An Indian History Book to Read

Byoliveridley

Ramachandra Guha has written a new book about modern Indian history (independence in 1947-Present). Sounds interesting, here is an excerpt (h/t the always wonderful blog, 3QD).
The Miracle That Is India : outlookindia.com

Is India a democracy, then? The answer is well, phipty-phipty. It mostly is, when it comes to holding elections and permitting freedom of movement and expression. It mostly is not, when it comes to the functioning of politicians and political institutions. However, that India is even a 50 per cent democracy flies in the face of tradition, history, and the conventional wisdom. Indeed, by its own experience, it is rewriting that history and that wisdom. Thus, Sunil Khilnani remarked of the 2004 polls that they represented “the largest exercise of democratic election, ever and anywhere, in human history.

Sounds like fun, people ask me about India all the time and while I have great experiential knowledge, this book would (if good) give this experiential knowledge some factual and structural backing.

Fun!

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    Musharraf and the never ending dictatorship

    Byoliveridley

    Pakistani opposition leaders and activists have been detained in the wake of President Pervez Musharraf’s decision to declare emergency rule.The
    acting head of the party of exiled former PM Nawaz Sharif was arrested, senior lawyers have been detained and the country’s chief justice sacked.PM Shaukat Aziz said that hundreds of people had been held, and the emergency would last “as long as is necessary”.Scheduled elections could be delayed for up to a year, he added.But no decision had been made over the date of any election, he added, insisting the government remained committed to the democratic process.

    BBC NEWS | South Asia | Musharraf targets key opponents

    Apparently, lessons are never learned. Just like General Zia ul-Haq before him, Musharraf pays a lot of lip service to democracy while riding his military coat tails to a permanent dictatorship. Just like General Zia-ul-Haq before him, the world thinks that he’s the last bastion standing between Pakistan and an Islamic fundamentalist state. Just like Zia-ul-Haq before him, he pretends to hold elections, then subverts the results because of “emergency conditions” and “extenuating circumstances”.

    It is rather sad and depressing, Zia ul-Haq was the first Pakistan “president” I knew, always ratcheting up war rhetoric against India. The Benazir Bhutto-Nawaz Sharif years seemed more like a soap opera between two rich and influential feuding Punjabi families than the brutal power struggle that continues to this day. And now, General Musharraf, who is depicted in Western media as the last man standing between the Taliban and Pakistan.

    The point? Pakistan, with its independent press, well-established middle class, a quasi-independent judiciary and politically intelligent electorate deserves better. I am not sure that Musharraf would survive without the propping up he receives from the US. But the rug needs to be pulled from under him. Behind that sophisticated veneer (imagine, a third world leader who speaks English and can wear a suit!!!) lurks just another power hungry tinpot dictator.

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    Arsenic in the News

    Byoliveridley

    Professor wins $1M for arsenic filter – Yahoo! News

    The National Academy of Engineering announced Thursday that the 2007 Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability would go to Abul Hussam, a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax. Hussam’s invention is already in use today, preventing serious health problems in residents of the professor’s native Bangladesh.

    This British Geological Survey website provides a good primer to the problem. Some key points:

    1. Arsenic is very toxic
    2. Arsenic is naturally occurring in the shallow groundwater aquifers of Bengal and Bangladesh at a toxic level
    3. The surface water is contaminated with bacteria and was responsible for high infant mortality, so aid agencies in the ’70s encouraged the use of tube wells and other groundwater pumps. While this contributed to a decline in infant mortality from gastrointestinal infections, it also dosed unsuspecting people with disease causing levels of arsenic
    4. The technology for removal of arsenic is very well known. But most solutions require electricity/periodic maintenance/technical skills and are thus not universal or sustainable.
    5. Simplicity is the key. You can’t tell the people to not drink the water, it is the only clean water available. You can’t install water treatment plants, there is no running water, you can’t rely on solutions that are centralized.

    So with all that in mind, here’s what Prof. Hussam did:

    The Gold Award-winning SONO filter is a point-of-use method for removing arsenic from drinking water.  A top bucket is filled with locally available coarse river sand and a composite iron matrix (CIM).  The sand filters coarse particles and imparts mechanical stability, while the CIM removes inorganic arsenic.  The water then flows into a second bucket where it again filters through coarse river sand, then wood charcoal to remove organics, and finally through fine river sand and wet brick chips to remove fine particles and stabilize water flow.  The SONO filter is now manufactured and used in Bangladesh. That’s great, and easy!

    That’s pretty much freshman chemistry right there, further proof that most innovation does not need new science, only people willing to spend some time on problems that don’t necessarily get looked at.

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    The NY TImes on India’s Water Issues

    Byoliveridley

    The New York Times starts a three part series on water issues in India.
    In Teeming India, Water Crisis Means Dry Pipes and Foul Sludge – New York Times

    The crisis, decades in the making, has grown as fast as India in recent years. A soaring population, the warp-speed sprawl of cities, and a vast and thirsty farm belt have all put new strains on a feeble, ill-kept public water and sanitation network. The combination has left water all too scarce in some places, contaminated in others and in cursed surfeit for millions who are flooded each year. Today the problems threaten India’s ability to fortify its sagging farms, sustain its economic growth and make its cities healthy and habitable. At stake is not only India’s economic ambition but its very image as the world’s largest democracy.

    This has not changed since I was a kid, we had the exact same problems growing up, and it is not likely to get any better real soon. Depressing to read first thing in the morning.

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    Shaming People into Pooping Indoors

    Byoliveridley

    Meanwhile, in the other India, people still poop outdoors…

    Using shame to change sanitary habits – Los Angeles Times

    Every morning before sunrise, Ravi Shankar Singh, a cheerful man known to his neighbors as “Luv” Singh, sets out to patrol the potholed roads and rice fields of this north Indian village. He carries a whistle and a flashlight. He sings while he walks. The village’s self-appointed sanitation guardian, Singh is on the lookout for anyone squatting in the fields or alleys, using the cover of darkness to do what millions of people have always done across India: defecate outdoors. After years of programs to increase the number of latrines in villages, the government still has not managed to eradicate a practice that is cited in the spread of water-borne illnesses and parasites, such as diarrhea and hookworms. Critics say the obstacle is not so much the shortage of latrines, though that, too, remains a problem for nearly half of India’s rural population. The main challenge is getting people to use the facilities they have. Singh says he’s found a way. When he spots someone squatting, he lets loose with a blast on his whistle. Or shines his light on the offender. Or both.

    This is clearly a serious public health issue and one that is linked to many avoidable deaths from disease. I am not sure if blowing whistles at people is an ethical way to do it. In a country where actual toilet facilities are still rare, and the people who grew up in this scarcity have internalized the fact that they have to “externalize” their poop, just providing facilities and shaming them is not enough.

    Just as with most things in India, no easy answers, I guess the right combination of education (especially targeting the young), enforcement through fines, and most importantly, saturation coverage of clean and easily available toilets would eventually work.  But it will take time, and of course, public urination is a completely  different beast!

  • India turns off Nepal's Oil

    Byoliveridley

    BBC NEWS | South Asia | Indian oil supplies to Nepal cut

    The Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) supplies all land-locked Nepal’s oil. Many petrol stations in the kingdom are now reported to have run out of fuel.

    The state-run Nepal Oil Corporation (NOC) said it had been unable to pay the IOC $90m that it owes.

    A spokesman said it would soon run out of reserves and the IOC move was causing widespread fuel shortages.

    Well, not the greatest PR move. When you’re the superpower in the neighborhood, why piss people off over $90 million? Anyway, the related links on the bbc page will tell you all you ever needed to know about the country that hosts the world’s tallest mountain.

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    "Eminent Domain" Police Firing Update

    Byoliveridley

    I had written recently about police firing deaths in West Bengal. It appears that there is a lot more to this story than a case of police overreaction.
    BBC NEWS | South Asia | Ten held over India police firing

    But there are suspicions that outsiders may have joined the police force to attack the villagers in Nandigram, protesting against the planned acquisition of farmland for an industrial complex.

    The West Bengal government has now said it is abandoning the project.

    “Outsiders”? That’s informative! Who might these “outsiders” be? More from an Indian source:

    The Central Bureau of Investigation -, probing last Wednesday’s Nandigram deaths in police firing, Saturday recovered a huge cache of arms and ammunition from Khejuri, a base of the Communist Party of India-Marxist -.

    Ten people, presumed to be members of the CPI-M, were arrested by the probe agency during the operation.

    The CPI-M is West Bengal’s ruling party, having been in power for more than thirty years. So the emerging hypothesis is that some “operatives” (read goons) from the ruling party decided to “help” the police clear out the protesting villagers. The tragedy has gone national because the CPI(M) is a supporter of the ruling coalition in India.

    It’s a complex issue, one that I want to learn a lot more about. But the gist of the story is that the ruling Communist party in Bengal is trying to kick start industrial development that has been stagnant for many years. The Haldia Development Authority has been tasked with this rather difficult task, and has been going about its merry business trying to acquire land and setup industrial parks and so called special economic zones.

    The issue here is not the idea, which is sound, but the process, which has been top-down, and designed and implemented with no input from the people who will be affected. Some level of increased industrialization will provide more infrastructure, jobs and money eventually. But the process needed to be planned so that the farmers affected could transition a little more easily from their generations of farm employment. Medinipur, the district where Nandigram is located is predominantly agricultural with 65% of the rural population working as farmers (source Indian Census 2001). There are nearly 6 million people involved in agriculture in this district alone. That’s an arkload of people who will be affected by a major change in the occupational profile, they need to be considered and consulted.

    So when the people affected protested and took the site over, the Chief Minister of West Bengal,  Budhaddeb Bhattacharya, asked the police to clear them out, and I guess they took that literally.

    These protests are spreading, with unrest in Orissa as well. The good news is that there’s been a lot of outcry, and the whole program has been put on hold pending a national policy on acquisition of land for industries. India is not China, people know how to organize, protest and generally make themselves heard. More importantly, the press will cover stories like these (at least for a few weeks, or until India loses to Bangladesh in the Cricket World Cup! – This happened on Saturday!), so development necessarily takes a slower and more tortuous path. That is not always a bad thing. Will they get the process right the next time they do it, I am not sure, but hopefully, these deaths will not have been in vain.