An Almost Happy Country

Tshering Tobgay is an amazingly gifted communicator. As the Prime Minister of Bhutan, he comes through as a person with a fine sense of humor, one who has an endearingly hesitant, modest way of connecting with his audience.

Seeing this TED presentation brought back memories of my own trips to Bhutan in in the late 1990s as a part of the JICA team for evaluating the Paro Valley Agriculture Development Project. Of the crisp, clean air, chunky furniture at Tashi Delek hotel, cheerful government officials in white woolen shawls, and of the surreal feel of a country where the citizens were told what to wear, how to build & decorate houses, and what to see on television.

Tobgay's eloquence on Gross National Happiness also made me wonder about the 100,000 ethnic Nepali's who had been expelled from Bhutan in the 1990s. That is one in every seven Bhutanese. Perhaps it is easier to find happiness after a successful round of ethnic cleansing... or perhaps such a move only rankles those who have lived most of their lives in multi-everything countries.

I am also curious to learn more about "Bhutan for Life" which is being described as 'an innovative funding initiative' for ensuring conservation of natural resources, in perpetuity. WWF-Bhutan provides a sketchy outline of the scheme and Tobgay's had claimed in his presentation that the fund - "multi-party single-closing deal"  - based on Wall Street practices, would be ready by the 'end of the year'.

Where can I find details of the this fund? Who are the donors involved here? What is their pound of flesh?

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REFERENCES and LINKS

* Tshering Tobgay, PM of Bhutan - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tshering_Tobgay
* TED Talk transcript - https://www.ted.com/talks/tshering_tobgay_this_country_isn_t_just_carbon_neutral_it_s_carbon_negative/transcript?language=en
* Dowling, Tim (2015): Unhappy? Welcome to Bhutan - the nation of 90% Joy -- http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/04/unhappy-bhutan-joy-happiness-gdp
* Forbes () - Bhutan for Life - http://www.forbes.com/pictures/mjh45egflj/bhutan-for-life-a-conse/
* WWF Bhutan - http://www.wwfbhutan.org.bt/bhutan_for_life/

WiFi and Basic Needs

This illustration says it all.

It might be stretching things a bit, but it does indicate how staying connected seems to have becomesome sort of a desperate, visceral need. We now choose hotels and eateries based on their ability to provide reliable bandwidth as much as the quality of accomodation or food. There is now a joke going around that, even at home, the best way to have a family get-together is to switch off the wireless router!

In an earlier post, I had figured that all WiFi devices talk to each other in the 2.4 GHz frequency, and that as per international protocols this band is divided into 79 channels (each 1 MHz wide) which the devices can change up to 1600 times per second, just to keep a data connection going.

I still have no idea how the scientists managed to create anything that sends out 1,000,000,000 vibrations per second, let alone how they go about slicing it like a cake and passing it around with all the icing and toppings intact.

Perhaps it is easier to understand things that are happening at an individual device level. Here are two parameters from my WiFi analyser:

The first screenshot shows that the signal strength ranges from -100 dBm (decibel milliwatts) to -40 dBm. The key unit here is that of power - Watts. It takes a thousandth (1/1000) of a Watt to send out signal equal to 0 dB.

The negative sign comes from the log scale. To quote WirelessAnnonymous:

Under a log 10 scale, a value of -2 represents 10 to the -2 power, which equals 0.01. Likewise, a negative dBm means that you're applying a negative exponent in your power calculations; 0 dBm equals 1 mW of power, so -10 dBm equates to 0.1 mW, -20 dBm equates to 0.01 mW, and so forth. It's a lot easier, and more useful in some calculations, to describe a weak signal as -100 dBm as opposed to 0.0000000001 mW.

The following shot illustrates how the signal strengh drops the further you move away from a router. The closest ones are sending out signals stronger than -50dBm while the farthest ones have the green bands diminishing into the -90 dBm range.



Then you have the next most important thing: the media access control (MAC) address.

When you have millions of data signals riding piggypack on radio waves, it is necessary to ensure that they reach the right destinations. For this, each WiFi device comes with a unique MAC address and they all use the address resolution protocol (ARP) to avoid cross-talk. If we compare the whole set up to city traffic, MAC represents the final destinations (a mall, home or fuel station). Vehicles (data packets) traveling along the roads (the internet protocol/IP) are capable of reaching anywhere but get an entry only to those places which have a matching MAC address.

This brings us to the next basic need - how do we stay safe from the carjackers, and hackers hiding in the dark streets?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* Reading signal strength -- http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/9782-43-read-signal-strength
* How to Geek - MAC Address - http://www.howtogeek.com/169540/what-exactly-is-a-mac-address-used-for/
* Ask Leo: IP address vs. MAC address -- https://askleo.com/whats_the_difference_between_a_mac_address_and_an_ip_address/

Talking of Raw Deals

In my scheme of things, a conference is worthwhile if it can give you at least one extraordinary takeaway. At the South-South Conference organised recently by RIS in New Delhi, I was pleasantly surprised to come across at least three great presentations.

The first was by Prof. Thomas Pogge of Yale University. Quite unlike the regular Indian academics who drown the audience with high sounding jargon and bombast, Pogge started out on a modest note, and put forth a few statling facts:

• 62 richest individuals have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the world population
• Corporate lobbying for a tax holidays -- for every $1 spent on lobbying the corporations saved them $220 in taxes
• Globalization is increasing inequality

Contrary to the official government position of USA, Pogge congratulated the Indian government for standing up the evergreening and bullying tactics of bigpharma!  

Then came Branislav Gosovic. He was introduced as an expert on South-South issues but prefered to call himself 'just a student' with a Montenegro tribal instict to stubbornly resist anything that was perceived as injustice.

Gosovic talked of his 40 years of witnessing how the UN system - particularly institutions like the UNCTAD was subverted by the developed countries. According to him, the 1960s was the 'Golden Age' during which poorer countries - the G77 - were consolidating themselves under the UNCTAD banner.

Then came the Heritage Foundation, a US-based think-tank that put out a 2000 page report highlighting how such a consolidation would harm the interests of the reining world powers. Inspired by this report a series of steps were taken to throttle UNCTAD. Its dynamic leaders were removed before the Uruguay Round, funding was curtailed and steps taken to undermine the G77.

According to Gosovic, what remains of UNCTAD is just a hollow shell. The only global think-tank that now stands up for the G77 is the South Centre, Geneva.

A representative from the South Centre, Manuel Gomes and Jomo Kwame Sundaram of Malaysia, reinforced some of the points mentioned by Pogge and Gosovic by presenting data on -

• Base Erosion Profit Shifting (BEPS): Tracing of  Illicit Financial Flows -- MNCs in developing countries charge their loal subsidiaries all kinds of fees....and in the end claim that there is no income to be taxed at all!
• Aid allocations have gone down from the promised $ 0.7% of GDP to $ 0.29%

• TPP Treaty -- Bilateral Investment Treaties now allow private companies to sue governments and force them to act against national interest:
• French in Egypt over increase of wages
• Robert Schillier's book -- Malaysia herbicides -- carcinogenic, and a mild form of agent orange. Action by the government to protect the health of its citizens drew them into an expensive legal battle with the MNCs

The RIS conference was a great way to bring together bring together countries and people who do not  (yet) have the money, power and institutional support enjoyed by the OECD. Whether it will takes things beyond the talking and report-publishing, into the realm of real action, remains to be seen.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* RIS Conference on South-South Cooperation - http://www.ris.org.in/conference-south-south-cooperation
* Wiki - Thomas Pogge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pogge
* TED Video - Medicines for the 99 Percent with a "Health Impact Fund" - - https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_pogge_medicine_for_the_99_percent
* http://www.ipsnews.net/author/branislav-gosovic/
* Jomo Kwame Sundaram - http://www.jomoks.org/

Daryaganj Monster

In the City of Djinns, there is a new monster sitting in the middle of one of its oldest streets. Arms outstretched into the sky, this yellow giant towers over the buses, trees and buildings, like a punk teenager waving out to the minarets of Old Delhi.

Step closer and you would see that it is a huge crane mounted on an oversized truck.  "Liebherr" says the modest logo one one side, and the name of the construction company telescopes into the skies. 

What does this machine do? 

According to the locals, it has been brought in to pull out the Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) which has been burrowing under the streets. The DMRC website says that the Daryaganj-Delhi Gate line has the largest TBM assembled so far. 

Where can I get some reliable information on these Liebherr's? How much weight can they carry? Why do they need to have those huge arms?

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* Liebherr Cranes -- http://www.liebherr.com/en/deu/products/mobile-and-crawler-cranes/mobile-cranes/mobile-cranes.html

* Delhi Metro - 96m long Tunnel Boring Machine - http://www.delhimetrorail.com/whatnew_details.aspx?id=c4kJd1nWTgMlld

Solar Powered Vendors

The world is moving on -  coconut vendors are now equipped with solar panels!

Until last year the most popular - and affordable - lighting technology available to the vendors was the "petromax" lamp. Messy, polluting and hard to maintain, these kerosene powered lamps also thrived on a blackmarket for fuel siphoned from the public distribution system. 

Most of the kerosene lamps have now been replaced by LED panels.   A supply chain had evolved around this model in which entrepreneurs had started supplying a complete LED lighting set (light panel + battery + stand), to the street vendors for about ₹20 a night. After 10:00 PM they would go around collecting the lamps, and then getting all the batteries recharged again from an AC outlet.

Now vendors - especially those on the open roads - have progressed to next logical step: charging the batteries using solar panels. 

In this case, the vendor, Kasim, set himself a budget of ₹ 3000 and got a 40Wp panel, a refurbished 12V battery of unknown Ah rating and two LED panels.  He has also paid extra for a charger-box with a 2-pin plug. He got conned on three counts - the seller sold him mobile charger calling it an "inverter", the LED panel cost him ₹200 (available at ₹80), and the worst of all - nobody told him that he needs a Solar Charge Controller (SCC).

Since the SCC controls the fluctuating voltage coming in from the panels, and optimises the charge that a battery can take, Kasim's entire investment s likely to go kaput in a few weeks. 

Kasim's case illustrates the problems most of face while adopting a new technology. He is, of course, an early starter. While most of the other vendors prefer a battery-rental model (₹300/week), he must have worked out that an investment in panels would spare him rental expenses within two months. 

I have tried to help out at bit by checking at Lajpat Rai Market (Old Delhi), and telling him that SCC's are available at ₹ 350 (Shop no. 40, 6Amp, DeepSolar brand). Will he get one installed before it is too late? Or will he continue with his "jugaad" setup, get disillutioned with his panel set and return to the regular mode?

And then, even if he does get himself a SCC, it would be yet another component which comes with no quality assurance, standard ratings or guarantees. 

We have set ourselves ambitous targets for increase in renewable energy capacity. The focus so far seems to be on big companies and on turning vast areas into solar-energy farms. While this is necessary, it is also important to ensure that entrepreners like Kasim have access, not only to solar equipment of reliable quality, but also to information and guidance that helps avoid unnecessary loss of faith in a good source for off-grid, renewable sources of power.

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charge_controller

* Charge Controllers - http://www.freesunpower.com/chargecontrollers.php

* Do I need a Charge Controller? -- http://forum.solar-electric.com/discussion/4518/do-i-need-a-charge-controller

- Battery AH * 2% * Vmp = Panel Wattage

* Do I need a controller? - http://www.mrsolar.com/content/faqs/when-do-I-need-a-charge-controller-and-why.html

* Solar Panel Selection Guide - https://www.bijlibachao.com/solar/india-solar-photovoltaic-pv-panels-selection-guide-understanding-system-quality.html

* MNRE Achievements - http://mnre.gov.in/file-manager/UserFiles/Achievements-of-Power-Coal-and-MNRE-Nov2015-English.pdf 

The Apathy Chronicles - II

Last year I had listed a few instances of the chronic apathy that cripple governance in India.

T.N. Ninan's latest book, "The Turn of the Tortoise" (2015, Penguin), describes cases of far larger magnitude. The most striking of these is the case of River Kosi on the India-Nepal Border.

Not unlike the Yellow River in China, the Kosi has always been known as the 'Sorrow of Bihar'. Over the past few centuring, it has changed course by up to 250km, sweeping away everything in its path. In the 1950s India and Nepal decided to mitigate this old problem by agreed on the construction of a 350m barrage on the Nepalese side of the border. The barrage was to be managed jointly by Indians and Nepalis.

In early 2000s, an Indian diplomat visited the barrage. He was shocked to find that two dredgers were lying in disrepair. A housing enclave for Indian officials was deserted and the barrage's control room had a solitary junior engineer from Nepal. No action was taken on the diplomat's report.

In 2008, the inevitable happened. Kosi burst its banks, changed its course, destroyed homes, fields and left nearly 3 million homeless!

Have we learnt any lessons from this? Do we now have a better system of incentives in place to ensure that government officials take their jobs seriously?

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* 2008 Bihar Floods - Wiki - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Bihar_flood
* Negligence caused 2008 Floods (2014) - http://zeenews.india.com/news/bihar/negligence-caused-2008-kosi-floods-in-bihar-report_951911.html

Black & White

What is it that makes black & white photographs so... compelling?

Yesterday evening  sudden downpour sent me scurrying into the Visual Arts Gallery of the India Habitat Centre. At first I thought the gallery was closed - it was dark and foreboding, and yet the doors were open. I stepped in to see the hall transformed like never before.

Jet black cloth covered all the walls, the space inside had been partitioned to create a maze of stunning photoframes, sheer fabric, projections, light and shadows.

This exhibition by Shailan Parker was called "Kavadsa", an evocative Marathi word to describe that fleeting light that which filters into a room to turn the most ordinary things into beautiful works of art.

Parker is what one could perhaps describe as an upmarket photographer. The exhibition underlined not only his ability to push understated elegance to the limits, but also his access to corporate sponsors and wellwishers with deep pockets, and access to the best equipment and material.

Could such images be created with more modest equipment?

William Dalrymple has brought out his first book of photographs, "The Writer's Eye", a collection of 60 B&W photographs shot only using his Samsung mobile, and edited with a free app, Snapseed.
His inspiration came from the bleak and grainy war photography of Don McCullin, the landscape work of Fay Godwin,  and Bill Brandt, whose "brooding images were marked by a stark chiaroscuro, a strong geometrical sense of composition, a whiff of the surreal, and a taste for the uncanny and unsettling".

I wish I knew what all these words mean, but in a world where we take color for granted, B&W images that just leave us with the bare essentials of light and shadows,will always have an attraction that is difficult to explain.


,
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LINKS & REFERENCES

* http://www.shailanparker.com/pages/07_wallart/wallart.html
* http://m.hindustantimes.com/art-and-culture/william-dalrymple-s-photo-exhibition-shot-on-phone-edited-on-snapseed/story-WY8IbVwc16CodwGGF28B0H.html

Crowdfunds at Work

What is common link that connects Glif, a nifty stand for smartphone cameras, a wooden remote-control stand, a touchscreen stylus and a whole range of cocktail party accessories?

The latest issue of Wired profiles a two-man company called Studio Neat which is focused on "solving interesting problems and delighting customers". For the past five years they have been creating and selling a diverse range products out of a garage in Austin, Texas.

However incredible this may sound, the fact is that Studio Neat has been one of the pioneers in a space that is now known as "crowdfunding". It all stated with a video pitch posted by the duo on Kickstarter, an online forum that helps 'bring creative projects to life'. When the crowd response turned out to be three times more than anticipated, the founders decided to meet the demand by outsourcing everything.

Manufacturing went to Dragon Innovation, and then to a more value-for-money outfit called Premier Source. A company called Shipwire was contracted for order-fulfilment; Shopify handles all of the shopping carts and credit card numbers, and Amazon acts as the main shopfront on the global marketplace.

Does such an ecosystem exist in India?

According to Quora, we do have a dozen crowdfunding platforms in India but obviously it takes more than just crowdfunding to get an innovative product on the market-shelf.

Dragon CEO Scott Miller conveys this gap very eloquently:  “If A is the idea and Z is the product in somebody’s hands...everyone assumes that by the time they have a prototype they’re at M. In practice, they’re at D. At every one of these steps, a small miscalculation or oversight can cost a company money."

We have a long, long way to go.

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LINKS & REFERENCES

• WIRED - Kick Starter Kings - http://www.wired.com/2016/03/studio-neat-kickstarter-kings-taught-world-how-to-crowdfund/#slide-1
• Studio Neat - http://www.studioneat.com/
• Kickstarter - https://www.kickstarter.com/about?ref=nav
• Dragon Innovation - https://www.dragoninnovation.com/
• Premier Source - http://www.premiersource.us/

Peanut Gallery

One of the highlights of this week was a gem of a retort:

"It is quite rich to sit in the peanut gallery, pass comments and throw empty shells at those who are actually rolling their sleeves up and working on the ground" 

Rohan Murty said this while defending Sheldon Pollock, an American Academic who heads a pioneering project for the translation of Indian classics into English.

Earlier this week I had leafed through a few paperbacks in the "New Books" section of the Dayal Singh Public Library. Among them were three new books published by the Murty Classical Library of India (MCLI). I remembered my sense of awe, gratitude and amazement. Finally we had access to our own classics, not only in a format we could easily relate to (local language on the left, English on the right), but also at a very affordable price!

The petition against Pollock at Change.org

Why on earth would anybody object to  such a remarkable initiative? And who were these "132 academics and public figures" behind the online petition against Pollock and MCLI? What were their objections?

The online petiton can be still be accessed at Change.org . It was started by Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan of IIT Bombay, and, apart from the 132 "Scholars and Intellectuals" who have put their weight behind this petiton, it also claims to have garnered 12,500 supporters.

Their objections boil down to two points:

1. Pollock is not sufficiently "steeped in the intellectual traditions of India", and is therefore incompetent to be the Chief Editor of MCLI
2. He has objected to the recent police high-handedness at JNU, and is therefore politically biased.

To think that 132 + 12,500 people would sign up a shallow petition like this, tells a lot about the current status of "intellectual traditions" in our country.

A few months ago another bunch of 100 academics, this time esconced in the universities of USA and Western Europe, had objected to Prime Minister Modi's visit to Silicon Valley. Here the objections were about "lack of safefuards about privacy of information" and the Gujarat violence of 2002.

Online protests, petitions, and carefully handpicked outrages make you wonder about the real motive of folks who initiate such campaigns. Is it merely an attention-seeking tactic, or is there more to it?

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LINKS & REFERENCES

• http://www.livemint.com/Leisure/bfBg8HJNxh4PPPxFXJVF1J/Who-is-Sheldon-Pollock.html
• http://scroll.in/article/804517/why-hindutva-forces-have-for-long-had-sheldon-pollock-in-their-sights
• http://m.economictimes.com/opinion/interviews/sheldon-pollock-is-central-to-the-classical-library-project-says-rohan-murty/articleshow/51238856.cms
• Paranjape, Markand (21Mar16): The Problem with Pollock -- http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/the-problem-with-pollock/
• Dasgupta, Swapan (2015): If we won' save Sanksrit, why stop foreigners? ToI Blogs, 3Apr2016 - http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/right-and-wrong/if-we-wont-save-sanskrit-why-stop-foreigners/

Little by Little

Two long journeys passed through Delhi last week: one a 'Walk of Hope' led by a spiritual leader, and the other a festival of Street Art.

The 'Walk of Hope' was started by 'Sri M' (aka Mumtaz Ali), covered more than 5,900 km across the length of India, made its stop-over before continuing towards Kashmir, and Street+Art completed its first mega-scale insallations in a drab government colony, and transformed it into the most stunning open-air art gallery in India. Both seemingly unconnected events had one thing in common. A dogged sense of purpose and persistence that brought to life Mao Zedong's famous quote - "The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step."


The Walk of Hope owes its origins to one man's promise to his teacher. Sixty-five year-old Mumtaz was just eight when he had the first 'meeting' with a Hindu ascetic at his home in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. In his late teens he travelled to the Western Himalayas in search of this ascetic, and stayed on for over three years as a a wanderind mendicant, and an "Apprenticed to a Himalayan Master".

Street+Art operated on an altogether different plane. According to one of its founders in India, Hanif Kureshi, it is a collective of artists who used public spaces - often illegally - to express themselves. Last year they had come up with a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi in the most unlikely place possible -- on a large blank wall of the Delhi Police HQ. In a city that already sufferes from an overdose of Gandhi memorials, perhaps this was a strategic - or cunning - move to co-opt that most formidable of all life forms of this planet - the  Indian bureaucracy.

The tactic seems to have worked beautifully. This year, the New Delhi Municipal Committee (NDMC) set aside 60 years of SoPs to permit Street+Art to put up large government-owned buildings across the city.


According to Kureshi, this is the culmination of eight years of behind-the-scenes work. Apart from persuading the bureaucrats to tweek their old rules and approve each installation, Street+Art also managed to get various embassies to sponsor the various artists; the paints were gifted by Asian Paints, and a small band of students and volunteers ensured that the right set of paints and support equipment reached each artist at the right time.



For instance, when Senkoe from Mexico set to work, there was a crane + operator at his disposal for three days (rent - Manlift, ₹10,000/day), two students from MSU Baroda recording the whole thing with a GoPro on time-lapse, and a group of volunteers led by Arunima helping with the coloring, and making sure that everybody got their food and snacks on time.

In few months time, memories of the Walk of Hope might fade until the next Guru comes around, and street artwork may last a few more monsoons, but both will be remembered for the power of incremental efforts!

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LINKS & REFERENCES

St+Art India - http://www.st-artindia.org/

* Menon, Aparna (2015): Shipping Containers in  Drab Container Yard -- http://www.thebetterindia.com/47944/shipping-container-street-art-start-india-tughlakabad-delhi/

 Walk of Hope -- http://app.walkofhope.in/#!/

A Manga Artist Vanquished

That strange Indian head-shake...

How does a foreign entrepreneur-artist experience !ncredible India?

For a quick and dirty introduction to cultural contrasts, there is no better book than Yukichi Yamamatsu's "Stupid Guy Goes to India" (Indo e Baka ga Yatte-kita).

It is the story is a 56-year-old, out-of-work, enterprising graphic artist who - despite all warnings  - decides to sow the seeds of a Manga-book industry in India. With of budget of JPY 1.2 million (~₹ 7 Lakhs / USD 10k) Yamamatsu flies in to Delhi in 2006, to try and publish Hindi translations of a few famous Japanese Manga books.

The author also happens to be a cancer survivor with a missing sigmoid colon, resulting in very weak bowels. In a country suffering a chronic shortage of usable public toilets, this becomes a formidable handicap. In spite of all odds, he rents a one-room-set in North East Delhi for ~₹ 5,000 / month and starts looking for translators, assistants, publishers and then, finally, retailers for selling the books.

As expected, he encounters all the troubles that beset foreigners to India -- dishonest, agressive auto-wallah's, beggars, filthy streets, and that strange Indian way of shaking heads to convey everything from consent to directions, and disdain. And then there are other spectrum of experiences that are reserved for only the most daring of Japanese visitor -- winning the odds at the Race Course, trying to hawk books at the second-hand market for books at Daryaganj, attempting to start art classes, a dabble in FMCG (cello-tape dispensers), and the grand finale - a visit to the prostitutes at GB Road!

Unfortunately, this is not a book with a happy ending. In the end Yamamatsu's efforts come to naught. He finds no takers for his translated Manga's or his tape-dispensers, and he leaves six months later with the question - "Even though there are countries where masses of people are illiterate, is there any nation so idiotic that they won't look at easy-to-understand, easy-to-read Manga?"

The sad part about this book is that it merely reinforces the incredulous, negative image of India. Its leaves you with yet another predictable glimpse of the yawning cultural gap that separates India and Japan.

And yet, it is certainly a book worth reading. Yamamatsu may not have succeeded in translating Manga into Hindi but Kumar Sivasubramanian does a fine job of translating the book from Japanese into English. Small mercies.

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* Yamamatsu Yukichi (2006): Stupid Guy Goes to India (Translated by Kumar Sivasubramanian 2011), Blaft-Tranquebar 2011
* 2012 book review - DNA -

http://www.dnaindia.com/lifestyle/review-book-review-stupid-guy-goes-to-india-1672968

* 2012 Book Review - The Hindu - http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/showcase-manga-comes-to-india/article2927589.ece

Chocho Michimichimichi = Tokyo Mitsubishi! :)

How Did We Know?

Conciousness is a strange thing.

On one hand it is easy to grasp that there could be a world beyond the reach of our five sense organs, but on the other it is not often that you come across proof that hits you like a ton of bricks. In books like "Autobiography of a Yogi" and "Apprentice to a Himalayan Master", there are numerous illustrations of paranormal perceptions, of yogi's being aware of events taking place thousands of miles away, of fantastic realms and parallel universes, but every now and then, you are confronted with facts that are difficult to brush aside.

First, the questions raised by Kurshed Batliwala:

• How did the ancients know that the earth was round? (Varaha-avatar, "Bhu-gol")
• Antares star (15th brightest) was called "Jeshtha" (the eldest, biggest) is actually 40,000 times larger than the sun, and one of the biggest celestial objects known to man. How did they know this 7000 years ago?
• In the Great Bear constellation (Ursa Major), the tail has a bright star called Mizar which -- when seen through telescopes - turns out to be a  twin star. In ancient India, it was always called the Arundhati-Vashishta which actually goes around each other -- a kind of stellar tango. How did they figure this out?
• Rust-proof Iron Pillars - (1) Qutub, Delhi (2) Kollur, Karnataka - been around for at least 2400 years...built to welcome Shankaracharya (?)
• Extracting Zinc from ore. Melts at 997C, but vapourises at 1000C -- "Indians built an innovative up-side-down furnace to extract zinc...a process that was secret for 4000 years...first the Chinese stole it from us, then the British stole it from the Chinese". Process was patented by William Champion (1543) who made the first Zinc Distillery in England. 
• (According to Wiki, Champion used a scaled-up process similar to that used at the Zawar mines in India where this process was available centuries before William Champion rediscovered it, since the 12th century AD)
• Katapaya-dhi Sankhya in a sloka praising Krishna gives the value of Pi up to 30 decimal places! What was the point in encrypting Pi into a Sanskrit sloka?
• Vasco-da-Gama's 'discovery of India' - in the Purtuguese journals,he was 'escorted' by a Gujarati trader who had ships 12x larger than Vasco's ships, and yet, in the European narratives, he is depicted as a mere 'guide'!

And then we have the questions raised by Graham Hancock in his controversial TED presentation:

• Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a potent psychedelic drug. Usually it is smoked because in the stomach it gets broken down by an enzyme (monoamino-oxidase). However, the Indians in South America mix it with juice extracted from a vine which is a MAO inhibitor. How did the Indians know that out of the 150,000 vines available, this particular one had the MAO inhibitor?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

* BharathGyan -- http://www.bharathgyan.com/

* Khurshed Batliwala's videos -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9aR_xfm-gE

* Autobiography of a Yogi (Yogananada)

* Apprentice to a Himalayan Master (Sri M)

* Graham Hancock -- https://grahamhancock.com/ted-war-on-consciousness-hancock/ 

WW2: Eye of the Beholder

This has been the most interesting book I've read in 2016.

Raghu Karnad's "Farthest Field - Indian Story of the Second World War" skillfully weaves history around lives of a bunch of cousins and friends in South India, who venture out into Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Eritrea, and then across the sub-continent to Burma and North East India.

As a boy growing up in India of the 1970s and 80s, the WWs were already dim, distant memories that nobody talked about. We had a great-grandfather who served the British Indian Army in Mesopotamia, and his son served the RIAF on the Arakan Peninsula. Neither of them left any notes or records. So my own view of the wars were built on "commando comics" where the British were invariably the intrepid heroes, Germans were always screaming "Mein Gott!", the Russians wandered in the periphery, and the Indians, of course,  were nowhere to be seen.

It is only now that I realise the sheer scale of India's involvement. Once the British realised that the allies just did not have the numbers to face the the Germans, Japanese and Italians, the Indian Army was expanded from 450 Indian officers to 12,000 between 1939-1945. Similarly, the personnel below officer rank had increased from 1.5 lakh to 2.2 million!

Another great revelation has been on the role of the Japanese. Unlike most western authors, Karnad takes care to give credit where it is due. The book gives you a glimpse of the astounding levels of training and preparation that went into the Japanese offensive that swept scross the Asia-Pacific in the early 1940s.

If it were not for a few errors of judgement history would have most certainly been written by a different set of victors. The Japanese, for instance, only crippled Pearl Harbor because they forgot to destroy the fuel and repair depots. Had it been completely knocked out, the Pacific War and t he Battle of Midway, would not have taken place at all. They also failed to realise that their codes had been cracked.

The Japanese also made a big gamble by sending across an army of 65,000 soldiers across the forests of Burma, hoping to grab the storage depots set up by the British in Dimapur. In the end barely 10,000 managed to retreat back home.

WW2, it turns out, was a much closer fight that we are willing to admit.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

The INA and Independence - http://www.asianage.com/columnists/ina-and-independence-367

New Ideas: How Far is the Market?

What is the distance between a product-idea and the marketplace in India?

In the developed markets this distance has been cut down considerably by those who have an access to the internet. As this article illustrates, the difference between those who harness freelancers on the internet, and those who go the traditional way, can run into thousands of dollars.

Comparing two similar products presented at a trade show, it turned out that one had spent four years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in hiring engineers and manufacturers, while another needed just seven months and $11,800 to get there. How the market responds to a prototype presented at a trade show depends on a number of factors but what does it take to get till this point?

The first thing you need, of course, is an idea. From here on you are seeking the answers to a series of questions:

• Is the Idea unique?  - checking the online databases at Patent Offices and Patent Depository Libraries. If the idea turns out to be unique, then - 
• Who provides the best VFM for professional Patents Search services? If the idea continues to have legs, then after filing a provisional patent - 
• Which product designer / engineer can create a prototype model?
• How should demand and product pricing be assessed?  - Focus groups through sources like ManagementHelp.org
• Which manufacturer provides the best deal in terms of cost and quality? Does he also have his own distribution network?

In India, over and above all these questions, you need to also constantly look over your shoulder to see if there is anybody waiting to flood the market with cheap imitations!

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* Entrepreneur.com (2010) - From Idea to Market - http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/217332

Hi Honey!

Honey is often refered to as "the only food that never spoils". There have been (unverified) claims of archeologists digging out 2000-5000 year-old jars of honey from sites in Egypt and Georgia. And today specialized honey's are counted among the most expensive foods in the world.

In 2014, a small consignment of Elvish honey from remote caves in Turkey sold in France for about USD 6,800/kg!

How does India fare in the world of honey exports?

According to APEDA, India exported 29,578.52 MT of natural honey to the world for Rs. 535.07 crore during the year of 2014-15. This comes to just ₹ 180/kg ($ 2.7)!

It is worth noting that we export almost no honey to Europe. In 2014, the European Union imported more than 315,000 tonnes of honey, most of which came from China. Despite all the barriers erected by EU, there does not seem to be much of a cost advantage here. Chinese honey costs just ₹ 20/kg more than Indian exports.

The amazing thing that emergers from these numbers is that the export value of Indian honey is far below the cost at which it retails within India!

Why do Indian exporters sell honey to the Arabs for ₹ 180/kg when they can get ₹ 600 to 900/kg in the domestic retail market? Or was I missing something here?

According to my friend H, the missing element here is Volumes. When it comes to getting agriculture commodities to the markets, one of the most important things to consider is scale of operations. Just as Indian honey is exported for a fraction of its domstic price, Basmati rice too earns our exporters pretty thin margins compared to the domestic market.


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REFERENCES & LINKS

The Chemistry of Honey - http://www.compoundchem.com/2014/08/21/chemistryofhoney/

10 most expensive foods in the world - http://www.worldfoodist.com/2013/01/25/the-worlds-most-expensive-foods/

Oddity Central - most expensive honey in the world - http://www.odditycentral.com/foods/worlds-most-expensive-honey-costs-as-much-as-a-small-car.html
- Elvish honey from Turkey - $ 6,800 / kg

World's top-5 honey - http://www.justfoodnow.com/2010/12/22/honey-the-five-best-in-the-world/

BeezHoney India - http://www.beezhoney.com/

Yemeni  Hone - http://www.honey-foryourhealth.com/the-worlds-most-expensive-honey-and-why-you-should-run-to-buy-this---yemeni-honey.html
Yemeni Sidr Honey - quality page - http://www.yemensidrhoney.com/index.php/quality-safety

USA - honey.com - http://www.honey.com/
Wikipedia on Honey - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey

- Certifications: HACCP (Hazard Analysis for Critical Control Points) - http://www.22000-tools.com/what-is-haccp.html
- ISO 22000 - for food safety - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_22000

- (IT, 2010) - Contaminated Honey in India -- http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/unhealthy-bitter-truths-about-honey-in-india/1/112833.html
. Only Hitkari was found to be free of antibiotics

Trade Stats - Honey in Europe (2015) - https://www.cbi.eu/sites/default/files/trade-statistics-europe-honey-2015.pdf

- APEDA Honey exports - http://apeda.gov.in/apedawebsite/SubHead_Products/Natural_Honey.htm
. exported 29,578.52 MT of natural honey to the world for the worth of Rs. 535.07 crore during the year of 2014-15.

- Myth-buster - no honey in ancient Egyptian tombs - http://bumblehive.com/honey-was-not-found-in-pharaohs-tombs/

Mewar at War

Why would 16,000 women throw themselves into a giant bonfire?

This is a question that has troubled me. History is replete with instances where kingdoms have gone to war, where cities have been beseiged, of armies saughtered and people enslaved. Carthage, Rome, Cuzco, Babylon, Jerusalem, Vijayanagara, Delhi...the list goes on an on.

However in the Rajputana kingdoms of Mewar and Marwar, the endgame has always been marked by huge fires lit in palaces where the women are said to have killed themselves en masse, while their menfolk went down on a final, suicidal charge into the waiting enemy flanks.

Chittorgarh Fort (Western ramparts)

In the popular annals of Indian history, the defenders of one fort have used this as a standard procedure across centuries - Chittorgarh. This first time this happened was in 1303 CE when Sultan Allaudin Khilji beseiged the fort for six months before it capitulated. Over 16,000 woment went up in flames in the first recorded "Jauhar" in Mewar. The scene was repeated in 1535 CE, when Mohammad Shah of Gujarat took the fort, and then again in 1568 CE when the Mughals led by Akbar blew up Chittor's fortifications using gunpowder.

Chitrtorgarh Fort - Suraj Pol (Eastern Entrance)

The mass suicide is often portrayed as the outcome of a Rajput "Code of Honor", of "Death before Dishonor". Yet, whichever way you look at it, it seems rather bleak to be in a situation where you forego the option of living to fight another day. What is it that really made these mass suicides worthwhile?

One answer to this question comes from V.S. Naipaul's book, "Among the Believers". In a chilling description of a new type of warfare that arrived on Indian shores, he describes how in 710 CE the 14-year-old "General" Md. Bin Qasim ordered the execution of all fighting men, enslavement of all the women and children in Sindh.

Once this was set as a standard procedure in the medeiva; "all out war", it left the combatants with very limited choices. Either you die in your own home, among family and friends, or got raped and killed while being flogged on an ardruous trek across the Hindu Kush mountains, or to the streets of Arabia.

For the women and children in a city that had already under seige for many months, it may not have been a difficult choice. Was it the women of Chittor who set the precedent? Or is remembered because it happened on such a large scale, repeatedly, at the same site?

Somehow, this does not be a topic of interest to our historians. Its a pity that there is so little information on this either online, or at the actual site.

A layout map of Chittorgarh near the ASI ticket office

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Unanswered Questions:

Q1: How is it that the Jain temples and towers survived the military assaults that had flattened almost all buildings in Chittorgarh? One of the oldest structures in Chittor is the Kirti Sthambh built in the 11the century, and it still looks as though it were completed yesterday!

Q2: What did the place look like when it was a flourishing city, with elephants, horses and bullock-carts carting up goods up and down the hill? Who designed the lovely ponds and water bodies inside the fort complex with striped marble slabs cladding on the side walls? Is there a book that brings the life and times of Chittorgarh back to life?

Mount Abu

Mount Abu is an amazing and a pathetic place in equal measure.

For a series of low, unimpressive hills that rise out of the plains of Rajasthan and Gujarat Mount Abu earns a rather disproportionate share of our awe. It is a place described in the Puranas as "Arbudaranya", it figures prominently in the creation myths of Rajputs and Gujjars. It is home the Dilwara Temples - perhaps one of the most intricately carved marble buildings in India. Escavations from historical sites across Abu span the past two millennia.

These days, Mount Abu is better known as the nearest "Hill Station" for all the residents of Rajasthan and Gujarat. This simply means that the hill attracts all kinds of riff-raff looking for a quick holiday destination where they can toss out all their garbage - especially liquor bottles and chips-packets.

Granite walls "scooped out"?

Despite the present state of affairs, the place is full of fascinating things that have hardly been written about. The rock formations all over Mount Abu is something to behold. Unlike the Deccan Plateau where you see large boulders balancing in improbable places, here you have rock faces that look as though they have been carved by a giant walking around with an icecream scoop!

Achalgarh, Mount Abu

Also amazing is the way animals have been honored in the temples here. At the Dilwara Temples, there is a whole gallery of magnificent elephants in polished marble. These aparently were built to honor the animals that lugged tonnes of marble up these hills.

Less celebrated but even more touching is the sight of three water buffalos carved out of black granite, standing guard on a water tank full of their brethren in flesh and blood. Who built these temples? If you ask the local guide, he will tell you some cock-and-bull story about a king who killed three demons who took the form of bufallos.

Three Buffalos

There is certainly a lot more to the ruins than meets the eye. Is anybody studying them seriously? How long will we continue to cover our ignorance with tales of Gods and Demons?

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REFERENCES & LINKS

- Geology - http://www.mantleplumes.org/Malani.html

- http://www.mountaburajasthan.com/tourist-places-to-visit/gaumukh

The Cost of a Stadium

How much does it cost to build a stadium?

Over the past one week a controversy has been raging over the cost of building a cricket stadium in New Delhi. The Chief Minister of Delhi claims that his office was raided by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) because his office had been investigating the shell companies behind a controversial "refurbishment" of the Feroz Shah Kotla stadium which cost about ₹ 142 Cr (USD 22 m). He also alleges that the money trail leads up to Arun Jaitley, India's Finance Minister.

Not the one to take things lying down, the country's Finance Minister has now filed a defamation case against the Chief Minister.

As allegations and counter-allegations fly to and fro, here are some figures that put things in perspective:

• A brand new stadium was contructed at Dharamshala for ₹ 20 Crores (USD 3 million)
• Prior to the Commonwealth Games 2010, the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium was refurbished at the cost of ₹ 600 Crores (USD 92 m)
• The iconic "Birds Nest" stadium built for the Beijing Olympics cost USD 243 million (₹ 2,750 Cr).
• In Japan, there was a huge controversy over the cost of a new stadium for the Tokyo Olympics 2020. A design created by Zaha Hadid costing USD 2.1 billion (₹ 13,650 Cr), It has now been replaced by a "cheaper" design that costs only USD 1.2 billion (₹ 7,800 Cr)

If we take the Dharamshala stadium as a realistic local reference point, the cost of JLN stadium and FZK stadum certainly seems over the top. But this should not come as a big surprise to any of us because we all know that in the absence of transparent funding to political parties, there is really no incentive towards having projects that have zero kickbacks.

Ultimately, as the old saying goes, "When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled."

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LINKS

* BBC - http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35158004
* Financial Times -- http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b5db6708-a874-11e5-955c-1e1d6de94879.html#axzz3v4mJWh9V
* Zahid's Stadium design for Tokyo -- http://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/new-national-stadium/

The Latest Tango in Paris

"Would you be interested in a smoke-less choolha?
...And how about a lantern that takes energy from the sun to light up your home at night?"

If you are shooting these questions at a bleary eyed villager's wife in a remote village in South Asia,  bewildered disbelief is what you would get. Why would anybody come around asking such inane questions? Would such new fangled things fit into the rough and tumble of living on a farm? Who can afford such gadgets anyway?

And yet, this is exactly what is happening in hundreds of villages in Bhutan, Nepal, Bangladesh, India, and other parts of the world. Life is becoming a wee bit easier -- thanks to events that have been unfolding in far away places like Stockholm, Rio De Janerio, Cartagena, and now, Paris.

Thanks to increasingly unpredictable changes in weather patterns, Climate Change has gradually moved from the realm of eggheads to actions that have a real impact on the ground.

Back in October, 1991, a diverse group of 183 countries met at Rio de Janerio. This meeting led to Conference of Parties (CoP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Then a partnership with international institutions to deal with global environmental issues led to the formation of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). Since then this insitution has provided over $12.5 billion in grants and leveraging $58 billion in co-financing for over 3,690 projects in over 165 countries.

This is an endeavour of amazing complexity. As with other most multilateral funding projects, GEF too operates through a wide range f partners: UNDP, UNIDO, ADB, WB, and a host of bilateral agencies and national governments. Each of them has a different way of working - UNDP partners with local government bodies while ADB and WB seem to prefer a a more direct approach to disbursal of funds.

For the past two decades, a complex machinery has been slowly grinding its way through the buureaucracy, resulting in some of the most unexpected sights across the world: people lugging equipment across remote areas -  wind turbines, micro/mini hydel systems, solar panels -  trying to get self-contained communities to increase their dependence on strange, new equipment, all for the Greater Common Good.

What about the biggest guzzlers of fossil fuels, like factories, power plants and automobiles?  Until now big changes in the developing countries were conditional upon receiving finance and technology from developed countries, as entitlements, not as foreign assistance.

How does the Paris Agreement change this?

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LINKS & REFERENCES

* UNFCC - Technology Transfer Framework -- http://unfccc.int/ttclear/templates/render_cms_page?TTF_home

* https://www.thegef.org/gef/gef_projects_funding

* (15 Dec 15 IE) - A long way from Rio -- http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/paris-climate-talks-a-long-way-from-rio/

Modi-Abe Camaradarie - Getting Down to Brasstacks

Prime Minister Abe in India now, and its time, once again, for the media to make hay while sun shines.

The Indian Express has come out with a special RED 'advertorial' initiative (pages 6-7) to mark the ocassion. It has the usual (unattributed) writeups on the history of investment, trade and social cooperation between Indian and Japan, as well as fillers to mark spaces where the expected advt revenue did not turn up. One of these is a "Fact File" box right below a message from the new ambassador designate, Mr. Kenji Hiramatsu, and the first point here states: "Japan is the world's largest consumer of Amazon rainfalls"!

Indian Express Fact File: Really?

What was that again?? Japan is the world's largest consumer of rainforest wood, but where on earth did the IE staffer get this absurd "fact"?

Not to be left behind, the HT Mint marketing media initiative carries a marketing initiative titled "India-Japan Deepens Ties". Here too the only advertisement is from Maruti Suzuki and the set pieces toss around numbers that make little sense. During Modi's visit last year, the title article claims, "Abe had set a target of 3.5 trillion yen $33.5 billion of public and private investment.." . There is no mention of how much of this has actually fructified over the past one year, since November 2014. The only data point at hand is a 2013 FDI figure of $1.7 billion!

Perhaps journalists working on advertorials can be excused for putting out shoddy data. However, the loss of credibility in the color-pages is not balanced out in the editorials or oped pages. In the opinons section there is one piece from Harsh V Pant who makes one pointed comment - "Thought there has been significant movement on these issues over the past year, these initiative still remain highly contested between the bureaucracies of the two nations."

Therein lies the rub. The Dedicated Freight Corridor project agreed a decade ago continues to be a snailpaced work-in-progress. And now we have the new promise of a $14.7 billion (₹ 98,000 Cr) bullet train project linking Mumbai and Ahmedabad.

While there has been a lot of hype around the Modi-Abe camradarie, substantial progress on India-Japan linkages is still bogged down in the red-tape, both in New Delhi and in Tokyo.

What exactly does it take to get the babu's cracking on both the sides?


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LINKS and REFERENCES:

* 11Dec15 - Reuters - Japan's bid for bullet train gets cabinet nod -- http://in.reuters.com/article/india-japan-train-idINKBN0TT0PI20151210
- Cabinet approval for $14.7 billion Japanese proposal...Mumbai-Ahmedabad - 503 km...Japan had offered to finance 80 percent of the cost ...at an interest rate of less than 1 percent.

* Pant, Harsh - 11Dec15 - The Abe-Modi Connect - http://www.livemint.com/Opinion/yoDbATculxoLxfwhlzSL8N/The-AbeModi-connect.html
- US-2 amphibious aircraft - submarines - nuclear plants
- Earlier this year Japan lost out to China is a bid for a high-speed railway in Indonesia

* Mint marketing media initiative
- 2014 Abe set a target of Yen 3.5 trillion $33.5 billion of public and private investment and financing from Japan including ODA to be made over a period of 5 years
- JETRO - number of Jap companies operating in India has grown from 267 in 2006, to over 1800 in 2013.

* 11Dec15 -- IE -- http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/japanese-pm-shinzo-abe-to-arrive-today-number-of-pacts-on-table/