Gah

How many times have you got this email forward? Does it piss you off or leave you feeling all soft and warm and fuzzy and proud?

You may know some of the following facts. These facts were recently published in a German magazine, which deals with WORLD HISTORY FACTS ABOUT INDIA.
• India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history.
• India invented the Number System. Aryabhatta invented zero.
• The World's first university was established in Takshila in 700BC. More than 10,500 students from all over the world studied more than 60 subjects. The University of Nalanda built in the 4th century BC was one of the greatest achievements of ancient India in the field of education.
• Sanskrit is the mother of all the European languages. Sanskrit is the most suitable language for computer software reported in Forbes magazine, July 1987.
• Ayurveda is the earliest school of medicine known to humans. Charaka, the father of medicine consolidated Ayurveda 2500 years ago. Today Ayurveda is fast regaining its rightful place in our civilization.
• Although modern images of India often show poverty and lack of development, India was the richest country on earth until the time of British invasion in the early 17th Century.
• The art of Navigation was born in the river Sindh 6000 years ago. The very word Navigation is derived from the Sanskrit word NAVGATIH. The word navy is also derived from Sanskrit 'Nou'.
• Bhaskaracharya calculated the time taken by the earth to orbit the sun hundreds of years before the astronomer Smart; Time taken by earth to orbit the sun: (5th century) 365.258756484 days.
• Budhayana first calculated the value of pi, and he explained the concept of what is known as the Pythagorean Theorem. He discovered this in the 6th century long before the European mathematicians
• Algebra, trigonometry and calculus came from India; Quadratic equations were by Sridharacharya in the 11th century ; The largest numbers the Greeks and the Romans used were 10⁶ (10 to the power of 6) whereas Hindus used numbers as big as 10⁵³ (10 to the power of 53) with specific names as early as 5000 BCE during the Vedic period. Even today, the largest used number is Tera 10¹² (10 to the power of 12).
• According to the Gemological Institute of America, up until 1896, India was the only source for diamonds to the world.
• USA based IEEE has proved what has been a century-old suspicion in the world scientific community that the pioneer of Wireless communication was Prof. Jagdeesh Bose and not Marconi.
• The earliest reservoir and dam for irrigation was built in Saurashtra.
• According to Saka King Rudradaman I of 150 CE a beautiful lake called 'Sudarshana' was constructed on the hills of Raivataka during Chandragupta Maurya's time.
• Chess (Shataranja or AshtaPada) was invented in India.
• Sushruta is the father of surgery. 2600 years ago he and health scientists of his time conducted complicated surgeries like cesareans, cataract, artificial limbs, fractures, urinary stones and even plastic surgery and brain surgery. Usage of anesthesia was well known in ancient India. Over 125 different surgical equipment was used. Deep knowledge of anatomy, physiology, etiology, embryology, digestion, metabolism, genetics and immunity is also found in many texts.
• When many cultures were only nomadic forest dwellers over 5000 years ago, Indians established Harappan culture in Sindhu Valley (Indus Valley Civilization).
• The place value system, the decimal system was developed in India in 100 BC.

Make Blog Not War

From Anja Kovacs of the Internet Democracy Project.


MAKE BLOG NOT WAR
A Freedom of Expression Training for Bloggers

An initiative of the Internet Democracy Project

Are you a blogger and interested in deepening your understanding of Internet censorship and freedom of expression as they play out in India? Would you like to know more about the ways in which such issues may affect you directly? As a blogger, do you see yourself has having an important stake in the freedom of expression debate?

Then this is your chance. The Internet Democracy Project is organising a training on freedom of expression and censorship for bloggers on 25 February 2012. In the course of this day-long program, a mix of short lectures and more interactive sessions will take you through:
• the history of censorship in India and its current status;
• the legal framework regarding online censorship and the ways in which it may affect you;
• debates on difficult questions such as where and how to draw the line where hate speech is concerned;
• what to do if you are served a legal notice;
• alternatives to censorship to fight problematic content;
and much more. Throughout the training, we will of course be paying particular attention to how all of this may affect your blog and yourself.

As the training aims to be highly interactive and will draw to a significant extent on participants’ experiences and inputs, there will be space for only fifteen select and experienced bloggers. They will be joined by four trainers: lawyer and law and tech blogger Apar Gupta; documentary film maker Bishakha Datta; literary critic, journalist and blogger Nilanjana Roy; and the Internet Democracy Project's Anja Kovacs.

The event will take place in Delhi, from 10 am until 5 pm. Bloggers from all over India are welcome to apply: the Internet Democracy Project will take care of the travel costs of all participants in the event as well as food for the duration of the event (as this is a day-long program, we will, however, not be able to provide any accommodation).

In return for facilitating your presence in the training, we ask that you write five blog posts on issues related to freedom of expression in India in the two months following the event. That is the commitment you make if you decide to join us.

Are you interested in being part of this program? Please send your answers to the questions below to Anja Kovacs, anja AT internetdemocracy DOT in as soon as possible and by 17 February at the latest. Selected participants will be informed on 18 February.

Where do you blog? If you are on Twitter, please do include your Twitter handle as well.
Why are you interested in joining this training?
Have you blogged on or otherwise engaged with freedom of expression issues before? If so, please share some details.
What are particular issues/questions you would like to see covered in the training?
Have you ever implemented any kind of censorship on your blog? Please expand (please note that answering yes to this question is not a reason to disqualify you from participation!).
Has anyone ever attempted to censor you as a blogger in one way or the other? Please expand.

Please note that while a demonstrated interest in one form or another (including on Twitter or Facebook) is definitely a plus, expertise in freedom of expression issues is not a requirement for participation.

We look forward to hearing from you!

#flashreads for free speech / Feb 14th

THE IDEA: To celebrate free speech and to protest book bans, censorship in the arts and curbs on free expression

WHY FEBRUARY 14TH? For two reasons. In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the death of Salman Rushdie for writing the Satanic Verses. In GB Shaw’’s words: “Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.”
February 14th or Valentine’s Day has also become a flashpoint in India, a day when protests against “Western culture” by the Shiv Sena have become an annual feature. In Chandigarh, 51 Sena activists were arrested by the police after V-day protests turned violent in 2011. Our hope is to take back the day, and observe it as a day dedicated to the free flow of ideas, speech and expression.

#flashreads is a simple way of registering your protest against the rising intolerance that has spread across India in the last few decades. At any time on February 14th—we suggest 3 pm, but pick a time of your convenience—go out with a friend or a group of friends and do a quick reading. If you'd like some suggestions/ selected passages, email me or leave a message in the comments and we'll send you some selections from challenged books. Or pick your favourite passage on free speech, or passages from a challenged book or the works of any writer who has faced sedition charges, a book ban or other forms of censorship.

Feel free to create your own protest.

Places where you might do public readings: subway and Metro stations, public parks, coffee shops, open areas in malls. If you’re talking about Flashreads on Twitter, please use the #flashreads hashtag.

If you have a blog, a tumblr or a website, an easy way to join in is to post Tagore’s poem, “Where the mind is without fear” (see below) on your site for a day, or choose any other passage on free speech/ censorship that appeals to you. Or write a post about free expression and what it's meant to you in your own life.
(You could do this on your Facebook / Google+ / other social site profile page too. On Twitter, consider linking to one of the many posts that contain this message. Or Tweet 'Where the mind is without fear' line by line, with the #flashreads hashtag

Where the mind is without fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

~Rabindranath Tagore

Elections and the elephant in the room

The Election Commission's order to cover up all statues of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati, and her party symbol, the elephant, has caused some consternation. One sees the logic, and one holds no brief for Ms Mayawati. Nevertheless, in the interests of fair play, one recommends that symbols of other political parties (PDF, scroll to page 79) in UP — and elsewhere — be similarly obscured.

So:

• All lotuses in all ponds should be covered, lest they give the BJP free publicity. (We recommend little gauze bags, so that some air and light get in.)

• Sickles should not be used: in cornfields, since that is an obvious advertisement for the Communist Party of India; and near hammers, because that's a plug for the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

• All alarm clocks must herewith be banned. They ring for the Nationalist Congress Party. Tell the boss that when you're late for work.

• Also to be kept away from the impressionable public eye, or to be covered with tarpaulin: bicycles, bows and arrows, hurricane lamps, spectacles, rotary dial phones, busses, lions, the rising sun, incandescent bulbs, torches, roosters, conchs, mangoes, weighing scales (the manual kind; you can go ahead with the electric variety), umbrellas, tops, hand-pumps, leaves (in pairs), three-petalled flowers, and a number of other fairly mundane items (see link above for the list).

• And, of course, since it just wouldn't do to let the Indian National Congress get away with it, you, yes, you, every one of you, will, until after polling day, kindly keep your hands in your pockets.

You who can't sleep tonight

You who can't sleep tonight,
As restlessly you move,
Tossing, turning, left, right,
But just can't find the groove -

Yes, you sod, you're alone!
Man up, don't whine, no tears!
Get online, yeah, c'mon!
And tweet away your fears.

Not Vikram Seth

Why Sachin Tendulkar isn't god

We — our media, but also our chattering classes, as visible on social media — call him God. We say he is gifted, that his skills are superhuman, and that his records will never be broken.

One begs to differ.

Every time you ascribe divinity to the man, you're doing him a great disservice. You're ignoring the hours and hours of practice that made handling a bat second nature to him. You're ignoring the fact that his coach, Ramakant Achrekar, ferried him from game to game at maidan after maidan on his scooter, so that on a given day he got more turns at bat in a competitive environment than anyone else. You're ignoring the more than 10,000 hours of purposeful practice that he had put in, honing his skills, before he made his India début; hours that most others managed to do only by their late teens at best, more likely in their early twenties.

You're also not paying due respect to the giants on whose shoulders Tendulkar stands, his wonders to perform: the generation that brought India's first cricket World Cup home, thereby inspiring countless young lads for whom cricket was suddenly more viable as a vocation, as a way of life. Which, in turn, encouraged the setting up of hundreds of cricket academies, and, in time, the channelling of advertising money into the game, which made it even more viable for all those lads, which in turn inspired even more... you get the picture.

We live now in an age when, thanks to the IPL, hordes of young men can aspire to a life of reasonable affluence on the back of nothing more than cricketing skill. They don't have to make it to the national team for the money to start rolling in. And their aspirations are being reinforced by the many hours of cricket being streamed into our homes by television and the internet, by the many advertisements starring cricketers who are the flavour of the month.

Which means more cricketing academies, more trained coaches, better facilities, and definitely more striplings wanting to play cricket.

Chances are, as you read this, many millions of little boys aged five to ten are out there in the playing fields of the towns and villages, dreaming of being Tendulkar, much like he dreamt of being Gavaskar.

In a few years, some hundreds of thousands of them will actually get to play the game with some level of seriousness, maybe for school or college, or impromptu neighbourhood teams.

Of those multitudes, many will drop out even while still in school, sure. But some will genuinely fall in love with the game and want to put in the extra hours in the pursuit of happiness (and excellence).

Some tens of thousands of them will have pushy/supportive (your adjective may differ) parents who send them off to cricket classes.

Of those, a few thousand will have the good fortune to receive high-level coaching, the kind that hones the basics but also innovates, pushes boundaries, teaches mental strength as well as physical skills, all without burning the tykes out or making them thoroughly sick of the game.

These kids will go beyond making it to the school and college teams: they'll play for clubs and states, and probably in smaller, more localised versions of the IPL, of which, I think, there will be a fair number of, and from which scouts for the big franchises will find their talent.

Of these, dozens will be good enough to be in contention for the national team. And they'll be playing at a level that is much higher than the current incumbents can. This is natural: standards rise over time, and cricket is much further from hitting a theoretical wall defined by human limitations than, say, the 100 metres track event.

What are the chances that at least one of them — inspired as a child by the winners of the 2011 World Cup, nurtured by parents and coaches, favoured by circumstances, and with the mental strength and the physical conditioning to last through a long career — will beat all Tendulkar's records?

Sacrilegious as it may seem, pretty good, I think.

Well, okay, maybe the little big man's Test records will never be broken. Because that form of the game will have vanished by then.

Jaipur Literature Festival

Will you be there?

The history of Star Trek

Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

A third view on the Lok Pal bill (and may there be more!)

This letter is reproduced here with Ms Roy's permission, and with the request to forward to friends. We need more debate, not just blind following.

Please also visit this page on the NCPRI site, which has a lot of related reading and additional matter.

Letter from Aruna Roy:

As a preface and a possible apology, let me say that this is a combination between a letter and a note. Please bear with the length of it. We write to you on a matter of mutual and common concern, the Lokpal bill, now in Parliament. The context of this letter is explained below.

When the Joint Drafting Committee of the Lokpal was working on the Jan Lokpal , the NCPRI had written to the Chair, Shri Pranab Mukherjee, and the co-chair Shri Shanti Bhushan, enquiring about the TORs and the process of and participation, in public consultation. Both assured us that there would be formal public consultation. It did not happen.

When the government bill went to cabinet with the intention of placing it in the monsoon session of parliament, the NCPRI decided to make its position known. The NCPRI is continuing with its deliberations and consultations and has prepared an approach paper and a set of principles for circulation. This is a work in progress.

The belief in consultations and discussion is the reason why we write to you.

The NCPRI’s (National Campaign for People’s Right to Information) involvement with legislation to deal with corruption and arbitrary use of power, began with the demand for an RTI law in 1996. The Lokpal was flagged as a law that needed to be taken up along with the Whistle Blowers Bill to address the killing of RTI activists and establish accountability. A committee was set up in the September 2010 for that purpose. The issue of the Lokpal was however taken up by some members of the NCPRI Working Committee, who formed the IAC and the NCPRI discussions remained suspended.

The Lokpal discussion has had an interesting trajectory. It began as the stated logical end of a large middle class mobilization on corruption. The stated end of that campaign was the demand for the setting up of a Joint Drafting Committee for a Lokpal bill. In common usage and understanding of corruption, the term casually refers to a range of corrupt practices. The political/governance spectrum is indeed more culpable than others. For it is mandated to maintain integrity in public life, to keep the country on keel with constitutional and other guarantees. This includes preventing the arbitrary use of power and corrupt practices. The Lokpal was too simplistically ordained by the campaign as a solution to all varieties of corrupt practices in our lives.

However the assurance that all solutions to the entire gamut of corrupt practices could be worked out through a strong Lokpal has left us with a great sense of disquiet. Not only because it does not address the arbitrary use of power. But because it is an unrealistic promise to rising expectations that it is an alleviation of all ills through one bill. It is also a question of the contents of the Jan Lokpal draft itself.

There have been public meetings but few consultations on the content of the Act in detail . While gestures and symbolic assent - like sms and referendums - may approve the intent, drafting of an Act needs more informed debate. The Lokpal debate has had its share of general platitudes, we need now to go beyond that. We also have to place the role of dissent squarely in the fulcrum of the debate. The discussions after all, flow from the acceptance that a strong Lokpal bill is needed. Also that the earlier and even the current government draft is faulty, even on principles.

The NCPRI however did make efforts before the 5th of April to arrive at a consensus with the IAC in a meeting held on 3rd April in the NMML. The NAC took up the matter independent of the NCPRI on the 4th April. The NCPRI had expressed reservations about the over arching and overwhelming structure of a law, which included grievances and corruption within its ambit. It was argued that though both are equally important, they require different mechanisms for implementation.

Subsequently events took over, and in the polarised discourse, it became impossible to make suggestions and or suggest changes. Every critique was attributed to wrong intent and viewed with suspicion and mistrust by the civil society members of the Joint Committee. Critique of the Bill has evoked sharp reactions, and statements have been made that no amendments or change to the principles or the framework is possible, and that disagreement with the draft was tantamount to promoting corruption. We were baffled by such statements. The NCPRI however continued with the consultations to evolve an approach, a set of principles and measures to unpack the huge unwieldy and much too powerful structure proposed by the IAC.

We are attaching a set of documents defining our approach to the Lokpal, different both from the Jan Lokpal and the Government bills. The NCPRI would like to share a set of principles and a framework for deliberation. The summary of our basic arguments is detailed below. This was placed in the public domain by the NCPRI and the Inclusive Media 4 Change ( CSDS) on the 5th and 6th of June 2011.

The consensus that emerged was that in place of a single institution there should be multiple institutions and that a basket of collective and concurrent Lokpal anti corruption and grievance redress measures should be evolved.

Summary of the NCPRI approach towards a series of concurrent and collective Anti-corruption and Grievance Redress measures:

Rationale: Vesting jurisdiction over the length and breadth of the government machinery in one institution will concentrate too much power in the institution, while the volume of work will make it difficult to carry out its tasks.

1. Unanimous endorsement of the need for accountability of all public servants, including the contentious issue of inclusion of the PM, with a few caveats. ( No one is above the law, enforcing the rule of law).

2. An independent system for judicial scrutiny and standards.

3. An independent and strong institution to scrutinize corruption of public servants and issues, which require different administrative processes and organizational set-up.

4. A mechanism to redress grievances of the common citizen.

5. Whistle Blowers protection.

The five measures proposed by NCPRI are:

1. Rashtriya Bhrashtachar Nivaran Lokpal (National Anti-corruption Lokpal): An institution to tackle corruption of all elected representatives, including the Prime Minister (with some safeguards), Ministers and Members of Parliament and senior bureaucrats (Group ‘A’officers) and all other co-accused including those in the private and social sector. The Lokpal will be financially and administratively independent from the government and will have both investigative and prosecution powers.

2. Kendriya Satarkta Lokpal (Central Vigilance Commission): Amending the Central Vigilance Commission Act to remove the single directive and empower the CVC to investigate corruption and take appropriate action against mid-level bureaucracy.

3. Nyayapalika Lokpal (Judicial Standards and Accountability Lokpal): To strengthen the existing Judicial Accountability and Standards Bill, that is currently before the Parliament, to ensure that the judiciary is also made effectively and appropriately accountable, without compromising its independence from the executive or the integrity of its functions.

4. Shikayat Nivaran Lokpal (Public Grievances Lokpal): To set up an effective time-bound system for grievance redress for common citizens to make the government answerable in terms of its functions, duties, commitments and obligations towards citizens. The grievance redress structure would have decentralized institutional mechanisms going right down to each ward/block level, and would ensure a bottom-up, people centric approach so that complaints and grievances can be dealt with speedily and in a decentralized, participatory and transparent manner. It will integrate public vigilance processes like vigilance committees and social audits, and provide for facilitation for the filing of all grievances/complaints through the setting up of block information and facilitation centres in every Block (rural) and ward(urban) in the country.The grievance redress mechanism will be a three-tier structure consisting of grievance redress officers at the local level within the department, independent district level grievance redressal authorities and central/State level grievance redress commission. It will include and rationalize existing
structures.

5. Lokrakshak Kanoon (Whistleblower Protection Lokpal): To strengthen the existing Public interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making the Disclosure Bill, that is currently before the Parliament, to ensure appropriate protection of whistleblowers.

These institutions, where relevant, will also be established at the State level. In addition there will be a common selection process to staff these institutions. We feel that all these measures need to be brought in simultaneously to effectively tackle corruption at all levels and provide a mechanism to redress grievances of citizens.

We write to you, to present this alternative, to elicit your responses, and to invite you to be part of the discourse. Please do let us know whether you are interested in being part of the discourse and in receiving periodic updates.

Please forward this on to friends and other interested people.

We look forward to your reply.

Warm regards,

Aruna Roy
MKSS (Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan)
Village Devdungri, Post Barar
District Rajsamand 313341
Rajasthan

(email us at views.lokpal@gmail.com)

Recommended reading on the Lok Pal bill(s)

A number of posts I found interesting and informative. Please also read Amit Varma's post, Anna's Song, where he has put together a similar selection (warning: links to this blog) and Prajnya's page dedicated the Lok Pal debate, which has a large number of links from different perspectives.

In no particular order:

India needs reforms, not a super babu - Kanchan Gupta - Daily Pioneer

Is there a teaching moment we're missing today? - Swarna Rajagopalan (personal blog)

I'd rather not be Anna - Arundhati Roy - The Hindu

Rupees, Annas And Vice - Gautam Patel (personal blog, but a piece that has appeared in the TOI's Mirror set of city newspapers)

Why Anna Hazare is wrong and Lok Pal a bad idea - Nitin Pai - (personal blog, The Acorn, part of The National Interest)

Of the few, by the few and Time to step back (both by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, in Indian Express)

A thinktank brings Anna the eyeballs - Rahul Kanwal - India Today

The Making of an Authority: Anna Hazare in Ralegan Siddhi - Mukul Sharma - Kafila (a collective blog)

The dangers of a movement - Ranjit Hoskote - Tehelka

The Insurgent - Mehboob Jeelani - Caravan

Jan Lok Pal: unconstitutional, unnecessary - Amba Salelkar - Pragati (part of The National Interest)

Hazare is no Gandhi - Salil Tripathi - The Daily Star

Reign of the Tin Men - Shoma Chaudhury with Revati Laul, The third flight path - Shoma Chaudhury, with an interview with Aruna Roy and Lokpal: An option without a fast or fuss - Revati Laul (all Tehelka)

Answering Anna’s critics: 10 posers and rebuttals - R Jagannathan - Firstpost

Protesters We Like: Anna, Arundhati and the doublespeak of dissent - Lakshmi Chaudhry - Firstpost

Hazare's solution is no solution at all - Aakar Patel Friday Times

Dreams at the barricades - Mihir Sharma - Indian Express

Hazare, Khwahishein Aisi: Desiring a new politics, after Anna Hazare and beyond corruption - Shuddhabrata Sengupta - Kafila

Are we missing anything? Please leave links in the comments. Thank you.

Added later

A patriarch for the nation? - The nation’s problems cannot be solved by a supercop - Ramachandara Guha - The Telegraph

Annationalism - Shekhar Gupta - Indian Express

A tale of two movements - Amita Baviskar - The Times of India

The long shadow of the Ramlila stage - Ashutosh Varshney - Indian Express