दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

I came across a good note- ‘Rediscovering Emperor Ashoka’ on the website of ‘Times of India’. You get nearer to your country and its history when you are in foreign land. I don’t know about others but it certainly happens with me. And the article can have heading as one I gave it by replacing ‘Emperor Ashoka’ by ‘India’. And with some tidbits about the heroes of Ashoka’s state (Bihar) appearing here and there in the digital media, the note became more relevant to me. I did my own research. And here is what Amartya Sen has written on Ashoka:

Is it indeed true (as claimed, for example, by Samuel Huntington) that “the West was the West long before it was modern”? The evidence for such claims is far from clear. When civilizations are categorized today, individual liberty is often used as a classificatory device and is seen as a part of the ancient heritage of the Western world, not to be found elsewhere. It is, of course, easy to find the advocacy of particular aspects of individual liberty in Western classical writings. For example, freedom and tolerance both get support from Aristotle (even though only for free men-not women and slaves). However, we can find championing of tolerance and freedom in non-Western authors as well. A good example is the emperor Ashoka in India, who during the third century BC covered the country with inscriptions on stone tablets about good behavior and wise governance, including a demand for basic freedoms for all-indeed he did not exclude women and slaves as Aristotle did; he even insisted that these rights must be enjoyed also by “the forest people” living in pre-agricultural communities distant from Indian cities. Ashoka’s championing of tolerance and freedom may not be at all well known in the contemporary world, but that is not dissimilar to the global unfamiliarity with calendars other than the Gregorian.
There are, to be sure, other Indian classical authors who emphasized discipline and order rather than tolerance and liberty, for example Kautilya in the fourth century BC (in his book Arthashastra-translatable as “Economics”). But Western classical writers such as Plato and Saint Augustine also gave priority to social disciplines. In view of the diversity within each country, it may be sensible, when it comes to liberty and tolerance, to classify Aristotle and Ashoka on one side, and, on the other, Plato, Augustine, and Kautilya.

Unfortunately, Indians, in general, particularly those with English education, start believing something worthwhile achievements of the ancient India only when someone from the western country write about it. Bruce Rich is an environmentalist and left-leaning critic of globalization and is not a historian by profession. He has a book ‘To Uphold The World’: A Call for a New Global Ethic from Ancient India’, which is all about Ashoka. Here is what Rich wants to convey.

Ashoka provides a unique example of a world ruler who tried to put into practice a state, secular ethic of nonviolence and reverence for life, which he also extended to international relations. His edicts, inscribed on rock faces and pillars all over India in the third century BC, declare even today for all to see religious tolerance and equal protection of the laws, and announce the establishment of nature reserves and protected species. His empire at the time was arguably the world’s largest, richest, and most powerful multiethnic state. Its trade and diplomatic links extended over most of what was then the developed world. If we take into account the slowness of land and sea travel 2,300 years ago, administering such a vast area was the equivalent to ruling the entire globe today.

Ashoka’s great ethical leap rested on the most paradoxical of foundations, a centralized government in all likelihood organized and codified by Kautilya, chief minister of Ashoka’s grandfather Chandragupta Maurya. One of history’s greatest political geniuses, Kautilya
wrote the world’s first treatise on political economy, the Arthasastra. The Arthasastra proclaims accumulation of material riches as the chief underpinning of human society, and recommends amoral realpolitik as an effective political approach.

Ashoka is a unique and revolutionary figure in history who not only renounced armed force, but also, in the words of Arnold Toynbee, made “a complete break with his dynasty’s and with every dynasty’s traditional policy.” But Ashoka did not abolish Kautilya’s administrative system; he tried to infuse it with a transcendent ethos of respect for life that encompassed every aspect of everyday activity and was strong enough to hold together one of history’s first multiethnic empires.

Why couldn’t India produce someone like Ashoka and Chanakya for thousands of years? Why should not the present political leaders take some lessons from that era? I wish they get some time to read these books or my blog entry. I have only one question for Nitish, Lalu and Ram Bilash: Did Ashoka or Chanakya talk or think anytime about getting the society divided among caste or communities to win the power? Did not Ashoka give equal weightage for the learned ones of all communities?

Let the voters choose the right one who works for a place in the history that will be written tomorrow.
—-
PS: And I am on it. Anand has bought the book of Bruce Rich as e-book on my laptop. ‘To Uphold The World: A Call for a New Global Ethic from Ancient India, starts with Amartya Sen’s introduction. I affirm my advice for readingthe book.

एक मास में,
एक रात के
पूर्ण चन्द्र की
स्निग्ध चांदनी
कितनी मनभाती हैं .
पर कितनी ऐसी रातों में
इसे देखने
हम बाहर होते हैं .
कभी कभी बारिस की
जब रिमझिम बूँदें
मोती बरसातीं हैं.
कभी कभी सूरज की किरणें भी
कितनी अच्छी लगती हैं
कितने हम में बाहर होते?.
कभी कभी उन गुलमोहर के पत्तों का
झर झर कर गिरना,
खुद अपने उन शोख रंग के
फूलों से मोसम में सजना
राह किनारे.
हरसिंगार के नन्हे नन्हे फूलों से
धरती का पटना,
और हवा को मदमाती कर
धीरे बहना,
और वंही मिट्टी में मिलना
कहाँ आज कुछ याद दिलाता?
प्रकृति सुंदरी का यह श्रृंगार
लोगों को अब नहीं लुभाता.
कभी कभी अच्छा लगता है
प्रात: प्रात:
नए शहर के मुख्य मार्ग पर
मुझे भटकना
और कभी यह अच्छा लगता
बिना निमंत्रण
उनका आना .
सभी व्यस्त हों
या वे मस्त हों
दरबो में या फिर महलों में.
हमें एक इच्छा है होती
मैं चिलाऊँ
‘बाहर आओ, खुश हो जाओ
देखो सूरज, महती धरती
और बहूत आगे बढ़ जाओ.’

If US wouldn’t have the bookstores such as Borders or Barnes and Nobles, perhaps it would have been difficult for me to enjoy my America’s long stays. Anand had taken me to Borders in Cary, but I didn’t find that to my satisfaction. On October 6, Anand took me to Barnes and Nobles. The collection and ambience both were to my liking. I went through some of the magazines and found Indians in the news that I shall like to share.

Fortune has a major article, ‘Touched by scandal‘ on Rajat Gupta, one of successful IITians. However, this one relates to a bad aspect about Rajat if it has any truth whatsoever.

The same issue of Fortune has selected PepsiCo Inc chief Indra Nooyi as the most powerful woman in U.S. business for the fifth year in a row According to Fortune, “Nooyi completed the purchase of PepsiCo’s two largest bottlers, bringing revenues to a projected $60 billion,” Fortune said. “Now she’ll have to deliver the $400 million annual cost savings she promised. Investors seem assured: The stock is up 12 percent since September 2009.”

Technology Review has published its list of 2010 Young Innovators Under 35, a list of technologists and scientists, all under the age of 35, whose inventions and research TR find most exciting. Their works span medicine, computing, communications, electronics, nanotechnology, and more that are changing our world. Three of them are Indians.

<

b>Indrani Medhi, 32, Microsoft Research India

Based at Microsoft Research India’s Bangalore lab, Indrani Medhi has conducted field research in India, South Africa, and the Philippines to design text-free interfaces that could help illiterate and semiliterate people find jobs, get medical information, and use cell-phone-based banking services. And there are 774 million adults worldwide who cannot read
Medhi used symbols, audio cues, and cartoons that are specific to particular poor communities. They still did not fully understand how information relevant to their lives could possibly be contained in or delivered by a computer.
To overcoming this problem, Medhi offered a five-minute video dramatization when an application is launched, illustrating exactly how it is supposed to work. For example, the one that accompanies her job-search interface features an upper-middle-class couple that needs a domestic helper. The husband posts the requirements to a job website that is subsequently accessed by unemployed and illiterate women at a community center. The video ends with a woman being hired.
–Guy Gugliotta

Rikin Gandhi, 29, Digital Green
Rikin Gandhi, founder of the nonprofit Digital Green, has developed a pilot project that offers a solution: simple videos starring local farmers themselves. Gandhi demonstrated that for every dollar spent, the system persuaded seven times as many farmers to adopt new ideas as an existing program of training and visits.
Villagers produce the videos using handheld camcorders; workers from partner nongovernmental organizations then check the quality of the videos and the accuracy of the advice before screening them in the villages with handheld projectors. So far 500 videos have been made, but three times that number–which should reach four times as many villages–are currently planned. –David Talbot

Ranveer Chandra, 34, Microsoft Research
PROBLEM: Wi-Fi uses frequencies that can’t carry a signal more than a few tens of meters. TV stations, on the other hand, use a portion of the radio spectrum that lets signals travel long distances, and the end of analog television has opened up unused slices of the spectrum between stations. They could be used for wireless Internet service, but it has been difficult to take advantage of these so-called white spaces without causing interference, because the exact frequencies used by TV stations vary geographically.
SOLUTION: Ranveer Chandra made the Microsoft campus in Redmond, WA, his laboratory for the first large-scale network to demonstrate the potential of using white spaces to deliver broadband wireless. Links in the prototype network can span up to two kilometers. To avoid treading on the toes of TV broadcasters, his system uses GPS to determine its location; then it checks the Web to find out what stations are active in the area. Chandra’s devices can also listen for nearby transmissions from wireless microphones, which use the same bands. When a conflict is detected, they switch to a backup slice of unused spectrum on the fly.
Chandra’s prototype network has the potential for white-space signals to connect large rural areas with minimal infrastructure. –Tom Simonite

Interestingly, all the Indian scientists in TR 35 are connected with Microsoft Research in India.

The Nitish–Lalu Bihar War 2010 has been declared and will get fiercer in coming days before the final onslaughts. It will be all over before I return to my Noida home.

Lalu has declared the heir-apparent of his party. He also has selected the male child instead of the female one as Sonia did few years ago. But he has finally decided to keep the mother of the heir apparent also in the fray and that too she will be fighting from two constituencies to have a sure win.

I wonder if the electorates of Bihar will prefer to go for establishing the Lalu clan on the throne. One can imagine what can happen if by some chance Lalu wins the battle. Will there be no tussle between the father, mother or the son to occupy the throne?

But will these announcements from the horse’s mouth not help Nitish in winning the battle or the great voters of Bihar overlook this perpetuating of the family rule of the state that was faced already by the state for almost three decades?

Many including myself wish Nitish to return in absence of any better choice. Nitish might not have been aggressive enough to pull up the state from its bottommost position in all the rankings among the states of India. However, Nitish did make a beginning. The development has got on track. I wish he goes for a kill in the next tenure.

Nitish has indicated his intention of development for the next term in his latest blog. However, in the next three years Nitish must establish a thousand skill-building centres, that, if necessary, can be run in second shift or evening in at least one rural school in every panchayat. All the children of the rural Bihar before reaching 16 years must learn at least one skill for employability. Nitish must seek the assistance of all including the institutions such as Anji Reddy’s Nandi Foundation or individuals such as Ratan Tata, Anand Mahindra, or Mukesh/Anil Ambani. To start with, Nitish can use the locally available artisans and skilled persons for training.

Nitish must think of handing over the task of regulating and controlling the discipline and quality of school education to outside agencies such as Pratham abolishing the inefficient and corrupt government inspectors.

Nitish must encourage the private and government colleges to compete with the best of those in other states or to close if they can’t. Nitish must kill all the malpractices in education and examination system.

Nitish must get at least one hundred engineering colleges established in the state that must cater to the demand of the state and cut down the worries of the parents of the children getting exploited by the institutions in other states.

And if Nitish does not have a man to do that I can do it for him free.

One thing for sure I hate his banning of political leaders of his own alliance to campaign in the state. I also pity BJP to compromise on such a highly undemocratic and humiliating step of Nitish. I do not know if I can call it large-heatedness, magnanimity or cowardice act of BJP. I don’t know how the people of Bihar take it. How can Modi or Barun become untouchables, if BJP is not? I can take it as the statesmanship of Modi. It is strange that Lalu still prides himself of being the one to arrest Advani. Does not the Nitish’s act resemble or smell the same?

I don’t know how the people of Bihar will go in this election. But when I was just getting into a nightmarish mood so far away from my own country, I came across the news report related to Sandip’s unique innovation the folding bicycle.

For me Sandip is more important than Nitish or Lalu. And I wish I could be of any help to Sandip to make his dreams coming true. I wish Sandip could contact me. Or will Nitish, still the chief minister, the governor of Bihar or for that matter anyone help Sandip?

Let me confess something. I believe that Rama was born, may or may not be in the place in the Ajodhya conflict, as all of us were in some place. But then it was the creative minds of Valmiki, someone else, or later on Tulsidas that transformed him into incarnated Vishnu or Maryada Purushottam.

Perhaps, none but media in India wished or expected the verdict on Ajodhya’s land of lord to create so much of fuss. But the government and its law enforcing agencies did everything to avoid one.

Indian judiciary has shown wonderfully innovative maturity to steer clear the nation from some major expected communal troubles. And perhaps the verdict has a national interest behind it rather than just the legal one. It usher well for the countrymen.

Many have given their own verdicts on the verdict of the three judges. Editors have expressed their opinions. TV anchors as well as reputed journalists have commented in their own way. But what was this verdict? Was it only to decide who owns that 2.7 acres of land? But then why have the judges talked of archeological evidences and mentioned about the birth place of Rama?

Babri Masjid would have been in its place in the period when Tulsidas lived in Ajodhya and was penning down Ramcharitmanas. However, it must not then be considered as the site of birth of Rama, otherwise he would have been the most tortured person as poet and would have mentioned about it directly or indirectly. The conflict was created by some unscrupulous ones at a later date and then politicians took over. As reported, goons and criminals run a number of temples at Ajodhya. I know at least about one.

Time and again, the political and religious leaders of Hindus talk of building the grandest temple that will mean lot of money coming from different sources, mainly through charity. But who will manage it? Will it lead to another CWG like corruption story?

And should not the Indians try to know about the money collected by the organizers for building the temple in 90s? What happened to that? Should not the organizers come out with an audited report in media?

India has many wonderful temples. Rama does not need one more. Let the Hindus vote for building one International University, the best and largest in the world where the students and teachers from all over the world converge to get and expand the knowledge for the benefits of mankind.

Alternatively, can the professional architects of the country and the great ones from abroad be invited by Indians including Hindus to come out with an innovative creation that combines the themes of all world religions that make Ajodhya a place of attraction for every one coming to India?

Will the Hindus and Muslims of India be open enough for a change?