nepali restaurant in delhi?

Ever since my first trip to Kathmandu, in 2002, I've been looking for a Nepali restaurant in Delhi. Shailaja even picked up a Nepali cookbook. But the key ingredient -- fermented bamboo -- for our favorite dish, aloo tama, so far can't be found.

Now, I realize that the Nepalese don't enjoy very high status in India, where they are looked upon with a sort of patronizing attitude. But I still can't comprehend why "Tibetan" momos (which in most places are more like Chinese jaozi than the yak meat dumplings you get in Tibet and its environs) are ubiquitous, yet you can't find a single joint that serves aloo tama and the other specialties of Nepal.

Ok, ok, I know, there are only three or so Keralite and one Goan (relocated to Gurgaon of all places) and most of the states/cuisines are hardly represented at all, outside their respective government-house canteens. But there are so many Nepalis IN Delhi, many with, as Indians say, "donkey's years" of experience as cooks. I just don't see why nobody's taken a flier on a few Nepali dishes at one of the momo joints or Indo-Chinese restaurants. And folks: I just KNOW there's a guy waiting in the wings at Flames who can knock out Nepali dishes like nobody's business if they just give him a chance. Beer and fermented bamboo... Mmmmm.

Somebody, please, prove me wrong. Any Nepali joints in town?

damn it's hot

I can't think about anything else. All I do is look at Google weather and quake in fear. 47 degrees Centigrade. Today I admitted defeat on the living room (where I'd put up styrofoam to try to block the heat). There are just too many doors and windows for the A/C to compete. My new strategy is to retreat to the bedroom, which is on the "shady" side of the house--such as it is--and only has two doors. I've moved the TV and laptop in here, and I think I've managed to get the room temperature down to around 30-32. What are people doing that don't even have electricity? Or the guys who I see spreading tar on the road? I think I would be dead in a matter of hours.

i'm not a farmer, i play one on tv

Back in the day, an advertisement for some hemmorhoid ointment or headache medicine used to feature a guy in a white labcoat who started his pitch with the line, "I'm not a doctor. I play one on TV." Then he'd go on to give his non-medical opinion about why you should buy the product. I don't know why the ad guys thought this would work. Maybe it was some "People hate know-it-alls so they're more likely to listen to an idiot with newscaster hair" thing.

But as far as I know the guy never actually started trying to write prescriptions or perform surgeries. Unlike Amatabh Bachchan and Amir Khan, who are now claiming not only to play farmers on TV, but to be farmers who deserve the right to buy agricultural land. Apparently, they ARE good at spreading manure.

the best salesman in the world

Those of you who remember the pedestrian horn and the refrigerator snorkel, two inventions that failed to make me a crorepati--yet!--should get a kick out of this. A couple months back I noticed that my gym had (madly) agreed to market a kind of personal home sauna device to its members. According to the brochure tacked up on the bulletin board, the thing is a kind of rubber/canvas box coated with some kind of sun-multiplying material. From the picture, it looks like you park it out in your garden or on your balcony and sit on a chair inside with your head sticking out through a hole like those old steamers that appeared in Three Stooges movies and such. Then the sun cooks you into a raisin.

Now, I know what you're thinking. The best salesman in the world couldn't sell this thing in Delhi, right?

Even with my A/C running, my living room has sauna-like characteristics, and I've already spoiled my feng shui by duct-taping the french doors (in Delhi! french doors!) with aluminum-foil-covered styrofoam (aka thermocol). Now that was an invention! Takes me back to the days when I thought the pedestrian horn would make me a two-hundred-thousand-aire.

back in delhi

Had to make an unscheduled trip to the US for six weeks, and couldn't muster the energy/enthusiasm to write of trivial matters here. Never fear, though. You can expect useless and trivial information at greater frequency for the foreseeable future.

achieve instant calm

This Slate article on the New Age conquest of Yoga is the funniest thing I've read in a LONG time. Be sure to read all the way through for the account of the v. flexible "yoga stalker." A favorite tidbit:

It all adds up to what a friend recently called the "hostile New Age takeover of yoga." "New Age" culture being those scented-candle shrines to self-worship, the love-oneself lit of The Secret, the "applied kinesiology"-type medical and metaphysical quackery used to support a vast array of alternative-this or alternative-that magical-thinking workshops and spa weekends. At its best, it's harmless mental self-massage. At its worst, it's the kind of thinking that blames cancer victims for their disease because they didn't "manifest" enough positive vibes.

One "manifestation" of this takeover is the shameless enlistment of yoga and elevated Eastern yogic philosophy for shamelessly material Western goals. Rather than an alternative, it's become an enabler. "Power yoga"! Yoga for success! Yoga for regime change! (Kidding.)

And then there's what you might call "Yoga for Supermarket Checkout Line Goals." Or as the cover story of Rodale's downmarket magazine YogaLife put it, yoga to: "BURN FAT FASTER!" (Subsidiary stories bannered on the YogaLife cover: "4 WAYS TO LOSE 5 POUNDS"; "ZEN SECRETS TO: HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS ... INSTANT CALM.")

an "old" one refurbished

Here's one that was finally published after an editor returned from a long vacation....

Indian state gets ready for an onslaught of rats
Rare species of flowering bamboo puts rodents in a feeding and breeding frenzy

JASON OVERDORF

From Friday's Globe and Mail

NEW DELHI — At nightfall in the remote state of Mizoram in northeast India, villagers listen with apprehension to the rustling of thousands of rats foraging and breeding in the jungle. For now, the rodents are gorging themselves on flowering bamboo. But when the bamboo dies and the rice harvesting season begins, a scurrying plague will descend on their paddy fields.

An unusual species of bamboo blankets Mizoram, a remote state with an ethnically distinct tribal population. Melocanna baccifera flowers only once every 50 years or so, generating millions of high-protein seeds that turn the local rats into incredibly prolific breeders. But when the seeds disappear, the huge number of rats left over invade the rice paddies of the area's farmers, destroying the crops the villagers depend on for survival.

In a single night, the legion of rodents can clip the ears from every rice stalk in a field, says James Lalsiamliana, the Mizoram Agriculture Department official who heads the state's rodent control cell. During last year's harvest -- when the bamboo flowering began in the eastern part of the state -- more than 40 villages lost their entire crop. And this year, the flowering has peaked across all of Mizoram.

"They depend on this paddy for subsistence," Mr. Lalsiamliana said. "The state will now have to arrange financial support for these areas."

Local villagers call the once-in-50-years phenomenon mautam, or "bamboo death." And the last time it hit, in 1959, it was indeed deadly. The central government dismissed local forecasts as superstitious raving, and was unprepared to fight off the rodents or provide adequate relief for the massive food shortages that followed. The famine spawned a revolt against Indian rule by the Mizo National Front that lasted until 1986 and took more than 3,000 lives. Now, one of the movement's leaders, Pu Zoramthanga, is Mizoram's chief minister.

This time around, the government has released more than $125-million to fight the problem. And as much as five years back, Mizoram began tapping experts to develop a co-ordinated plan to limit the effects of the flowering and control the rodent population. The Ministry of Environment and Forests drew on experts from the International Bamboo and Rattan Network (INBAR) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to help find new ways to utilize the bamboo and thus encourage local villagers to harvest it before it flowers. The ministry also called in Canada's John Bourne, a 30-year veteran of Alberta's rat patrol who helped make the Canadian province rat free, to study the local rodents and develop a plan for killing rats. Last season, the program Mr. Bourne helped develop allowed villagers to kill hundreds of thousands of rodents using homemade traps and poison supplied by the state.

Mr. Lalsiamliana says the state paid villagers 100 rupees (about $2.50) for every 50 traps they set and distributed more than 15,000 kilograms of rodenticide.

T.P. Subramony, head of INBAR's Delhi office, says India now has a comprehensive plan that covers extraction and management of the bamboo, how to regenerate the forest cover, controlling the rodent population and dealing with health hazards that may arise with the proliferation of the vermin. But he says the key to a solution lies in realizing the value of the bamboo itself.

Although locals cut down and burn bamboo to collect ash that they use as fertilizer, experts from the state's Bamboo Development Agency estimate that less than 1 per cent of the 850,000 hectares of bamboo gets harvested, which is why a panel of researchers from UNIDO and India's Rain Forest Research Institute has recommended the promotion of cottage industries such as the manufacture of tooth picks and bamboo mats and a temporary ban on harvesting bamboo in other parts of the country for the paper industry, along with a host of other economic stimuli.

"One issue is the dying bamboo," Mr. Subramony said. "Then there is the question of how to utilize it. There is a threat, but there is an opportunity also."

Nevertheless, this flowering season, averting a food shortage depends on killing rats. And that may not be enough.

"There will likely be a food shortage, and that may lead to famine," said S.N. Kalita, formerly the principal secretary of forests and head of the environment and forest department of Mizoram. "But the situation cannot be compared with 1959. Now our communication by road and air transport are improved, so transporting in food will not be a problem. Already, some reserve stock has been created. All I can say is that the state government and the government of India is fully prepared."

Special to The Globe and Mail

the us attorney snafu

This is a story that most readers abroad--like me--probably ignored. It sounds like so much American arcana. All that checks and balances rubbish that we yanks are always yanking on about. Of course Bush wanted his own ringers in the office, you probably figured, that's the way of the world.

Well, consider this article in Salon that explains how Bush's moves brought Christian fundamentalists into the Department of Justice to stymie civil rights cases that protect black voters, instead setting the dogs on supposedly thornier issues like allowing Bible-thumpers to proselytize in schools and setting up the whole "intelligent design" thing.

election preview

I don't know, guys. I'm no future White House correspondent. But I can't help thinking that it's going to come down to Hillary & Obama (or Obama & Hillary) vs. Giuliani and Condi Rice. Black and female vs. White and black female. History vs. history. And that's a showdown that scares me, no matter how much Bush has managed to alienate my fellow Americans. I like to recall the days when Giuliani was the guy Wyclef sang about as "the beast"--who "cleaned up" NYC by issuing poorly trained, inexperienced cops with rapid-fire weapons.... Sounds like just the guy to appeal to America's frightened heartland, even if he does come from the big city.

the worst lede i've read in a long time

The "color lede" sinks to new lows. Check out this badly overwritten bit of weepy Orientalism from Canada's Walrus magazine:

"The trees are almost all gone, cut for fuel long ago, and Kabul, once described by the Mughal Emperor Babur as a city of gardens and promenades, is, like its occupants, the dull, dun colour of dust. Christopher Alexander watches as men in shalwar kameez jostle through the crowds or drink sweet tea sold from roadside stands as they chatter with friends, adding their voices to the endless din. Street vendors hawk fried pastries, cellphone plans, and Pringles chips, while limbless children and destitute women in sky-blue burkas beg for coins."

Aghgah ahh ack. Whoops. Sorry. The sound of vomiting is hard to spell.

i don't know about you, but i could use a raise

When did the media become so uniformly anti-union, free-trade, and pro-business? Maybe I'm waxing nostalgic, but it seems to me that there was a day when at least a few of the world's magazines didn't read like dumbed down, slapdash versions of The Economist. Anyway, if that day ever existed, it's gone now. The irony is that journalists are among the worst paid white collar workers in the world, and their jobs are under as great a threat as any. Look at me: I'm working for Newsweek and other magazines without a contract, so they don't have to pay any health benefits or a salary, instead paying only for my work product. And despite the wide-eyed statements on various freelancers web sites and in "Writers' Market" type publications, there's no way to extort pay rates that cover extras like insurance and your equipment & utilities (e.g. Internet fees). The guys who have a full-time job are getting paid a little better, but the more people that newspapers and magazines fire, the more freelancers they create, making the guys on staff more and more superfluous. Does that give editors any sympathy for organized labor? Hell, no. Unions are still demonized for demanding $50 an hour to pull levers and refusing to work during breaktime. And even for a country like India, where perhaps 1 in 10 workers is even employed in the "organized sector" (which as I understand it does not necessarily mean a union shop, simply, more or less, an outfit that operates on the books), where the minimum wage is shockingly low and rarely enforced, and where working conditions range from lax to frighteningly inhumane and dangerous, unions are still trotted out as one of the biggest forces holding back so-called "development." It wasn't the good will of the Carnegies and Rockefellers that brought America's workers along for the ride during the great rise of the 20th Century. On the same lines, I find it hard to believe that the "voluntary efforts" to erase caste discrimination and provide decent wages and working conditions often touted by India's leading capitalists will be enough to do the job here.

Folks, you can have it one way or the other. Either India has a huge, unskilled, unorganized labor force. Or it has a small, skilled, unionized labor force. But Goldman Sachs and company--i.e. those of the "India's demographics will make it the world's second largest economy by 2050 blah de blah" school--can't have it both ways. Can they?

i'm not THAT stupid

At an SEZ protest yesterday a fat, light-skinned bloke in white kurta pajamas, about 5 foot 8 inches tall and wearing two gold rings, tried to pass himself off in an interview as a landless laborer. "We make 100 rupees per day, plus we're allowed to take vegetables from the fields and we get a portion of the grain at harvest time," he told me, throwing in a few English phrases of his owne, via an interpreter. I'm pretty sure that the substance of what he told me was true, but how the heck did he think he was going to fool me into believing he was a landless agricultural laborer? I think I'd have been skeptical even on my first day in India! And having seen a few landless folks--usually, because of poor nutrition, less than 5 foot tall and so slight that they seem part of some lost tribe of pygmies--there was just no way. I almost busted out laughing. I'd have sooner believe that the guy had just swallowed a landless laborer.

remember dinesh d'souza? he's back

Back in the nineties, when I was in college, Dinesh D'Souza became something of a literary star--at least among policy wonks--with his book Illiberal Education, one of the big cultural documents in the era of obsession with political correctness. I fortunately managed to avoid reading it, but all the crap I read about it may have been worse. Now it looks like history may be set to repeat itself, if The New Republic's Andrew Sullivan is right. Shudder.

Here's an excerpt from Sullivan's review:

What is that path? At its core is a deepening rejection of cultural and philosophical modernity. D'Souza believes that the defining new distinction in American politics is no longer between the economic right and the economic left. The size of government and its role as a guardian of the public welfare are increasingly dead issues, or issues where no vital energy crackles. D'Souza rightly holds that the real divide in the new century is between authority and autonomy, between faith-based politics and individual freedom. And in this struggle at the level of first principles, D'Souza chooses his own side. He is at war with the modern West. If forced to choose between a theocratic order that upheld traditional morality and a secular order that saw such morality marginalized, D'Souza is with the former. He puts it more graphically himself: "Yes, I would rather go to a baseball game or have a drink with Michael Moore than with the grand mufti of Egypt. But when it comes to core beliefs, I'd have to confess that I'm closer to the dignified fellow in the long robe and prayer beads than to the slovenly fellow with the baseball cap."
....
The Enemy at Home is essentially an unpacking of that extraordinary confession. D'Souza argues that there are only two choices for a human being to make in the twenty-first century with respect to "core beliefs": "traditional morality" and what he calls "liberal morality." Traditional morality, in D'Souza's view, "is based on the notion that there is a moral order in the universe, which establishes an enduring standard of right and wrong. All the major religions of the world agree on the existence of this moral order. There is also a surprising degree of unanimity about the content of this moral order." Liberal morality, by contrast, consists first of all in the right of the individual to choose for him- or herself what morality is. It is about "autonomy, individuality, and self-fulfillment as moral ideals." Its essence is the notion that "each person must decide for himself or herself what is right in a particular situation." D'Souza argues that the shift in America over the past few decades from traditional morality to liberal morality is "the most important fact of the past half-century."

don king drapes the pope with title belts

In a rare audience, Don King presented Pope Benedict XVI specially made championship boxing belts from the WBC, WBA, IBF, Italian Boxing Federation and French Boxing Federation this week, occasioning the following comment from maxboxing.com's Bernard Fernandez:

"Will the WBA pronounce [Benedict] a “super” pope, and mandate a box-off of the two highest-ranked cardinals for designation as the “regular” pope? Will he have to sign a promotional contract (no expiration date, of course) with King to remain in the eternal good graces of WBC president Jose Sulaiman, who has a similar lifetime gig? And is the IBF even now plotting to strip him of his papacy for refusal to throw down with some Middle Eastern ayatollah ranked No. 1 by that dubious organization’s ratings committee?"

We'll have to wait and see. But if the Vatican does hold a box-off, I for one am hoping that the competitors keep on their robes and pointy hats.

blast from the past - the homestead strike

I ran across an interesting Wikipedia entry today as I was thinking about parallels in American history with India's current developmental phase. Check out this article on the 1892 Homestead Strike for some interesting parallels with what's going on in India today.

metro chief rues lack of 'passenger etiquette'

Welcome to delhibelly, E. Sreedharan.

"I would like to appeal to the citizens of Delhi to allow passengers to first alight from trains before boarding," says the Metro chief in a public appeal quoted in the Express. "I assure you that the trains will not leave before all those on the platforms are aboard or the trains become full."

The appeal comes within days of the Metro experimenting with a brilliant new crowd management scheme that apparently works wonderfully in Singapore, Hong Kong and Tokyo. They painted yellow lines on the floor that indicate where boarding passengers should queue up, and more yellow lines where space should be left for passengers to get off the train. Says the Express: "The plan, however, was not very successful."

Up next: An appeal from cinema halls, elevator operators, traffic policemen, subzi wallahs, cashiers, bouncers, and parking lot attendants.

shoot to kill

As India investigates the police firing in Nandigram, New York has indicted three police officers for firing 50 rounds into a carful of unarmed men. Naturally, the police spokesman tells the press that the indictment sends a dangerous message to policeman, saying, “The message that’s being sent now is that even though you’re acting in good faith, in pursuit of your lawful duties, there is no room, no margin for error.”

But consider the facts of the case. After a black officer fired the first shot, a white officer emptied his magazine into the car, reloaded, and emptied another magazine, firing a total of 31 bullets at the unarmed "suspects"--all of whom were black. Fortunately, only one of them was killed. Three shots is a margin of error. But 31 from one guy, and 50 in all? I don't think so.

This goes to an important aspect of policing that is all too often ignored. The job of the police is to maintain law and order, yes, but too often the struggle to do so becomes an ego trip. You don't get out of the car when I say, you must be made to submit--whether that means being frightened, humiliated, beaten down, or, in this case shot. A whole lot of stupid policies are enacted in support of this attitude. For instance, the police are issued semi-automatic weapons (allowing them to fire 50 shots in the course of a minute or two) because they supposedly should not be outgunned by criminals. But why is that the case, when a firefight in an open street endangers far more people than would letting the criminals escape? Even more egregious are the high-speed chases (a favorite on those awful real-life video shows) in which the cops put ten or fifteen careening vehicles on the road supposedly to stop one reckless driver--making him drive much more recklessly, and for a much longer time. Meanwhile, they have the guy's description and license number, through which they can get his address. Why not just let him drive off and pick him up at six in the morning when he's sleeping off his hangover? Because that would be a blow to the ego.

Sometimes, you have to think with your brain and not your balls, folks. Let 'em go, if it's smarter and safer. Pick 'em up later. England has the right idea, with its unarmed police. That way, if the coppers are scared of black folks, their mistakes are less costly and they have to get really close to bludgeon somebody to death.

religious bias made beer man target gays: cops

What a headline! Too bad the article is about a Mumbai serial killer, rather than the waiter at the Bombay Cricket Club.

news from the usa

Since I've been banging on about reservations (or quotas) in higher education here in India, I ought to point to a recent New York Review of Books article that has exposed the fallacy of equal access to great colleges in the good ole US of A. Some tidbits:

Ninety percent of Harvard students come from families earning more than the median national income of $55,000, and Harvard's dean of admissions was quoted in the Crimson a few months earlier defining "middle-income" Harvard families as those earning between $110,000 and $200,000.

It is hardly surprising that lots of rich kids go to America's richest colleges. It has always been so. But today's students are richer on average than their predecessors. Between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s, in a sample of eleven prestigious colleges, the percentage of students from families in the bottom quartile of national family income remained roughly steady— around 10 percent. During the same period the percentage of students from the top quartile rose sharply, from a little more than one third to fully half. If the upscale shops and restaurants near campus are any indication, the trend has continued if not accelerated. And if the sample is broadened to include the top 150 colleges, the percentage of students from the bottom quartile drops to 3 percent.[2] In short, there are very few poor students at America's top colleges, and a large and growing number of rich ones.

In addition to the main point here, one other fact came starkly home. Whatever my background, as a (non)householder and breadwinner, I am poor by US standards. Very poor indeed.

how terrible can cnn get?

CNN International has its moments, and it's certainly improved since the days when it was the "all Oklahoma cyclones, all the time" network---wait! really? Has it? Last night we nearly pissed ourselves laughing over a program called the World 360 degrees or some such rubbish, hosted by a desi bloke in Atlanta (Ram Ramgopal, I think, which to get the full effect of course must be pronounced as though the nickname "Battering" preceded it). Battering Ram delivered the "news" as though he were the English instructor for a classful of mentally challenged three year olds. In...Ok-la-ho-ma...an...eight-teen-year-old...boy...re-ceived...an...op-er-a-tion...to...help...con-trol..his
weight....... He...weighed...five...hun-dred...pounds...... ARRRGH! Apart from that torture, the stories they chose to pimp to sister network CNN/IBN were the lamest items of tripe they could find, and they'd pumped up the "awwww, how sweet" quotient to exponential proportions. Apparently, now every story has to end with one of those incredibly stupid kickers or it doesn't make the air. You know what I'm talking about. We're getting them in print journalism, too, these days.

I say bring back the cyclones. They were frustrating. (You know the story: Three Americans were killed in a devastating tornado that swept through Oklahoma today!) But at least they weren't "cute."

in the outback

In a series of longish posts, Slate writer Rolf Potts describes a car journey through the Australian outback, where finding "the real Australia" is easier said than done. Generally, I can't make it past the first couple paragraphs of the items that appear on Slate--too snarky, the politics guff reads like it's part of a sit-com about a debate team of something, and the travel stuff is usually as exciting as reading somebody's laundry list. This one's worth a look, though, for folks like me who are becoming obsessed with Australia after Dirt Music, Three Dog Night, the Secret River, et al. One of the best moments: "You think this is odd, you shoulda been here last month," Sal tells me. "We had a Mad Max party and a Priscilla Queen of the Desert party at the same time. What can you say? Some people come here to learn our history and see how we live. Others just want to have a good time."

how i gentrified ghaziabad

A few months ago I ran across an advertisement for Ghaziabad that was stamped with the bold claim, "Newsweek rates Ghaziabad as the sixth most dynamic city in the world!" Knowing myself in a way responsible, I wondered if this campaign would continue. Today I ran across the same ad. Oops.

To be honest, I had serious reservations about writing of Ghaziabad as India's fastest-growing city, based on UN figures. For one thing, the UN numbers appeared to be generated from a synthesis of Indian figures, yet the local experts were somewhat stunned to learn of the once crime-ridden city's supposed "dynamism." It also seemed a bit absurd to focus on population growth as such an important measure, since in India anyway that often means more poverty rather than a rapid climb up the economic ladder. Gurgaon and Noida, though they were growing faster by population, as well as economic indicators, were too small for our ceiling (I forget what it was offhand). But why not Chennai, I suggested? At the time, it, too, was experiencing phenomenal growth, though not by population, with factories arising seemingly overnight, property prices doubling year-on-year, and so on. Nope. We had to go with the UN. Why? Well, we needed a measurement that could be applied to all the countries that we'd feature.

So, owners of property in Ghaziabad, rejoice. You've got yourself a genuine dynamo. Hell, after reading what I'd written, even I contemplated picking up a luxury flat on one of the construction sites in Indirapuram.

yardley saved me 50 pounds

If there's one book whose price should be listed in pounds, it's Vikram Chandra's new tome, Sacred Games. Whenever a new Indian novel comes out--especially one that receives heavy praise--I grumble and vacillate over whether to read it. Is it really good? Wouldn't I rather be reading something else? Won't I confront the same old storylines and oft repeated formulas (filtered through Bollywood)? As the list of questions suggests, I usually let discretion be the better part of valor, save my money and (very often) the two or three trees used to print a book that no editor felt inclined to prune, however rambling, repetitive or baggy it became. Fortunately, Jonathan Yardley has saved me the trouble and the inevitable backache of reading Sacred Games.

One sentence did it for me: "The enthusiasm with which the venerable firm of HarperCollins is promoting this massive deadweight of a novel, and the money that it's putting where its mouth is, leaves one to ponder once again the eternally mysterious ways of the book-publishing industry."

Negative reviews are so rare that when comes along, one does well to pay heed. No pondering needed for me. Not now.

oblomov

The New Republic paid tribute to one of my favorite novels, Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov. I daresay this is the best least-read Russian novel, and deserves to stand alongside Tolstoy's fatties and Chehov's pamphlets as one of the best examples of what can be done with the written word. In the review, Joseph Frank points out that the book was one of the few works of Russian literature to contribute a new word to the language--oblomovshchina--which gets its origin from the eponymous hero of the novel. What does it mean? Well, you have to read the book to REALLY understand, but the dictionary says "carelessness, want of energy, laziness, negligence." Add to that a candidate for the best love letter of all time and some of the best laughs since Lucky Jim, and you can see why this is on my "must read" list. I think I saw a copy at Om Book Shop awhile back.

(ir)resistible?

A recent IHT editorial posits that high-population, high-growth economies like India and China will "just say no" to America's culture of fast food and trashy entertainment. The writer's theory? Basically, he says these nations have their own fish to fry, while low-population centers like Scandinavia are starved for US cultural product. Would that it were so! I think a casual visit to the Saket Community Center and many other venues in Delhi suggests otherwise--it sure looks like to me that consuming "American" trash is a major aspiration for Indians, and lack of means is the main reason for low consumption. Which means more bad food, bad movies and bad music on the horizon.

This sounds like one of those "I can refute that argument in two words" kindof essays. The two words? Ben Stiller. Somebody stop that guy.

doubling the budget for higher ed?

The Indian Express reports that the government is slated to increase the budget for higher education by as much as 150% to increase the number of students the system can accomodate and thus temper the effects of new quotas for the so-called Other Backward Classes. On the one hand, it goes without saying that higher spending on education is a good thing. But I can't help wondering whether the government is making a crucial misstep at a watershed moment for the country by blundering further down the top-heavy investment pattern it has followed in the past. Unless the increase in the budget for higher ed is accompanied by a similar boost in spending on primary ed--and/or vital reforms to facilitate more fairness and greater access in the private primary schools--I fear that adding university places will only weaken the overall quality and once again enshrine the inequalities that exist between rich and poor. Quotas or no.

$50 symantics

Seems like the $50 plus $25 a year "subscription" to keep the product working that we give Symantec for its antivirus program is a big, fat waste of money. Despite all its constant updating and hogging of system resources that slow even Shai's superfast new machine to a snail's pace, it's neither able to protect us from virus attack nor able to clean the viruses and adware from the machine successfully. To be honest, I'm not sure that any other program is any better, but I'm guessing that there are many out there that offer better value for money. The only source of solace, as I surf out a different AV reputed to kill the bug that we've caught and pay another $40, is reading the nasty comments from other Symantec users. One guy writes that the people at Symantec actually offered to clean the virus off his PC for a $50 fee! Isn't that what your antivirus SOFTWARE is supposed to do? he replied. I'd rather send the money to one of your competitors. He received a groveling response with new instructions (they didn't work either) and then bought a new program. WTF! Do we need a different AV for every virus? Has anybody ever downloaded one of Symantec's "fixers" that actually worked?

can india make a blockbuster drug?

Indian generic-drug makers once bedeviled Big Pharma; now they may be its best hope for success.

By Jason Overdorf
Newsweek International

March 5, 2007 issue - India used to be big pharma's worst nightmare. Loose patent laws and a glut of talented scientists made that country the world capital for generics. As quickly as companies like GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, Novatis, Pfizer and others could develop innovative new drugs, nimble Indian companies could copy them—and sell them for a fraction of the price. The practice led to a tangle of litigation. But now, the legal battles are giving way to new partnerships. Click to read the rest.

the envelope please

So we've seen a good number of the Oscar nominees, with Volver and The Lives of Others on the card for this weekend. Thoughts so far:

Little Children (Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor) - A decent enough flick, but nothing to write home about. Kate Winslet's performance is pretty standard stuff for her, about the same level as she delivered in the Eternal Spotlight of the Sunny Mind or whatever. She's disqualified forever for her role in Titanic anyway, though she wins pants down for most convincing naked acting. The supporting actory guy, who plays a sexual predator who still lives with his Mom, does an impressive job in a more demanding role--which requires him to be creepy and vile AND to win our sympathy in the end. Verdict: Won't win anything.

Little Miss Sunshine (Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress) - Definitely NOT the best picture, even out of the unwisely chosen short list. At times saccharine, at other times pretentious, and at still other times cliched (the ending copied from the Hugh Grant starrer About a Boy made more obvious because the lead actress is the same in both flicks), this one made me laugh but didn't fool me with its pretensions. Allan Arkin is great, but his role is too small and hinges too heavily on shtick--an old guy who swears a lot does not an Oscar winner make, unless it's Peter O'Toole. The little girl up for Best Supporting is disqualified by age. You know the saying: Never vote for kids or animals. Seriously, looking cute is not the same as acting, and you shouldn't get extra points for being young, or about to die, or appearing in films despite losing on American Idol. Verdict: Won't win anything.

Blood Diamond (Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor) - This was the worst movie of the lot, and Leo's performance was stunningly bad. Apart from generally overacting and screwing up his face like his skin was attacked to a drawstring all too frequently, his Rhodesian-South-African-Australian-New Zealand accent slipped into good old American at every other word. Why don't they change the script when this happens? Just erase a few lines and add a few different ones here and there and make the character American. It would save the star a lot of embarrassment and the audience a lot of exhausting wincing. Anyway, Leo. like Kate Winslet, is barred from winning forever due to his performance as "the king of the world." I believe I recognized the Best Supporting guy's overacting from Amistad, though I'm not certain. Apparently, Leo let him borrow the drawstring to contort the skin on his face, and he didn't get any help from the screenwriter who couldn't decide whether he should be tough and naive or absurdly moralistic and borderline mentally retarded. "I can't tell them I'm the cameraman so I can get on the bus to go find my missing son! That would be lying!" Or "The vicious soldiers who shoot everybody indiscriminately are driving by with their machine guns and rocket launchers, I must call out to them in case my son is on board the truck!" I knew things were going to get really bad when Leo & sidekick ran into the jungle to look for the impossibly big diamond and the camera honed in on a Chimpanzee (a Chimpanzee!) in a tree overhead for a "oo-aa-ee-aa" cameo. To quote the stupid script, "TIA." This is assanine... er... This is Africa--of the "Tarzan tell Cheetah go back treehouse, fetch Jane" variety. Verdict: Doesn't win anything. Leo too embarrassed to set foot on red carpet.

The Departed (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor) - Not the best picture, but should win some kind of award for adaptation of terrible foreign film. (It was based on the Hong Kong action flick "Internal Affairs," a movie that showed no evidence that its absurd plot could ever be presented in a way that an audience could take seriously--more kung fu! more kung fu! I kept thinking. Anything for less dialogue.) It should also win for best use of the R rating since Quentin Tarantino. Seriously, I want Tarantino and the writers on this one in a verbal slandering duel to the death, and I want it now. That would be a Best Picture candidate. Best Director--maybe. Yes. I think so. The amazing feat of making this story somewhat believable, and the characters empathy-inspiring, was virtuosity itself. Best Supporting Actor--Mark Wahlberg was pretty damn good, actually, but I haven't seen any of the other nominees. Verdict: It'll win something.

Days of Glory (Best Foreign Language Film) -- This was a terrific movie, with several performances that topped or matched the nominees in Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor categories. But what really struck me about it was that here was the movie that Saving Private Ryan purported to be but wasn't -- that patriotic glory farce that was bald-facedly market as an anti-war flick. Probably the best war movie I've seen. Verdict: Too many Muslims. Just kidding. But I think you know what I mean. It won't win, despite being terrific. Going by the press, my money is on Pan's Labrynth, which I haven't seen.

Water (Best Foreign Language Film) -- Surprisingly good, especially considering the presence of John Abraham. The best part about the movie, for me, was watching John's face when he didn't have any lines. His effort to "act" was so conscious, and so obvious, that you couldn't help but laugh. Verdict: I don't think so.

The Queen (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress) -- This was an excellent movie, and Helen Mirren's performance was top-notch. I don't think it warrants Best Picture, but the movies that I would have chosen didn't make the short list, so I think it's a likely winner. Unless Judy Dench really delivered the goods in Notes on a Scandal, which I haven't seen, I'd say Mirren takes Best Actress. Anyway, Judy's roles have been sort of same-same-but-different over the past few years, haven't they?

Babel (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress) -- I went into this one with a lot of doubts. A serious, arty film with Brad Pitt? Especially the ego-supercharged, post-Angelina Brad Pitt? It seemed like a recipe for disaster. Add in a healthy dose of zipping around the globe, disorienting flashbacks, etc, and I was thinking is Innaritu the new Abel Ferrar? But I was actually surprised at how well it turned out. Brad did a little of that scrubbing-his-face-with-his-hands ala Twelve Monkeys et al, and his heroic postures were sometimes a little hard to take, but Innaritu won me over with his whole "wake up you fatass American fuckers, life sucks in the developing world" thing. Verdict: I think this one wins Best Director on degree of difficulty points. The Japanese girl deserves Best Supporting, but American Idol girl will get it for her "Oh, gosh, I never imagined I'd work in Hollywood" shtick and Cinderella points for her come-from-behind-Simon-Cowell rise.

The Devil Wears Prada (Best Actress) -- I can't believe this is even nominated. I mean, I know, it's Merryl Streep, and she gives a role that could have been pure camp a lot more oomph. But still. This is a story about handbags and boyfriends. I forget, did Glenn Close get a nomination for her turn as Cruella Deville in 101 Dalmatians? Verdict: Streep goes 0 for 20 or whatever it is now.

The Last King of Scotland (Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor) -- It dragged at times, yes, but I think it could have been in there for Best Picture instead of Little Miss Sunshine. Forest was great. So was the Scottish guy. Verdict: O'Toole takes it -- the old guy edges the black guy on "I'm about to die, dammit" points.

Half Nelson (Best Actor) -- Another film that should have been up for Best Picture. Better than the Departed and Little Miss Sunshine, though sometimes it reminded me of an episode of The Wire. The dude looks uncannily like my friend Andrew Nash as well, so he had to overcome a major obstacle to convince me he was really a drug-addicted inner city schoolteacher. Verdict: It's not your night. (See above)

The Pursuit of Happiness (Best Actor) -- Thankfully, I didn't know this was a biopic about the founder of the Gardner Rich brokerage before I watched this, so I was able to suffer (audibly) through Will Smith's trials and tribulations as he tried to make it. Stellar performance, and a pretty decent movie, but this year it's a no go. Verdict: Nope.

Venus (Best Actor) -- This one should not only have been up for Best Picture, it should have won. This was the rarest of movies, that takes on the most important questions of "ordinary" life and whacks it out of the park. O'Toole was hilarious, completely convincing, extraordinarily charismatic, and on and on. Verdict: He can go to the grave with that damn naked statue.

can private schools save the poor?

An intriguing article by Clive Crook in the Atlantic points to James Tooley's research showing that 10-cents a day private schools for slum dwellers in India and other developing countries are outperforming government-run alternatives. But for political reasons the international community is ignoring the evidence. A seasoned opponent of private education--it's unfair, isn't it? all those little bastards in their deck shoes and preppy shirts....Perhaps I was scarred as a youth--I can't help wondering whether going private is a real alternative. The private schools for the poor are no doubt better than the government-run schools--if for no other reason than that they are accountable to the parents of the students. But how do they compare to the private schools for the rich? And doesn't giving up on government-funded primary education concede that the education received by the poor not only is but will always be vastly inferior to the one received by the rich? Call me an idealist, but I think even America's flawed model (schools are funded by property taxes, so residents of rich neighborhoods get rich schools and residents of poor neighborhoods underfunded schools) offers kids a fairer shake, though it creates tremendous pressure on young house-hunters to live in the right neighborhood.

The Ten-Cent Solution


Cheap private schools are educating poor children across the developing world—but without much encouragement from the international aid establishment.

by Clive Crook

.....

I f good ideas were all that mattered, everybody who has heard of Jeffrey Sachs would have heard of James Tooley as well—but they aren’t, and you almost certainly haven’t. In fact, even if you are keenly interested in education, aid, or Third World development, which are Tooley’s areas of research, you still probably haven’t heard of him.

This is not because his work is dull or unimportant. His findings are surprising, and they bear directly and profoundly on the relief of extreme poverty all over the world. (Name me a more important issue than that.) The reason you haven’t heard of James Tooley is that his work is something of an embarrassment to the official aid and development industry. He has demonstrated something that many development professionals would rather not know—and would prefer that you not know, either.

Tooley is a professor of education policy at England’s University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Several years ago he was working as a consultant in Hyderabad, India, for the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank. One afternoon, while wandering around the alleys beside the Charminar (a sixteenth- century monument and Hyderabad’s best-known tourist attraction), he came across a school for the children of slum dwellers. To his surprise, he found that this was not a state school but a private one—providing education to the extremely poor and collecting fees (of a few rupees a day, or less than a dime) for its services. Intrigued, he kept looking, and found other, similar schools. They were typically small and shabby operations, sometimes occupying a single classroom, staffed in some cases by just the teacher-proprietor and an assistant. Yet they were busy—crowded with eager pupils—and the teacher was actually teaching. (This, Tooley knew, was not something you could take for granted in the classrooms of Indian public schools.)

F or years education officials in most developing countries (and workers in international aid agencies, too) have talked as though private education for the very poor barely existed. The only hope for equipping these unfortunate people with basic literacy and numeracy, they’ve said, was to improve the reach and quality of free, compulsory, state-provided schooling.

But that hope appears dim at the moment. Public schools in most poor countries, where they operate at all, have long been recognized to be ineffective. Teachers are frequently unqualified for their work. Perhaps worse, they are often uninterested in it: In many poor countries, teaching jobs are viewed as sinecures, and many teachers are disinclined to show up for work at all. They do tend to organize, however. Their salaries add up, and public schools in most developing countries make heavy demands on the public purse. The whole issue has therefore been seen as a daunting question of resources: Vast sums will be required to provide free universal education of tolerable quality in Africa and South Asia; there is no cheap alternative; and the help of foreign donors will be essential.

The many fee-based slum schools that Tooley saw within a few minutes’ walk of the Charminar made him wonder about all this. So he began researching the reach and performance of private schools for the extremely poor in India and elsewhere, supported not by an official agency but by the private Templeton Foundation. What he found was startling.

In Hyderabad, a city of more than 6 million people, Tooley and his team—confining their search to poor areas lacking amenities such as running water, electricity, and paved roads—counted 918 schools. Only about 40 percent were run or financed by the government; 60 percent were private. Of those, some were “recognized” by the government, but most were officially unknown to the authorities. These black-market private schools were smaller on average than the other kinds—but they still accounted for about a quarter of all the children in any sort of school. Remarkably, some of the slots in these private slum schools were offered free or at reduced rates: The parents of full-fee students, desperately poor themselves, willingly subsidized those in direst need.

This flourishing educational enterprise is all the more surprising once you understand that India has deliberately discriminated against private education—forbidding for-profit schools, for instance, and requiring schools to be run as trusts rather than proprietorships, and limiting their ability to borrow. Despite these handicaps, private education for the very poor has evidently thrived.

W hat Tooley stumbled onto in Hyderabad turns out to be typical not just of India but of all the other places he subsequently researched—including parts of China, Ghana, Kenya, and Nigeria. In every case, private education is a principal lifeline for the abjectly poor. In the areas of Ghana and Nigeria that Tooley’s team has canvassed, an outright majority of poor children are attending private schools run without support from the government. Often, the schools are run by just a few teachers. They put out shingles in the way that physicians do in the United States, and are paid directly by their charges.

As Tooley relates it, the response of the international development community to his research has been less than enthusiastic. Even if private schools are much more prevalent than we had previously thought, he’s been told, they are obviously no good. Standards in such schools are bound to be low.

But the development community seems to be wrong about that, too. On the whole, dime-a-day for-profit schools are doing a better job of teaching the poorest children than the far more expensive state schools. In many localities, private schools operate alongside a free, government-run alternative. Many parents, poor as they may be, have chosen to reject it and to pay perhaps a tenth of their meager incomes to educate their children privately. They would hardly do that unless they expected better results.

Better results are what they get. After comparing test scores for literacy and basic math, Tooley has shown that pupils in private schools do better than their state-school equivalents—at between a half and a quarter of the per-pupil teacher cost. In some places, such as Gansu, China, the researchers found that private schools serving the poor had worse facilities than comparable state schools; in Hyderabad, they were better equipped (with blackboards, desks, toilets, drinking water, and so on). Regardless, the tests so far show that private-school students do better across the board.

Why have these findings been so reluctantly received? The answer is politics. The consensus on economic development—specifically, on the role of the state in promoting growth—cycles to and fro. At the moment, orthodox thinking embraces a leading role for the market in most areas of economic life. But in most developing countries, as in many rich ones (including the United States), schooling is widely regarded as quite another matter. Children’s education is higher than commerce. These realms must not be allowed to mix. Many development and education officials wish to enshrine free education as a universal human right. Education, in other words, is too important to be left to the market.

In this view, if state schools are failing, which nobody denies, they need to be fixed, whatever the cost. And this is how the challenge of education in developing countries is currently framed: Governments need to spend more on their schools. One could more easily sympathize with that view if the state systems were easily fixable. In many developing countries, certainly in India, it would be unrealistic to think so, even if one could say, “Hang the expense.” The problems seem systemic, not fiscal.

Most of those who campaign for greatly increased aid to poor countries would wish to see governments spend much of that money on state-run schools. The goal is admirable, but the method may be counterproductive. Tooley’s research suggests that small-scale support for private slum schools—through scholarship programs, backing for school-voucher schemes, or subsidized microfinance—might do far more good than a big aid push directed at government-run education.

Tooley has been publishing his research in education journals but has also written for libertarian and conservative think tanks. Unfortunately, these associations have pushed him further outside the development mainstream. Perhaps most alienating, his findings (as he notes) conform very well to the views of the late Milton Friedman, who spent the last years of his life arguing that publicly funded vouchers and a market of privately run competing schools were the way to fix another education system in urgent need of repair: America’s. All the more reason why, so far as some development officials are concerned, Tooley’s obscurity is welcome.

As for Tooley himself, he is now moving beyond research alone, preparing to embark on a new project: the management of a new $100 million fund to invest in private schools for the very poor in developing countries. Development professionals need not be concerned, however. The money is from a private foundation. It won’t waste any country’s aid budget.

The URL for this page is http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200703/crook-schools.

will the patriot missile come to india?

Back in the day -- circa 1991 -- poverty compelled me to drink the so-called "king of beers" out of the economy-priced 40-ounce bottle. Red, white and blue, shaped like a keg with a cone on top, you can guess the nickname it acquired in the midst of Desert Storm. Yep. "The Patriot Missile."

Now I read that Anheiser Busch is opening up a JV brewery in Hyderabad, I can't help but wonder if their marketing geniuses (they must be smart to sell such terrible watery beer in such massive volumes) will scorn the metric system (American-style) and bring the Patriot Missile to India. Even without a front stoop to sit on and a brown paper bag to obscure the bottle, I might have to crack open a few, for old times sake.

fullbright scholars to india upset over lengthy clearance delays and denials

By SHAILAJA NEELAKANTAN
in The Chronicle of Higher Education
New Delhi

The Indian government has delayed approving the projects of dozens of Fulbright scholars for months and has rejected some projects without explanation -- a move observers believe is an attempt to force the scholars to change their research topics.

The rejections and months-long delays have put a number of the scholars into professional and personal limbo, and have upset officials at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi and the United States Education Foundation in India, which runs the Fulbright program there.

"Through these delays and censorship efforts, the government of India is harming those Americans who have invested their careers and aspirations in the U.S.-India relationship," said Larry Schwartz, public-affairs officer at the embassy. "These are people who would have become India's most vigorous advocates in the U.S."

Of the 94 Americans awarded Fulbright scholarships to India for the 2006-7 academic year, only 17 received their clearances within six months of applying, according to Jane E. Schukoske, executive director of the educational foundation in India. Most of the rest experienced delays of five to 10 months.

As of mid-February, 10 academics were still waiting for their clearances, including seven whose initial applications were still pending and three who changed their research topics after being rejected. Some scholars who were rejected reapplied after changing their subjects while others decided not to reapply.

The research subjects rejected by the Indian government, without explanation, include studies of language ideologies in the schools of Mumbai, India's financial capital (formerly known as Bombay), to which millions of Indians from others states migrate; of democratization in Kerala, a southern Indian state where India's communist parties have been influential; and of Muslim women's perceptions of the role of women in society.

India's Ministry of Human Resource Development coordinates the proposal reviews, also called the visa-authorization process. That clearance precedes application for the visa itself. Until recently, said Ms. Schukoske, the ministry's Web site said that projects were usually approved within three months. Repeated calls to the ministry requesting comment were not returned.

Many scholars applied for their clearances in March 2006, expecting to begin their research in India by the end of August, but did not receive approval in time. An orientation program in New Delhi, typically scheduled for late August or early September, was canceled because of the delays. The clearance delays began with the previous year's awardees, only 54 percent of whom received clearances within six months.

"These delays have caused serious hardships for many of our scholars," said Ms. Schukoske, noting that the review process is at odds with the rest of the Fulbright experience in India. "Once scholars are cleared and begin their Fulbright grants, they enjoy warm welcome and energetically pursue their projects with support from their Indian colleagues."

A number of scholars who spoke to The Chronicle were both angered and perplexed by their treatment. Some of those still awaiting clearances had decided to come to India on tourist visas and sit out the waiting period here. Having left their full-time jobs in the United States and, in some cases, having no other means of support, they noted that, at least, living in India is cheaper.

"Frankly, my research is in jeopardy, and I've spent most of my savings, and I don't think I can afford to stay much longer," said Forrest Fleischman, who arrived in India in September on a tourist visa. In mid-February, he said, he was told that the Ministry of Home Affairs, one of several government agencies that screens the proposals, had placed "adverse comments" in his file.

"While there is no final word, it seems highly probable that my application is about to be rejected," Mr. Fleischman said. He had planned to focus his research on political empowerment and biodiversity protection in Kerala's agricultural ecosystem. The home ministry deals with matters of domestic security, and Mr. Fleischman says his project has no negative implications on domestic-security concerns.

"I've spent the last nine months planning my life around this project," he said. "I have made it the cornerstone of my graduate-school application -- and hoped to make it a core of my doctoral work."

Last September the Board of Directors of the educational foundation in India sent a statement of concern to the Ministry of Human Resource Development, the Ministry of Home Affairs, and the Ministry of External Affairs, urging them to expedite the review process, and noting that many of the scholars "relinquished their normal duties or studies, and, in some cases, their spouses and children have left jobs and school."

Anupama Bhatnagar, a member of the foundation who is deputy secretary at the human-resource ministry, did not sign this statement. Ms. Bhatnagar did not return repeated calls made to her office by The Chronicle.

Aseem Sharma, a foundation board member who is president of Corning SA, India, said in a faxed message that he and others on the board had been in regular touch with the ministries since sending the letter. "I am not aware of any response from the ministries to the board," he wrote.

In December, 33 Fulbright scholars sent a petition U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, urging her to get involved in the matter.

"When we received our acceptance letters, we understood our selection to be a great honor and a prestigious career boost; for many of us, it has instead become a financially and emotionally debilitating obstacle," the petition says. The signers add that they have received no funding or accurate information that would help them plan for the future, and that many of them are without incomes and health insurance.

Secretary Rice did not respond to the letter, but Thomas A. Farrell, the State Department's deputy assistant secretary for academic programs, said the United States had raised the problem with the Indian authorities "at an extremely high level."

In October Mr. Farrell met with the Indian chargé d'affaires -- the second in command at the Indian embassy in Washington -- to discuss the issue. Since then, he said, "we've gotten a substantial resolution of the problem." He added: "The backlog is virtually cleared."

Mr. Farrell characterized the problem as an "ongoing issue that has been around for a number of years." He said it had grown more acute as the number of American scholars seeking visas to India has grown. The problem does not represent any anti-American hostility on the part of Indian officials, he said. Instead, it is strictly "an issue of bureaucracy."

That is little consolation for those who have suffered through lengthy delays or failed to get their clearances. Tariq Tapa, whose documentary film project, "The Imaginary Princess: A Muslim Girl's Story," was rejected, decided not to change his subject and re-apply.

"Given the choice between either churning out a half-baked proposal just for the sake of getting back on the one-year merry-go-round with still no guarantee of success, or just walking away clean, I chose to walk," said Mr. Tapa.

"I spent years researching it and months preparing the proposal and building the contacts and context to give it integrity. Starting over from scratch and handing something in during the space of a few weeks was more than absurd; it was offensive, as if I were writing a thank-you note and not a graduate dissertation due in the time I promised my department."

Instead, Mr. Tapa, who said he began to suspect months ago that his project would be rejected, privately raised money to shoot his film. He came to India on a tourist visa last October, has begun shooting his documentary, and expects to finish on time, this April, as planned.
"But I am now required to begin repayment on student loans because I no longer qualify for an academic deferral," he said. "So, to be quite honest, becoming a Fulbrighter has been one of the most financially and emotionally regretful experiences of my life."

fullbright flap

The delay and denial of approvals for a great number of Fullbright scholars planning to conduct research in India has raised a ruckus here, occasioning a weeklong, frontpage series in the Indian Express, as well as editorials bemoaning the bureaucratic control over education, etc. etc. Shailaja's story in the Chronicle of Higher Education spells out the details.

Though India's move deserves criticism and the Fullbrighters our sympathy, one has to read this move in the context of America's increasingly paranoid visa policy, which has cut deeply into the arrival of foreign students in American universities, scuttled hundreds of business trips, and seen reputed scholars sent back to their country by barely qualified border personnel when they reached US shores. One case that made headlines was the turning back at the border of Govardhan Mehta, former director of the Indian Institute of Science. But as Fareed Zakaria points out in a recent Newsweek column, the obsessive, ineffectual and insensitive attention to security (is there any reason these initiatives need to be captained by the ignorant and the rude?) is already costing the US.

reinventing bollywood (edited version)

By Jason Overdorf (Business 2.0 March 2007)

A REBEL MOVIE PRODUCER IN INDIA LOOKS TO HOLLYWOOD FOR INSPIRATION--NOT JUST FOR HIS FILMS, BUT ALSO FOR HIS BUSINESS MODEL.

RONNIE SCREWVALA WALKED THE RED CARPET AT THE glitzy Dubai International Film Festival in December with Oliver Stone and Richard Gere. Westerners might have wondered who he was and why he deserved the company of two Hollywood luminaries, but anyone familiar with the Indian film industry would have understood. Screwvala, one of the leading movie producers in India, is bringing Hollywood-style filmmaking to the subcontinent. And U.S. moviemakers, desperate for new opportunities, want a piece of the action.

India's teeming film industry, known as Bollywood, is extraordinarily prolific. Indian filmmakers churn out 1,000 movies each year. Yet the industry grossed just $1.5 billion in 2005, and only a handful of movies made it to first-run theaters overseas. Compare that with Hollywood, which pumped out 563 movies that year and made more than $18 billion at the box office, including $9.6 billion from international distribution.

Why isn't Bollywood making more money? That question is the driving force behind Screwvala's company, UTV Software Communications. "Broadcasting [in multiple channels] started here in 1992, and it's already a $4 billion business," says the 49-year-old entrepreneur. "Yet this 100-year-old industry is still less than $2 billion. We have to grow." His solution is to revolutionize Bollywood--blow up the business model and replace it with traditional studio rules.

It's a huge job. Bollywood has always been a haphazard affair. Half a dozen prominent families controlled it, but they weren't very businesslike. Movies started shooting with no scripts and little money. Stars disappeared midshoot for weeks at a time to vacation, go home, or work on another movie. Theater owners underreported ticket sales to avoid sharing revenue with producers. It was nearly impossible to figure out whether a movie had made money and, if so, how much.

In addition, Indian story lines did not appeal to many outside the country. To the Western eye, Bollywood movies were chaotic, a surreal combination of Sylvester Stallone and Busby Berkeley musicals. In a typical plot, the hero sang, danced, fought bad guys, got the girl, found his long lost brother, and wept on his mother's deathbed--for at least three hours.

Screwvala broke into Bollywood in the late '90s, teaming up with anyone willing to work by his rules. UTV has produced a dozen movies with all the earmarks of professional filmmaking: budgets, marketing and distribution plans, real preproduction, and three-month shoots. The company distributes them worldwide and milks Hollywood-style ancillary revenue, from product placement to soundtrack rights and video-on-demand. Screwvala has also cut the running times and dumped the disorganized and stale story lines. His hit Rang de Basanti (The Colors of Spring) tells the story of India's disaffected urban youth; it also made more than $2 million in the United States. "We're breaking the mold," Screwvala says, comparing his experience to the days when Star Wars and other independent films paved the way for new genres in Hollywood.

Screwvala likes pioneering. The former game show host started his business career walking around Mumbai, asking apartment dwellers to try a newfangled gadget called a remote control. He got Indians to give up their single-channel, government-run television and brought cable to the country in the 1980s. He used the money from that to get into television production, making a steady stream of animated cartoons that attracted U.S. producers looking to outsource their own animation.

But all the while, he had movies on the brain. "Indians have always been voracious movie viewers," he says. "That's in our DNA. But we're as strong in commerce as we are in creative. It seemed to me that there was a huge opportunity here."

He was right. Now U.S. filmmakers, their revenue streams threatened by videogames, the Internet, and video-on-demand, knock on his door. This year, along with his Indian films, he's partnering with Sony Pictures and Fox Searchlight on movies starring Chris Rock and Will Smith, as well as an adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake. News Corp. and Disney bought stakes in UTV last year.

And Screwvala's plan is starting to bear fruit. In 2005, UTV took in $52 million--$32 million of it from movies--and turned a modest profit. That made it the second-largest producer in India, counting box office and ancillary revenue, a meteoric rise for an industry newcomer. And its "new" business practices are spurring changes at competing studios. Contracts, budgets, and balance sheets are more common. So are shooting schedules, bigger marketing budgets, and the exploitation of ancillary revenue. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Indian films will generate $2.3 billion by 2010

UTV has many other ventures, including 15 straight-to-DVD movies, an animated feature co-produced with a U.S. company, and a U.S. television series. But Screwvala has yet to reach his ultimate goal. "We have a good relationship with Disney," he says. "I'm hoping it can help us get some of our films into Wal-Mart." Spoken like a true Hollywood producer, albeit with a distinct colonial accent.

UNECONOMIES OF SCALE

Indians crank out nearly twice as many movies as U.S. producers but reap less than 10 percent of the revenue.

[This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.]

[Table]

	2005 films released	Revenue
Bollywood	1,041	$1.5 billion
Hollywood	563	$18 billion

Sources: Box Office Mojo; MPAA; PricewaterhouseCoopers

3 STEPS TO SUCCESS

Find a fragmented industry

Enforce standards and discipline

Grow the market via exports

on the inheritance of loss

I've already criticized Booker-prize winner The Inheritance of Loss for being slight and dull. Over the last day and a half, which I spent reading fellow shortlister The Secret River by Kate Grenville, however, I began to think of Kiran Desai's book as far worse than I had initially.

My problem with Inheritance, I came to realize, was that it is a self-Orientalizing, feelgood novel, whose principal characters are all cute, cuddly brown folks who speak in a comical version of English and whose lives are tragic because they aspire to Western ways and Western standards of living and fail (inevitably, it seems is the implication). I presume that if a white person had written such a book in our postcolonial times, it would be blasted as patronizing and offensive.

Moreover, Inheritance fits among those books and movies (Life of Pi, Life is Beautiful) whose sole purpose seems to be to reassure us that all people are essentially good folk, that tragedy and comedy are one (a fellow coming home destitute, yes, but he IS coming home, returning, the book implies, to the place where he belongs--no upward mobility here!--and doing so in his cute and cuddly and humorous brown way, in some Auntie's nightdress stolen from a clothesline). Far from compelling us to look inward, to think hard about what we have made of the world, and acknowledge our own complicity in the countless evils that surround us--however good people we may be at heart--Inheritance and books like it allow us to close our eyes and conclude with great self-satisfaction that the poor buggers across the road are really quite happy; such a cuddly, resilient people they are, after all.

What is sad to me is not that people should enjoy reading such pallative fiction--I don't believe every piece of writing should be like a cruel mirror thrust into your face--but that the judges for what is meant to be a contest for serious literature have chosen to reward it and hold it above more deserving candidates that UNLIKE Inheritance of Loss are doing the work that literature is meant to do. This year, my not so humble feeling is that The Secret River does that in far more compelling fashion.

Now, every "literary" Indian will read Inheritance of Loss. The smart ones will say to themselves, "Well, I don't see what all the fuss is about," though ninety percent of them will say so shamefacedly, as if they can't possibly know as much as the brilliant Booker judges. Very few will pick up The Secret River--surely one of the most perceptive, excoriating and penetrating accounts of the brutality of colonialism that there has ever been. Literature is about moral choices, not just of the characters within the pages of books, but the moral choices and moral characters of readers as well. Safety-valve books, like Inheritance of Loss, that allow us to stand back from the moral issues at their core and say "that's not me" do not deserve our highest accolades. As riveting as a thriller, rumbling along with a growing sense of dread to a conclusion that will unsettle you for days after you read the last page, The Secret River is exactly NOT that sort of pallative fiction.

If you fancy yourself a literary person--or even if you don't--please, please, please read this book.

why i won't be buying windows vista

With all the hype about Microsoft's new Vista operating system--forecast to save the PC manufacturers from the doldrums of flat sales in the west and limited growth in developing countries--I took a moment to think about why the whole wide world have become such suckers. When Windows XP came out, were you that impressed? Was there any "Wow, this is so much better than Windows 98!" Has Microsoft Office improved since 1997? Have you enjoyed the endless security flaws and "critical updates" that you have to download, only later to discover that they cause more problems than they solve?

The answer is no.

So why then does everybody keep upgrading? The only reason there is a compulsion to upgrade is that classic teen justification: everybody else is doing it. I remember the day that was driven home to me, when I first faced compatibility issues with Office 97 and whatever version I'd been using. Fortunately, I was in Asia and able to pick up a pirated copy of the new stuff for less than $10. I had no qualms about it, despite all the propaganda telling me that piracy will kill babies in America and so forth. How could I? When it's so obvious that Microsoft has gone from exploiting its monopoly to kill its competitors to exploiting its monopoly to drive new sales--at highly inflated prices?

Soon, I hope, Google's model of online-based, pay as you go software will put an end to Microsoft's monopolistic practices. But the new system may not go far enough to make software free. And I'll say it now: If you are paying for software of any kind, you are an idiot. I know you won't believe me. You'll swear up and down that Windows and the expensive software that comes with it is imperative for your business/social life becasue you have to be compatible with all the other fools out there in cyberspace. You'll wax eloquent about how easy to use Windows is, with its plug and play functionality and other bells and whistles. And when I say the next word in this sentence--Linux--you'll roll your eyes and stop reading and say to yourself "Oh it's another one of those open source techie types."

That's right folks, six months ago I converted to Linux in the form of the easy to use "ubuntu" version. This is how I did it. I went onto the web using my Windows-based machine and downloaded the free software, burnt it onto a CD following the instructions available on the web site, wiped my laptop clean of Windows (it had crashed anyway so I'd just replaced the hard drive and was ready to restore all my old files), stuck the CD in the drive and fired it up. It took about 30 minutes to get ubuntu running as the operating system, with all the built-in hardware running normally except the wireless LAN card. No matter, I used a LAN cable to stay connected to the web and waited for ubuntu to run its automatic update software--as easy to use as Windows, or easier. Within 15 minutes more I was up and running.

That's right: 45 minutes and I was free of the Microsoft prison of pay and pay until we make things so difficult you have to buy a new PC altogther. I got OpenOffice, which is compatible with MSOffice and lets you set it up so it saves your files as Word, Powerpoint, Excel etc formats, for zero dollars. I got Firefox for zero dollars. I got a clone of Adobe Acrobat for zero dollars. I got a CD/DVD burner and media player for zero dollars. And on and on. When I needed software to read downloaded comic books, that was also free. All of these programs were as easy to use and as cool-looking as any of the software I've ever purchased, adn the ubuntu operating environment itself acted almost exactly like Windows. The only trouble I've ever had is with a few recalcitrant Indian web sites that (in very slavelike fashion) continue to work only with Internet Explorer and not Firefox--the most frustrating of these being the site of low-cost airline Air Deccan.

So I say, before you buy that pirated copy of Vista--I'd NEVER admit the possibility that you'll actually pay full price, when the Nehru Place distribution is so much more convenient--download a copy of ubuntu and install it on your machine. If you like, you can even partition your disk so that one portion can run on Windows when you so choose. See if it's really as hard to use as everybody says but the opensource advocates--I know, I know, they sound like they've been drinking the Kool Aid. See how much fun it is to pick up software from home, without the irritating trip to Nehru Place, for free instead of for Rs. 100-200 here and there.

I, for one, will never buy another piece of software again. Especially not Vista.

let them watch cricket

Trying to break the habit of interfering with private enterprise, the government of India decided that cricket remained one area that it had to step in. Today the information and broadcasting ministry ruled that the private television channels that have bought the exclusive broadcast rights for Indian cricket will have to share their feed with the state-owned broadcaster Doordarshan in exchange for 75% of the ad revenue DD gets from the cricket ad spots.

Though it's good news for the poor who don't have cable, this is bad news for cricket because it devalues the broadcast rights and therefore reduces the amount available to pay players, build infrastructure etc., etc.

What should be done?

There's no need to prevent the poor from watching cricket, but the 75% sharing plan isn't sufficient because it divorces the market-savvy sales teams of the private channels from the product they are selling. Now DD can sell ads and share the money with the rightsholders, but the channel's not great at selling. Instead, if it so desires DD should be allowed to show the entire broadcast--ads and all--from the content owner, and the content owner should pay DD a cut from its ad revenue for the access it's getting to a few hundred million more TV sets.

the death of a giant

One of my idols has died. Ryszard Kapuscinski was 74 years old. He deserves the Nobel. Read The Soccer War, Shadow of the Sun and everything else available in India immediately if you have not already read them. If you have read them, consider reading them again. There aren't any more coming.

From the AP:

Polish Writer Ryszard Kapuscinski Dies

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: January 24, 2007

Filed at 2:01 p.m. ET

WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish writer and journalist who gained international acclaim for his books chronicling wars, coups and revolutions in Africa, the Middle East and other parts of the world, died of a heart attack, his literary agent said. He was 74.

Kapuscinski died Tuesday at Warsaw's Banacha hospital, Czeslaw Apiecionek, one of his literary agents, told The Associated Press.

Poland's parliament honored him with a moment of silence Wednesday morning, and Speaker Marek Jurek praised him as ''a witness of human suffering and a witness of people's hopes.''

''There is no one among Poland's writers to fill in the space left by him,'' said Marek Zakowski, president of the Czytelnik publishing house, which published several of Kapuscinski's books and is editing a new one, ''Lappidarium 6.''

He described Kapuscinski as ''a rare kind of great personality. He was always curious to learn more about the world, he was curious to meet people.''

Kapuscinski launched a career in the late 1950s and early 1960s that would see him become a master of reportage. In those years, he served as the sole Africa correspondent for the Polish Press Agency, or PAP, reporting on the upheaval across the continent as African nations shook off colonial rule and declared independence.

He went on to publish books such as ''The Emperor,'' probably his most popular book, a chronicle of the decline of Haile Selassie's regime in Ethiopia. But the book, published in 1978, was more a reflection on dictatorships in general, and widely interpreted by Polish readers as a criticism of Poland's communist regime.

Kapuscinski once said the book was more about the ''mechanism of dictatorial rule.''

Three years later, he published ''Shah of Shahs,'' a book about the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled Iran's Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.

''Besides reporting current events, I studied books about Islam,'' Kapuscinski said, according to his official Web site.

''I wanted to describe the people, their mentality, their way of seeing the world. And experience taught me that from each spot in the world one sees the planet differently. A person who lives in Europe sees the world differently than a person who lives in Africa. Without trying to enter into these other ways of looking and perceiving and describing, we won't understand anything of this world.''

Several of Kapuscinski's books were translated into English. He also wrote ''Another Day of Life,'' about the Angolan civil war, ''Imperium,'' about the waning days of the Soviet Union, ''The Soccer War,'' and ''The Shadow of the Sun.''

In past years, he was often mentioned as a likely contender for the Nobel Prize for literature by oddsmakers and followers of the prize -- though the Swedish Academy itself is secretive about who it considers.

Kapuscinski was born in March 4, 1932, in Pinsk, a chty then in eastern Poland, and now located in Belarus.

He is survived by his wife, Alicja, and a daughter who lives in Canada, Zakowski said.

There was no immediate information about funeral arrangements.

without a trace

A gruesome serial-killing case raises furious questions about whether the police are doing enough to find the 45,000 kids reported missing each year in India.

By Jason Overdorf

(Newsweek Web Exclusive Jan. 20, 2007) - Half an hour from the heart of New Delhi, in the mushrooming grid of houses, cottage industries and tech companies that make up Noida, one of India's fastest-growing cities, a small crowd of protesters are calling for the head of their state's chief minister. "Mulayam Singh," the leader chants. "Murdabad!" the crowd shouts in response. "Noida police," the leader calls. "Hai! Hai!" the crowd echoes.

Their chanting means: "Death to Mulayam Singh!" and "Noida police, shame! shame!" Many of the lower-middle-class demonstrators hold aloft handmade flyers emblazoned with the photographs of schoolchildren, some in uniforms, some in poorly knotted neckties, others in colorful salwar kameez. The kids on the flyers have one thing in common. They have all disappeared without a trace, some of the approximately 45,000 children reported missing each year in India. And now, behind a block-long screen hastily erected to thwart rubberneckers, a backhoe and a team of forensic investigators are digging up their small bodies.

In a case that came to light on Dec. 29, police have detained businessman Monander Singh Pandher and his servant Surindra Koli for interrogation about the abduction and murder of at least 20 women and children. No charges have been filed, the suspects are under judicial remand while the police conduct their investigation. According to reports, the servant has confessed and implicated his boss, but the boss hasn't admitted any crime. Body parts and skulls, mostly from the kids, were found hidden in municipal storm drains attached to Pandher's house. The protesters are furious because the police discovered the alleged murderers and the grisly evidence of their crimes by accident, after ignoring as many as 40 missing- persons reports in the area over the last two years. And their anger has tapped into a deep and growing well of resentment in India, where the gap between rich and poor grows wider every day.

According to summaries of interrogations and other stage-whispering that has been leaked to the press, the alleged murderers were said to be sexual predators who operated as a team, with Pandher supplying his house and veneer of respectability to protect them from suspicious eyes and Koli acting as procurer. Police say they found 17 skulls and a large number of bones in the drain outside Pandher's house and surgical knives, gloves, a butcher's knife, and blood-stained clothes inside the home. Last week, the Uttar Pradesh police turned over the case to India's Central Bureau of Investigation, or CBI—a national policing unit similar to America's Federal Bureau of Investigation—after several weeks of bumbling that allowed journalists and curious neighbors to trample all over the crime scene. Dr. Rajat Mitra, a criminal psychologist who has worked closely with the police, admits frankly that the authorities (even perhaps the CBI) are out of their depth. "The understanding of serial killers is virtually nonexistent here. They could not understand what kind of crime it is. It involved pedophilia, gory rituals ... The diabolic nature of the crime was not something they believed happened here."

But the victims and their activists remain convinced that the police failures amount to more than simple incompetence. "This is a failure of our democracy," says Kailash Satyarthi, the leader of a group fighting the trafficking of children, "because it shows that the poor, and especially the children of the poor, are totally neglected." As long ago as September, Satyarthi's group, the Bachpan Bachao Andolan or Save the Childhood Movement, approached the Noida police on behalf of parents who alleged that their missing-persons reports had been ignored. At that point, 31 neighborhood kids had disappeared. One local TV channel picked up the story. The police, apparently, did nothing. Only after the apparently unrelated kidnapping of the 3-year-old son of a rich businessman made stop-the-presses headlines, and the entire police and government apparatus mobilized to secure his safe return, did Noida's other missing kids draw notice. Even then, they were soon forgotten. Not until neighbors who'd earlier been dismissed once again complained of a rotting stench coming from the storm drain outside Pandher's home, was the first body discovered.

Noida is not the first Indian city to suffer a serial killing. Last year, for instance, a gang of nine taxi drivers based in Gurgaon (another booming satellite town) confessed to robbing and murdering at least 35 passengers. In 2004, a 57-year-old merchant named Sadashiv Sahu was nabbed for murdering 22 elderly and middle-aged men in the small Uttar Pradesh town of Fursatganj. And in 1995, a rickshaw driver nicknamed "Auto" Shankar was executed for kidnapping, raping and murdering six young girls throughout the late 1980s. Although these documented cases are far fewer in number than the cases of serial murders in the United States and other developed countries, Mitra says that police ignorance of profiling and other relevant investigative techniques, the lack of coordination among law enforcement in different regions of the country, and problems as simple as poor record-keeping, make it likely that there are many more serial murders that have never been linked to one killer.

But more than any previous case, the horror of the Noida murders has drawn attention to an unpleasant truth about the safety of children in this intensely family-oriented society. The 45,000 children reported missing each year doesn't include those whose families are turned away or are afraid to go to the police. Eleven thousand youngsters, presumably trafficked for prostitution, pornography or slave labor, are never found. Yet, in large part, the official apparatus continues to treat these cases as though they are a necessary condition of poverty—children running away from starvation—rather than as undiscovered crimes. "Missing children masks a lot of more heinous crimes [like pedophilia]," says Mitra. "That notion needs to get into the police psyche."

Link - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16713819/site/newsweek/">http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16713819/site/newsweek/

why boycott, when it's so profitable not to?

I was disappointed to open my India Today this week and see a beaming Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani sitting next to--you guessed it--Narendra Modi, good-naturedly grinning at his jokes at the third annual Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors summit. Widely condemned for his role in holding back the troops while rioters executed a pogrom against Muslims in his state, Modi has (according to the magazine) remained the darling of India's top financiers due to the wise approach he has taken to making Gujarat a business-friendly destination. That's sad, as far as I'm concerned, and confirms an impression that I've been getting for some time now that liberal India has shifted from genuine outrage over the Gujarat riots to self-congratulatory mode about their demonstration of the same outrage.

Movies are made showing that the riots were bad, but like movies about the Holocaust (Schindler's List, Life is Beautiful) their focus on the heroes of the struggle give audiences a ready reason to say "I'm not a bad guy." Nope. We're all noble members of the resistance, aren't we? Nobody believes he's the guy who locks his door and hides under the couch while his neighbors are murdered, but when the time comes, a hell of a lot more of us turn out to belong to that category than to the group that fights back.

When did the riots become an isolated phenomenon that we've stood up against and beaten? Nothing has changed, folks. Look at Bangalore this week. Riots are an endemic part of Indian politics, and communalism is still the principal organizing force behind more than one important political party. Narendra Modi remains in power. The BJP never decided his resignation was required, and to all appearances, they were right. Yes, the party lost heavily in the national elections and some attributed that to anger over Gujarat. But most in the know saw the shift as (1) India's usual anti-incumbency and (2) poor Indians' anger resistance to an "India Shining" campaign that vividly showed that the party's interests lay elsewhere and they'd been forgotten.

Not only that. The willingness of Tata, Ambani and his brother Anil, Kumarmangalam Birla and others to continue to pump money into Gujarat and (worse) be photographed on stage with the man still believed to have caused a greatd deal of the carnage shows that there's no longer any moral sanction against his vision of a "Vibrant Gujarat." I don't know how the Birlas or Ambanis feel about Hindutva--nor do I care, really, since this shows that their PR guys also have no concerns about how the public will react to the association with Modi and there's never been any public outcry against associating with him in business or at social functions, other than the NRIs who (brilliantly) sought to deny him a visa to the US. But I had higher hopes for Ratan Tata, who has previously shown himself to be a man with strong moral convictions.

Boycott Gujarat until Modi resigns, should have been the rallying cry. If it ever came, it wasn't very loud. As a result, now Modi is welcomed with broad smiles and embraces, an honored member of society.

a perfect match

With all the really-on-again, not-really-on-again surrounding the Ash-Abishek "link up" (see, I DO read Stardust), I never got the chance to think about the implications of the marriage between India's most beautiful woman and most eligible film-family bachelor. Now that I have, I'll concede they're the perfect couple. Here's why:

(1) Ash is a career-killer for boyfriends who hooks up with rising stars and derails them, while Abishek has a track record for failing stupendously while he's hooked up and then suddenly taking off when his loser-dom is confirmed by being dumped. I predict this go-around Ash's career tanks (if the family lets her continue to work outside the home) and Abhi's hits the even-faster track.

(2) Both are supercool when they are acting, but almost unbearable to listen to when they are being themselves. This means MAJOR groan-moments on Simi Garewal are coming soon. Yes! (And I DO know all the words to the "Speak, so I can see your soul" theme song).

(3) Govinda never officially hooked up with Rani, so the spot for unbelievably media dream couple was open (though G-R would have been MUCH more fun than A-A).

(4) Abhishek is a brilliant dresser who makes the most out of mediocre looks, while Ash is a knockout who manages to look terrible whenever she chooses her own clothes.

(5) The Bachchans are tight with Subrato Roy AND Amar Singh, while the Rais are just plain old folks who receive anonymous packages in the mail with twenty thousand dollars inside. There has to be a connection.

serial killers, mass murderers, and spree killers--a note to reporters

BTW:

Stalin is a mass murderer. And, in a pinch, maybe Charlie Manson. The Washington DC sniper of a couple years back and the guy who drove around Indiana shooting people of color "Natural Born Killers"-style are spree killers. John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Hannibal Lecter are serial killers, as are the guys out in Noida. Get it right.

good news and bad news

Just when you think things are looking up, as the mobilization of the Rang De Basanti generation brought Manu Sharma to justice, a new "hot story" happens to remind you that the more things change, the more things stay the same. In this case, it was the Noida serial killer (or killers) and the strong evidence that the cops ignored the pleas of the poor people they'd sworn to protect. That is, unless the oath specifies that their meant to serve the rich--which would explain a lot.

Naturally, there's been a lot of furor following the discovery of the bodies in Noida (at least 17 children according to the last update I read, for those of you in foreign lands who don't trawl the AP and BBC updates). But I think one aspect of Indian policing and its faults hasn't gotten the attention it warrants: To an outside observer, it looks like their investigative procedures, both in terms of following clues and collecting evidence for subsequent trials, are far from adequate. I'm no expert, mind you, and I'm speaking in my unofficial capacity as a guy who sits on his ass watching TV, not having done any reporting on this story or spoken with anyone in the police about how they work. But both the Manu Sharma case and the Noida case suggest to me not only malfeasance/negligence/corruption, but also simple incompetence. For instance, with the TV cameras rolling, the police seemed to be digging up the Noida property without any effort to take note of how the bodies had been concealed or even taking much care to make sure they didn't damage the bones etc. In one shot, I distinctly remember seeing some constable-type standing back sortof holding his nose (ok, not literally, but he had that "I'm not touching THAT" posture) while a laborer-type got his hands dirty in the pit picking up a skull or something and wiped it off with an old rag. Now, I'm guessing CSI is pretty much bullshit. But this did not strike me as cutting edge police work.