Women's solidarity with bar girls

Going by the reports, posts and opinions in the English media and blogs, the verdict seems to be that the government has no business messing about with dance bars and the bar girls. I have nothing new to add to this issue, except to just say that I am in agreement with this verdict. I hope the Government will junk its current policy of moral policing. If at all it should get involved in this issue, it should spend its regulatory energy to ensure better working conditions for the bar girls.

What I have here in this post is just an observation about the fairly large number of women and women's groups that have lent their strong support for the bar girls (if not directly for the bars themselves) in their struggle against the Maharashtra Government's ill-conceived, misguided move to "protect decency". Here is a sampler:

• Rashmi Bansal, the editor and publisher of a popular youth magazine called JAM - Just Another Magazine, has a blog post:

  "The argument that dance bars corrupt the youth is not valid. The youth have multiple avenues for corruption. Let the youth make their own choice."
  
  That's the opinion of writer Suketu Mehta, in an interview to Sunday Mid day. The issue in question is the closure of dance bars in Mumbai - and across Maharashtra. And I certainly agree with his assessment.

• Writing in the Financial Express, Sucheta Dalal, first reveals that she is "no advocate of dance bars", and adds:

  "But the sudden closure of legitimately licensed businesses, without responsibility for loss of state revenue, needs a discussion. And, a blanket ban only covers the failure of police and enforcement machinery and the corruption involved in granting bar licences. It also sets the stage for bigger payoffs to reverse the ban, or to turn a blind eye when the business goes underground".

• Tavleen Singh in the Deccan Herald:

  "When political leaders run out of ideas, when they no longer know how to meet the people's real demands they resort to cabarets and sideshows to distract the populace. [...] How else to explain why the government should be concerning itself with banning dance bars when there is so much real work to be done".

• Jyoti Punwani in the Indian Express:

  With the grossest "item numbers" being staple fare on TV, cyber cafes in Mumbai charging as little as Rs 20 an hour to surf the Net, blue-film parlours sprouting in every small town, every second movie being almost soft porn, and X-rated magazines displayed all over the city after 7 pm, it's difficult to judge exactly what role dance bars, where customers must spend far more money than on any of the above, play in corrupting Maharashtra's teenaged boys and male breadwinners. Is it okay to be titillated by crude and graphic images of writhing half-clad women wherever you go, but not okay to actually see them in the flesh?

• Here is Neha Viswanathan:

  Let's face it. The dance bars' girls are probably doing the same job as actors in cinema. Except there is no camera rolling, and no Simi Garewal to interview them to know about their innermost feelings while they were sipping Coconut water after the shoot.

• Reshma Patil has a very good front page report in the Indian Express, titled "Mumbai police flaunt the law, ignore fine print".
• This report in the Hindu (written by a "special correspondent") is a clincher: "Women's groups express support for dance girls", and they cite solid reasons for doing so. On a related note, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has sought the comments and response from the Chief Secretary of Maharashtra on this issue in four weeks.
• The Writer-in-exile, who appears to be a woman, asks, "should dance bars be closed", answers "NO", and gives a bunch of reasons. Take a look.
• Finally, here is Kama, whose self description at blogger reads, "I am an Indian Devadasi. I therefore believe that sex with men is divine and draws me closer to the presence of my Gods":

  This is so stupid as to be beyond belief ! Anyone who considers making 100 000 dancing women unemployed is going to "prevent" prostitution has got to be a total idiot. However this is typical of the Indian middle class when they seek to protect working class women.

Update (19 April 2005): Do take a look at some men's point of view here

When the taxman comes calling ...

Arnav Pandya offers some advice.

Is HCL the new HLL?

Ten years ago, many people held the view that Hindustan Lever (HLL) was the fount of managerial talent, and many CEOs (of other companies) had HLL on their resumes. Today's Economic Times claims that HCL (Shiv Nadar's conglomerate that has within its fold HCL Infosystems, HCL Technologies, NIIT and many others), goes beyond even HLL. Apparently, not only do managers flow out of HCL like Ganges out of Gangothri (or innovations out of Google), but entrepreneurs do as well!

In a growing economy, when many new firms come into existence, isn't it evident that many CEO's would be needed? Wouldn't they come from existing companies? All else being equal, wouldn't more of them come from big companies than from small companies? Wouldn't there be a good number of CEOs who had worked earlier at Reliance, HLL, ITC, Infosys, Wipro, et al?

Has HCL been truly unique in developing managerial and entrepreneurial talent? The article, written by Vinod Mahanta, tries hard, but I am not convinced.

It is truly shocking!

Is it really possible? Can people really do all this with a cellphone?

Navel-gazing at The Hindu

Can you imagine a newspaper that actually issues a guide that tells the readers how to navigate through it? The Hindu, the great 115-year old newspaper from the South, recently went through a re-design. I have to say the newspaper is much nicer now, but does it need a guide? Come on ...

I thought only the Times of India is into serious self-promotion, with articles about itself (and its affiliates, surrogates) that look like news. Yesterday, The Hindu had two articles (one of them by N. Ram, its Editor-in-Chief), and interview with Mario Garcia, the designer, and a report about a function organized to celebrate this redesign. Today, it has one full page of readers' response to its new look, which Ram says, "offers a more contemporary, elegant, and functional newspaper".

Serious case of navel-gazing, this.

On a slightly different note, why is it that our newspapers do not provide any information about the authors of their op-ed articles? I think it is absolutely essential, even when the author is on the newspaper's staff.

One more on higher ed

This seems to be the week for articles on higher education. First, there was Abdul Kalam, and now it is the turn of Prof. Philip Altbach of Boston College to give his views in an op-ed in today's Hindu. I hope to have more on this later.

Bachelors program at IISc and TIFR?

Update (almost 10 months later): Venkat, over at Domesticated Onion, offers his opinion on this matter here.

Before I begin, I request you to read this disclaimer: I am writing all this stuff as a private individual; my employer is not responsible for any of the views and opinions in this post -- or, for that matter, in any of the other posts in this blog! .... Hmmm.... I feel much better now!

Let us now start with a scene in the movie, Desperately seeking Susan, in which the character played by the pop diva Madonna is at a party, and her friend introduces one "Dr. Smith" (see [1] in the footnotes) to her. After a bit of stilted conversation, the man leaves the two friends alone, and Madonna asks her friend in a voice full of thinly suppressed disdain, "Is he a real doctor, or is he one of those Ph.D.'s?".

This post is about the question of whether our elite research institutions (ERIs), represented by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research (TIFR), should offer undergraduate (UG) programs. This question is only going to become more and more insistent with time. The reason is simple: the ERIs, whose research capabilities are unrivalled at any other Indian university, do not have an UG program. Sure they offer PhDs by the hundreds every year; but shouldn't they also award Bachelors degrees if they want to be seen as a real university [2]? After all, there aren't many universities without a strong UG program (in fact, I cannot think of any, right at the moment).

There is a widespread perception that undergraduate education -- particularly in the sciences -- is not in a great shape in our universities. Given such perceptions, there will certainly be a move to make the ERIs start UG programs. Let us take a look at two important drivers behind the move, which I think will succeed sooner or later:

1. Remember the recent budget speech by our Finance Minister, Mr. P. Chidambaram? He announced that he "propose[s] to provide [to IISc] an additional sum of Rs.100 crore as a grant for this purpose". What is "this purpose" that Chidambaram is talking about? To make IISc a world class university! While the media went berserk with the "world class" meme, I am sure quite soon the attention will turn to the "university" meme. If the premise that real universities -- particularly the ones mentioned by Chidambaram himself: Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge and Oxford -- are deeply into UG education, don't you think someone in the Parliament is going to ask, "how far has this 100 Crore largesse helped in achieving its stated goal?".

2. Research degrees alone don't a university make. Thus, if you disregard any of the masters programs (e.g. IISc's engineering departments offer M.E., M.Tech and M.Des. programs), what the ERI's do is quite simple, conceptually: almost complete focus on research, coupled with meagre teaching. In other words, this mode of functioning is so similar to that of research labs -- including those run by the Departments of Space (DoS), Atomic Energy (DAE), Defence (DoD), and a giant organization called the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

Here is an interesting twist: CSIR has already caught onto this fact, and has already applied to the University Grants Commission (UGC) for a "deemed university" status for some of its labs, so that they can offer Ph.D. degree programs without having to depend on the benevolence of nearby universities. Some people have told me that UGC has granted some of its labs this status, but I have not been able to verify it.

A related point is that starting such institutions that concentrate only on the research programs leading to a Ph.D. degree is not all that difficult. All it requires is a sufficiently motivated scientist who has a powerful politician as a friend. There are quite a few examples of such institutions in India.

Given these facts, I think it is only a matter of time before ERIs decide that they are better off joining the ranks of "real universities" than being a part of this motley crowd of labs and small, specialized research institutions.

I think these two important drivers will do much to push the ERIs in the direction of starting UG programs. I also think that the journey of ERIs towards the goal of UG education and real university-hood is much less difficult than the reverse journey of the universities to improve their research performance (which, I hasten to add, is also essential). Further, given the intellectual firepower available in ERIs, they can easily set an example (for other universities to follow) in terms of innovation in designing and delivering UG programs [3].

Finally, there is an argument that, with the proliferation of engineering colleges all across the country, there will be no takers for UG programs in science. My answer is that science will always attract students if good institutions offer programs in science. In this respect, ERIs are better placed than anyone else.

It is time to end this post with a question similar to Madonna's: "Are you ERIs ever going to become real universities, or are you going to be content with being "deemed universities"?

---

Footnotes

[1]: I haven't seen the movie, so I am not sure about this name (Dr. Smith).

[2]: A university can be defined as the place where knowledge is created, preserved, and disseminated. ERI's are certainly good at the first two, but contribute very little to dissemination of knowledge to the younger generation on a large scale. Our universities, on the other hand, seem to concentrate on educating students, than on knowledge creation and preservation.

[3]: An educational innovation that comes to mind immediately is to move away from the archaic 3-year B.Sc. program to a more standard 4 year BS program in sciences, that will put it on the same footing with the 4-year BE programs in engineering. Some of you may recall that the earlier, 5-year BE programs underwent some "reforms" to become the current, rather successful 4-year program.

A rather sad reputation ...

There are many people who hold a dim view of teaching and teachers. I have pointed out in the past interesting expressions of such views by Nietsche, and by some of our own.

I found this morning, through a post by Kieran Healy, some juicy quotes which just prove the point that maligning academics is a business that is alive and well.

Just a couple of them here:

Kieran quotes from Patrick O'Brian in The Ionian Mission:

"...teaching young gentlemen has a dismal effect upon the soul. It exemplifies the badness of established, artificial authority. The pedagogue has almost absolute authority over his pupils: he often beats them and insensibly loses the sense of respect due to them as fellow human beings. He does them harm, but the harm they do him is far greater. He may easily become the all-knowing tyrant, always right, always virtuous; in any event he perpetually associates with his inferiors, the king of his company; and in a surprisingly short time alas this brands him with the mark of Cain."

Harry Hutton, in his comments on Kieran's post, offers this one by H.L. Mencken:

The truth is that the average schoolmaster, on all the lower levels, is and always must be essentially and next door to an idiot, for how can one imagine an intelligent man engaging in so puerile an avocation?

I suggest you read Kieran's post and the comments. I found a few more such quotes by doing a bit of googling. Here is another one from the legendary H.L. Mencken, whose writing is a veritable source of juicy quotes on all kinds of things:

Of all the human qualities, the one I admire the most is competence. A tailor who is really able to cut and fit a coat seems to me an admirable man, and by the same token a university professor who knows little or nothing of the thing he presumes to teach seems to me to be a fraud and a rascal.

and, finally, this one from the great Mark Twain:

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

If you know any more of these quotes, as someone put it so memorably less than two years ago, "Bring'em on!".

Economics in one lesson

Via Brad DeLong:

Tyler Cowen tells us that Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson is now online.

Brad goes on to offer a critique of Henry Hazlitt's work; his critique starts with "It's an excellent book to read if one already knows a significant amount of economics"; he then recounts all the conditions that must be satisfied for classical economics to work that are ignored by this book, and offers a tentative conclusion: "his book [is] very dangerous indeed to a beginner in economics". So, beware!

This seems to be Brad's season for recommending online books; in two earlier posts, he recommended Doug Henwood's Wall Street, and Milton Friedman's Roofs or Ceilings? The Current Housing Problem.

Gripe water

The mighty Economic Times talks about a lowly product, gripe water, a category dominated by TTK Healthcare's Woodwards brand that sees minimal advertising of a boring, repetitive kind. Almost all pediatricians are against its use, and some actively attack it. In spite of these problems, the product is a best seller. So, what gives? Vikram Doctor has the answer!

An interesting quote from a doctor who thinks this product is useless: "Gripe water is really only good at soothing the parents"! The company, of course, says these attacks by pediatricians are misguided, since their main complaint -- that the product used to have small amounts of alcohol -- is no longer valid; their product has been alcohol-free since the 80's.

The article also talks about colicky babies who are fed this concoction; I am not so sure. When I grew up, babies were given gripe water routinely -- colic or no colic. I am quite sure this sort of indiscriminate use is still common.

We really have no experience with this product whatsoever, since our son grew up without too much of a fuss. I guess we just got lucky. Thanks Aadhu!

Doug Henwood's Wall Street

Doug Henwood's 1997 book, Wall Street, is now available online. Hat-tip: Brad DeLong, who says "It's a very good book", and recommends it highly. Daniel Davies offers a solid endorsement for the book: he says it could equally well be a textbook for MBA courses.

Abdul Kalam on science in India

The President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam's inaugural speech at a recent Indian Physics Association seminar at Kharagpur appears in today's Hindu as an op-ed. It is about attracting bright and enthusiastic youth to science as the major challenge that we face. Here are some of his suggestions:

An assured career in science is essential for a certain number of high quality committed scientists with aptitude towards research. There should be a minimum annual intake of about 300 M.Sc and 100 Ph.D scientists with proper emoluments and assured career growth in organisations such as ISRO, DRDO, Atomic Energy, CSIR, DST, and universities. Private and government funded universities must be encouraged to appoint M.Sc and Ph.D scientists selected through a nationally coordinated competitive selection process. This will be a great motivator for science students and their parents. It will be an assurance to youth and their parents that the future is secure once they take up a career in science.

Experienced scientists and policy makers must recognise the talent available in their organisations irrespective of their position. They must empower young scientists to create state-of-the art laboratories once they have concrete thoughts and vision. Vikram Sarabhai in the initial stages of ISRO brought in a culture of management, which encouraged and satisfied the vision of young scientists that collectively succeeded in making the mission of the organisation a reality.

Universities and Research & Development institutions must encourage and facilitate young scientists to write quality research papers in frontier areas and in prestigious journals. They should also facilitate youth to present papers in national and international seminars and symposia, which will enable them to assess their standard against international benchmarks. Encouraging youth to be lead authors while publishing joint research would be a very good gesture, which youngsters will cherish for many years.

Based on my experience of interacting with 600,000 students, I feel they are looking for role models to follow after their 10+2 career. Approximately seven million students appear for the plus two examinations every year; and three million of them are from the science stream. To attract them to a career in science, we need many novel ideas.

Youth must be made to understand the beauty of doing science, the pleasure of doing science, and the ultimate bliss when results of science make you understand nature, master it, control it, and finally make things that improve the quality of life of humankind. Every scientist must pledge that he or she will spend at least some time visiting schools to ignite young minds by recounting his or her experiences.

Laptops for poor kids?

Uh oh, Nicholas Negroponte (of MIT's Media Lab, whose audacious plan to use Indian Government funds to run its own version in India was scuttled by Arun Shourie about 12 - 24 months ago) is deeply into development through ICT, again! The Hindu had this AP report about his efforts to get low-priced laptops into the hands of children in the developing countries. Apparently, Dr. Negroponte has made a pitch for this plan in January at the World Economic Forum, and has a few corporate backers: Advanced Micro Devices, Google and News Corp.

Now, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such pious initiatives. The only problem is from a simple fact: what the children in developing countries really need is proper education -- good public (or inexpensive private) schools, teachers, blackboard, and .... hold your nose ... toilets! I certainly wouldn't like our governments to get into such fancy projects because of all the good media they get, and divert scarce resources to them instead of things that would make a real difference -- like schools.

Read the report anyway, and there is some interesting information regarding technology bottlenecks (mostly in the form of display monitor) that need to be tackled in creating a 100 Dollar laptop. There is also a reference to the Simputer, "a $220 hand-held device developed by Indian scientists in 2001 that only last year became available and is not selling well". Four of our colleagues from the Institute were involved in developing the simputer, and their version is being marketed in India under the brand Amida Simputer. While it has some really cool features, I guess in this age of 4000 rupee mobile phones, it would really be difficult to sell a 11000 rupee hand-held device.

Update: looks like the "simputer is a failure" meme has been slash-dotted. This time, the discussion is about this AP story.

Director Balaram

Deccan Herald, Bangalore's very own newspaper, has reported that Prof. Balaram is the choice of the search committee appointed to select the next Director of the Indian Institute of Science, where I work. The reporter has of course hedged things by saying that his selection needs to be approved by several layers of bureaucracy, including the President of the country.

This is absolutely fantastic news for us in the Institute. I am sure many people have known the public face of Prof. Balaram as the editor of Current Science, India's leading journal for science and science news; in his editorials, Prof. Balaram has tackled some of the pressing issues that this country faces in the realms of science education and research. In the discussions on the practice of science in India, his has always been a voice of reason, sanity and understated passion.

I just want to recount an episode from 2002. In its issue dated 25th October, the magazine Science reported that Shobo Bhattacharya (then a scientist at NEC Research Institute in Princeton, New Jersey) was chosen to head the Tata Institute for Fundamental Research, where he still is the director. In the article, the reporter quoted several senior and "very senior" scientists from India complaining that there were very few bright scientists left in the country to take up such leadership positions, and that there is a " missing generation"; let me recount some of their quotes:

• C.N.R. Rao: "There is a lack of leaders in the age group of 45 to 55 years..."
• M.G.K. Menon: "Without question there is a certain crisis"
• Goverdhan Mehta: "With our scientific output on the decline, this [leadership crisis] was inevitable ..., and the problem is going to become even more acute"

The rest of the report is peppered with "missing generation", "slim pickings", "matter of serious concern", and other such nonsense. Reading this report was so painful for me and many others -- don't get me wrong here: our pain was not because of the selection of Shobo Bhattacharya; after all, if he was the best among the contenders, he should be chosen. Period. Our anguish and pain were due to the derogatory remarks (that were plainly contrary to any objectively observable facts) about a whole generation of younger scientists; my first reaction on reading these remarks was, "Uh oh, these guys are so clueless they don't even know what to say when a reporter's mike is in front of them". After a bit more of thought, I concluded that these guys are truly -- and shamelessly -- self-serving; after all, the beneficiaries of the meme that there is a missing generation in science leadership are just the guys spreading this meme actively; using this meme as a pretext, they get to continue to lead science in the country -- possibly for life!

Well, you would not be surprised to know that many of us felt very strongly at that time that these senior scientists did a great disservice to the cause of science in this country through their irresponsible statements. Therefore, you can imagine our immense relief when Prof. Balaram echoed our views (and then some) in this Current Science editorial two months later. Read his editorial, and you will see why I am happy that he is going to be the leader of our Institute.

Joel on FogBugz

Here is a very interesting series of five articles by that great writer on software development, Joel Spolsky, whom I have mentioned before. In this series titled "The Road to FogBugz 4.0", Joel recounts the history of development of the new version of his company's flagship software. I really don't have any idea about FogBugz, but I can appreciate much of what he says about software development; and, he says a lot also about much else about running a business, the role of interns, strategy, pricing, and so on. Read the articles; they are educational, informative, entertaining and great!

Along the way -- in the fourth article, I think -- I learned of a couple of really nice sites. One of them is the CSS Zen Garden which is devoted to website designs using nothing but web standards established by W3C and other organizations. In particular, it uses just XHTML and CSS to produce beautiful designs for web pages (it contains an archive of designs contributed by others). All this may sound rather drab, but take a look at their astonishingly fresh designs, and prepare yourself to be amazed!

The other link I found is to Mike Gunderlo's site The Daily Grind. Mike's advice for writers, while seemingly written to an audience of writers about computers and software, should be useful for others as well.