knowledge Industry, remember?), NASSCOM is wasting its time in asking for government help for a small segment of the industry.

* * *

It's not surprising at all that NASSCOM is identified more with lobbying than with any proactive measures.

[End Rant]

Cartoon summary of cricket

Except that it is all in French! [caution: it's a pdf file].

Link via Daniel Davies [aka dsquared] of Crooked Timber.

Don't fight with your spouse

If you want your wounds (physical ones, whether or not they were caused by your spouse) to heal faster. Wound-healing may be delayed as much as a day, says this report in New Scientist. The underlying research study was done by a team led by Janice Kiecolt-Glaser at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

The following comment is from Patricia Price of the Wound Healing Research Unit at Cardiff University, Wales, who was not involved in the study:

This study was carried out on healthy people – a lot of them young. So imagine the effect on people who are elderly or already immunosuppressed. Some wounds, such as leg ulceration associated with diabetic foot disease, can take months to heal and the implications of stress for these people could be enormous.

Link via Selva of SciAn Blog.

Today's science & tech news

Many, many years ago, a now-successful American cardiologist did some work on the side that showed some strange bacteria in the stomach linings of ulcer patients. But others could not reproduce his results partly because of private agendas. He was then dissuaded from pursuing this stuff, because his main line of work was cardiology. Others came along later, discovered the bacteria all over again, and are on their way to Stockholm to receive their Nobel Prize.

There aren't many people who can even claim to be in the same league. We are, after all, talking about Nobel-worthy work.

Read this sensitive and sympathetic profile of Dr. A. Stone Freedberg, a 97-year-old retired Harvard scientist.

Dr. Marshall [one of the Nobel-winners this year], asked in a telephone interview whether he would have won his Nobel Prize if Dr. Freedberg had been able to pursue his ulcer research, said, "No way."

"If Dr. Freedberg's team had been able to culture H. pylori," Dr. Marshall said, "they would have seen that bismuth kills the bacteria and they could have developed a treatment in a few years."

He added: "They would have won the Nobel Prize about 1951 as I was getting born. So it was just a bit of bad luck for a lot of people."

Very touching.

* * *

Donald McNeil Jr. has an article in the New York Times about some of the ideas being pursued by brilliant minds. If these ideas ever fructify, they would make this place a lot easier for people to live in. In particular, poor people would benefit a great deal from their success.

Just look at a sample of them: Dried vaccines that you can mix in a cup of juice, infecting mosquitos with life-shortening bacteria, studying prostitutes who are extremely resistant to HIV infection, developing cyanide-free cassavas, a kind of tuber that sustains life in Africa during hard times, developing a portable (palmtop?) diagnostic kit for use in poor areas, messing with the smell organs of mosquitoes so they leave humans alone, and many others.

Another news story earlier in the week reported that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated 84 million dollars to two organizations that are "working to prevent needless deaths of babies in the first few days of life."

They are some of the 43 research projects to be funded by the 'Grand Challenges to Global Health' program announced by Bill Gates in 2003. His 450 million dollar kitty "was to make sure that innovation wasn't reserved just for big-ticket items like cancer and heart disease".

Mr. Gates, in an interview, sidestepped a request to name his favorite projects. "Oh, I love all my children," he said.

But he remained brutally realistic about where his "children" - and the money he lavishes on them - were likely to end up. "Eighty percent of these are likely to be dead ends," he said. "But even if we have a 10 percent hit rate, it will all have been worthwhile."

Though I don't like the business or the tactics of M$, but I certainly admire the philanthropic instincts of one of its founders.

* * *

Eric Schmidt, co-founder of Google, and Hal Varian, a Berkeley professor and consultant to Google, have a Newsweek column in which they talk about "seven key principles we use to make knowledge workers most effective."

In case you are wondering, yes, one of them is "Don't do evil".

'The most amazing illusion'

Digg.com says so. And, guess what, it is so!

New York Times on India's Golden Quadrilateral

Here are the links to all the parts of Amy Waldman's series titled "India Accelerating":

1. Mile by Mile, India Paves a Smoother Road to Its Future: about the Golden Quadrilateral.
2. In Today's India, Status Comes With Four Wheels: about the auto boom.
3. On India's Roads, Cargo and a Deadly Passenger: about the spread of AIDS
4. All Roads Lead to Cities, Transforming India: about the migration to the cities

Amy Waldman, the India reporter of the New York Times, has a long and detailed story on the flagship highways programme of the Vajpayee government, that continues to be implemented by the Manmohan Singh regime. Also embedded within this story is a multimedia presentation on the Golden Quadrilateral that has lots of pictures accompanying her commentary.

I am linking to this because Waldman brings interesting perspectives of a Westerner to the table. Perspectives that a bright-eyed reporter for a business magazine might overlook. Some may take offence at the kinds of stuff she has put into the story: grinding poverty, manual labourers carrying concrete at a bridge construction site, bonded labourers working under bright lights supervised by a foreman with a whip. ...

Take, for example, the peg with which she starts her story.

In the middle of the old Grand Trunk Road a temple sits under a peepul tree. The surrounding highway is being widened to four lanes, and vehicles barrel along either side. But the temple and tree thwart even greater speed, and a passing contractor says they soon will be removed.

Kali, Hindu goddess of destruction, thinks otherwise. She is angry, say the colorfully garbed women massing in the holy tree's dappled shade. As evidence, they point to one woman's newly pockmarked face and other mysterious ailments recently visited on their nearby village, Jagdishrai. They have tried to convince Kali that the tree and temple devoted to her must go, but they have failed. Now they have no choice but to oppose the removal, too, even if they must block the road to do it.

Goddess versus man, superstition versus progress, the people versus the state - mile by mile, India is struggling to modernize its national highway system, and in the process, itself.

Or, consider this:

Outside Jaipur, young men virtually bonded into labor hack with primitive tools at old tires. They work in an archaic assembly line beside the highway, chopping the tires into pieces and loading them onto trucks so they can be burned as toxic fuel at a brick kiln. The tent camp they call home splays out in dirty disarray behind them. A brutish overseer verbally whips them to work faster.

"Please take me out of here," Rafiq Ahmed, 21, whispered as he bent in the darkness to lift another load. "My back hurts."

She also reports on the positives which I am sure you have seen in umpteen magazines. Business magazines, in particular.

Just go read the whole thing. Like it or not, it's out there. While at it, don't forget to see the accompanying multimedia presentation [the link is embedded inside the story]. This seems to be the first of a four part series; I will keep adding links to the other parts.

An interview with ...

... Narendra Jadhav, Principal Adviser and Chief Economist at the Reserve Bank of India.

The blurb on the India Together page adds that "he is also a Dalit and strong advocate of reservations in the private sector."

The interview covers a lot of finance and economics stuff, and becomes quite heavy at times. His views on reservation for Dalits, particularly in the private sector, appear towards the bottom third of the interview.

Brain imports

The New York Times, in an editorial urges the State and Homeland Security Departments to sort out the issue of "cumbersome and off-putting" visa procedures for students.

Here is an excellent reality-check paragraph:

The fact is that the competition for foreign students has become far more intense. While American campuses are still by far the favorite destination, they have been steadily losing market share for years, especially to Canada, Australia and Europe. Now the European Union is considering offering citizenship to foreign students who complete their doctorates at European universities. That's a powerful incentive, even if it does smack of actively encouraging a brain drain from developing countries. But then, Rajiv Gandhi's famed formulation still holds: "Better brain drain than brain in the drain."

BTW, does anyone know when Rajiv Gandhi said this interesting quote?

In an op-ed from exactly a year ago, Ashis Nandy says:

"... Technically, no university could invite a foreign scholar to give a lecture even while he was visiting India as a tourist. It too required prior clearance, and of course, as everybody knows, foreign participants of all seminars had to be cleared. ... "

He was talking about the Indira Gandhi era of the late sixties and early seventies!

I only wish some Indian newspaper would write such a well reasoned and passionate editorial asking the Indian government to ease its visa procedures for foreign students and scholars. Right now, the procedures are absolutely horrible!

Take, for example, foreign scholars visiting the country for a conference. The conference organizer must inform the Indian government about the foreign scholars, and seek its clearance and permission. Then, this information should go to the Indian embassy/consulate where the visitor applies for a visa. There are default waiting periods (and delays) in every step. These procedures smack of a collective insecurity, impose immense costs in terms of time and energy for everyone, and deserve immediate change.

Wikipediaaah! (Part 2)

Rememeber this post from two days ago? It has made it to New York Times! Katharine Seelye, the reporter, goes a little bit deeper into the vandalism issue, and has taken the views of Jimmy Wales, the creator of wikipedia. After citing some impressive figures, she gets to the crux of the problem.

It has, by most measures, been a spectacular success. Wikipedia is now the biggest encyclopedia in the history of the world. As of Friday, it was receiving 2.5 billion page views a month, and offering at least 1,000 articles in 82 languages. The number of articles, already close to two million, is growing by 7 percent a month. And Mr. Wales said that traffic doubles every four months.

Still, the question of Wikipedia, as of so much of what you find online, is: Can you trust it?

And beyond reliability, there is the question of accountability. [...]

Wales has promised some new initiatives that will address these concerns. One of them is to have a reviewing and rating mechanism, and another is to disallow unregistered users to create new pages.

I also want to correct the impression that I may have given unintentionally here. Wikipedia works, and works very well most of the time. Its entries on many topics are superbly written (so superb, in fact, it is difficult to imagine that it is all *only* a volunteer activity), and it is a vital resource for all of us. It is important to keep in mind that these issues of reliability and accountability are newsworthy only because they are so rare. Aren't you glad to know that vandals are so rare? Or perhaps, there are many more vandals, but most of them are writing virus programs for M$ Windows. ;-)

'What they don't teach you at Graduate School'

In a rather irregular series on 'advice' to graduate students in this blog, this one is truly special. This article in Inside HigherEd by Paul Gray and David E. Drew gives a coherent set of advice to not only thosee thinking about graduate school, but also those thinking about post-doctoral positions, and about their first faculty jobs. It's all US centric and too general (it addresses people in pretty much every discipline), so take it all in the right spirit -- as a generic guide to what one might expect in academia.

A lot of what the authors say is quite sensible. For example, look at this:

Finish your Ph.D. as early as possible. Don’t feel that you need to create the greatest work that Western Civilization has ever seen. Five years from now the only thing that will matter is whether you finished.

Or, this

A Ph.D. is a certification of research ability based on a sample of 1. The Ph.D. certifies that you are able to do quality research. ... The people who sign your dissertation are making a large bet on your ability to do it again and again in the future.

A very sobering perspective, but very true, as well.

While reading this article, don't forget the comments. I found at least one of them that had a really interesting idea:

... I have often thought the Ph.D. process was the most INTELLECTUALLY unbearable part of my life. Focus, focus, focus, narrow, narrow, narrow, grind, grind, grind. Prospective academics should have the option of writing a Ph.D. dissertation (Zzzzzzzz) or completing three, more or less related (and be creative in relating them) master’s degrees, all with serious master’s theses, of course.

Writing those papers for publication as a graduate student was quite wonderful — even exciting at times – but I would have much preferred completing a master’s in mathematics (probability), a master’s in physics (“modern” physics), and a master’s in philosophy (history of science). Now, wouldn’t that have been fun? And if education can’t be fun ... well what’s the point?

In addition to producing a generalist, in a science setting, it would also produce a truly interdisciplinary person. I really like this idea; there is a real need for people who can talk multiple languages in science and engineering, because many of the exciting problems are at the interfaces (or the walls) between disciplines. There is really a great value in having a few cats that can negotiate such walls skillfully. Except that individual departments will have to develop an expertise to evaluate candidates of this kind; I don't expect that to happen anytime soon. So, this proposal of multiple masters instead of one long Ph.D, though interesting, is dead on arrival.

'Press Plagiarist of the Year Award'

Via slashdot: BBC has a story about three bloggers coming together to announce the inaugural Press Plagiarist of the Year Award.

Check it out; it is a lot of fun, at the expense of a bunch of people who really don't deserve their reputations.

Farmer suicides in Maharashtra ...

... and cotton subsidies to farmers in the US.

Yesterday's Hindu carried an op-ed by P. Sainath, about the plight of farmers in the Vidharbha region of Maharashtra, that has driven more than 300 farmers to commit suicide in just one of the eleven districts of that region between 2001 and 2005. Not surprisingly, Sainath's op-ed is passionate, vigorously argued, rich with details. Here is a couple of excerpts [with some emphasis added by me]:

Vidharbha's mainly cotton farmers have been hit by rising input costs and the crash of output prices. They have also been ruined by the collapse of rural credit. The banks will simply not help them. So they turn to moneylenders. While 58 per cent of all farm households in the State are in debt, it's a lot worse in Vidharbha. Here, close to 90 per cent of short-term credit needs are met by private loan sharks. Meanwhile, farmers have also been crushed by fake seed dealers. Mindless de-regulation has crippled the sector.

[...]

Meanwhile, the State Government has helped boost private traders. Those who exploit this mess to lift the farmer's produce at rock bottom prices. Their parallel markets can now function openly. Also, the State has never pushed the Centre to stop the dumping of highly subsidised cotton from the rich nations. Giant subsidies by the United States to its producers have killed the price of cotton. The duty on cotton imports is just 10 per cent. On sugar — affecting western Maharashtra — it is 60 per cent.

Those sentences in bold point an accusing finger at the rich countries -- in the case of cotton, it is the US -- for the subsidies that they provide to an ever dwindling number of farmers. Recently, Tyler Cowen had a post with this little nugget:

Over 2001 and 2002, America's 25,000 cotton farmers received more subsidies -- about $3 billion -- than the entire economic output of Burkina Faso in a year. Two million people in Burkina Faso live partly or fully from cotton farming.

These subsidies are at the centre of the struggle in WTO between developing and developed countries. Recently, Brazil has threatened to stall the ongoing Doha Round of negotiations until the developing nations' demands on agricultural subsidies are met -- a move that was wholeheartedly supported by the New York Times in an editorial.