As security increases, would freedom decline?

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Last Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved a plan for a nationwide text messaging system that would alert Americans on their cell phones about terrorist attacks, natural disasters, campus shootings (like the one that occurred in Virginia Tech in 2007), child abductions or a killer on the loose.

The initiative originates from a 2006 federal law, the Warning Alert and Response Network Act (WARN Act) that requires upgrading the national emergency system. Cell phone subscribers won’t be charged for the alert messages they receive from Uncle Sam; nonetheless, they could opt out. Although the wireless industry has endorsed the plan, according to news reports, service providers’ participation is voluntary. Target date for fully implementing the FCC plan is 2010.

Any organisation, private or public, that mass-distributes information instantly can also collect it from its users instantly. Search companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL and others collect and archive huge amounts of personal data from which can be profiled the behaviour of the user. They also cooperate with authoritarian governments as a price for working in their countries, especially when the lure of profits is irresistible.

There are cases of Internet search companies that have inadvertently released from their archives millions of search queries. Even if the names were not released, it would not have been difficult to put together the profile of searcher XYZ, for example, and what was motivating his search. The questions XYZ asks and the searches he makes online or in real life would reveal his mind. Web users everywhere are quietly submitting to whatever brings them a feeling of comfort and certainty. Protests against intrusiveness by the government and businesses into our personal lives have become muted. We are lapsing into a non-obtrusive surveillance society.

Every time there is a terrorist attack text message, we would feel that the government might be right. Online surveillance devices are being increasingly used by businesses to track users when they surf their Websites. Tracking is done inconspicuously and the user can never suspect that he is being watched.

Most of us are familiar with cookies, Web bugs, small software programs the advertisers put on our hard drives to track where we surf so that they can customise the most fitting advertising message for us to achieve target marketing, reaching the right person with right message. But a Web bug can be programmed to collect whatever data is required without the knowledge of the user. When you look at your online financial statement, or a health Website, the digital bug too could be monitoring it. Some companies do inform their visitors about the tracking devices they use and for what purposes. A Web beacon can track whether a particular message, including junk mail, has been opened and acted upon. Any electronic image that is part of a Web page, including a banner ad, can be programmed to act as a beacon and spy on the user.

Companies claim that the information enables them to personalise the surfing experience when a frequent user visits their portal. Users can opt-out, but most of them don’t know whether the option is available; nor do many of them pay attention to the privacy statement. Clandestine observation technologies are not limited to the Net. Several companies are using biometrics, face recognition, radio frequency and global positioning system (GPS) technologies to keep a watch on their properties and track suspects. Many car rental companies in the United States use GPS to keep track of their rental cars. If a car is stolen or is involved in an accident, the company would know the exact location of the car. But can a company withhold information from the police?

Many airports have started using digital fingerprint identification technology to conduct background checks without any protest from employees. Face recognition technology is being extensively used not only in airports but also in ballparks, banks and other business establishments. If a suspect turns up, his face is digitally matched in seconds with the image database. It is not a foolproof system. So far we don’t know how many terrorists have been apprehended by face recognition technology, but the security business is booming in the United States.

The US Customs and some airports are using low-dose X-ray machines, such as Body Search, to electronically scan a person for drugs, bombs and contrabands. Body Search electronically strips a person naked and projects the image on the screen for scrutiny without the person being asked to take her clothes off ~ all in the name of security. Hundreds of air travellers, including women, are randomly subjected to electronic Body Search.

An interesting security tracking technology is the radio-frequency identification tag (RFID), which is attached to a suspect’s baggage as he checks in. The tagged baggage is automatically routed to a security area where it is screened with special cameras and sensors for explosives and other hazardous materials. Depending upon the level danger alert, along with our baggage we too might have to wear radio-frequency ID tags so that we can be monitored as we move from one airport to another, from country to country via GPS. From centralised text messaging on cell phones to radio frequency ID tagging, government and global corporate interests are converging.

Imagine the possibilities ~ good and evil!
What might a democratic country with a base of 300 million cell phones do?
Or think of an authoritarian rising super power texting a message to its captive billions: Beware of the devil in monk’s clothing preaching compassion.

(ND Batra, the author of Digital Freedom, teaches communication and diplomacy at Norwich University)

Brand India

Becoming a global brand and keeping it

From The Statesman
ND Batra

It is doubtful if Ford Motor Company would have sold a high-profile brand portfolio like Jaguar and Land Rover to a Chinese auto company. Tata is embedded in a multicultural open society where workers’ rights cannot be easily trifled with. Besides, Tata knows how to communicate in a global environment.

Tata is good because India is good.
Mittal Steel adopted a global corporate diplomacy to persuade Europeans that the Mittals were no carpetbaggers; they’re coming as partners. Mittal Steel’s takeover of Arcelor might have made Tata acquisitions of global brands comparatively smooth.

As corporate India expands globally, it must communicate well. Excellent communication is the key to effective corporate public affairs and global diplomacy. Without a comprehensive communications strategy that embraces all important stakeholders, who interact with the company and form its business environment, global corporate diplomacy cannot be effective. In this age of global transparency enforced by the “always on news cycle”, the Internet, the YouTube, and reporting standards established by global watchdogs like Global Reporting Initiative, multinationals can neither run nor hide.

Companies just cannot afford not to communicate about an issue that concerns stakeholders in their business environment. And since they have to communicate, they must do it efficiently. Corporate communication is essentially persuasion, even when a company is just trying to inform stakeholders.

Power to persuade is the soft power that transnational companies apply to win the hearts and minds of not only consumers but public at large. But to do so in a multichannel-Webbed environment over which they don’t have much control, companies need to be diplomatically smart, especially when a company has to operate in a foreign environment.

There are many reasons for doing so. For example, companies have become de-localised (Tata, Mittal Steel, IBM, Wipro, for example). They are no longer woven into the fabric of local communities only as they used to be in the pre-Internet age. Company employees do their work in a virtual environment and their mobility makes them less concerned with what is happening in their neighbourhood. In an environment like this it would take extraordinary efforts for global companies to communicate and present their position in a persuasive manner.

That’s why Sovereign Wealth Funds are so threatening. They are faceless behemoths and who knows they may have hidden political agendas. Perception is reality and many people perceive global companies as more powerful than the government, which draws enhanced critical scrutiny from the media and NGOs. The image of power, which global companies project, raises expectations as well as fear in the minds of the people. Growing expectations of corporate responsibility create unusual challenges for corporate communications and diplomacy. Because of corporate mismanagement and scandals in the United States (the subprime crisis that has rocked global finance) and Europe (Siemens corruption is the latest), public watch groups expect greater openness and transparency from companies.

A corporation in India may get away with any kind of behaviour, but that may not be acceptable in the United States or Europe. Since expectation of corporate behaviour differs from country to country, corporate communications strategies must take such variables into account. It is necessary to point out that effective communication takes place in a cultural context.

Understanding the host country’s political culture is very important for corporate communication and diplomacy to be effective, a lesson corporate India must learn quickly. Political culture includes the legal system, and the rules and regulations, which must not be violated in the host country. Good corporate behaviour may not be rewarded; bad behaviour is not only punished but also sullies the reputation of the company.

Since each country has its own enduring cultural symbols and icons, doing effective global corporate communication is quite a challenge. What is culturally and politically correct in one country may not be so in another country. Not understanding national cultural differences can create a nightmare for companies doing business abroad. Moreover, global corporate communication in order to be effective must be aimed at specific groups or audiences especially relevant to the company. They are: customers, financial analysts, government authorities, and non-business stakeholders such as NGOs.

Customers are the most important constituency for a company. They are the reason for doing the business and a very important source of a company’s strength. In a competitive environment, where one product may not be qualitatively much different from the other, keeping the customer coming back to the company requires communication at multiple levels ~ product, price, image, trust and most of all reputation the company.

Trust and reputation are the basis of communication with customers. Communicating effectively with market analysts and financial journalists is very important because it is through them that a company manages its image of financial strength and growth.

Raising false expectations for short-term benefits can destroy a company’s reputation. And sometime when analysts and financial journalists instead of being impartial and objective reporters and critics become part of the vicious conveyer belt, they destroy public trust and provoke harsher regulations. Corporate behaviour is regulated by rules and regulations, which are framed in the public interest and in consultation with the industry. But once the rules are in place, not only authorities but also public interest groups, many of which have established global network to monitor compliance, closely watch companies’ errant behaviour.

Recent Microsoft ordeal in Europe for anti-trust violation is a case in point. The US transparency law (Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002) was enacted in the aftermath of Enron’s collapse and other scandals.

There are thousands of global NGOs who have made it their business to scrutinise the behaviour of local, regional and multinational companies to protect the public and environment from exploitation. With clear and well-defined demands, global NGOs with huge and broad-based financial and legal support system can swing into campaign mode against a corporation and even a country very quickly and very efficiently.

Think how NGOs are pressuring governments and global corporations to boycott the Beijing Summer Olympics unless China lifts its stranglehold on Tibet. China has yet to understand the power of the shopping cart, especially in Europe which values quality as well as human rights.

(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University)

China's enemy not in Dharamsala

China’s enemy in cyberspace

From The Statesman

ND Batra

The ongoing struggle in Tibet shows how new Web technologies — cell phones, digital photography, texting and e-mail — are making it harder for the Chinese Communist authorities to control the struggle for self-rule and freedom. Wireless global networks are shrinking space and time, turning geographic space into cyberspace, and bringing people together for collaboration in the international political space. Since the renewed struggle began in early March with the Buddhist monks’ demonstrations in Lhasa, the whole world has been experiencing the agony of Tibet in a virtual environment created by global networked communications. As China dreams of Olympic glory, Tibetans don’t want to be left behind and they dream of the Dalai Lama returning to his homeland.

Telepresence technologies help us improve our awareness and responsiveness to the human condition in remote corners of the world. Every human activity — from Tibetan monks crying in public, “We have no freedom, we have no freedom”, to the most complex mathematical problem — is nothing but information. Every human activity that takes place in the real world can be turned into a digital stream and instantly distributed globally through networks, thus extending the reach of humans. Digital images can be stored, retrieved and replayed anywhere, as you see today in all major US and European newspapers which not only archive printed stories but also videos of the ongoing struggle in Tibet.

Of course, the same information can also be transformed into intelligence about human behaviour regarding commerce, national security or any other social or political activities. Political discourse, slogans, chants and cries for freedom become indistinguishable as they converge in a digital flow and surge through cyberspace. The Chinese may be prevented from seeing Tibet on YouTube but the rest of the world will be playing it again and again. If a picture is worth 10,000 words, video is forever.

Convergence, instantaneity and feedback make the Internet the most powerful medium of communication and resistance ever developed. Since the traditional media, including books, television, newspapers, magazines, radio, music and interpersonal communication (instant messaging), are converging on the Internet as a multimedia stream into which anyone can plug in, their power increases manifold and in ways whose implications the Chinese authorities still don’t understand. YouTube, for example, has given Tibet a constant state of telepresence in the European and American political and public discourse.

Normally we talk of offshoring manufacture and outsourcing research and development and other forms of intellectual and professional work to other countries; but China, because of its paranoid nationalism, has been offshoring the Tibetan people’s struggle and Buddhism to Europe and the USA, thus globalising Tibet. The Internet, thus, is revolutionary in the sense that it is lowering barriers for cross-border convergence of cultures.

Although ancient people tried to abridge space and time by sending messages, especially in wartime, through drums and smoke signals, not until the invention of the telegraph was it possible to think about communication in terms other than transportation. Like goods, messages were communicated from place to place at a speed that the best transportation system of the time — for example, the pony express or the railroad — made possible. The telegraph altered the geography-based metaphor of communication, which ceased to be synonymous with transportation. As the telegraph triggered the development of new technologies in the early part of the 20th century, as the telephone, radio, and television became ubiquitous, communication became increasingly liberated from the constraints of space and time. Computer networks and the Internet have further altered our view of space and time. A networked organisation or an individual with texting and instant messaging has a different feel of space and time than those of the pre-digital era. The mobile phone is the door to cyberspace and once you are there, you are simultaneously in a synchronous and asynchronous world, a world that gives a a greater sense of freedom and control than the real world. That’s how international organisations in the forefront of Tibetan liberation are helping the Tibetan people to continue their resistance.

The Chinese dilemma is that as more and more people experience Tibetan resistance in cyber media, the authorities don’t know what to do about it. Under the advice of public relations firms, China conducted a controlled tour for journalists but that would not help to “re-educate” the untamed minds and hearts of the Tibetan people.The enemy of China is not in Dharamsala but in cyberspace.

Canadian scholar Herald Innis said in The Bias of Communication that a new medium of communication created a specific cultural shift and changed our concept of space and time, with tremendous cultural consequences. “A medium of communication has an important influence on the dissemination of knowledge over space and time and it becomes necessary to study its characteristics in order to appraise its influence in its cultural setting.”

The Chinese public relations offensive included inviting a handful of selected diplomats on an officially-controlled trip, a visit that came after foreign journalists on a tour of Lhasa encountered a group of 30 Buddhist monks shouting that there was no freedom in Tibet. The Han Chinese “demographic aggression” into Tibet, which the Dalai Lama referred to last Saturday, was glaringly apparent during the monks-led anti-Chinese demonstration that began on 10 March, on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese occupation.

Besides its crude public relations propaganda and diplomatic intimidations, China is also fighting a cyber campaign with its Operation Golden Shield, the so-called Great Firewall of China. Of course, technologies of freedom can also be used for repression, especially inside China. But there is a cyber-world beyond China, over which no one has any control.

(ND Batra teaches communication and diplomacy at Norwich University and can be reached at narainbatra@gmail.com)

Tagore on Life and Death

Thou Hast Made Me Endless- Part XIII

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 AD) Nobel Laureate of 1913
(Some translated pieces from his Bengali works)

Translator:RAJAT DAS GUPTA: Calcutta: e-mail: rajatdasgupta53@yahoo.com
rajarch@cal3.vsnl.net.in

Tagore on ‘Death’ (2)
In the first chapter under this caption published on 2nd March 2008,. it has been mentioned that Tagore’s thoughts on ‘Death’ are mostly Upanishad (more than 4000 year old Indian scripture in Sanskrit language) based. We have Tagore’s interpretation of this Upanishada aplenty in his book ‘Santiniketan’ (in Bengali) an extract from which is translated below.
[…..From age to age Man is deriving wisdom through ignorance, he is gaining bliss by annihilation of sin and blight. Through strife he is getting Truth, there is no other means for it. Those who think that this ‘light’ is untruth, Utopia is a mere fiction, had they been right, Man would remain same as he was on the day of his advent on this earth, he would not grow any more. Because Amritam (Immortality) is inherent in him, man has made way through Death to radiate his Immortality;. Through the narrow outlet of Death, Amritam founts. Those who had visualized this, gave their call- “Be not afraid; this darkness is not true, neither Death is; you are successors of Amritam. Don’t accept serfdom to Death; if you surrender to your physical instincts, you’ll insult your inheritance to Immortality”. As insects nibble the flower, so does your physical instincts to your Immortality. He Himself had said –“Thou art the sons of Immortal; like Me.” Shall we belie his words every day?
…….’Whatever we piled up, we shall guard for ever’; what sort of piety is this? Just as our penchant for our torso to guard which our relentless frantic attempts go futile. However much we may pine for it, because our relation with it is for long, we cannot protect it, as to do so is to protect Death itself. We have to kill Death only by shunning our body……………….]
Thus, in Tagore’s dissertations on ‘Death’ we more hear about ‘’Life’ and his songs/poems on ‘Birth’ and ‘Death’ are hand in glove. A few examples follow.

1) A Tagore’s song on birthday:

He nutan dakha dik arbar
Janmero prathama subhakshan
……………………………….
[Note: There has been a boom of celebration of birthday parties of young and adults alike in the Western style even in our country with the trite song ‘Happy birthday to you …..etc.’ preceded by the ritual of cutting/eating of delicious birthday cakes to be followed by sumptuous dishes and, of course, the incumbents are flooded with costly gifts from their guests. Thus, the birthday parties do provide plenty of enjoyment. However, it may be interesting to compare this ethos with that which pervades the whole of Bengal during the Kabi Paksha (Poet’s fortnight) which starts on the 25th day of Baisakh (this month in the Bengali calendar synchronizes with the mid April to mid May period), the birthday of the Poet, when the entire clime here is inundated with Tagore’s songs/recitals etc. in various functions taking us deep into the perception of Creation’s mystery, which we badly miss in our said birthday rituals which, one may feel, are in utter mediocrity once one has experienced the ecstasy and philosophical height in Kabi Paksha. Out of many other recitals relevant to the profundity of ‘birthday’ the following song is sure to be heard on this occasion ]

O Ever New, may Thee reappear
Through Life’s holy primal hour;
With the mist torn
Like Sun be Thy manifestation.
From the midst of inane
Thy victory be over its bane.
Let be hailed by Thy glow
And my heart’s trumpet blow;
Music of Life’s marvel
Infinity’s eternal wonder to reveal;
The clarion call to the Ever New be sent
At the advent
Of Baisakh the twenty fifth
For its un-blighting gift.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Poem No: 39 of the book ‘Sesh Saptak’ written in 1933, about 8 years before his death in 1941 at the age of 80.

[Translator’s note: Tagore’s wonderful interpretation of Upanishada is found in a large number of his essays which helps us understand this oldest scripture of mankind in Sanskrit which founted from the profound spiritual inspiration of the sages of ancient India more than 4000 years back. The following quote from Tagore’s essay ‘Dukkha’ (=Woe) is a sample of such interpretation which also appears to me very relevant to this poem on Death, the extreme form of woe according to the limited perceptions of lesser mortals like us. Only a saintly frame of mind, as the Poet had, can perceive Death in the vast canvas of Creation where Death’s severity is so diluted.
“Those who lack in spiritual and devotional power, want to perceive as total truth the manifestation of God only amidst happiness, pleasure and wealth. They say, wealth and fame are gift of God, beauty evinces Him and that worldly success is His blessing and reward for our virtuosity. Benevolence of God, to them, is tender and piteous. These infirm with their euphoric reveries take the mercy of God as an aid to their greed, delusion and cowardice with their fragmented fads. But O Awful, where do I confine Your mercy and joy? Only in my happiness, wealth and a panicles life? Shall I have to split woes, hazards, fear and death to juxtapose against You for my knowledge about You? Not so. O Lord, You are sorrow, hazard, fear and death. The blazing flames of Your face are gutting out the mortals, Your vigour is warming up the whole world. O Terrible, we can get rid of the illusion of grief and death only by sighting Your awful form. Else, in Your world we have to go around with a coward’s inhibition, failing to surrender totally to Truth. Then I address You as Benevolent and implore Your mercy and, on its denial, complain against You and lament for my protection from You. But O Terrible, I beg of You that strength which will enable me to deem Your mercy not for my self-comfort and narrow utilities to deprive myself with Your incomplete perception. Let me not deceive myself by approaching You with a trembling heart and a moistened eyes to earn Your compassion. From age to age You are rescuing Man from untruth to Truth, from darkness to illumination, from death to immortality, the journey for which is not one of comfort, but of the severest ordeal.”]

They came to me to say –
“O Poet, tell us about Death, pray”.
Said I, “Death is my very intimate,
Its rhythms my heart vibrate;
Entangled in my vein
Joy of its flow in my blood lain.

Says He – ‘Go ahead
With your burdens shed;
Go on dying every second,
At my pull, on my moment.”

Says, “if you sit static
Everything to grip –
In your world flowers will harsh
Rivers will marsh,
The stars will fade –
Stop not” – so He said;
“Don’t look back –
Get across the old, ruins weary that slack.
I’m the Death shepherd
Driving Creation’s herd
From age to age
Pasture to pasture to graze.

When Life’s stream flowed,
I followed.
Allowed it not to ditch,
Lured it past the guard of its beach;
Led it to the vast sea,
That is none but me.

The Present aims permanence,
Imposes on you hence
All its load; all your virtues
To this glutton you lose.
On its surfeit, this monster
Craves a stall in wakeless slumber.

The Creation to rescue from the grip
Of this hibernate Present, is my severe sweep;
That eternal stumbling block
To smash with my disastrous shock,
To pave the way for the pageant perennial
Of the yet to appear, those newcomers to hail.”

* * * * * * * ** * ** * * ** ** * * ** ** ** * **

Poem” Punarabartan (Re-incarnation) from the book Geetali (Music) written in Buddha Gaya in 1914.

[Translator’s note: The Hindu belief in re-incarnation may conflict with the scientific mindset if we try to interpret it in a physical sense. But even scientists will never be able to explain the mystery behind the mortal life which apparently terminates while new life re-appears. Are these totally isolated phenomenon or linked up? The Poet is inclined to accept the latter. Incidentally, recital of this piece goes both as a poem as well as a song, the starting of which in Bengali is as follows –

Abar jadi ichcha karo abar ashi phire,
Dukkha sukhar dheu khelano ei sagarer tire….]

Here I revert to if you’ll wish so
This shore dashed by the waves of weal and woe.
Float my boat again,
On the dust play my game –
Run after the elusive golden deer
Only to flood in tear.
In the dark night, on the road thorny
Again I start my journey –
Either to succumb to my injury
Or survive its fury.
Again in disguise me to beguile
You play with me all in smile;
With my renewed mirth
Again I love this Earth.

CAN CHINA CRUSH TIBET?

Globalisation of Tibet

From The Statesman

ND Batra

China will once again succeed in crushing the Tibetan uprising which has spread from the politically reorganised region known as the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) to the outlying provinces, Gansu, Sichuan, and Qinghai, where Tibetans have a significant presence.

Once again silence would descend upon Tibet and its people would retreat into their hearts and prayers. But that would hardly be a remarkable achievement for a rising global power, especially when it is trying to show off to the world how the country’s stupendous economic growth has transformed the lives of the people, including, as China claims, those who for centuries suffered the “tyranny of Tibetan feudalism”.

During more than half a century of total domination over Tibet and its cultural and religious institutions, including the massive settlement of ethnic Chinese and their businesses into the heartland of Tibet, China was supposed to have reformed and re-educated Tibetans into total submission to China’s “superior culture”, not to mention hegemony. Why, then, has one of the most authoritarian states the world has ever known failed to brainwash and control the minds of a tiny minority of six million mostly illiterate and leaderless people? Why would these “wretched Tibetans” listen to the voice of the “splittest” from Dharamsala?

After all, the mighty Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was able to crush innumerable uprisings including the bloodiest students’ and workers’-led brief revolution on 23 October 1956 in Hungary. The USSR, as China is doing now, sent in tanks and troops and, in spite of the fact that there were worldwide protests against the Hungarian suppression including in India, the Soviets succeeded in re-establishing their yoke on Hungary. That was an era of Cold War, a balance of terror and mutual annihilation, and the USA and the Soviet Union had other battles to fight. Hungary was forgotten in the vast oblivion until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989.

Tibet’s storyline is different. First, in 1959, after the failure of the Tibetan uprising, the Dalai Lama along with 80,000 Tibetans escaped to India; and thanks to the Gandhian spirit still alive in India at that time, the Nehru administration let the young Tibetan leader gradually establish an international political and spiritual presence instead of turning him and his people into perpetually ghettoised refugees. Since the Great Escape, Tibetans ~ young and old alike ~ have been braving the hazards of Chinese occupation forces and have kept coming to Dharamsala. This year, another 2,500-3,000 Tibetans will escape to India. Many of them eventually go to Europe and the USA, where they imbibe the spirit of freedom and keep the spirit of Tibet alive.

The rise of the Dalai Lama as a global spiritual leader is an amazing phenomenon. Nothing has diminished him. How could this man who has been termed by a top Chinese official as a “wolf wrapped in a habit, a monster with a human face and an animal’s heart”, whose people are suffering a cultural genocide, still be so forgiving and so loving?

Visiting the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, the Speaker of the US Congress, Nancy Pelosi, one of the most powerful, courageous and compassionate women living today in the USA, told her audience that Chinese atrocities against Tibetans were “a challenge to the conscience of the world”. Was she chiding India for being chicken-hearted? “If freedom-loving people throughout the world do not speak out against China’s oppression in China and Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak on behalf of human rights anywhere in the world,” she admonished.

Last September, when German Chancellor Angela Merkel received the Dalai Lama in her office, Chinese authorities were enraged because it amounted to giving the monk recognition as the political leader of Tibet. But Sino-German relations had begun to mend until the peaceful protests by Buddhist monks in Lhasa turned into a spontaneous eruption in the entire greater Tibet region and suddenly lifted the massive public relations smokescreen that the Chinese had succeeded in casting over the world about the “improvement” in its human rights record.

Through the miracle of cell-phone video, the Internet and YouTube, the whole world watched what the Chinese authorities were doing to Tibetans. Of all the Europeans, Germans are the most sensitive about human rights issues. The Genocide and Holocaust are eternally etched into their collective consciousness and historical memory. German Development Minister Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul was quoted as saying, “Violence can never be a solution. The two sides can only arrive at a solution through dialogue.” But there can be no dialogue between two sides unless they accept each other. Tibet’s Communist Party secretary, Zhang Qingli, told regional officials, “We are engaged in a fierce battle of blood and fire with the Dalai clique, a life-and-death struggle between the foe and us.” Whatever happened to China’s pretensions to a “peaceful rise” and the “journey of harmony”?

While Germany has been more outspoken about China’s oppression in Tibet, even suspending environmental technology aid talks, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been no less bold in his decision to meet the Dalai Lama when he visits London. He told parliament about his phone conversation with Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao wherein he urged him to ensure that there “had to be an end to the violence in Tibet”. He also said that he “called for constraint” and “an end to the violence by dialogue between the different parties”. But China considers the Dalai Lama a runaway rogue and trouble-maker rather than a party to the dispute.

China has two alternatives.
It may attempt to “resolutely crush” the Tibetan people’s uprising as the Communist Party’s official daily newspaper has urged the government to do and turn Tibet into an Orwellian Panopticon, much like the Soviet Union had done in Hungary and its other satellite countries. But in the age of wireless mobility, texting, networking and decentralised global organisations fighting for human rights everywhere, the Communist leadership may not succeed in using the great Chinese propaganda machine and the digital firewall to control the Tibetan mind without doing the same to the rest of the population.

Alternatively, China may consider establishing a genuine dialogue with the Dalai Lama and restore to Tibet internal sovereignty and autonomy and in the process transform itself into one country, multiple systems ~ as is the USA, India or the evolving European Union.

(ND Batra, the author of Digital Freedom, teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University. He can be reached at narainbatra@gmail.com)

Transcript: James Miles interview on Tibet - CNN.com#cnnSTCVideo#cnnSTCVideo#cnnSTCVideo

Transcript:
James Miles interview on Tibet - CNN.com#cnnSTCVideo#cnnSTCVideo#cnnSTCVideo


http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/03/20/tibet.miles.interview/#cnnSTCText

American Presidency

Unfolding political drama in America

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Since the Republican presidential nomination race has been finally settled in favour of the 71-year-old Vietnam War veteran Senator John McCain, all that he has to do is to keep himself alive in the media so that during the intense and protracted primary contest between two Democratic contenders, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama, the old man is not forgotten. However, public attention, no less than the news media, is focused on Democratic contenders for their party nomination.

Just out of curiosity, I casually asked a visitor, the insurance appraiser who had come to inspect my car for collision damage, as to who he would prefer in the Democratic primary that was being held that day, Clinton or Obama; he responded that Obama sounded better. The Obama people called him the previous night asking for his vote. I could feel the uncertainty in his voice when he added that he liked Clinton too but insisted that to him gender and race did not matter. Although this might not have been a representative voice, the ambiguous response has been the trend throughout the country, in spite of the fact that blacks everywhere have been overwhelmingly voting in Democratic primaries for Obama, a 48-year-old charismatic African-American senator from Illinois, with a remarkable gift of eloquence.

Obama traces his biological lineage to his black African father from Kenya and his white American mother from Kansas. He has been saying publicly that his father walked out on the family when he was only two years old and he was “raised by a single mom”. But he seldom mentions that his mother, according to Janny Scott’s report in The New York Times, was a highly energetic intellectual woman and somewhat of an adventurer with wanderlust. After her second marriage to an Indonesian, the family moved to Indonesia, where Obama’s half-sister was born. Perhaps because Obama comes from a racially and culturally mixed background, African, Asian and American, he has such broad public appeal, though the blacks won’t let him forget that he is, after all, a black. In the Mississippi primary, 90 percent of blacks voted for him. Nor would his wife, Michelle Obama, who comes from a Chicago black family, let him forget who he is: “For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country,” she told a political gathering sometime ago in Milwaukee, “because it feels like hope is making a comeback.” Her remark raised lot of controversy and she receded into background.

When Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice-presidential nominee and a Clinton fundraiser remarked that Obama is leading in the primaries because of who he is and “if Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position, ” she was accused of stirring racial controversy. She quit the campaign but refused to disown her comments.

Race is a factor, no doubt, but it seems to be favouring Obama more than Clinton. Since the beginning of the primary season last year, Americans have been deeply engrossed and conflicted about the Democratic nomination race for the White House particularly between these two powerful political personalities, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama; between their respective claims of political experience and the necessity for change in Washington; and between their catchy slogans “Yes, we will” and “Yes, we can.” The upsurge in political engagement amidst all demographic and social strata, African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, women and youth, has been unprecedented.

For the first time in decades, few Americans have remained aloof from the vital political process, which is partly due to the foreign policy conundrum regarding the war in Iraq and the impending recession triggered by sub-prime lending and the sliding housing market. But more than that, it is the first time that a woman and an African-American have dared go to the top and emerged as very competent and viable presidential candidates; and because they have come so far might change the course of American history, whether they win or lose.

Perhaps no one would have put the voters’ quandary better than former President Bill Clinton, who while addressing a church group last month, said, “I’ve been waiting all my life to vote for an African-American president. I’ve been waiting all my life to vote for a woman for president. ... I feel like God is playing games with our heads and our hearts.” And lately he has been suggesting that perhaps there would be a dialectical synthesis between the two senators’ positions on healthcare, war in Iraq, free trade (NAFTA), job outsourcing, immigration and other issues, bringing them together on a joint platform and making them an unbeatable team against the Republican presumptive nominee, Senator McCain.

From Regular Joe to Joe Millionaire ~ and let us not forget women, who have been playing a tremendous role in this election ~ everyone is excited as well as divided about Clinton versus Obama, and how either of them would face a most redoubtable opponent, the Vietnam War veteran McCain, who has said repeatedly that he would rather lose the presidential campaign than the war in Iraq, which he called “necessary and just.” In sharp contrast, both Clinton and Obama have vowed to bring American troops back home at the earliest convenience and within a reasonable timeframe.But with Iraq front becoming comparatively quiet thanks to Bush’s surge policy that McCain wholeheartedly supported, another “necessary and just” war is raging at the home front, which no one knows how to fight. And it is called Recession.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University, Vermont.)

When kids go digitally mobile

Kids of the mobile revolution

ND Batra
The Statesman

Kids of the mobile generation want to be connected with their friends through social networks, MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, though they may not be always aware of the risks of exposure.

But don’t blame the parents; they just can’t stop worrying that the Internet, like guns and drinking, can be dangerous. Kids do not have the maturity of judgment and self-restraint to prevent accidental injuries to themselves and others. Especially now-a-days when cell phones are becoming multimedia mini-laptops and millions of kids are using them day and night, parents and health and law-enforcement officials are becoming increasingly concerned about cybercrimes against children.

Part of the problem is that parents and teachers cannot keep up with emerging technologies and do not know how kids are using them. It was easier to control the desktop because parents would just hover around to see where kids were surfing; but there is no way that a Web-enabled cell phone can be monitored.

The Internet could cause harm to children, for example, when stalkers and predators prowl chatrooms, assume fake identities and make propositions for romance and sex.

Several surveys have found that majority of teenagers online are contacted by people whom they never met before; and many kids do respond to e-mail and instant messages from strangers. Although some teen recipients do worry about unsolicited messages, most of them don’t care or treat them as a passing nuisance.

Reports after reports have urged parents, teachers and health-care professionals to educate children on how to deal with online sexual solicitations and other hazards of virtual life. Of course, dealing with risks is part of growing up. Just as we watch children on the playground, we should watch them in cyberspace, it is argued, rather than altogether preventing them from venturing into the wonderland of cyberspace.

According to a recent online victimization of youth research report from The National Children for Missing & Exploited Children, “Approximately one in seven youth online (10 to 17-years-old) received a sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet.”

Some online predators pursue their intended victims aggressively by calling them on phone and sending them letters through mail, money and gifts, according to the report. More than one-third of the surveyed children received “an unwanted exposure to sexual material -- pictures of naked people or people having sex.” Some children do inform their guardians or parents but majority of them do not bother, the report said. In response, some parents install software such as Net Nanny, Cybersitter, Safe Eyes or some other filters that are flooding the market.

Kids are normally reluctant to share their passwords for social networking sites, MySpace or Facebook; but a few parents do prevail and watch what their children are doing online. Looking at the rapid growth of mobile technology, the question is not how soon kids should go online because there is no way of stopping them at any age. The education market place, too, is pushing parents to put their children online, lest they be left behind in the digital age.

As Rory Cellan-Jones of BBC recently reported, “Children are at the cutting edge of the mobile internet revolution and both teachers and the phone industry can learn from them….While the teachers here are worried about aspects of mobile phone use such as bullying texts and explicit videos, they are aware that a ban is becoming untenable.” Since parents and teachers can’t stop them, the best way is to re-direct the cell phone use by adding educational value to it, it is suggested. “And they (teachers) are even beginning to explore how mobile phones could be used in lessons – one class was using phones to film simple animations,” said Cellan-Jones.

Although not much research is available at present to assess the impact of computers on educating children, no one wants his or her child to be left behind. Being there, being in cyberspace, is important. In an effort to bridge the digital divide and educational gap, some schools in the United States make available to students’ families a home connection to enable kids to do their homework and allow their parents to be in touch with the teachers.

Occasionally one comes across reports that students who had access to the network did better in mathematics and English scores than those who did not have such an opportunity. There are some educators who believe that letting even four-year old children surf the Internet would blossom their minds. Earlier the better, for which currently there is no hard research data available, but so strong is the passion of parents for their children’s future that even some politicians are ready to support the myth of early blossoming of the mind with their political demagoguery.

For children interactive cartooning and games can be great fun, but certainly not as much as they can have with biking, block building, finger-painting, and playing with mud, or just plain pushing and hustling. There are educators who still believe that the most precious natural gift for children is their imagination.

It is through tactile sensations and make-believes that they explore and make sense of their surroundings. The challenge before child psychologists, educators, health professionals and parents is to find a balance between the real and the virtual, so as to engage children emotionally and imaginatively. Let children grow at their natural pace rather than forcing them to ripen prematurely and create early bloomers.

(ND Batra is Professor of Communications, Norwich University, and is the author of Digital Freedom: How Much Can You Handle?)

When the dollar falls

Recession is worse than terrorism

From The Statesman

CYBER AGE / ND BATRA

One word that frightens Americans most today is not terrorism; it is recession.

As if trying to stop the spiral of gloomy news, President George Bush told reporters on Thursday that the US economy is not in peril, not on the brink of recession. After expanding for seven long years, the economy is slowing now, he said. During the fourth quarter of 2007 the US gross domestic product, which measures total goods and services, crawled to less than one per cent, while the ranks of unemployed swelled more than the forecast. The mighty dollar has been falling in value and causing pain and anxiety. Of course when a 13-14 trillion dollar economy creaks, it seems like an earthquake. Consumer confidence is down.

Consumers are not spending enough on durable goods such as cars, appliances, business equipment, electronic equipment, home furnishings and fixtures, and house-wares and accessories. People are not buying houses even though house prices have declined 10-15 per cent since last year and the mortgage rates too are down. To stem the slide, President Bush and Congress came up with a $152 billion stimulus plan under which most tax payers will get from the government $300 to $1,200 which they hope would be plowed back to consumer spending and lift the sagging economy. But with gas prices going up with the possibility of $4 a gallon during the summer, extra money in the pocket would be helpful.

President Bush sounded as if he were whistling in the dark when he said: “We believe in a strong dollar policy and we believe, and I believe, that our economy has got the fundamentals in place for us to be, to grow and continue growing more robustly, you know, hopefully more than we are growing now.”

But the market did not listen. In fact, when Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned during the second day of his semiannual testimony before a congressional committee that even some banks might fail due to bad real estate loans, the stock market shrank in fear. It did not help much when he said that the overall banking system is in good shape.

How could he be so brazen when some of the biggest financial institutions like Citigroup and Merrill Lynch have gone begging for billions of dollars of cash infusion from foreign government controlled sovereign wealth funds? The levers of political power in Washington DC have little effect upon Wall Street, which runs on its own convoluted logic, alternating between irrational exuberance and unfounded fear.

It seems to me that Americans’ feelings of prosperity, the collective sense of well-being, is tied up with the market price of their homes, which makes me think further that economics, in spite of all econometrics and data collection and theorising by Nobel laureates, is essentially nothing but the psychology of fear and hope.

Last year, before the housing bubble began to deflate, my hometown Hartford re-evaluated the price of my home by almost 50 per cent, and by golly, I felt suddenly rich and good. But when I realised that I would have to pay more property taxes, which was the town’s (evil) intention for re-evaluation of my property, I felt conflicted and wondered whether I should appeal against the property re-evaluation. I did not want the worth of my house to go down. Nor does anyone else, but that is exactly what is happening in the housing market today. Due to poor home mortgage lending practices, or you might say greed, banks began to give loans on low adjustable interest rates to less credit-worthy people, hoping that since home prices were going up borrowers would re-finance their loans based on increased home equity. But somewhere a domino fell, lenders and borrowers began to lose trust in each other, and what earlier seemed to be a robust housing market turned into a speculative bubble, and hence the resulting panic.

The American dream begins with having one’s own home, so there is nothing more humiliating for a person than losing his home to bank foreclosure. Being driven out from one’s home is like being driven naked out of the Garden of Eden.

Foreclosures have been rising as the low initial interest rates on adjustable subprime mortgages are re-adjusted, which means interest rates for borrowers go up to market interest rates. Falling housing prices create negative equity, which means the mortgage relative to the value of the house is much greater. Some people who bought houses with small or no down payment are simply walking away, because their houses now are worth much less than they originally bought for.

Foreclosures add to the market glut, so home prices keep sliding down; and Americans feel less wealthy. They don’t feel like spending on non-essential goods, going to restaurants, buying a new a sofa, for example; and they postpone buying a new car for another six months or even year. Besides, when the home prices go down, the homeowners’ ability to borrow money against the equity value of their homes in order to buy big items, or go on vacations also goes down.

Banks shrink in fear lest consumers default, so they push up the lending bar thereby reducing credit availability, which adversely affects economic activity further. So when President Bush tells Joe Six-Pack, here’s $1,200, go and spend it, it is on the assumption that these millions of small acts of consumer spending would have a multiplier effect, preventing the much feared recession from becoming the economists’ self-fulfilling prophecy.

George W Bush would not like recession to become a parting gift to the nation.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University, Vermont. He can be reached at narainbatra@gmail.com)

Tagore: Such is Thy pleasure

Thou Hast Made Me Endless- Part XII

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 AD) the Nobel Laureate of 1913 was introduced to the West primarily through the collection of English translation of some of his poems/songs captioned as ‘Gitanjali’ (=Offering of Songs).More translations of his works followed by the poet himself and others after he had won the Nobel, including poems/songs, dramas, short stories etc. However, such efforts were sporadic and sluggish, mostly on individual initiative, which still remain so.As a result, a vast volume of the poet’s works remains un-translated while, it appears, it is an impossible proposition to translate even a substantial part of the poet’s total works to permit those, not privileged by the knowledge of Bengali language, a reasonably broad view of his myriad creations where unfathomable perceptional depth of top grade aesthetics runs through, literally true to his song “Thou hast made me endless / Such is Thy pleasure”.Notwithstanding this, an upsurge of Tagore translation took place in the last decade of the twentieth century by virtue of a good number of eminent poets/translators e.g.William Radice, Joe Winter, Ketaki Kushari Dyson, to name a few, all of whom left their valuable contribution to this oeuvre and my book THE ECLIPSED SUN is a modest addition to this. I have put stress on a few aspects of the poet’s works, particularly those in his twilight years, which seemed to me quite inadequately covered so far. The followings are presented mostly based on this book. RAJAT DAS GUPTA: Calcutta: e-mail: rajatdasgupta53@yahoo.com
rajarch@cal3.vsnl.net.in
Tagore on ‘Death’ (1)
Tagore’s poems/songs on ‘Death’ are numerous, as those are on almost any other subject he had penned down. However, ‘Death’ being an awe to the humans since their advent on this earth, it may be fascinating how Tagore breaks away from this eternal ‘awe’. His thoughts on ‘Death’ draw mostly on the oldest scriptures on Earth e.g. Vedas & Upanishadas that evolved in India more than 4000 years back, that said (in Sanskrit) –

“Srinnantu Biswe Amritasya Putra;
Aa Ye Dhamani Dibyani Tasthu
Vedahamatam Purusam Mahantam….”

[Hearken the sons of Immortal
Residing in this heavenly abode;
I’ve known that person Great…]

As Tagore interprets it – Those who uttered “I’ve known Him…” assured us at the outset, “You are the sons of ‘Immortal’ in your heavenly abode, not of ‘Death’ in this mundane Earth…”

This message of Upanishada echoes in all the dissertations of Tagore on ‘Death’. A few poems/songs in this series may illustrate this.

Poem: KANKAL (Skeleton) of the book Purabi: on board Chapad Malal in December 1924.

[Translator’s note: Saint Aurobindo said that the biological evolution in the animal world , which had started with amoeba, dinosaur etc ages back, has ended with Man after which no better species has evolved. According to Aurobindo, now the objective of the Creator is to raise Man to the level of divinity (in spite of the massacre in the animal world by the genetic engineering?). We get an echo of this theory in this poem.. The Poet refuses to accept that Man has appeared only to be turned into a carcass. As in his numerous poems/songs and other dissertations, here also he reiterates Upanishada that humans are sons of the Immortal and that they are pacing towards a glorious spiritual objective in association with their untiring advancement in science and other areas of wisdom to explore the mysteries of Creation.]

The carcass lays aside
On the grass there wayside;
The grass that once nourished it
Gave repose too after its feast –
Only a few pale bones left there
To hint Time’s silent laughter;
Towards Death to direct,
Allusive of my same fate
Where with animal I don’t differ –
And that too will end there;
That, as will end my life’s nectar
In dust will be left the broken clayware.

Said I, O Death, I believe not
In Thy mock of naught.
Mine is not the life to terminate
Bankrupt of all treasures in the ultimate;
At the end of the day
The debt of my meal and sleep to re-pay.
Whatever I’ve thought, told or heard,
Or sang in my music abrupt –
Could not be seized by Death,
Measureless are what I’ve got or will bequeath.

Dance of my mind excelled
Life and Death, and traveled
To the land of music
Its eternal beauty to seek
A countless times
Merely to belie all its sublimes
At the skeleton’s threshold
In mere flesh is my true self to be told?
No, my moments didn’t torment me to tire,
Bereft, to cast me at the wayside dust there.

From the lotus of form on the earth here
I’ve drunk that formless nectar,
Amidst sorrow to glimpse joy
Has been my ploy;
In my heart to have the signal
Of the message of the silent Eternal;
I’ve seen light’s passage
At the brink of darkness;

I’m not mere
The Creator’s satire;
With boundless treasure
Is composed my noble disaster.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Pakistan and America

Pakistan transformed, really?

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Looking at the election results of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province that hugs Waziristan and Afghanistan, a region notorious for the Taliban and Al-Qaida sanctuary and terrorists’ breeding ground, one might wonder if the earlier intelligence that the whole region has been permanently radicalised and is in the grip of Islamic diehards was nothing but a morbid exaggeration. Religious fanatics do not give up their extremist belief simply because of violence and economic hardship and seek change through the ballot box as the NWFP people have done along with the rest of Pakistan. Wherever there is a free election, people vote in their self-interest. Jihadis have more to fear the ballot box than missile attacks from the United States.

Only five years ago, the frontier people, a majority of them hardy Pathans-Pashtuns who straddle the Khyber Pass and have a shared ethnicity with most Afghans, voted into power an alliance of religious parties, MMQ, letting it form a government dominated by pro-Taliban clerics. With their significance presence in the national parliament, many analysts feared that the MMQ’s influence would spread to the rest of Pakistan. It seemed extremely worrisome that the Taliban and Al-Qaida had finally established a permanent base, a fortress of power from where they would rule the whole region and which would become the source of an endless global supply chain of terrorists.

Although Punjab dominates Pakistan in many ways, the self-governing autonomous region had increasingly become a vortex of chaotic power, a blend of extremism and tribalism, beyond the control of the central government.

The greatest worry has been that the extremist virus might infect the younger madrasa-going generation, about which one might say that the jury is still out. Perhaps because of the Musharraf government’s restrictions on political activities by two major political parties, Sharif’s Muslim League (ML-N) and Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, Pakistanis had limited political choices, which they exercised by voting for Islamic parties or Musharraf’s own political faction of the Muslim League (ML-Q).

It is argued that Musharraf’s thinking that the military must supple the country’s capable political leaders that could guide and control political processes, did not work out and might have encouraged the spread of extremism by weakening the moderating forces of the two major political parties.

Partly because of the Pakistan military’s ambivalent attitude towards the Taliban, and some delusional miscalculation that it could still be used to influence events in Afghanistan, large areas of the border region, especially in Waziristan, turned into a suicidal war zone, which has made the life of the people a living hell and tied down thousands of troops in a bloody and humiliating hit and run enterprise.

Last week’s ballot showed that voters were not enamoured of Islamic extremists’ ideology and preferred to choose secular parties, including the Awami National Party and Bhutto’s PPP, who are likely to form a provincial government. The challenge before the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, leader of Muslim League (N), and Asif Ali Zardari, PPP’s new leader, as they push and shove to form a coalition government, is twofold. First and foremost, how to cooperate wholeheartedly with the United States and NATO in the war against the Taliban and Al-Qaida, who are using the tribal region as their hideout and training camps for keeping Afghanistan in a state of perpetual turmoil and have been extending their tentacles into the rest of Pakistan. During the US presidential primaries, the three leading candidates, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barak Obama of the Democratic Party and Senator John McCain of the Republican Party have expressed their differences about the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, but they have been firm in dealing with the Taliban and Al-Qaida in Pakistan. Sen. Obama even suggested bombing the tribal areas of Pakistan if it did not fully cooperate with the United States.

Benazir Bhutto was reported to have no objection if the US troops operated from Pakistan’s territory in hunting down the Taliban and Al-Qaida. The new leadership of Pakistan cannot afford to belittle the US interests in the region, including Afghanistan and Central Asia. The second major issue of course is the fate and the political role of President Musharraf, whose political party, Muslim League (Q), got a terrible beating at the poll, including the defeat of its 23 cabinet ministers. Benazir had agreed to a power-sharing arrangement with him, which allowed her to return to Pakistan, unfortunately, as it turned out, to meet her tragic end. Mr Sharif, who returned from his Saudi exile but was barred from fighting elections, is at present dead set against any accommodation with Mr Musharraf and wants him to be impeached. Bringing back the old judiciary hastily might aggravate the situation and trip the apple-cart.

If the coalition has a two-third majority in parliament, Mr Musharraf could be impeached but whether it will be politically wise to do so is a different matter. The greatest need of Pakistan today is to form a secular, progressive government with a strong economic agenda that can sustain the remarkable economic growth of more than six per cent achieved during the last several years of the Musharraf administration; and resume the dialogue with India to bring peace and stability to the entire subcontinent.

The continuation of Mr Musharraf as President albeit with diminished political role will allow the diplomatic, economic and political processes to continue, apart from assuring the United States that war against terrorism will not be adversely affected. There is no indication that the Bush administration has lost its confidence in Mr Musharraf (and the Pakistan military), and whoever occupies the White House next January will build upon the gains of the Bush administration and increase the US influence with the civilian government as well as the military establishment, where Mr Musharraf continues to have a loyal and powerful network.

(ND Batra teaches communications and diplomacy at Norwich University and is working on a new book, This is the American Way)

Googlistan

Building trust in Googlistan

From The Statesman

ND Batra

A recent Pew/Internet report regarding the privacy implications of digital mobility said that many people in the United States “are jumping into the fast, mobile, participatory Web without considering all the implications.”

Of course that is true of other countries too. Just imagine India’s 237 million mobile phone users who keep chirping without any thought of who might be listening to them. As the Pew report stated: “If nothing really bad has happened to someone, they tend neither to worry about their personal information nor to take steps to limit the amount of information that can be found about them online.” But the invisible threat of someone watching and listening is ubiquitous.

The enthusiasm about the Internet among the young and the old all over the world has been increasing steadily. Painful memories of the deflated dotcom era have faded. The digital age is rising again, it would seem, on a foundation of hope, as more and more users begin to realise the Internet’s potential in diverse fields from online teaching to micro-financing to grocery shopping.

The main reason for the growing popularity of the Internet, especially the wireless mobile, is that it makes the users’ lives easier and also creates business possibilities where none existed earlier. Though this is basically an adult view ~ teenagers value the Internet for different reasons ~ the fact remains that its popularity among all sections of society not only in the United States but everywhere else too is multiplying.

The phenomenal rise of Google and the recent Microsoft’s bid to acquisition Yahoo! shows that dotcom companies have not only been growing rapidly but the future is digital and mobile. The users regard the mobile Internet not only as a limitless source of free information available at a click but also a shopping mall, banking street and place to socialise.

Of course, some people still don’t feel confident about trusting the computer screen ~ even if an online store gives free home deliveries; they would rather go to the store, browse and enjoy the sensuous experience of personal shopping.

There is a widely held view that the Internet is a genuine cause of concern regarding privacy, pornography, accuracy of information and accountability. Hopefully as these concerns diminish, the dotcoms would become a pre-eminent engine driving the economy everywhere. The question of accountability is a typical one that the American public normally asks, whether it is regarding a toy manufacturer, pharmaceutical company or a mutual fund company. But since the Internet is not owned by anyone and is impossible to control, the question of accountability becomes intriguing and difficult to handle.

At present very few people feel that there is any online accountability. The American people are worried about the government and private companies collecting information about them when they are online. Data-sniffers do make us vulnerable on the Internet. If in a shopping mall someone watches or stalks you, you become alert and take some action; or maybe you choose to do nothing. On the Internet you don’t know who is watching you and why, which creates a diffused sense of anxiety and consequently reduces trust in the system.

The adult users’ view of the Internet contrasts sharply, in many respects, with what American teenagers think about cyberspace. Teenagers love the Internet’s freedom and anonymity. For them it is a source of empowerment and a zone of unsupervised freedom. Another Pew/Internet December 2007 survey, Teens and Social Media reported that teenagers’ “use of social media ~ from blogging to online social networking to creation of all kinds of digital material ~ is central” to their lives, with girls ahead of boys in the blogosphere.

“Digital images ~ stills and videos ~ have a big role in teen life. Posting them often starts a virtual conversation. Most teens receive some feedback on the content they post online,” the survey reported.

Unlike adults who want the Internet to be regulated somehow, teenagers prefer the Internet to be left alone, lest its freedom be compromised. They are aware of the dangers of meeting strangers and predators online but feel confident of dealing with the situation on their own, a view that also finds expression in other reports about the Internet and teenagers. Teenagers are also not as much concerned about surveillance as are adult users, which seems a little puzzling.

I believe teenagers’ indifferent attitude regarding data mining and profiling is due to the fact that they have very little to lose in material terms, for example, credit card identity theft, financial blackmail, and bad credit.

Fear is a natural emotion and it grows as we grow older. My own students whom I occasionally use as captive focus groups to see which way the social winds are blowing feel that it is the responsibility of the individual or parents, not the government, to supervise the Net. But that does not answer the question about teenagers who come from families where parental supervision is not available.

When the family bonds are not strong and guidance is minimal, how should teenagers deal with the freedom of the Internet, especially with portals like MySpace and Facebook, where kids can do whatever they want, posting personal and private thoughts, and all kinds of pictures? Creating trust in Googlistan is a great corporate challenge.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University, Vermont)

Love on line

"Finding lasting love in the virtual world may be no less certain than in the real world. But millions of singles are turning to matchmaking sites in hopes of meeting Mr. or Ms. Right, and some entrepreneurs believe that both profits and better marriages will result. " More...Dating-Game Theory Finding Love Online
By Bill Snyder

Digital Education for the Millennial Generation

Digital Education for the Millennial Generation

by Michelle A.L. Singer, correspondent Feb. 15, 2008

A laptop for every freshman, a wireless campus, class discussions online and distance learning—this is the face of high-tech campuses. How does Norwich University measure up? Read more...

Digital space to real space

Millennial musings of a non-millenial man

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Our BlackBerrys, the Internet anywhere and wireless global connectivity do give us a sense of freedom but they may also be diminishing face-to-face interactions and engagement from the realities of life. Sometime it takes a natural calamity to bring us back to our sense of humanity.

Last week when most Americans were hooked on Super Tuesday presidential primaries and its aftermath, a cluster of deadly tornados with wind speed 125-150 mph ripped across five states in the US South killing 59 people. Miraculously an 11-month child was saved ~ not by Google Earth but a perceptive human who spotted the child in a mud puddle. And President George W Bush was there too. “I’m here to listen... to make sure that the federal response is compassionate and effective,” Mr Bush said after an aerial tour of the area where he saw first-hand, not on YouTube, homes flattened and fields strewn with trees and animal carcasses.

The identity, cultural values and religious life of a community are anchored in physical space, which MySpace and Facebook cannot replace. But it is true that human bonds, especially of the millennial generation (those born between 1977 and 1994), are loosening. With our cell phones and GPS, perpetual mobility and perpetual connectivity, we are in touch without being in touch.

In this age of virtual presence and transitory relations with disembodied and delocalised groups that rise and disappear in cyberspace, the sense of the place, its physical and cultural intimacy, its diurnal patterns, is becoming very important to people. The feeling of being a New Yorker, the smells and the sounds of the city even in the dead of winter is so desirable. If you live in Kolkata or Mumbai, for example, you know what I mean.

During the grueling presidential primary season, Democrats and Republicans have been going from one state to another on an endless pilgrimage to be with the people, physically connecting with them, touching them, eating with them in local diners, which they could not have done in cyberspace. One of the greatest virtues of democracy is that it churns up society periodically and creates the possibility of renewal through self-examination as it is happening now in the United States as presidential hopefuls, Republicans and Democrats, crisscross the country promising a better America. They love the blessings of borderless cyberspace to raise funds but talk of protecting the borders to stop illegal immigrants who come to seek work while corporate America outsources work to a digital seamless world.

The question is whether the digital age, which gives us the choice to work and collaborate from anywhere, could also revitalise and renew abandoned suburbia, downtowns and slums especially surrounding big cities hit by subprime loan crisis and home foreclosures. Social networks, chat rooms and virtual communities hold the promise of bringing about new social activism in communities and empowering people to demand changes, but so far it has not been happening.

Laws are made to empower citizens to live a life of self-regulated autonomy in accordance with their personal beliefs and values. Can civic responsibility be maintained if one loses a sense of place? Can a civic generation be created in cyberspace? Digital economy tends to make people less committed to their communities.

Closer the world becomes because of globalisation, greater is the need for localism and committed local leaders. Identity that creates bonds becomes crucial. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Americans are so worried about illegal immigrants, who are so essential to the economy and yet are perceived as a social burden. Americans fear dilution of their identity due to the influx of people from across the border.

Yet a serious question arises as to how a country should make itself desirable enough to keep and lure the elite, when a substantial portion of work becomes mobile and could be done from anywhere in the world. The late management guru Peter Drucker saw the digital economy threatening “a new class conflict between the large minority of knowledge workers and the majority of people who make their living traditionally.”

But you don’t see this happening unless you wonder why Maoists’ insurgency in India continues unabated or why a physician like Amit Kumar is able to persuade poor Indians to sell their kidneys instead of providing them with affordable healthcare. Digital and stock-market millionaires are rising everywhere, in India too.

In spite of digital economy the median family income in the United States has not been going up significantly, while the number of millionaires is galloping. Trickledown economy has been trickling very slowly to the bottom rung of the people. Stock market does not spread wealth, though the number of Americans owning stock directly or through their pension funds has increased substantially. When the top ten per cent own 90 per cent of the stock, market alone cannot provide a cure for poverty.

Migration of jobs from industrial rustbelts to other countries, and the consequent desertion of erstwhile prosperous communities, has been causing pain. Call to reform education, including testing and teachers’ accountability, has been an attempt to halt dislocation when global corporations become increasingly global and mobile and rootless. The need to build a broad-based economy that gives hope to people left behind could have never been more urgent than today. The millennial generation needs to get out of MySpace and YouTube and smell the earth.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University, Vermont. He is the author of Digital Freedom: How Much Can You Handle?)

Smart campuses sans smart professors

Can a smart campus make its professors smart?

From The Statesman
ND Batra

Today an institute of higher education with graduate and post-graduate research programmes needs a sophisticated environment of virtual learning that allows its students and faculty to access not only its own databases but also global intellectual resources. Some universities such as MIT, Yale, John Hopkins, UC Irvine, and others have made available their courses, including audio-video lectures online, which are open to the public. Through their opencourseware, these universities have established global collaborative relations with other institutions and in the process built up their social capital and enhanced their reputation. MIT offers more than 1,800 courses online and many of its faculty members have become global teachers. Its opencourseware site has received 2.4 million visits since 2004.

US campuses are increasingly becoming broadband and wireless, enabling students to use their laptops or mobile devices from anywhere. Classrooms are getting “smart” in the sense that teachers can connect to Internet sources from their classrooms, besides using other instructional tools. I live very close to Dartmouth College and whenever I visit the campus, I see students using their laptops everywhere. Many professors put up their class notes and other teaching materials online. Online discussions and wikis are becoming common teaching tools.

Making a classroom “smart” and globally available requires the university to have a professional studio/staff to help faculty members to digitise and upload their lectures and other teaching materials online, apart from having enough server space to accommodate requests for access from the general public. It is an expensive undertaking.

At the graduate level, some universities have created virtual campuses that are supplemented with periodic on-campus residencies during which students and faculty members make presentations, hold symposia and seminars. For example, at Norwich University where I am a faculty member, the graduate school uses Blackboard Learning System for its teaching and it is working all right at present. But in the age of Second Life, YouTube and video podcasts, I don’t know how long graduate students will be satisfied with the present method of asynchronous teaching.

As a graduate faculty I would like to virtualise my presence through Second Life and offer Web seminars. Last week I attended a live Webcast seminar (http://w.on24.com/r.htm?e=100367&s=1&k=69ADCF54195868AF1164D05CCF308FF4) presented by Dow Jones, “Latest Trend in Social Media: How to Listen Effectively and Engage in the Conversation,” which in its one-hour presentation included voiceover PowerPoint, graphics, instant participant surveys and question-answers. I thought this might be a wave of the future for virtual teaching. Some universities, for example, Harvard Law School, have begun to offer some of their courses in Second Life.

Of the various instructional methods used for teaching by American professors, the use of computer-aided instruction, especially at the undergraduate level, is limited to PowerPoint or video primarily to break the monotony of a long lecture. PowerPoint gives teachers an illusion of mastery of their subject matters but its excessive use can be a barrier to engaging students in class. Some students resent the technology because it tends to shut them out of live exchange. No one has come up with an equally good alternative to lecture-discussion method that has been at the heart of teaching-learning experience since ages.

Lecturing is done partly to establish intellectual and personal relationship with students even if the same material may be available in the textbook. Sometimes lecturing becomes a necessity, especially when a tough topic and fundamentals have to be explained. When the textbook along with supplementary readings is brought to bear upon a discussion topic in the classroom, you see the beginning of learning, which is further enhanced through projects, term papers, weekly essay assignments, and the stimulus of quizzes, and mid-term and final examinations.

But online teaching is raising some interesting possibilities. While in classroom discussions some students, especially girls, hesitate to participate, I have personally found that most students participate very enthusiastically in online discussions. Many of them express themselves freely when I encourage a free-style discussion, de-emphasising grammar for the time being. Online discussion creates a level playing field between the extrovert and the shy type.

Of course students and professors miss a lot when there are no face-to-face encounters, dramatic moments which occasionally result in witticism, humour and other minor confrontations that enhance teaching and learning and make the dialogue ~ the dialectic ~ such a joy.

Information technology causes stress on the campus, simply because no one can always keep up at the cutting edge of technology. Even younger faculty members who have grown up with the Internet feel stressed due to the fact that information technology is not user-friendly.

Teaching online requires a different attitude because communication between students and teachers is asynchronous. Many adult students find working on their own time a great advantage. But how to get your point across without facial gestures and vocal cues is a challenge. Classroom liveliness and vibrancy, the thrill of being with students is absent online. Lecturing is performance and some of us become teachers because it gives us a sense of participation in the learning process. Physical presence and face-to-face meetings can bring out the best in students. The juice rush that one feels in the class when there is something unexpected, the laughter, the body language and voice inflection, and the instant feedback, including sleeping and yawning, all are absent in the virtual classroom. How to bring one’s personality into the virtual classroom is a serious challenge.

Can a smart university campus make its professors smart? Global exposure can be an incentive for some professors to improve their teaching but the jury is still out whether a smart online presentation is all that what we mean by good teaching. Nevertheless, you can’t disagree with the MIT’s motto “Unlocking Knowledge, Empowering minds,” whatever it takes, virtual or real.

(ND Batra is professor of communications at Norwich University, Vermont)

Sagarika: Tagore

Sagarika

A poem by Tagore


From: RAJAT DAS GUPTA: Calcutta: e-mail: rajatdasgupta53@yahoo.com
rajarch@cal3.vsnl.net.in



Thou Hast Made Me EndlessPart XI

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941 AD) the Nobel Laureate of 1913 was introduced to the West primarily through the collection of English translation of some of his poems/songs captioned as ‘Gitanjali’ (=Offering of Songs).More translations of his works followed by the poet himself and others after he had won the Nobel, including poems/songs, dramas, short stories etc. However, such efforts were sporadic and sluggish, mostly on individual initiative, which still remain so.As a result, a vast volume of the poet’s works remains un-translated while, it appears, it is an impossible proposition to translate even a substantial part of the poet’s total works to permit those, not privileged by the knowledge of Bengali language, a reasonably broad view of his myriad creations where unfathomable perceptional depth of top grade aesthetics runs through, literally true to his song “Thou hast made me endless / Such is Thy pleasure”.Notwithstanding this, an upsurge of Tagore translation took place in the last decade of the twentieth century by virtue of a good number of eminent poets/translators e.g.William Radice, Joe Winter, Ketaki Kushari Dyson, to name a few, all of whom left their valuable contribution to this oeuvre and my book THE ECLIPSED SUN is a modest addition to this. I have put stress on a few aspects of the poet’s works, particularly those in his twilight years, which seemed to me quite inadequately covered so far. The followings are presented mostly based on this book.
Tagore as historian (Contd. IV- concluding part)
Seemingly a romantic love poem, ‘Sagarika’ hides a massive chapter in Indian history with its glory followed by ignominy. Reference from the poet’s Java diary quoted below, will surface the true implications of the poem.

Poem: ‘Sagarika’ (the daughter of the sea) of the book ‘Mahua’.

[Translator’s note: Toward the close of 2000 A.D. the then President of the USA Bill Clinton visited India and while addressing a gathering in his honour, India’s the then President K. R. Narayanan had said that it was of late fashionable to call the world a ‘Small Village’, which is of course a fall out of the revolution in the communication system defeating space and time. But, Narayanan had pointed out to Clinton that in the mediaeval age the villages were ruled by the Morols (Village Chiefs) while the modern villages are ruled by the Panchayats (Village Associations) manned by the elected representatives of the people. He had thereby analogized the United Nations (UN) with the Indian Panchayats for the purpose of to-day’s ‘Small Village’ and had implied that its affairs should be overseen by the UN instead of the sole superpower now existing e.g. the USA. Of course he had meant the Big Brother role for which the USA had been aggressive from time to time often myopic to others’ causes besides her own.
History tells us about such aggressive role of some Western nations over several centuries past with their imperialist ambition. Whichever territory they had occupied, they had enslaved the local people there by brute force to enjoy their “Master” status. We ourselves had been victim of the British rule for about 2 centuries till 1947. This instinct of domination has not died even to-day and has rather been found infectious world over with the progressive perfection in genocide technology.
Indian history had been quite different. Indians had taken their voyage abroad in the past to export their humanistic ideas, religious values, music and culture along with their merchandise, but never with imperialist contemplation. The poem was written on the 1st October 1927, soon after which the Poet took his voyage to Bali island, now a part of Indonesia. India’s link with this island is age old. Stamps of Indian culture, religion, music, art etc. have survived time in this island. The Poet recalls all this past link with Bali which dates back to the glorious period of Indian history, but was particularly snapped since mid-eighteenth century when the dark period of our country was at the worst with the advent of the British rule, and the Poet was on voyage to Bali with a heavy mind while the freedom fighters’ suffering was at its peak in his own land. The Poet thus regrets his inability to offer anything precious new to Bali except his humble music.
The following quote from Tagore’s diary recording his thoughts at the time of his voyage to Java will more clarify his thoughts behind ‘Sagarika’.

“The pure dedication that Science has ushered in is for all country, all time and all men; so it has imbibed in man the power of God, to drive out all woe, penury and ailment from human family with its weaponry. The Viswakarma (God of Engineering) for creation of heaven for man is this Science. But when this very Science laboured to shape up man’s desire for fruit to an enormity , it became the Yama (God of Death). If man on this earth will annihilate, it will be for this reason – he knew Truth but not its use. He achieved divine power, but not divinity. In modern time that divine power is manifest in Europe. But has it been so for genocide? In the last war this very question has emerged stark. Europe has become a terror outside her boundaries, as evidenced throughout Asia and Africa. Europe
has not come to us with her Science, but with her greed. So the blockade for manifestation of Europe within the heart of Asia. With impertinence of her Science, hubris of her power and her greed for wealth, for long Europe has cultivated this hassling of man all over the earth. When it boomeranged at her home she is anxious.
She put others’ pasture on fire which has now caught on her wood. She is now wondering where to stop. Is it by halting her machinery? I don’t say so. But they have to halt their greed. Will it be achieved by religious sermons? That won’t be enough. Science also must complement it. The dedication which controls greed inwardly is of religion, but that which removes the external causes of it is of Science.
These two combined, accomplish their dedications. Wisdom of science to-day awaits union with religion’s. But why all these debates are labouring my head on my way to Java? The reason is, India’s erudition once went abroad. But those aliens had regarded it favourably.
Tibet, Mongolia, Malayas, wherever India had preached her wisdom, had been through genuine human relations. To-day my pilgrimage is to witness those historical evidences of man’s holy access everywhere. Also to note is, that India of yore did not preach some cut and dried sermons, but inaugurated the inner treasure of man through architecture, sculpture, painting, music and literature, stamps of which remain in the deserts, woods, rocks, isles, rugged terrain and difficult
resolves………”. [Java diary, July, 1927]

I am unaware of any poetry in any other language which better conveys one’s passion for the old link with a country through such a superb love allegory. I also think, evaluation of this poem in the context of goodwill that was in India’s political ethos in the past, as this poem reveals, but largely missing globally, is only relevant.

Bathing in the deep blue sea,
On the pebbled beach sat thee;
Thy garments loose
Left scribbles on the shore profuse.
The affectionate Sun on thy body un-ornate
Left its golden paint.
With crown on my head,
In right hand archery held,
Stood in my royal attire –
Said, “I’ve come, O foreigner!”

Startled, from thy seat of rock,
Thou stood up with a shock –
Asked, “Why did you come?”
Said I, “Let thy mind calm,
Only I want to pluck flower
For God’s worship, in thy bower.”
Thou attended me with indulgent smile;
We plucked Juthi, (1) Jati (1) and Champa (1) to pile. (1)
To sort those in the basket sat together,
Worshipped Nataraj (2) with our earnest prayer. (2)
The mist was over, light flooded the sky,
Facing Shiva (2), Parbati’s (2) smile did lie. (2)

As rose the evening star
On the mountain top there,
Thou alone at home
On thy waist shone
Bright blue sapphire,
Round thy head, garland of flower.
Bangles in thy hands both –
On my way playing flute I quoth –
“Guest I’m at thy door.”
Scared, stretched thy lamp my face to explore;
Asked, “Why did you come?”
Said I, “Let thy mind calm,
Thy charming person I’ll adorn
With the decors I’ve borne.”
Flashed a beaming smile
On thy face, its beauty sparked awhile.
The gold necklace on thy chest
I suspended, the crown on thy head set at rest.
Lit up lights thy mates, their frolic sublime
Flooded the entire clime.
Thy ornate person did flitter
The charm of the night’s lunar glitter.
With my rhyme matched thy jingle,
Smiles at the sky the full moon single;
Light and shade to and fro
As the sea waves go.

Unwittingly, the day was over;
So, my ship raised its anchor.
Sudden was the wind adverse on my voyage,
Unleashed havoc, put the sea in rage;
Drowned my ship in the salt water
In the dark night with all my treasure.

With shattered fate, I’m again at thy door
Attired as destitute, my royal robes no more;
Saw at the temple of Nataraj (2) (2)
As before, was the decor of flowers;
While at night, the festive sea
Rhymes moonlight dance in wavy glee;
With thy silent face down in that fest
I stole a look at my garland round thy chest,
At my paints, listened rhythms of my song
Sway thee in ecstasy, all to me belong.

I implore thee; O bonny,
Once more hold thy lamp to me;
Now I’m no more crowned,
My archery no more to be found;
In the southern wind brought neither
My basket to fill in thy bower;
Only I’ve brought my flute;
Try please to make me out thou astute.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
(1) these are Indian names of some flowers.
(2) Nataraj, the Lord of Dance, is the other name of Shiva and, according to the Hindu concept, his dance cycles Destruction after Creation. Parbati is the wife of Shiva.