Demographic dividend and poverty: India v. China

Nandan Nilekani is one of the more prominent voices that are all gung-ho about India's demographic dividend and that "it will be the only young country in an aging world."  There is no doubt that India will be one young country in an aging world, but will that deliver the economic dividend?

Consider the population projection first:

There is no doubt about China's population projection, is there?  That is a country where total fertility rate has fallen so much below the replacement level that it is looking at a potential rapid depopulation in the second half of this century.
India, on the other hand, is projected to increase by another half a billion people before its population stabilizes.  Most of this growth will happen in the northern Indian states--Southern India is a completely different demographic and economic story.
But, despite all the difference between the south and the north, the reality is that it will be one single India that will have to deal with the population increase.
Nilekani seems to be confident that this is when India's economic growth will accelerate like crazy--because of all the surplus labor.

I am not anywhere near that level of confidence that Nilekani has because of the sheer magnitude of poverty in India, which has been growing in numbers, though slightly decreasing as a percentage:

[The] number of poor people (defined as those living on less than $1.25 per capita per day at 2005 purchasing power parity) in South Asia increased from 549 million in 1981 to 595 million in 2005, and from 420 million to 455 million in India, where almost three-quarters of the region’s poor reside.
In other words, while South Asia’s economies have not underperformed on poverty reduction, merely matching global trends may not be enough for the region with the world’s largest concentration of poor people.

What ought to be done, then?

The paradox of South Asia is that growth has been instrumental in reducing poverty and improving social outcomes, but poverty rates and social outcomes have not improved fast enough to reduce the total number of people living in misery. As a result, policymakers should begin to consider direct policy interventions to accelerate social progress, with a particular focus on human development and gender inclusiveness.

And this is exactly why I fear that India will have a tough time tackling poverty while another half a billion is added: the politics in the form that is practiced in India precludes the kinds of direct policy interventions that are necessary.  Unless the politics changes, the demographic dividend cannot be realized. But, it doesn't look like politics will change there for the better.

The reality is then this:

India's failure to uplift its poor and improve the economy in rural areas—where two thirds of the country's 1.2 billion people live, mostly untouched by the boom—threatens the country's growth, economists say. India has so far relied on its services industry in cities to fuel growth. But the country is running out of skilled workers and its agricultural dwellers are ill-suited to fill the gap. India's success or failure in boosting the size of its middle class will determine the long-term attractiveness of the market to foreign investors.

I wish the demagogues in America will understand all these and stop bullshitting to Americans that we have to compete against India.  The more they engage in such demagoguery that more the typical American thinks that every other Indian attends one of those IITs and is some super-duper-scientist.  \

It ought to start with Professor Obama, who ought to know better than to convince Indiana workers that India is their competition!

Arguing that that was the reason why the U.S. had to “make sure that we win that competition,” he added, “I do not want the new breakthrough technologies and the new manufacturing taking place in China and India. I want all those new jobs right here in Indiana, right here in the U.S, with American workers, American know-how [and] American ingenuity.”

I suppose politics sucks anywhere!

Remembering Arthur Laurents

I hadn't yet completed my first year of living in the US as a poor graduate student when I watched West Side Story.  It was small television set that my roommate owned, and yet that miniscule screen size didn't take away the excitement of the musical in any way.  I am reminded of all that because of the news that one of the four people involved in creating that phenomenal musical, Arthur Laurents, died.

It is not as if I had been listening to Broadway musicals in India.  Not at all.  West Side Story was my first ever, and what a way to fall in love with Broadway!  I had no idea about Bernstein and Sondheim too.  So, there I was completely transfixed by the visual and aural experience.

Even though I was only on a student visa at that time, I had left India with a larger idea of making America my home, if things worked out well.  So, naturally, the piece that really, really, grabbed my attention was "America."  Now, when I discuss migration and immigration in my classes, every once in a while I play "America" for my students too



Yes, "I like to be in America" ... Ole!

And, of course, "Tonight"



Over the years, I have watched more musicals, including Gypsy.  It was the revival with Patti Lupone that I watched on Broadway. "Honey, everything's coming up roses"



I suppose I have gotten to an age in my life when I can relate in more ways than one to "the way we were"



Thanks, Mr. Laurents

Chart of the day: job loss in America

Note on this chart at the source: Horizontal axis shows months. Vertical axis shows the ratio of that month’s nonfarm payrolls to the nonfarm payrolls at the start of recession.

So, how many more jobs ought we to be adding?

There are 6,955,000 fewer nonfarm payroll jobs today than there were when the recession officially began in December 2007. If the pace of job growth from April (244,000 jobs added) continues each month going forward, it will take 29 months before we have the same number of jobs as we had when the recession began.
And we should have more jobs than we had before the recession began. After all, the population is growing, and more and more Americans reach working age each month.

What, me worry?

bin Laden dead. Five days. The $ cost is HUGE

Joseph Stiglitz gave us a $3 trillion figure, which he recently stated is lower than the real price we have paid, once we factor in the opportunity costs.

Ezra Klein revisits this theme, and notes that OBL was successful, even if he didn't win it:

[OBL] had a strategy that we never bothered to understand, and thus that we never bothered to defend against. What he really wanted to do — and, more to the point, what he thought he could do — was bankrupt the United States of America. After all, he’d done the bankrupt-a-superpower thing before. And though it didn’t quite work out this time, it worked a lot better than most of us, in this exultant moment, are willing to admit.

Now, OBL is gone, and it is high time we started to seriously rethink the war machinery that has ruled America. 

The National Journal provides the following chart to put things in perspective:

And adds:

More than actual security, we bought a sense of action in the face of what felt like an existential threat. We staved off another attack on domestic soil. Our debt load was creeping up already, thanks to the early waves stages of baby-boomer retirements, but we also hastened a fiscal mess that has begun, in time, to fulfill bin Laden’s vision of a bankrupt America. If left unchecked, our current rate of deficit spending would add $9 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. That’s three Osamas, right there.
Although Bin Laden is buried in the sea, other Islamist extremists are already vying to take his place. In time, new enemies, foreign and domestic, will rise to challenge America. What they will cost us, far more than we realize, is our choice. 

What, me worry?

Pakistan: be afraid. very, very afraid!

I have blogged so often about Pakistan that I thought it might be time to revisit some of my previous posts--only those related to geopolitical implications, and not the ones like about Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

As I reviewed them, it scares the hell out of me that here I am in a small town far away from Pakistan and Washington, DC, and have been constantly harping on the need to remain focused on an effective Pakistan strategy, only to realize after these years that we still do not have one.  How awful!

I have selected the following from my posts, and have excerpted a few sentences to convey their main arguments.  In chronological order:

August 7, 2008: On the edge of a nervous breakdown

the military and the ISI might easily be tempted to play the India card, with a new twist: that India is working with Afghanistan, and using its embassy in Kabul to launch its anti-Pakistan activities, to squeeze Pakistan from all sides. If the country gets sold on this argument, then, say hello to mushroom clouds over the subcontinent. 

September 14, 2008: Pakistan is Cambodia, if Afghanistan is the new Vietnam

Ever since the US upped the ante by sending in ground and air forces into Pakistan's territory--without getting Pakistan's permission--we knew that it was only a matter of days before we morphed into Pakistan's enemy. It certainly looks comparable to the beginnings of the incursions into Cambodia.

November 22, 2008: How to solve a problem like Pakistan

the nuclear armed pakistan is close to failing as a state. ... No, I am not exaggerating: Pakistan's collapse can unleash demons that can be beyond our wildest imaginations.

April 4, 2009: Run! Now! Pak says nukes are safe!!!

It is way past time to worry when the prime minister has to go around trying to convince everybody that the nukes are safe! The good thing for us in America: we are far away from the chaos. The bad news: that is what we used to think until September 11, 2001!

Now, against these blog entries, consider the following news stories of today:

Cornered Pakistan may strike India to salvage lost pride (Times of India)

Deeply embarrassed by the US raid that killed Osama bin Laden under its nose, the Pakistan army might be tempted to ratchet up hostility towards India and even encourage the terror proxies it controls to stage strikes on the Indian mainland, the Indian security establishment feels.

Pakistan dares India to break border (The Nation)

Pakistan, in clear allusion to India, said on Thursday any country that tried to raid its territory in the way US forces did to kill Osama bin Laden would face consequences from its military.

India says Pakistan violated LOC ceasefire (Daily Times)

India said the Pakistani army fired on its positions and violated a ceasefire agreement in Indian-held Kashmir.

Meanwhile, just as bin Laden was America's Public Enemy #1, Dawood has been India's enemy #1.  Where was Dawood? Ahem, in Pakistan.  Where is he now, in the post Osama world?  India Today reports:

After Pakistan being caught ignorant about the presence of the world's most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden, its Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has whisked away India's most wanted gangster-turned-terrorist -- Dawood Ibrahim -- from the country.

Headlines Today accessed a secret intelligence dossier which says that the ISI has shifted the notorious underworld kingpin to Azerbaijan or Tajakistan. He has been moved out to keep him from the post-Laden killing troubles.

If only it were merely about Dawood, says the Times of India:

Despite evidence produced by New Delhi to the contrary, Pakistani leaders have for years rebuffed claims that criminals and terrorists sought by the Indian government are living on its soil. They consistently denied knowledge of Dawood Ibrahim operating out of Karachi and even brushed aside news reports of his daughter's lavish wedding in Dubai.
Police say that Dawood is only the most prominent of names receiving sanctuary across the border. Besides him, Karachi is playing host to Dawood's brother Anees and his lieutenants Chhota Shakeel, Tiger Memon, Aftab Bhatki, Edda Yakoob and Fahim Machmach.

The list is longer. Mumbai train blasts suspects Riyaz Bhatkal and brother Iqbal Bhatkal are also said to be living in Pakistan.
The migration of India's most wanted to Pakistan occurred in the 1990s after New Delhi signed an extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates, where many of them had taken refuge.
"In 2005, Dawood's daughter got married to cricketer Javed Miandad's son in a big ceremony. Later, his brother Noora died and the entire Pakistani media reported about it. And yet the Pakistani government kept denying the don's presence on its soil," said a senior police officer.

Inspector Louis Renault said it best in Casablanca:

What I live for ...

Today seems to be a demonstration of a teacher-student partnership when it comes to learning about, and understanding, the world.  As if the earlier one wasn't enough, I now get a second one from another student "T."

"T" quoted me a sentence from Bertrand Russell, to which I confessed my ignorance; I hadn't come across that one before.  So, "T" took the extra trouble of sending me the following longer excerpt from Russell's autobiography; the title of this post is a modification to Russell's prologue, "What I have lived for," only to make sure that no reader thinks that this post somehow signifies the end of my existence here :)

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

It is a wonderful reminder that I am not the only one in this journey, and that there have been giants like Russell who have paved the very path that I travel.

Assuming that I am just about past the halfway marker in my life, looking back, it seems like I, too, would gladly live it again, if offered that chance.  Sure, there have been disappointments and frustrations along the way.  But what is life without them!

A long time back, towards the end of the high school years was when I first came across a serious essay by Russell, thanks to my good friend, Srikumar, who had taken a brief fancy for Russell's philosophy.  The philosophy was way too dense for me.

I was impressed that Russell was a math genius though.  It was in this context that I also came to know about "Wranglers" in math--Russell was one of those elite mathematicians who did not top the exams however.  All that discovery about math exams meant that I was all too excited to participate in a regional mathematics exam.  I remember getting a certificate, which I regret I never saved!  This high school level math exam, to me, was like that fabled Wrangler tradition :) 

But, for some reason I never read any of Russell's works. There was something that put me off. I can't quite recall what it was.  So, it is neat that a student brings to my attention the prologue to Russell's autobiography. Something new learned everyday.

Along with all that, "T" reminds me of the Beatles line:

ob-la-di ob-la-da life goes on brah ... lala how the life goes on

Yes, if for nothing else, some of us live for Beatles' songs; so, from Russell to the Ringo, here are the Beatles :)

bin Laden is dead. Four days. Unwarranted secrecy

In one of the "Mind your language" episodes,  is it Ranjeet or Ali who remarks that he watched the most violent show on television, and when asked for the name of the show he replies, "Tom and Jerry."

Whether it is at the toon level, or in dramatic portrayals, television is super-saturated with images of horror and destruction--sometimes even worse than the ones in real life itself.  And then the movies. Probably the worst of all horrific images are in computer games.

Most of the people on this planet are routinely bombarded with horrific images.  It is, therefore, bizarre to hear the "it is too gory" justification for not releasing OBL's photo. 
Talk about the nanny state! 

Jack Shafer writes:

I'm for the publication of the pictures because they're an essential part of the war on al-Qaida. Withholding the photos and couching their suppression in the name of national security misjudges what makes al-Qaida tick and infantilizes the nation. It also sets a precedent for "news that's too gruesome to reveal." ...
If a nation can be trusted to view the horrors of 9/11 in real time, flip through the Abu Ghraib picture book, witness the made-for-video murder of Daniel Pearl, see images of dead Uday and Qusay on the evening news, and gaze upon pictures of dead soldiers coming home as air freight (photos that President Bush, incidentally, tried to ban in the name of managing the news), then it can be trusted to stomach the last photos of Osama Bin Laden—and whatever turmoil those photos might cause. Why? Because that's what sort of country the United States is.

The other argument is that releasing the photo would incite anti-American jihad. Oh yeah, wave the "war on terror" banner all over again.

As always, it is only humor that can get me over the hump

Warning: do not eat or drink when watching the following:)

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Terrorists: They're Just Like Us!
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog Video Archive

The Daily Show - Face/Off
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Photo of the day: college degrees and ponzi schemes

An email from a student, "R," had the subject line "university ponzi scheme."  In the email, "R" writes "Did you read this one? Are you Dr X in this article?" ....

Hey, I have been loud and open on this--like here--and don't have to hide behind any "Dr. X" :)

Thanks to R for the link to this latest piece on the worthlessness of the college degree ... and it is in this piece that you will find the image below ...

Excerpt:

if college is neither a luxury good nor an investment, what is it? For Thiel, the commodity college most closely resembles is the humble insurance policy. Americans have become terrified, he says, of what will happen to their children if they don’t send them to college. The recession, widening income inequality, growing job insecurity, the uncertain future of the welfare state, the increasing costs of health care—all have deepened the anxieties that made college such an attractive option for a rising middle class in the first place. “I think that’s the way probably a lot of parents think about it. It’s a way for their kids to be safe, to be protected from the chaos. You’re paying for college because it’s an insurance policy against falling out of the middle class.” The larger question this raises, he says, is, “Why are we spending ten times as much for insurance as we were 30 years ago? And does that tell us something has gone really badly wrong with our country?”

Of course, I have blogged before about Peter Thiel's views on education.  I suppose while we might arrive at the same conclusions about the deplorable state of higher education, our reasons and objectives are not the same.

bin Laden dead. Three days later. More questions/concerns

Last evening, I turned the TV on to check if C-Span had anything interesting.  (Yes, that kind of a junkie to willingly watch C-Span, which has been one of the best American media innovations ever. America set an example and even countries like India have their own versions of C-Span now.)

It looked like some kind of a dinner where Obama got up to talk. And he said something about OBL's death. The entire room burst into applause and stood up as well.

I turned the TV off in disgust. I mean, are we not done celebrating that?  Isn't it time to get to the details?  To start asking tough questions?

Apparently not.

I then find out that Obama is heading to NY, to Ground Zero. Come on, enough with the theatrics and let us get on to serious content.

Glenn Greenwald is way ahead of me (when is he not, eh,) and notes how the media folks are happy to parrot any administration's testosterone-filled messages, instead of digging deeper. Greenwald cites TPM's comment on the entire Osama and wife as human shield spin:

Turns out the woman that was killed on the compound wasn't bin Laden's wife. Bin Laden may have not even been using a human shield. And he might not have even been holding a gun.

It is not any surprise then that there are people who think that was not Osama either.

William Saletan has this to say about the administration's false narratives:

The reason U.S. officials bought and sold this story is that it fit their larger indictment of Bin Laden. It reinforced the shameful picture of him hiding in a mansion while sending others to fight and die. It made him look like a coward.
This is the narrative that's really at stake. A narrative isn't just a chronology. It's a tale woven with themes. For 20 years, Bin Laden peddled a tale of oppression and jihad. In elaborate video and audio messages, he depicted al-Qaida's trail of bombings as a Muslim struggle against Western persecution. He wasn't just a terrorist. He was a storyteller.
That's the story Brennan sought to undermine when he cited Bin Laden's use of a human shield to show "how false his narrative has been over the years." Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also targeted Bin Laden's story. In a statement trumpeting his death, she argued that "people across the Middle East and North Africa are rejecting the extremist narratives and charting a path of peaceful progress." Carney, too, warned against false interpretations. "It would be a shame," he warned, if Bin Laden's killing "became a piece in a partisan narrative."
Carney is right. So are Brennan, Clinton, and Cameron. Bin Laden was a delusional mass murderer, and his narrative was false. But you can't debunk one false narrative with another. The firefight at Bin Laden's compound, it now appears, pitted two or three men against a dozen or more commandos. Bin Laden didn't engage in the firefight and used no human shield. He wasn't even armed. We shot him dead anyway. That's the truth. Deal with it.

Well, in other places it would be called propaganda, right?

The more the administration wants to control the flow of information so that it will all be spun in a way it wants, the more this entire thing comes across like Bourne going to kill the African leader in the middle of the night.

The Guardian quotes an American prosecutor at Nuremburg:

Benjamin Ferencz, an American lawyer who was a US prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials and who lives in New York state, asked whether the killing was justifiable self-defence or premeditated illegal assassination. He would have preferred he had been captured and put on trial.
Ferencz, 92, said : "The picture I get is that a bunch of highly trained, heavily armed soldiers find an old guy in pyjamas and shot him in the chest and head and that borders, without access to more facts, on murder." He added: "Even [the head of the Luftwaffe Hermann] Göring had a right to trial."

Attorney General Holder:

"The operation in which Osama bin Laden was killed was lawful," Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee. "He was the head of al-Qaida, an organization that had conducted the attacks of September 11th. He admitted his involvement and he indicated that he would not be taken alive. The operation against bin Laden was justified as an act of national self defense."

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, the wily Hamid Karzai is making use of the political opportunity to distract attention from himself and his corrupt government:

"They didn't find Osama in Logar, they didn't find him in Kandahar," declared Afghan president Hamid Karzai. "They didn’t find him in Badakhsahn, in Kabul or in Parwan. They found him in Abbotabad, in Pakistan," he said.

Although president Karzai made sure he included a word of appreciation for the sacrifices of NATO and the United States, the frustration in his tone was clear. "NATO and the world did not hear our call for ten years," he said. "We burned and burned. Osama was killed in Abbotabad."

There is only one way I can calm myself down then ... with the Daily Show!

The Daily Show - To Kill a Mockingturd - Pervez Musharraf Lies About Osama bin Laden
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The middle way. And just right. Life isn't a bore then?

In response to a dear ol' friend, I said I led/lead a dull and boring life.

But, I wonder if that is an incorrect statement.

For instance,

My students, who are always impressed that I have been to all the continents, except Antarctica, would not agree that my life is boring.
My lunch earlier this afternoon was far from boring--grilled ciabatta bread sandwich with pepperjack cheese, onions, and black-pepper salami; banana; roasted and salted cashews; and coffee. I made the sandwich at home.  How can this be boring? 
As I was driving to work, it was a fantastic blue sky, with puffy white and dark clouds, and the Sun was shining brightly, with a gentle breeze blowing.  Far, far, from boring.

Maybe some times it merely feels like a boring life, when I forget to sense and understand the gloriously joyous and wonderful life all around?

The television program on PBS reminded me about this teaching from the Buddha:

Fair goes the dancing when the Sitar is tuned.

Tune us the Sitar neither high nor low,
And we will dance away the hearts of men.

But the string too tight breaks, and the music dies.
The string too slack has no sound, and the music dies.

There is a middle way.

Tune us the Sitar neither low nor high.
And we will dance away the hearts of men.

Yes, indeed, that middle way. When things are just right so that our hearts will sing and dance.  Easier said than done, buddy, er, Buddha ...

Speaking of the sitar, here is a part of Ravi Shankar's famous 1967 concert at the Monterey music festival



Ravi Shankar and the sitar always reminds me of : "Within you, without you" by the Beatles

But then, I am a mortal, and there are moments when I say, "it's a bore"

White. Whiter. Whitest. ... Portland, Oregon!

Click here for the text-analysis of the following graphics from the Oregonian:

bin Laden is dead. Two days later ... Now what?

Soon after my first blog-post related to bin Laden's death, a high school classmate from India, who still lives there, commented:

Dont really feel happy or want to congratulate the US for something that they created.

Juan Cole reviews that history my friend refers to, first before he gets to what next:

Usama Bin Laden was a violent product of the Cold War and the Age of Dictators in the Greater Middle East. He passed from the scene at a time when the dictators are falling or trying to avoid falling in the wake of a startling set of largely peaceful mass movements demanding greater democracy and greater social equity. Bin Laden dismissed parliamentary democracy, for which so many Tunisians and Egyptians yearn, as a man-made and fallible system of government, and advocated a return to the medieval Muslim caliphate (a combination of pope and emperor) instead. Only a tiny fringe of Muslims wants such a theocratic dictatorship. The masses who rose up this spring mainly spoke of “nation,” the “people,” “liberty” and “democracy,” all keywords toward which Bin Laden was utterly dismissive. The notorious terrorist turned to techniques of fear-mongering and mass murder to attain his goals in the belief that these methods were the only means by which the Secret Police States of the greater Middle East could be overturned.

Cole's essay is a must read--he even notes how his blog itself began after 9/11.  Cole adds:

if Bush had gone after Bin Laden as single-mindedly as Obama has, he would have gotten him, and could have rolled up al-Qaeda in 2002 or 2003. Instead, Bush’s occupation of a major Arab Muslim country kept a hornet’s nest buzzing against the US, Britain and other allies. Now that Obama has eliminated the monster Usama Bin Laden and vindicated the capability of the United States to visit retribution on its dire enemies, he can do one other great good for this country abroad. He can get us out of Iraq altogether.

Yes. I hope the anti-war Democrats and libertarians will increase the volumes of their demands to end our military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I am not sure whether Gaddafi is seeing this OBL story as his moment to use more force when the world is distracted, or as a sure sign of how he himself will end up if he doesn't step aside soon.  Similarly in Yemen, Zimbabwe, ...

How are Obama and Congress going to use this valuable opportunity?  Cole ends his lengthy piece with this:

The Arab Spring has demonstrated that the Arab masses yearn for liberty, not thuggish repression, for life, not death and destruction, for parliamentary democracy, not theocratic dictatorship. Bin Laden was already a dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War and the age of dictators in which a dissident such as he had no place in society and was shunted off to distant, frontier killing fields. The new generation of young Arabs in Egypt and Tunisia has a shot at a decent life. Obama has put the US on the right side of history in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya (where I see crowds for the first time in my life waving American flags). People might want a little help from a distance, but they don’t want to see Western troops deployed in fighting units on their soil.
If Obama can get us out of Iraq, and if he can use his good offices to keep the pressure on the Egyptian military to lighten up, and if he can support the likely UN declaration of a Palestinian state in September, the US will be in the most favorable position in the Arab world it has had since 1956. And he would go down in history as one of the great presidents. If he tries to stay in Iraq and he takes a stand against Palestine, he risks provoking further anti-American violence. He can be not just the president who killed Bin Laden, but the president who killed the pretexts for radical violence against the US. He can promote the waving of the American flag in major Arab cities. And that would be a defeat and humiliation for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda more profound than any they could have dreamed.

Quo vadis, Obama?

Hey Libyans, Yemenis, Bahrainis, Tunisians, Egyptians ... we have not forgotten you ...

I read the news today oh boy ...

Yes, The Beatles, of course:

I saw a film today oh boy
The English Army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
but I just had to look

No video on YouTube though .... but, the song, yes

The Daily Show and Jon Stewart are hysterically funny in "Bye Bye, Beardie" :)

The Daily Show - Big Deady
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Chart of the day: Twitter and bin Laden's death

I can relate to this chart--from the moment the media started their speculation that the major address by Obama was related to OBL's death, and for a couple hours after that, I was watching for updates on Twitter ... My first tweet on this was at 8:12 pm PDT, and my final one was at 11:15 pm.  It was simply crazy to follow the news, and to kind of vicariously participate in real-time conversations, on Twitter. Who woulda thunk that!

I feel sorry for all those rebels and protesters in Libya, Yemen, ...their protests have been drowned out in the OBL news.

bin Laden is dead. It is the day after. Now what?

As I went to bed last night, I realized that I had to redo the mental script I had for my classes--some of the students might want to discuss the bin Laden-related events, while some might not care.  Then the question of whether I had a pedagogical responsibility to treat this as a learning opportunity as well.  If a learning opportunity, then what were the lessons to focus on?  How would I then go about discussing those lessons?

Teaching, as I see it, is nothing but editorial decisions everyday.  We select and present materials to students. We interpret the data in the manner in which we prefer--even when we try our best to be impartial, and leave our ideological preferences at home.

As I was driving to work, I figured out a game plan.  My formal teaching/learning moment would be to highlight the importance of understanding of geography.  That we understand that location matters, and the location-related relationships matter.  So, I would use maps of the Indian Subcontinent to tell a story of sorts. But tell a story in a way that draws questions.

However, I wanted to do that as a wrap-up after inviting comments from the students.  But then how would I broach the subject?  I figured I didn't have to worry about this--I was confident that at least a couple of students would jump on this topic even before I got to the computer in the classroom.

It turned out exactly that way. "T" loudly remarked that he wanted to discuss the current events and not our regularly scheduled topics.  "What happened, man?" I asked him with a smile.  "T" said "about last night, and Osama."  And thus we discussed the events. For 45 minutes. Including recalling where we were on that fateful 9/11. "T" asked whether it was ok to publicly celebrate--apparently a few had expressed displeasure at the celebrations.  "Go ahead and celebrate" I told him. "Bin Laden has killed tens of thousands, including thousands of Muslims" I added.

At the end, I reminded the class that all politics aside, we owe a thanks to the military.  I asked those who had served to stand so that we could thank them. One stood. We clapped. And then I asked all those with friends and families who have served in the military to stand. With the exception of a couple of students, the entire class stood up.

And, with that we took a break, and then I did my spiel on geography, location, and relationships. At the end of it all, we had only 20 minutes out of the 110-minute session to talk about resources, which was the topic for the day.

As the students were exiting, "T" paused for a second and said, "thanks for allowing us to talk about this for more than half the class time."  

I wonder whether the students know that I hate violence. I hate wars. I have never touched a gun in my life. Not even a bullet. I hope that I will never, ever, touch any of those killing machines.  A friend, "P," when I told him about these views a few years ago, thought it was a noble to goal to set for oneself--to not ever go anywhere near those weapons of destruction. He should know--he is a Vietnam veteran!

But, does it matter whether or not students know what my personal preferences are?  I tell you, teaching is immensely tougher than what it seems from the outside.

I am glad though that Osama bin Laden is gone. Capturing him, then trying him in a regular court--not one of those Guantanamo circus cages--would have been my preferred option. While I hate the death penalty, I recognize that it is legal in this country.  Bin Laden would have been sentenced to death after the due process.


So, it is now the day after. It is not as if we now revert to the halcyon days of September 10, 2001.  There is simply no there there. But, there are a few things I hope Obama, the Democrats, and the Republicans will start thinking about. Such as the ones that Dahlia Lithwick writes about:

About all we can say with certainty is this: We tortured. We live in a world in which we must contend with information obtained by torture. We now need to decide whether we want to continue to live that way. Writers from ideological backgrounds as diverse as Matt Yglesias and Ross Douthat argue that it is time to return to the paradigm abandoned after 9/11. Let's put the 9/11 attacks and the existential threat it created behind us. With Bin Laden's death, let's simply agree that the objectives of the Bush administration's massive anti-terror campaign have finally been achieved, and that the time for extra-legal, extra-judicial government programs—from torture, to illegal surveillance, to indefinite detention, to secret trials, to nontrials, to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay—has now passed. There will be no better marker for the end of this era. There will be no better time to inform the world that our flirtation with a system of shadow-laws was merely situational and that the situation now is over. ...

The "war on terror" language was always metaphorical, I realize, but it unloosed a very real Pandora's box of injustice on a nation that prides itself on its notions of fairness. That makes the highly symbolic death of Bin Laden an apt time—perhaps the last apt time—to ask whether this state of affairs is to be temporary or permanent. If President Obama truly believes, as he said last night, that justice has finally been done, he should use this opportunity to restore the central role of the rule of law in achieving justice in the future.

And, can we please start complete withdrawal of the military from Afghanistan? And not get all too entangled in Libya?  And reduce defense spending so that we can provide better social safety nets?

As the month draws to a close, I will have yet another learning opportunity--"Memorial Day."  But, I don't do any talking in class for that--like in the years past, all I have to do is update my slides of images of Oregon's soldiers who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A very quiet automated slide-show for ten minutes. That always leaves me drained, emotionally and physically.

What was Osama bin Laden doing when the Navy Seals came knocking?

America's Finest News Source has the "scoop" on it:

NEW YORK—Osama bin Laden, 54-year-old leader of the international terrorist group al-Qaeda and mastermind of the 9/11 attacks that took nearly 3,000 American lives in 2001, was killed early Monday morning in Pakistan while sitting on the toilet, the U.S. populace took great pleasure in imagining today. “Just thinking about the stupid look on that evil bastard’s face when those Navy SEALs kicked in the bathroom door and started blasting away—it’s so totally priceless,” said Queens, NY resident Rachel Sumner, one of 311 million Americans who reveled in a fictional scenario in which bin Laden met his gruesome and humiliating end while sitting on the commode, humming to himself, and reading a newspaper. “And him frantically trying to pull up his boxer shorts seconds before some badass Special Forces guy blows his head off—ha, ha! What a fucking moron.” Some Americans have disputed this fabricated version of bin Laden’s death, explaining they prefer to imagine the terrorist leader being surprised by Navy SEALs while wearing bright red lipstick, trying on ladies’ clothing, sashaying in front of a full-length mirror, and saying, “Who’s the prettiest little girl? Osama's the prettiest little girl!”

Everything will be fine as long as our sense of humor and satire never go away, nor are curtailed ...
A bonus: a slideshow on OBL :)

On a serious analysis, Christopher Hitchens employs his verbal skills:

we won't have to put up with a smirking video when the 10^th anniversary of his best-known atrocity comes around. Come to think of it, though, he hadn't issued any major communiqués on any subject lately (making me wonder, some time ago, if he hadn't actually died or been accidentally killed already), and the really hateful work of his group and his ideology was being carried out by a successor generation like his incomparably more ruthless clone in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. I find myself hoping that, like Zarqawi, Bin Laden had a few moments at the end to realize who it was who had found him and to wonder who the traitor had been. That would be something. Not much, but something.

A vast number of questions remain to be answered ... by this administration and the previous ones ... I favor Jack Shafer's reminder on this:

the fog of breaking news almost always cloaks the truth, especially when the deadline news event is a super-top-secret military operation conducted by commandos halfway around the world and the sources of the sexiest information go unnamed.

bin Laden and the Pakistan connection

A high school classmate, who now lives in India after quite a few years here in the US, comments in his Facebook page on the American forces taking out bin Laden well inside Pakistan, this close to its capital and military facilities:

The beginning of recognition for Pakistan's army as a terrorist organization...

The Pakistani military-ISI-terrorism angle will come under intense scrutiny, within that country, in India, in the US and around the world.  The Times of India notes:

top US officials have openly suggested for months that the Pakistani military establishment was hiding bin Laden. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton came closest to publicly exposing Pakistan's role last May when she accused some government officials there of harboring Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar.

''I am not saying they are at the highest level...but I believe somewhere in this government are people who know where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida and where Mullah Omar and the leadership of the Taliban are,'' Clinton said on May 10 last year, adding, ''We expect more cooperation (from Pakistan) to help us bring to justice capture or kill those who brought us 9/11.''

Taken together with President Obama's pointed reference to President Zardari and leaving out any mention of Pakistani forces' involvement, it would seem that Washington believes that Pakistan's military intelligence establishment, including the ISI, was sheltering bin Laden. The ISI was accused as recently as last week by the top US military official Admiral Mike Mullen of having terrorist links, and named as a terrorist support entity by US officials, according to the Guantanamo cables.

Lending credence to the charges is the fact that US forces homed in on bin Laden in Abbottabad, which is a cantonment just 50 kms from Islamabad, where the Pakistani military has a strong presence. The place where bin Laden was killed is only kilometers from the Kakul military academy, where many Pakistani military elites, including some of its ISI cadres, graduate from.

While US officials are tightlipped about precise details, analysts are trying to figure out whether the compound that sheltered bin Laden was an ISI safehouse. There is also speculation as to whether Hillary Clinton was referring to this when she made her pointed remarks last May.

US officials have said for years that they believed bin Laden escaped to Pakistan after the American bombing campaign in Afghanistan. But Pakistani officials, including its former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, insisted that he was in Afghanistan, even as Afghan officials would angrily refute it and say he is in Pakistan. In the end, the Americans and Afghans were right on the money.

A few minutes after President Obama's address to the country, world actually, I called my parents, who live in India. 

It was about 930 in the morning there and, of course, like normal people they were not watching television at the early time of the day.  Mom hoped that it would not be a case of Ravana and his heads :)

India's minister wasted no time in reminding the world about this serious Pakistani nexus:

India today said the killing of global terrorist Osama bin Laden was a matter of grave concern as it proved that terrorists belonging to different groups find sanctuary in Pakistan.

Union Home Minister P Chidambaram said in a statement that perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks, including the controllers and handlers of the terrorists, continue to be sheltered in Pakistan.

He said that earlier today the U.S. government informed New Delhi that Osama bin Laden had been killed by security forces somewhere “deep inside Pakistan.”

“After the September 11, 2001 terror attack, the U.S. had a reason to seek Osama bin Laden and bring him and his accomplices to justice,” the statement said.

“We take note with grave concern that part of the statement in which President (Barack) Obama said that the fire fight in which Osama bin Laden was killed took place in Abbotabad ‘deep inside Pakistan’

“This fact underlines our concern that terrorists belonging to different organisations find sanctuary in Pakistan,” he said.

The Home Minister said in the wake of this incident “we believe that perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks, including the controllers and handlers of the terrorists who actually carried out the attack, continue to be sheltered in Pakistan.

“We once again call upon the Government of Pakistan to arrest the persons whose names have been handed over to the Interior Minister of Pakistan as well as provide voice samples of certain persons who are suspected to be among the controllers and handlers of the terrorists.”

Oh ... I have a class to teach ...

What a May Day: Bin Laden dead

If Public Enemy #1 is dead, can Zawahiri be far behind?  I wonder if Zawahiri is in a larger city like Peshawar or Rawalpindi, but not anywhere near Abbottabad, given that his height and weight could help him merge with the locals ...
Funny though how quickly Wikipedia is updated, but not the FBI pages :)


View Larger Map



Reuters reports:

Osama bin Laden was hiding out in a mansion near a Pakistani military training academy and less than two hours' drive from Islamabad when he was killed in a dramatic CIA-led operation involving helicopters and ground troops on Sunday night. ...

"After midnight, a large number of commandos encircled the compound. Three helicopters were hovering overhead. All of a sudden there was firing toward the helicopters from the ground," said Nasir Khan, a resident of the town.
"There was intense firing and then I saw one of the helicopters falling down," said Khan, who had watched the dramatic scene unfold from his rooftop.
Senior Pakistani security officials said the operation, carried out at around 1:30 a.m., involved both helicopters and ground troops.

Reuters reports that "Express 24/7 television showed an image of what it said was bin Laden shot in the head, his mouth pulled back in a grimace."  


VOA adds:

Pakistan English-language television station Express 24/7 says two of bin Laden's wives and six of his children have been detained by U.S. forces. The station reports four of the terrorist leader's aides have also been arrested.
Express 24/7 says the neighborhood where the fight took place has been cordoned off and residents have been advised to stay in their houses.

 A report from Pakistan (ht)

K. Balachander's movies stir old memories

There are many movies of K. Balachander's that I enjoyed watching back in India.  His distinct style of story-telling was refreshing from the usual run of movies.  There was a family friend who couldn't rave enough about "KB" movies, and she had all the reasons for it.  Not surprised at all, therefore, that KB is the latest recipient of the prestigious Dadhasaheb Phalke Award--the equivalent of "lifetime achievement" award here.  And the first Tamil movie guy to be thus honored.

A few song/dance clips from some of his movies:

This one, from "Edhir Neechal" ("swim against") fascinates me because one wouldn't typically expect Nagesh to feature in such a duet:


There aren't a whole lot of older KB movie clips in YouTube.  A favorite family story is about one of his movies, "Iru Kodugal."  There was only one movie theatre, "Amaravathi," in the town where we lived.  When "Iru Kodugal" was screened there, dad and mom wanted to watch it.  But, they didn't want to take the kids.  There was no question of hiring somebody as a babysitter either.  So, they decided to take a chance by going to a late night show, after putting the kids to sleep.  The theatre was a mere couple of minutes of a walk from home.  They get to the box office only to find that they had missed the movie by a day :)

As I started understanding movies, one of the KB movies that impressed me a lot was "Apoorva Raagangal." I was a pre-teen, as we would now refer to that phase.  The beginnings of an awareness of girls.  There was one girl whom I fancied all through those years, well into high school.  I wonder what she is up to now!  Thus, cinematic duets always had interesting aspects for me, in my imaginations.  Anyway, to me "Apoorva Raagangal" was the first real KB experience--quite an offbeat plot and narration.  A few years later on, I came to understand that the storyline was a take-off on an old Vikramadityan tale. 



KB launched many a acting careers.  My earliest memory of Kamal Hassan, Rajanikanth, and Sridevi--a trio who would go on to dominate the movies for years--is from "Moondru Mudichu."   This translates to "three knots" and it is not difficult to leap to an idea that it is a movie that is a love-triangle.  Probably the oldest drama plot anywhere in the world.  Incidentally, "Calcutta Viswanathan" who played a significant role in that movie recently passed away.  He was one heck of an intellectual/academic on his own, was the son-in-law of an intellectual heavyweight, and the brother-in-law of another.



"Ninaithale Inikkum" ("sweet when remembered" or "sweet memories") was a very different KB--not a serious movie by any means.  It was a movie more significant for the music by MS Viswanathan, who was fading out against the younger Ilayaraja, who quickly began to dominate the film world.



The more I got into the teenage years, the more I disliked the routine formulas in Indian movies.  Even KB's movies too didn't impress me that much anymore, and I went to very few movies later on ... The last KB movie that I watched was "Ek Dhuje Ke Liye." I would assume from the popularity of this movie that KB might have earned a gazillion.  It was formulaic, all right, but a well done formula.  A typical Indian movie storyline of boy meets girl of a different culture, parents protest, and the two commit suicide by jumping off a cliff into the sea.  I am not sure if recent movies have updated this storyline at all, but then it has been decades since I watched one!  Anyway, "Ek Djuje Ke Liye" had one awesome song after another; here is my favorite:



Thanks for the memories, KB.