I first heard name of this book when I was in class 5. During preparation for all those numerous general knowledge competition I heard name of this book and author which of coures I dutifully crammed.
My age, society, school or city - none of them enabled me to understand what this book was and what it was about.
I had forgotten completely about this book as our media has a flavor to celebrate authors who have some glamor quotient . B K Nehru had none ,it is a different matter that at one time he was the best known man to US administration .
Another point which went against BK was though he was an old man but he was not aloof from modernity as against other Indian leaders and statesman he had a proper understanding of world of finance and international politics. I have read autobiographies of Nehru, prasad and among bureaucrats Haksar & Dharmavira and all these men though great they were were blissfully ignorant of larger world and I think this has been India's problem from time immortal.
Next I read BK Nehru in a book on north eastern states in which in the chapter on Nagaland one ex HT journalist who had made nagaland his home lambasted BK Nehru for his approach to solve Nagaland problem. Next I read about him in Jagmohan's "My frozen turbulence in Kashmir". Jagmohan;s approach was curious .He was not lambasting BK but at the same time to show that he improved state's administration says previous men who dealt with Kashmir were inapt. But when one proceeds further in book and Jagmohan laments that during governorship when there is an elected CM , there is not much to do I understood that even BK did not have much option before him.
I don;t have the book with me now but i highlighted important parts in the book for which I think future reader of that library book will not forgive me so as a penace I wil ltry to make best use of my memory and write a review or my impressions of the book either chronologically or topic wise.
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Monday, March 10, 2008
Opportunity & Choice
Lately I have been pondering over how our life's course is decide by these two words.
Opportunities is very obvious as to why someone born in sub Saharan Africa or with all kinds of disadvantages of gender, race, place, wealth, parentage, society & religion can not have the opportunity to make choices which someone else from a privileged background will have.
But my point is interrelation between them i.e. someone with less opportunities also , if he makes correct choices one after another then he can create opportunities for him like say Abraham Lincoln or Dhirubhai Ambani for that matter & similarly someone with opportunities gets to make more choices .
We can see this daily around in our life as well as others life.
So what architect says to Neo in matrix that as you put precisely chocie is the question I think it is incomplete choice which leads to opportunity is crucial and the other way around.
Opportunities is very obvious as to why someone born in sub Saharan Africa or with all kinds of disadvantages of gender, race, place, wealth, parentage, society & religion can not have the opportunity to make choices which someone else from a privileged background will have.
But my point is interrelation between them i.e. someone with less opportunities also , if he makes correct choices one after another then he can create opportunities for him like say Abraham Lincoln or Dhirubhai Ambani for that matter & similarly someone with opportunities gets to make more choices .
We can see this daily around in our life as well as others life.
So what architect says to Neo in matrix that as you put precisely chocie is the question I think it is incomplete choice which leads to opportunity is crucial and the other way around.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Two ideas for Indian tourism from Montana USA
Recently I have started reading Economist thanks to institute login. before this I used to read it in IIT library and at my company after my boss had read his copy.
I think what makes elite insittues important is this access to outside world as well as ideas .For example if you read an economist issue then for complete next week you can see responsible commentrators and intellectuals lifting ideas straight from it and creating buzz with their new thinking in print and electronic media. Some people go even forward and print complete articles in their name with slight modification here or there.
Well but the point I was making is this week's Montao diary in Economist.My takeawas:
1. 4th largest state of USA but less thna a million population but this is not an excuse for unavilaibility of resources or public amenities .Even the yellowstone park which comes under its jurisdiction is well guarded. Why can't we have such administration in India.
2. As the state is small it appears they don't spend much on government pretensions and even governor house is like neighbous. In india no matter how small the state is all the regalia is must. Did someone say we are socialist??? Even in the book "freedom at midnight" author mentions that Indian minsiters wanted all the pomp and glory of britishers on the independence day and thier socialism could wait for one day.But it is still waiting :).
Moreover I think one reason of this is we repect autohrity only when it is pompous. Even simplicity of Gandhi had its scale to domiante everyone around him and not to be lost in crowd.
3. A really interesting piece is about how they have turned brothels into tourist attractions .here follows the sxtract :
Friday
“MY DAD, who lived a long good life, always used to tell us kids that a town without a whorehouse was a stupid place in which to live.” So wrote one woman in a letter to Helena’s daily newspaper in 1973. Montana may not want to bring back its old brothels, but everywhere I went, there seemed to be one or two on the list of things to see.
Before leaving for Montana, I asked a friend of mine who had grown up in Great Falls where to eat around the state. One can’t-miss, he said, the Windbag Saloon, in downtown Helena. One side of the menu lists the restaurant’s (fairly standard) food offerings. The other advertises the building’s chequered past. Built in 1885 on top of Last Chance Gulch, the creek in which gold deposits were discovered in 1864, the structure that houses the Windbag is a former cathouse called Old Dorothy’s, which peddled flesh right up to Dorothy’s death in 1973.
Where can a man go to vent his enthusiasm around here?
According to a contemporary account, Dorothy was “a dumpy, grey-haired 57-year-old diabetic”. She inherited the whorehouse from its penultimate madam, a woman named Ida who distributed gilt neckties to favoured customers.
Neither Ida nor Dorothy, however, ran the most notable whorehouse in the state. That distinction seems to lie with the Dumas brothel, a rotting Victorian-era mansion in Butte that remained open from 1890 all the way to 1982.
Boom times in Butte’s mines saw the numerous cathouses built on a lane called “Venus Alley”, where miners could “vent their enthusiasms”, as one euphemism put it. Along the alley prostitutes advertised themselves from small rooms called “cribs”, one of which the current owner of the Dumas building recently discovered behind a wall. Deserted, he says, since the 1940’s, the crib contained ancient cigarette butts, bottles and a bed frame that saw enough work that its legs had pushed through the linoleum floor into the wooden floorboards.
The Dumas brothel, which was a museum until 2005, is famous enough that it attracted a thief a few years back, who reportedly stole bed frames, doorknobs and some rare, antique sex toys. For a time, Rudy Giecek, the old bordello’s owner, also teamed up with the International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education, which planned to hold “Whore Camp”, a yearly conference for the sex trade, there.
Now, the Dumas is shuttered and falling apart. But, according to the Montana Standard, a local pizza deliveryman recently donated $20,000 to fix the building’s roof and foundations, and Butte’s Urban Revitalisation Agency just issued a grant to help with the same.
All of this fuss over a broken-down brick mansion from the 1890s seems odd. But in the western United States, suburban tract homes from the 1950s feel old; the reverence residents have for their aging cathouses reflects a longing for a sense of history—any history.
Even more, Americans harbour enduring fondness for the turbulent world of unfettered freedom and vice the West’s Big Sky country offered their forebears, and this sensibility is magnified in Montana. You can see that nostalgia manifested in American western movies or, more alarmingly, in anti-government militia organisations based in Montana. And it might be strong enough to keep Venus Alley’s cribs standing for another generation
Can we do something similar in India. We had prominent khothas in India which had magnificent bulidings and were quite different from red light areas of today. The whores were cultured and brothels ahd thier share of political influence. Remmber ghasiti begum of Bengal or that fmaous novel of Shivnai "krishnakali". In benglai authors' novle be it srikanta or devdas brothels would invariably come with leaidng lady devotee of krishna.
My point is we had brothels which were maginificnet if all these novels are not pure imagination and we should be able to find such buildings and convert thme into touris attractions.
seocnd thing which struck me was how they have ocnverted an old mine into a toursit spot.
Tuesday
BUTTE, MONTANA used to be home to “the richest hill on earth”. Gold and silver deposits were discovered in the area late in the 19th century; miners have been digging ever since.
Boom times came as the electrification of American homes and businesses boosted demand for the millions of tonnes of copper in and around Butte (according to local legend, the demand for bullets created by the first world war also helped). The town is still dotted with ancient, wooden mining rigs, and three of the city’s oldest streets are named Quartz, Gold and, of course, Copper.
Heavy industry in Butte
A famous red-light district developed, and the mines attracted foreigners looking for work and fortune. Many early miners were Irish, and the city still displays those roots: it has pubs as well as bars, and a famous St Patrick’s Day celebration.
But the hill that built Butte has become an ever-deepening pit, and the city’s fortunes rise and fall with the price of copper. Just east of the town’s historic centre are a set of enormous strip mines, whose activity has stopped and started over the last few decades according to the vagaries of world demand.
Miners cut the hills down in rings, each smaller in diameter than the last, leaving a terraced depression in the ground. The remaining ore, the operators tell me, is the lowest grade in the world. Still, demand for building materials in China and elsewhere has boosted copper’s price lately, and the mines are running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The mine’s safety chief drives me to the rock face in a battered Chevrolet Suburban. Along the way, we pass by the most spectacular legacy of Butte’s past prosperity: the Berkeley Pit—a 1.5-mile wide, 1,800-foot deep strip-mine, long inactive (pictured).
Since mining stopped, it has been filling with water that seeps through cracks in the rock, creating an acidic stew of heavy metals and arsenic that once killed a flock of migrating snow geese. Now, the mine operators have an observation post that employees check hourly to ensure that birds keep clear of the toxic water. At my hotel they sell postcards with pictures of the Berkeley Pit on them; the town has made it into a tourist attraction.
Birds' bane
We stop to watch explosives blast a fresh tear into the earth at one of the other pits. The detonation doesn’t go off perfectly: rust-coloured smoke indicates that the explosives are burning rather than exploding. We proceed to the rock face, where an enormous crane scoops earth into immense lorries, which then take the material to the first of many refining facilities.
The mine extracts 100,000 tonnes of material a day, half of which is waste. Conveyer belts move the rocks to a series of crushers. The ultimate result is a fine powder, which is mixed with water, diesel fuel and a series of chemicals in long troughs. Rotors excite the mixture, and the metals literally froth out of the troughs attached to air bubbles.
Butte is a useful example of why Montana’s economy is doing well despite the malaise elsewhere in America. High commodity prices and the weak dollar have helped extractive industries and agriculture, which the governor says account for 20% of the state’s economy.
But Butte’s renewal can’t last. The mine safety chief tells me that unlike Missoula or Bozeman—university towns that attract out-of-staters—few people move to Butte, which is almost entirely populated with natives. The price of copper will fall eventually, and with it the fortunes of this and other mining towns across the state. The Berkeley Pit, on the other hand, will last for centuries
This is also somethin interesting which can be tried out in areas which had mines before modern technology came. I mean even before britishers we used to produce iron,copper and gold and such mines can be devleoped into touris spot. Kolar gold mine seems to be a perfect candidate.
I think what makes elite insittues important is this access to outside world as well as ideas .For example if you read an economist issue then for complete next week you can see responsible commentrators and intellectuals lifting ideas straight from it and creating buzz with their new thinking in print and electronic media. Some people go even forward and print complete articles in their name with slight modification here or there.
Well but the point I was making is this week's Montao diary in Economist.My takeawas:
1. 4th largest state of USA but less thna a million population but this is not an excuse for unavilaibility of resources or public amenities .Even the yellowstone park which comes under its jurisdiction is well guarded. Why can't we have such administration in India.
2. As the state is small it appears they don't spend much on government pretensions and even governor house is like neighbous. In india no matter how small the state is all the regalia is must. Did someone say we are socialist??? Even in the book "freedom at midnight" author mentions that Indian minsiters wanted all the pomp and glory of britishers on the independence day and thier socialism could wait for one day.But it is still waiting :).
Moreover I think one reason of this is we repect autohrity only when it is pompous. Even simplicity of Gandhi had its scale to domiante everyone around him and not to be lost in crowd.
3. A really interesting piece is about how they have turned brothels into tourist attractions .here follows the sxtract :
Friday
“MY DAD, who lived a long good life, always used to tell us kids that a town without a whorehouse was a stupid place in which to live.” So wrote one woman in a letter to Helena’s daily newspaper in 1973. Montana may not want to bring back its old brothels, but everywhere I went, there seemed to be one or two on the list of things to see.
Before leaving for Montana, I asked a friend of mine who had grown up in Great Falls where to eat around the state. One can’t-miss, he said, the Windbag Saloon, in downtown Helena. One side of the menu lists the restaurant’s (fairly standard) food offerings. The other advertises the building’s chequered past. Built in 1885 on top of Last Chance Gulch, the creek in which gold deposits were discovered in 1864, the structure that houses the Windbag is a former cathouse called Old Dorothy’s, which peddled flesh right up to Dorothy’s death in 1973.
Where can a man go to vent his enthusiasm around here?
According to a contemporary account, Dorothy was “a dumpy, grey-haired 57-year-old diabetic”. She inherited the whorehouse from its penultimate madam, a woman named Ida who distributed gilt neckties to favoured customers.
Neither Ida nor Dorothy, however, ran the most notable whorehouse in the state. That distinction seems to lie with the Dumas brothel, a rotting Victorian-era mansion in Butte that remained open from 1890 all the way to 1982.
Boom times in Butte’s mines saw the numerous cathouses built on a lane called “Venus Alley”, where miners could “vent their enthusiasms”, as one euphemism put it. Along the alley prostitutes advertised themselves from small rooms called “cribs”, one of which the current owner of the Dumas building recently discovered behind a wall. Deserted, he says, since the 1940’s, the crib contained ancient cigarette butts, bottles and a bed frame that saw enough work that its legs had pushed through the linoleum floor into the wooden floorboards.
The Dumas brothel, which was a museum until 2005, is famous enough that it attracted a thief a few years back, who reportedly stole bed frames, doorknobs and some rare, antique sex toys. For a time, Rudy Giecek, the old bordello’s owner, also teamed up with the International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education, which planned to hold “Whore Camp”, a yearly conference for the sex trade, there.
Now, the Dumas is shuttered and falling apart. But, according to the Montana Standard, a local pizza deliveryman recently donated $20,000 to fix the building’s roof and foundations, and Butte’s Urban Revitalisation Agency just issued a grant to help with the same.
All of this fuss over a broken-down brick mansion from the 1890s seems odd. But in the western United States, suburban tract homes from the 1950s feel old; the reverence residents have for their aging cathouses reflects a longing for a sense of history—any history.
Even more, Americans harbour enduring fondness for the turbulent world of unfettered freedom and vice the West’s Big Sky country offered their forebears, and this sensibility is magnified in Montana. You can see that nostalgia manifested in American western movies or, more alarmingly, in anti-government militia organisations based in Montana. And it might be strong enough to keep Venus Alley’s cribs standing for another generation
Can we do something similar in India. We had prominent khothas in India which had magnificent bulidings and were quite different from red light areas of today. The whores were cultured and brothels ahd thier share of political influence. Remmber ghasiti begum of Bengal or that fmaous novel of Shivnai "krishnakali". In benglai authors' novle be it srikanta or devdas brothels would invariably come with leaidng lady devotee of krishna.
My point is we had brothels which were maginificnet if all these novels are not pure imagination and we should be able to find such buildings and convert thme into touris attractions.
seocnd thing which struck me was how they have ocnverted an old mine into a toursit spot.
Tuesday
BUTTE, MONTANA used to be home to “the richest hill on earth”. Gold and silver deposits were discovered in the area late in the 19th century; miners have been digging ever since.
Boom times came as the electrification of American homes and businesses boosted demand for the millions of tonnes of copper in and around Butte (according to local legend, the demand for bullets created by the first world war also helped). The town is still dotted with ancient, wooden mining rigs, and three of the city’s oldest streets are named Quartz, Gold and, of course, Copper.
Heavy industry in Butte
A famous red-light district developed, and the mines attracted foreigners looking for work and fortune. Many early miners were Irish, and the city still displays those roots: it has pubs as well as bars, and a famous St Patrick’s Day celebration.
But the hill that built Butte has become an ever-deepening pit, and the city’s fortunes rise and fall with the price of copper. Just east of the town’s historic centre are a set of enormous strip mines, whose activity has stopped and started over the last few decades according to the vagaries of world demand.
Miners cut the hills down in rings, each smaller in diameter than the last, leaving a terraced depression in the ground. The remaining ore, the operators tell me, is the lowest grade in the world. Still, demand for building materials in China and elsewhere has boosted copper’s price lately, and the mines are running 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
The mine’s safety chief drives me to the rock face in a battered Chevrolet Suburban. Along the way, we pass by the most spectacular legacy of Butte’s past prosperity: the Berkeley Pit—a 1.5-mile wide, 1,800-foot deep strip-mine, long inactive (pictured).
Since mining stopped, it has been filling with water that seeps through cracks in the rock, creating an acidic stew of heavy metals and arsenic that once killed a flock of migrating snow geese. Now, the mine operators have an observation post that employees check hourly to ensure that birds keep clear of the toxic water. At my hotel they sell postcards with pictures of the Berkeley Pit on them; the town has made it into a tourist attraction.
Birds' bane
We stop to watch explosives blast a fresh tear into the earth at one of the other pits. The detonation doesn’t go off perfectly: rust-coloured smoke indicates that the explosives are burning rather than exploding. We proceed to the rock face, where an enormous crane scoops earth into immense lorries, which then take the material to the first of many refining facilities.
The mine extracts 100,000 tonnes of material a day, half of which is waste. Conveyer belts move the rocks to a series of crushers. The ultimate result is a fine powder, which is mixed with water, diesel fuel and a series of chemicals in long troughs. Rotors excite the mixture, and the metals literally froth out of the troughs attached to air bubbles.
Butte is a useful example of why Montana’s economy is doing well despite the malaise elsewhere in America. High commodity prices and the weak dollar have helped extractive industries and agriculture, which the governor says account for 20% of the state’s economy.
But Butte’s renewal can’t last. The mine safety chief tells me that unlike Missoula or Bozeman—university towns that attract out-of-staters—few people move to Butte, which is almost entirely populated with natives. The price of copper will fall eventually, and with it the fortunes of this and other mining towns across the state. The Berkeley Pit, on the other hand, will last for centuries
This is also somethin interesting which can be tried out in areas which had mines before modern technology came. I mean even before britishers we used to produce iron,copper and gold and such mines can be devleoped into touris spot. Kolar gold mine seems to be a perfect candidate.
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