Indian English

From Chandan Mitra's weekly column in the Pioneer, some hilarious examples of English usage:

In a newspaper, describing a case of chain-snatching in which criminals shot dead the man who tried to resist and pursue the chain-snatchers, the reporter stated: “The deceased gave chase to the criminals who, however, managed to escape”!

Police notice: “Take care of belongings. You may be theft”

The article is interesting reading too.

http://dailypioneer.com/columnists/item/51044-dont-fast-you-may-be-theft-indlish-is-on-a-roll.html

Newspapers of India

The print media plays an important role in shaping public opinion. Somehow a perception has been built that the media is the conveyor of the truth and most people find it as a trustworthy source of news and an institution that stands by the common people. It is therefore called the "fourth estate". While the TV media has become an object of ridicule for a lot of people, the print media is still supposed to report "true facts" in an impartial manner. 

However, things get more complicated than that, many interests shape the worldview a newspaper projects and these in turn shape the opinion of their readers. It is not my case that newspapers be impartial in their opinion. Yes, we would expect news to be reported objectively, but an opinion by nature is subjective. What is a newspaper which does not have an opinion of the world and society - it would just seem like a dumb person? How can an institution run by journalists - people with an intellectual bent of mind, and who move around with those in power - not do a critical analysis of the world that they report and form a worldview? 

The right thing to do is to recognize this enriching diversity of opinion that exists, and be exposed to many  streams of thought rather than limiting ourselves to one. For years, it was the one newspaper that we subscribed to that would shape our thoughts, but with the Web we have at our disposal many alternative streams of thought. While I grew up reading a single newspaper, in the last few years, having access to these multiple sources of news and opinion has made me think of issues with a much broader perspective.  This post in an attempt to put together my opinion about the various streams of thought in the Indian national print media. 

So, let me have me take on the primary newspaper/magazines in India, which I follow with varying degrees of regularity. Of course, all these are English language media, which unfortunately is one of the biggest lacunae in my coverage. I hope to broaden my reading to at least a couple of regional languages  in the near future.

The Indian Express: The Indian Express has a glorious history in upholding a fiercely independent media. It stood up to Indira Gandhi's regime during the Emergency and exposed corruption in the highest echelons of power in the Bofors case, Dhirubhai Ambani, etc. having been led by stalwarts like Ramnath Goenka and Arun Shourie It had a reputation of being strongly anti-establishment and on economic matters it supports free markets. Socially, it is a liberal centrist paper. However, over the years the anti-establishment sting seems to have gone out of the Express and it is now pretty favourable to the Congress and especially Manmohan Singh in its editorials. Yet, its oped is still the richest in terms  of the diversity of opinion from all cross sections of ideologies. I still think it is the most comprehensive paper in terms of getting a view of national politics.

The New Indian Express: Its the less known sister group of the Indian Express, formed from the south Indian editions after the split in the paper's ownership. However, it seems to have inherited some of the anti-establishment spirit of the united Indian Express group. It seems to be nationalist, somewhat center-of-the right in its leanings. There are some good satirical columnists in the New Indian Express - V Sudarshan, Gnani Shankar, and Aditya Sinha (who is now with the DNA newspaper).

The Hindu: The venerable newspaper from Chennai, which is highly respected for its opinion even in the North. It believes in a greater purpose in its journalism and has built its image in that way. So you could consider it to be a "serious" if somewhat boring paper. Its leanings are generally left wing and liberal. However, at the same time there is a lot of respect and coverage for Indian arts and culture in the paper.

The Times of India: I do not know much about the history of ToI, and it is undoubtedly the largest selling English language newspaper in India (and the world?). Yet, it is difficult to have any respect for the ToI, because it doesn't really have any views of its own. Its views are shaped by what the consumer  wants and its marketing managers seem to have more influence than its editors. You could classify it as an free-market supporting, liberal paper - but it doesn't matter. The Times shouldn't be taken too seriously. Unfortunately, it has a large following.

The Daily Pioneer: Unbashedly pro-BJP and probably the most right wing and nationalist of Indian papers, this paper is edited by BJP Rajya Sabha MP Chandan Mitra. So, for a perspective of right wing opinion this is the paper to read.

There are magazines and many online sites that present different points of view. More about them in some future post.

(PS)
On a lighter node, don't miss the newspaper wars.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXLsi_Vmtw4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Eb-waHx-00&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxz4WvGG7uA&feature=related

Book Review: The Polyester Prince

While poring over books at a street shop, I noticed Hamish MacDonald's The Polyester Prince. Knowing  that the book would not be available at any book stores in India, due to pressure from the Ambanis, I immediately snapped it up. Having read it, I can say that its not only the Ambanis but a lot of other people who wouldn't want the book to be widely read. The Polyester Prince is an unofficial biography of Dhirubhai Ambani, chronicling his and Reliance's rise to the high table of the Indian industry. The books specifically focuses on the some of the inconvenient facts about Ambani's super rapid growth. Though a biography, it almost feels like reading a thriller as events move fast, there is always a conspiracy in the air and the years roll on quickly. The book is well researched and presents as balanced a point of view as possible, given that the Ambanis refused to answer any of the author's questions in the course of writing the book. It is a mixture of facts, suspicions, strong rumours, hearsay and legends around Reliance. The book is one of the very few bold accounts of contemporary Indian history. The book is almost surely an inspiration for Mani Rathnam's movie - 'Guru'. 

The book tracks the growth of Ambani from his humble origins in a Bania family in Gujarat. Given the region and the community that he came from, it should be no surprise that he ended up in business. The trader community and Gujaratis are particularly well known for their trading and business skills, having perfected the skills over hundreds of years and have contributed in no small measure to make the Indian sub-continent the economic power it was. Ambani learnt the tricks of the trade during his stint in Aden and starting understanding how to manage money and finance. From then there was no stopping him, as he understood the importance of raising capital. He must have been the most innovative financier India has had and it is this skill that has taken Reliance where it is. Reliance isn't a polyester or petrochemical or telecom (or whatever sector it is investing in today). It is basically a financing company that knows how to raise capital with all kinds of schemes and then put it to use and showcase it to raise more capital. 

That's not the case with Reliance alone. Every major Indian industrial conglomerate today - the Tatas, Birlas, the Ambanis, etc. come from a trading background and it looks like this is the standard operating procedure of most of these family firms. So, my hypothesis is that India's industrial growth is not oriented towards building and innovating solutions geared towards the country's problems but rather importing and retrofitting someone else's solution to some similar problem - a trader's solution. Since the Indian economy opened up, the Indian conglomerates have adapted and been hugely successful at their core competency - trading, and they can stand up to any challenge in the world on this front. 

Ambani was not only a master financier but a great manipulator of the license-raj system that Indira Gandhi converted the Indian state to. The Govt. Of India controlled a lot of economic activity like - what industries to allow, who gets to run it, what manufacturing capacity, what items to import and in what quantity and basically everything under the sun. The Govt basically ran a huge patronage network, where favored people would get their needs met; all rules and regulations being malleable and subject to convenient interpretation. The book illustrates how bad the license-raj was and how Ambani exploited it to the hilt with the help of his cohorts in the Government, some of whom still hold the highest posts in the country.

And the government was ruthless too. It could make life miserable for anybody who would not do their bidding. The way the governments cracked down on the Indian Express group for their expose of Reliance and on Ambani's rival Nusli Wadia (and Dhirubhai too, when his enemies were in power) shows all that is wrong with our arbitrary system of government where those in power have a lot of discretionary power. This system is best expressed in S. Gurumurthy's first salvo of his now legendary Reliance expose:

If the mail rule prohibits something, get a sub-rule added which permits it. The main rule will no doubt exist in the book but the book alone.  ...  Rule of law at once becomes sub-rule of law and the sub-rule eventually becomes subversive rule.

Dhirubhai was a product of his times, and the book is an indictment of that bad system which created a person like him and allowed his tactics to flourish. The moral of the story is that Government should have minimal discretionary powers, and create a level playing field for competition. Some liberalization has happened in the last 20 years, but real reform of the Government is yet to happen. Afterall, A. Raja of 2G scam fame seems to have referred to Pranab Mukherjee's coaching manual of the 80's when he was the Finance Minister and had Ambani's backing.

Post script: It is downright hypocritical of the large banias (all our big conglomerates) to plead for the interest of the Indian consumer and demonise their own brethen (the small banias who run the kiranas) in the FDI-in-retail debate. The big fish is now are just waiting for an opportunity to eat the small fish. Don't be taken in by the propaganda.

Book review: The Lost River

How many times have we heard praises to the triumvirate of rivers - the Ganga, the Yamuna and the Sarasvati? While we know where the Ganga and Yamuna flow, we have been conventionally told that the Sarasvati is a mythical river that joins the Ganga and the Yamuna at the triveni sangam at Prayaag. However, for more than a century a debate has been raging, unknown to most layman in India, about the real truth of the Sarasvati.

'The Lost River' by Michel Danino explains the issues involved, the various viewpoints that exist and provides a beautiful narrative of the story of the Sarasvati. It is a good scholarly work, and an interesting read at the same time. A few questions that have been asked in the course of the debate, and I have tried to summarize them and the answers/viewpoints from the book's position on the issue :

• Is the river Sarasvati for real? 
• Where did it flow? Since the mid 19th century, a seasonal stream in Rajasthan's desert with an unusually wide bed, the Ghaggar-Hakra, has been postulated by many to be the lost Sarasvati river. The archaeological, literary, geological and local folklore evidence is very strong to suggest that there was indeed a very large perennial river flowing through the desert of Rajasthan and Pakistan. 

• The Ghaggar-Hakra may have been a large river in old times. But was it the Sarasvati? Again the circumstantial evidence is strong - mainly from our literary sources. The 'nadistuti hymn' from the Rg Veda enumerates the major rivers of Northwest India - the Sapta Sindu - in east to west direction; the Sarasvati lies exactly between the Satluj and the Yamuna, just like the Ghaggar-Hakra. Balarama's journey along the Saravati in the Mahabharata and the places he visits correspond to places in this region. 
• Over the last fifty years, the Ghaggar-Hakra basin has also seen the discovery of a large number of Indus valley civilization sites from Haryana to deserts of Cholistan in Pakistan.  This has led to the realization that the Indus Valley civilization was built around two major river systems, the Indus and the Sarasvati.  Some of the largest Indus valley sites like Kalibangan, Banawali, Rakhagarhi, Ganeriwala and Lothal are in the Sarasvati's basin. 
• What happened to the Sarasvati? The Sarasvati's major tributaries were the Himalayan rivers, the Satluj and the Yamuna; whereas traditionally the Sarasvati has itself been identified to originate from the Shivalik Hills at Ad Badri. At some point, the Yamuna and the Satluj changed courses, the Yamuna joining the Ganga and the Satluj joining the Indus thus depriving the Sarasvati of its major water sources. The Satluj is known to have a very volatile history of changing its course, the latest being somewhere in the 17th century. Some tectonic movements may also have contributed to these changes. 
• When did this drying take place? Studies show that the river was in full flow in around 3000 BC, but it had dried up in its central sections by around 2500 BC. That means in the Mature Harappan age, the river was already dry in some parts and this is clearly observable from the settlement pattern of Indus valley sites. Most sites during this period are either near the northern end in Haryana/Punjab or in the southern portions in Cholistan area of Pakistan. The sites in Rajasthan from the Early Harappan phase seem to have been abandoned by then. 
• What happened to the people in this region once the river died? Here is where the story gets even murkier and gets intertwined with the Aryan Invasion theory. Traditional history says that what followed was a dark period in the history of India till the Aryans from Europe invaded and settled in the Gangetic plains which evolved into the classical Indian civilization from which our present day civilization derives. The contention of many historians is that there is simply no archaeological or genetic evidence to support such a theory, whose only basis seems to be the need to explain the commonality in the Indo-European languages. The author argues for a strong continuity of our present day culture from the Indus valley civilization. As the river dried up, people migrated to the east settling in the Gangetic plains and carrying over their science and technology, architecture, religion and arts. A couple of chapters in the book are dedicated to exploring these connections and make for very interesting reading.

In addition to the debate on the Sarasvati, this book is also good material for anyone wanting to read on the Indus valley civilization. One part of the book is devoted to the Indus valley civilization, with one chapter on a few prominent Indus valley cities on the Sarasvati river. 

As a footnote, what is most depressing is that our history books make no mention of these facts. Why are these alternate views presented in our history books when the evidence for these theories too are not trivial at the least? Our history books too live either in Indus valley time or truly in Kaliyuga.  

Thanks to mankuthima for recommending this book, and you can find his summary of the book here:

• Sarasvati-The lost river - Part I
• Sarasvati-The lost river - Part II
• Sarasvati-The lost river - Part III

300 Ramayanas - Some thoughts

This Diwali was preceded by some fire-crackers in the Delhi University and noise of these crackers made a larger public hear A.K. Ramanujan's essay on the Ramayana - '300 Ramayanas'. A little controversy is always good publicity and lot of people must have read this essay for themselves and made a judgment about it. I read it too, and at a cursory look it looks like an interesting summary of the various ways in which the Ramayana is narrated and the differences that exist in these various tellings. In our country, our scriptures have been the vehicles of spreading culture, rather than being a mere series of historical facts and figures (if such a thing exists). So as times have changed, so have the interpretations to our scriptures. All Ramanujan's essay does it to give a bird's eye view of the process and to highlight the importance attached to these traditions to our country. Go read it for yourself and make a judgment.

Then, the whole controversy of it being deleted from the DU's syllabus doesn't make sense - either from the point of those wanting it in the syllabus or those opposing it.  It was a local university decision which doesn't merit any national headlines. I doesn't do any harm to have it on the university syllabus either, but there is nothing spectacular about Ramanujan's essay to make it indispensable. It is just a manufactured controvery. As Pratap Bhanu Mehta points out,
    "The exclusion of A.K. Ramanujan’s great essay from the syllabus of the Delhi University highlights the ways in which both the Left and the Right have reduced a great tradition to an impoverished political totem."

Both are blinded by their preconceived notions much like Dhridrastra was by his love for Duryodhana,
       "The Left and Right in India share one deep premise. The tradition, in its final analysis, has to be reduced to the social question."

For the Left, as Swapan Das Gupta puts it, "rather than encouraging students to savour divergent ways of looking at the past, history became a set of acceptable truths and unacceptable untruths — hardly an approach befitting an open and argumentative society."

The Right in desperation and indignation, "has substituted intimidation for sober argument." 

The result is the pathetic state of intellectual discourse in India.

Mehta says that the Delhi University was finding it difficult to get anyone to teach Chayavad, that great movement in modern Hindi poetry. Engaging with the meaning of Nirala (Hindi poet) is out of question. But the situation is even more dire for the teaching of Tulsidas. This assertion of tradition is coming at a moment where its loss is imminent.

Das Gupta makes an interesting argument,
"The problem, it would seem, arises from the dubious practice of listing prescribed texts. In the past, a history curriculum would identify broad themes for study, leaving teachers the independence to recommend readings for further study. A student would be tested in the examination for his ability to construct lucid arguments that would reveal their understanding of the subject. With 'prescribed' texts becoming the norm, the student's scope for demonstrating independence of mind and even originality of thought are naturally at a discount. They are expected to imbibe and parrot prevailing orthodoxies — a process that can hardly be said to be conducive for the training of the mind.


What we are witnessing in India is not an assault on free speech but something far worse, an attack on the spirit of free inquiry. There is something fundamentally skewed with a system of higher education that posits two stark alternatives: a compulsory reading (and, by implication, acceptance) of a scholarly work or not reading it at all. The space for critical discernment is fast disappearing and we are turning into a nation of slogan shouters. "

The good thing is that the intellectual debate that should have been in the university is now open to everyone for participation via the Internet. So forget these boardroom wars and read Ramanujan's essay and recommend me any similar ones if you can find them. I would especially like to know if similar ones exist for the Mahabharata.

printf("Adieu Ritchie, McCarthy and Jobs");

In the last two weeks, the world of computing has lost three of its stalwarts - Dennis Ritchie (the inventor of C and Unix), John McCarthy (the father of AI and Lisp) and Steve Jobs (of Apple). 

For me and for basically everybody I know of, the introduction to programming came through C. I still admire C for its simplicity and orthogonality. The notions of elegant and efficient programming can probably not be taught better in any language other than C. Unix, of course, is a boon to the world - an operating system so simple and elegant that every OS of note essentials follows its design principles. Ritchie, Brian Kerninghan and Ken Thompson were first class hackers who changed the world  forever. 

The very term 'Artificial Intelligence' was coined by John McCarthy and he along with Marvin Minsky, Claude Shannon laid the foundations of this branch of computer science that I now happen to be associated with. AI is now the darling of the computing world, though the challenges McCarthy had set for us is still far away. And who can forget Lisp - the language that has spawned the functional paradigm of programming that every programmer of note will appreciate for its elegant style.     

Unlike Ritchie and McCarthy, Jobs was no technical whiz or geek - but the idea that drove him was the same - beauty and elegance. Its a word not normally associated with CEO - but it is his insistence of aesthetics that has seen Apple build the sleekest products that just do what they are supposed to do with no feature crap that is the bane of all software. 

R.I.P

North of the Vindhyas

I am just back from a vacation north of the Vindhyas, my first trip to this vast part of India. Where did I go? Delhi was my base camp, and I travelled from there to Agra, Mathura, Rishikesh and Haridwar.  To be my unbelievable fortune, I also got to go to Srinagar on official work :). That's a lot of travelling in 10 days. It also means I have a few posts to write, but I will save that for the next few days and leave you with the major achievements of this vacation and a few snaps:

• I saw the three giant rivers of the Indian plains - the Ganga, the Yamuna and the Saraswati. Wait! Did I say the Saraswati? Does it even exist? Well, I  started reading 'The Lost River: On the trail of the Sarasvati' on this trip. So I can say I realized the truth of its existence and  one day I hope to see the bed of the Ghaggar-Hakra river it she once flowed through.   
• 'Kashmir se Kanyakumari' is an oft-used phrase in our country, and I can say that I have visited both the poles of India. 
• It is a awesome feeling to visit places graced by two of the most revered teachers of India, Shankaracharya (Shankaracharya Temple, Srinagar) and Krishna (Sree Krishna Janmasthan, Mathura) 
• Finally, I got to visit two of the most beautiful places associated with India - the Taj Mahal and Kashmir. 

Sameer, me and Ritesh in Gulmarg

Majestic !

More on trip in future posts !