Can beggars be choosers?

Sourced From: Dan Ariely's blog

One day a few years ago I passed a street teeming with panhandlers, begging for change. And it made me wonder what causes people to stop for beggars and what causes them to walk on by. So I hung out for a while, engaging in a bit of discreet peoplewatching. Many people passed the beggars without giving anything, but there were a few who stopped. What was it that separated those who paused and gave money from those who didn’t? And what separated the more successful beggars from those who were less successful? Was it something specific about their situation, or their presentation? Was it the beggar’s strategy?

To look into this question, I called on Daniel Berger Jones, an acting student at Boston University who had just finished hiking around Europe. Not having shaved in months and already looking pretty scruffy, he was ready for the job (plus as part of his training to be an actor I figured it would be good for him to learn how to beg for money – at the time he did not see that particular benefit). So I found a street corner and placed him there to take on the panhandling trade. I asked Daniel to try a few different approaches to begging and to keep track of the approaches that made him more or less money. (Of course, after the experiment was over we donated all the money that he made to charity). The general setup was what we call a 2×2 design: When people walked by, Daniel would either be sitting down (the passive approach) or standing up (the active approach) and he would either look them in the eyes or not. So there were times when he was 1) sitting down and looking people in the eyes, 2) sitting down and not looking people in the eyes, 3) standing up and looking people in the eyes, or 4) standing up and not looking people in the eyes.

Daniel got to work, scrounging for money. He stayed on his corner for a while, trying the different approaches. And it turned out that both his position and his eye contact did, in fact, make a difference. He made more money when he was standing and when he looked people in the eyes. It seemed that the most lucrative strategy was to put in more effort, to get people to notice him, and to look them in the eyes so that they could not pretend to not see him.

Interestingly, while the eye contact approach was working in general, it was clear that some of the passersby had a counterstrategy: they were actively shifting their gaze in what seemed to be an attempt to pretend that he wasn’t there. They simply acted as if there was a dark hole in front of them rather than a person, and they were quite successful at averting their gaze.

At some point, something very interesting happened. There was another beggar on the street – a professional beggar – who approached young Daniel and said, “Look kid, you don’t know what you’re doing. Let me teach you.” And so he did. This beggar took our concept of effort and human contact to the next level, walking right up to people and offering his hand up for them to shake. With this dramatic gesture, people had a very hard time refusing him or pretending that they did not seen him. Apparently, the social forces of a handshake are simply too strong and too deeply engrained to resist – and many people gave in and shook his hand. Of course, once they shook his hand, they would also look him in the eyes; the beggar succeeded at breaking the social barrier and was able to get many people to give him money. Once he became a real flesh and blood person with eyes, a smile and needs, people gave in and opened their wallets. When the beggar left his new pupil, he felt so sorry for poor Daniel –and his panhandling ineptitude– that he actually gave him some money. Of course Daniel tried to refuse, but the beggar insisted.

I think there are two main lessons here. The first is to realize how much of our lives are structured by social norms. We do what we think is right, and if someone gives us a hand, there’s a good chance we will shake it, make eye contact, and act very differently than we would otherwise.

The second lesson is to confront the tendency to avert our eyes when we know that someone is in need. We realize that if we face the problem, we’ll feel compelled to do something about it, and so we avoid looking and thereby avoid the temptation to give in and help. We know that if we stop for a beggar on the street, we will have a very hard time refusing his plea for help, so we try hard to ignore the hardship in front of us: we want to see, hear, and speak no evil. And if we can pretend that it isn’t there, we can trick ourselves into believing –at least for that moment– that it doesn’t exist. The good news is that, while it is difficult to stop ignoring the sad things, if we actively chose to pay attention there is a good chance that we will take an action and help a person in need.

Religion in the 21st century

Note: Sourced from Philosopher’s Beard
Once upon a time religion was in the world and made the world. Religion made the messy chaotic world legible to human understanding and amenable to human purposes. It fixed things in place, like the stars in the sky and the distinction between men and women. It ordered the flux into the cycle of life: the turning of the sun, seasons, and harvests; birth and death. It explained and justified the social order: why one man is born to wealth and power and another to be a serf. It told us with all the force of a mighty and all-encompassing metaphysics what our lives really meant, and how we should act, think and feel. But no more. Religion has been brought low by its old enemies, philosophy and politics. Religion persists and is even popular. But it is now in the mind, a matter of personal belief projected outwards. In short, religion is now secular.

I focus here on the trajectory of the Abrahamic style of theological religion (other forms of religiousish behaviour require their own accounts). This kind of religion rests on a metaphysical unification of the divine, the social-order, and nature. It gives us an enchanted world and a guarantee that we know our true place in it. The enemies of theological religion have always been philosophy and politics because both present inherently secular ways of grappling with the nature of the world that bypass religion. Their rise has shattered both enchantment and Truth. Religion still creeps about the place, but in a thoroughly subordinate role.

Philosophy is always trying to see the world - natural, social, and ethical - from a non-orthodox perspective. Philosophers are those annoying people who are always saying, Yes, but..... As in Yes of course God exists, but just suppose that the heavens are like a giant clockwork mechanism that goes automatically after it's been set up? Wouldn't that be an interesting way of looking at things?

Religions can be seen as rich communal storehouses of knowledge about subjects as diverse as ethics, agriculture, hygiene, economics, etc that provide access to more wisdom about how to live than any one person could ever come to on their own. (That is a significant reason for its attractiveness even in the modern world, apart from the social club benefits.) But its metaphysical constraints (the ultimate answer is always that God did it) mean that religion can't compete with philosophy in the theoretical knowledge game.

Philosophy constantly spews out alternative approaches to understanding the world, most perniciously by creating dedicated collaborative epistemic communities interested in particular subjects - previously. (Every major academic discipline, from physics to economics to mathematics was started by philosophers.) These lovers of theoretical knowledge for its own sake leave the speculative orientation of philosophy behind as they develop specialist methodologies and employ them systematically upon different bits of the world. If they are given space and freedom (universities) they generate vast quantities of robust theoretical knowledge about how the world really works. Religion of course knows this full well, and always strove to keep the keys to knowledge to itself, for example in medieval Europe by exercising tight control over literacy, libraries, and universities.

But the Enlightenment let philosophy out of its bottle for good, and since then it has succeeded to an astonishing degree in producing much much better accounts of how the world works than any religion. It has convincingly shown that all religions make serious mistakes about matters of fact (astronomy, history, medicine, etc), and about how facts are connected (evolution, cosmology, etc). The sacred triangle between the divine, human society and nature just isn't out there, so, obviously, your prayers cannot affect the weather or your marriage prospects. It has shown that the world is actually much more complicated than religion ever claimed - exposing the limits of religious knowledge communities. But at the same time it has shown that the world doesn't need God, gods, or spirits to make it work. Even in ethics, it has shown up the inconsistencies, biases, and questionable foundations of religious teachings and identified a plethora of alternatives that beat iron age patriarchal tribal mores hands down. (How many genocides does God order in the Old Testament? Death for picking up sticks on the Sabbath?) Religion can cope with atheism since atheists at least take religion seriously enough to argue about. Naturalists though don't even find religion compelling enough to consider (any more than fairies or UFOs), except as an object of study, for example by anthropologists and sociologists.

Politics is about earthly power and has an underlying Machiavellian pragmatism that has always been in tension with religious accounts of the divine, true, social order. Politicians are the ones who have bright ideas like this. Hey, what if I stop killing and torturing the people who disagree with the official church about the Doctrine of the Trinity. Think of all the money I would save and all the extra taxes I could raise.

The pragmatism of politics is a threat to theological domination of society in more than one way. (Hence the truism that the separation of church and state actually protects religion.) On the one hand religion can easily be corrupted by politics if it is seduced by the possibility of using direct earthly power to make sure the social world follows the divine script properly. The exercise of that power can't be done without yielding to the logic of politics and becoming embroiled in the profane arts of government (like the Borgias, or Khamenei). And then people will stop taking the clerics' heavenly status claims seriously. On the other hand politics can reach out to religion as a source of legitimacy for its own Machiavellian strategies - blessing kings, wars, and taxes for example. Here the seductions themselves are earthly - access to the king's court, monetary rewards, and legal privileges for your clerics. Sooner or later you're selling indulgences to build gorgeous palaces and your clerics are raping peasant children with impunity. And then, again, the people tend to lose faith.

Despite these tensions, politics and religion can co-exist in a reasonably stable arms-length relationship since each recognises that it needs what the other does and can't replace the other (churches need funding; kings need right as well as might). So even when the relationship broke down (e.g. in the Protestant Reformation), it tended to come back. That is, until politics invented something new and enormously powerful: large nation states combined with democratic government. These replace kings, whose legitimacy as rulers was always based on a dubious metaphysics of divine social order (backed by raw ruthless power), with professional politicians. The legitimacy of political power holders now depends on their ability to appeal to the people, not the clerics; the legitimacy of their actions depends on their adherence to temporal constitutions not divine law.

Since these forces were fully unleashed religion has been forced to adapt. Out went the mighty all-encompassing metaphysics in the face of the top-down scrutiny of querulous university academics. Out went the claim to absolute truth in the face of the bottom-up revolution of peasants wanting the right to their own opinion. The new religion is individualised, marketised, and deracinated.

Individualisation
Liberal democracy is all about dealing with the fact of reasonable disagreement, that as soon as one relaxes totalitarian social control one will find that other people have completely sincere beliefs and judgements that differ from yours. Luther of course when he said 'Here I stand. I can do no other.' didn't think he was making a plea for individual freedom of conscience. He thought he was right. But when lots of people start thinking they have the right to stand up for what they believe, one has to find a modus vivendi (or face interminable civil war). One has to find a way to live in the same political society as people whom you believe are utterly - metaphysically - wrong. The trouble is that once you set up some rules for keeping the peace - state neutrality on religious matters, no religion in the public square, etc - they do much more than keep the peace. One ends up finding one's Lutheran, Catholic or Jewish neighbours actually very pleasant. It becomes harder and harder to remember that the really important thing in your relationship is that they're going to hell. Politeness comes to matter to you and you decide to keep your revelation to yourself so as not to be an ass. Instead of religious credos being too dangerous to utter in public, mentioning them becomes something of a social gaffe, like blurting out your taste in pornography.

Meanwhile the damned philosophers are busy creating a secular intellectual space open to all and independent of any religious dogma. Religion's storehouse of wisdom is bypassed and then surpassed by towering cathedrals of secular knowledge. Then it is subjected to criticism. Of its science, history, ethics; even of its literary status! If you try to talk about miracles and divine providence these people ask if you also believe in UFOs or fairies; and ethnographers ask if they can study your interesting sub-culture.

Contemporary religion takes place in the mind of the individual. Beyond this inner world you must act as if your beliefs were irrelevant. Outside, the world turns according to a godless physics, biology, economics, etc. In society your talk and actions are dominated by the fact of pluralism, so you must behave with a careful neutrality that the godless can go along with.

Marketisation
Pluralism and individualisation also brings markets. Of course, marketing is nothing new to the theological religions, but previously they were often in the comfortable state of being monopolies and being able to charge above the going rate in your attention and property for their spiritual services. That meant that they tended to set a 'price' for their services that maximised their profits, even though it left a great many people unserved or underserved (the deadweight loss of monopoly). Indeed in the heyday of religion most people probably weren't particularly religious because they weren't the core market and the core product wasn't designed or priced with them in mind.

Nevertheless there was some innovation. The invention of the afterlife for example is a brilliant way of getting even more out of your present customers. As Pascal pointed out, by extending people's utility function into eternity you alter their cost-benefit analysis in favour of greater commitment to the church in this life (however much you discount future well-being, eternity trumps present consumption). Likewise monotheism's visceral distaste for polytheism is typical monopolist protectionist behaviour (3/10 commandments are about monopoly and trademark protection). If you have a choice of gods you can play them off against each other, as the Greeks did, by switching to a different god whenever one fails to deliver. Multiple gods means market competition between divine service providers and lower prices for the ordinary consumer (and so also more freedom to think for yourself). Under monotheism when your prayers aren't answered, it's your fault and you need to pay/pray more.

Monopolist religions used their excess profits to invest in R&D (among other things) in their principal technology - theology. On the one hand they were able to train and employ the best minds of their time. On the other hand this was quite inefficient for society as a whole since all those great minds were only allowed to think about one area. And it turns out that when great minds take up the serious study of God, they raise at least as many problems as they solve (which then have to be kept quiet - Luther!).

The modern state of affairs requires religions to compete with each other like regular companies in a free market. Monopoly profits from captive consumers are a thing of the past. Since people tend to think all religion is pretty much the same thing (different paths to the same ultimate truth) all the religious denominations are desperate to avoid being fully commoditised, like pork bellies, as fully substitutable with each other and compared purely on price. So they strive to differentiate themselves, like supermarkets or airlines. They identify and target distinct types of customers like single mothers, high-flying business types, or specific ethnic groups, and then woo them with free lunches, parking, daycare, and sermons they like to hear. To increase retention rates they pay close attention to customer feedback and tweak their offerings to meet changing tastes. (Latin isn't working for us anymore.) They have to come up with competition strategies against new start-up religions and franchise operators moving into their areas.

All this marketing is of course quite profane. The success of a religion is now judged in terms of the numbers of 'bums on seats' it can corral into its services, and the amount of money those bums can be persuaded to give up. Not by the truth of its theology. The True religion is all mixed up in the marketplace with the mass of heresies and trivial spiritualisms (like horoscopes and crystal-ball gazing), which are distinguishable only by the success of their marketing. And the marketing affects the content of religions as well, turning them into a set of recognisable hack genres like self-help and personal-growth, or horror (fire and brimstone; that one with the snakes). Many of the fastest growing religions hardly bother with theology at all, because their customers don't have time for all that wordy stuff.

One of the interesting consequences of this is that modern religion has diversified its offerings to supply every consumer niche, rather than demanding that the spiritually inclined accommodate themselves to the True church. Tastes which went somewhat unrecognised and uncatered to before are now met by specialist operators. For example, fundamentalists eschew the established religious providers altogether and start their own co-operatives to meet their peculiar concerns with purity. So in some countries with a thriving free market for religion (most prominently, America) there is probably more religious activity than ever before.

Deracination
Contemporary religion has been deracinated - separated from its cultural context. In the enchanted world religion was always felt as much as thought, because it was literally embedded into the social landscape and rituals of everyday life. That gave religion a solid foundation, and helped make defection difficult to even imagine. It also protected religion from theological excesses by requiring a religion that a human society could actually live by. But now that the enchanted world has shattered, theology can no longer depend on the solid foundations of social practices. Almost the whole of Western Europe, for example, enjoys its quaint Christian culture (history, holidays, recipes, nice old buildings, church weddings) as part of its national identity, but hasn't the faintest interest in Christianity. We are basically Christian naturalists, perhaps the ultimate insult to the old-time religion. Religion for us is an ethnic identity thing, not a belief thing.

On the other hand, the falling away of the cultural roots of religion means that those people interested in personal spirituality have more freedom than ever to download and try out a new theology. That drives the thriving market for religion already discussed. But it also has implications for the kind of religion that people can have. In particular accessing the wisdom of religion about the human condition (all those brilliant minds focussed on analysis and commentary for generations) requires more than reading the sacred book by itself (or in the case of many evangelicals, the few quotations they like). The reason many fundamentalists are so unpleasantly and rigidly righteous is that they are people of the book who lack the lived culture of the book. They mistake religious knowledge of the kind one can get by reading a book like Euclid's geometry, for religious wisdom, which requires a much deeper immersion and personal subordination to the culture of that religion. Fundamentalists, and their worried observers, make an even bigger mistake in believing that religious movements based on literalist readings of sacred texts constitute a revival of old-time religion. Instead they are a fundamentally modern and secular phenomena of individuals searching for meaning in their own lives and fitting together a personal theology from bits and pieces of texts that suit them, and then joining clubs that see things the same way.

Conclusion
The secularisation thesis actually happened, though not exactly in the way 20th century sociologists predicted. They thought levels of religiousity would decline as religion lost its hegemonic dominance over society, whereas in fact it is the nature of religiousity which has changed. Contemporary religion is a thoroughly secular affair. It is matter of individual conscience, and as such hard to distinguish from secular 'religions' like veganism, environmentalism, or socialism. Religious individuals, like socialists, see the world a certain way, but they recognise that others see it differently and they understand the significance and legitimacy of religion in terms of private personal belief. The deinstitutionalisation of religion in liberal societies has led to cut-throat competition which has shifted religions from price-makers to price-takers. Religions now recognise that the customer is always right and make offerings to the customer (instead of vice versa). Religion has been cut free from its cultural base and now floats freely, as bite-size memes that anyone can download from the cloud when they feel like it and assemble for themselves.

When coal minister meets with tiger..!

This is absolutely crazy! Indian newspapers have largely ignored this bizarre spectacle for some reason. In a country where bureaucracy has its own customs, having a mascot meet a minister is unheard of.

Greenpeace activists, some dressed as tigers, demonstrated outside the central headquarters of the Ministry of Coal in central Delhi on Wednesday, until Minister Prakash Jaiswal agreed to see them. Greenpeace has been protesting India’s coal policy, citing damage to forests in central India.

After about an hour of demonstrations outside the ministry’s headquarters, the group was invited into the minister’s office, a spokeswoman said, where they presented him with petitions signed by 112,000 people asking for changes in India’s coal policy. Minister Jaiswal has asked the group to come back for a longer meeting next week, the spokeswoman said.

In particular, Greenpeace has been investigating the impact coal mining is having on Maharashtra’s Chandrapur region, near the Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve. The forests outside the reserve are shrinking because of mining and industrialization, a Greenpeace report says, which is impacting the reserve animal population, who use the forests as a corridor to travel to other reserves.

The amount of coal India produces fell far short of government plans in the last fiscal year, a fact the ministry blames in part on the difficulty of getting the necessary environmental clearances to mine.

Is it “End of Good Times?”

It was month of April, 2004. April 7, 2004 precisely. "I am that mysterious buyer," roared Vijay Mallya at a press conference in Bangalore as he unveiled the legendry Tipu Sultan’s sword taken away after the British assault on Srirangapatnam on May 4, 1799 which saw the end of the 'Tiger of Mysore.' “Oh..he made the country proud by getting back the sword”, mumbled my father. Perhaps Dad himself has never before heard the name of this “savior of our national honor.” And rest they say is history. Vijay Mallya’s arrival on the national conscience was grand and grander were the ways in which he ruled the national imagination for seven-years.

Postscript: "To write the epitaph of Kingfisher airlines constantly is not fair," Vijay Mallaya told reporters on November 15, 2011. So, what actually happened between April 2004 and November 2011?

Mallya’s rise incidentally coincided with India’s own rise as an economic super power. With one of the world's most expensive yachts and a cricket and Formula-1 team, Mallya soon became "King of the Good Times" for his zooming lifestyle. Mallaya symbolizes the resurgent India. For Indian middle class, he was what everyone wanted to be. He was the emblem of new India - flashy, high-risk, rich, flaunting and never ashamed of it.

Worth $1.1 billion, according to Forbes magazine, Mallya’s lifestyle fascinated many Indians, including the nearly 700,000 that follow him on Twitter. But now India’s “Richard Branson” is in deep trouble. Mallya’s business interest includes liquor, IPL and F1 teams. But it was his aviation dream that perhaps made him a power in business world to reckon with. His Kingfisher Airlines, accounts for nearly one-fifth of flights in the Indian sky at any given point in time. He literally transformed the flying experience by focusing on services like good food, personal screens on domestic flights. On each flight, Mallya appears on a recorded message on the inflight entertainment system, boasting of hand-picking each of the airline's hostesses who "have been instructed to treat you in the same way as if you were a guest in my own home", writes Reuters. Mallya’s innovation touched the flyers and the company was doing brisk business so much so that last year the company even applied for flying in international skies.

And now board members of Kingfisher airlines are considering a sale of property to raise funds for the airline. The airline has cancelled more than 200 flights in the past week, raising fears it could go bankrupt. I enquired with one of journalist friend as to what ail Kingfisher? She promptly blamed it on the “extravagant and pompous life-style,” of Vijay Mallya. And this sentiment is shared by many others including Shiv Sena’s Bal Thackeray. "Mallya's flamboyant lifestyle is responsible for the debts that Kingfisher Airlines has incurred," Bal Thackeray said.

Type Vijay Mallaya on the Google and the first suggestion it prompts is “Vijay Mallaya’s car collection, his yacht, and his house.” So did Mallaya flounder all his wealth which he earned from Kingfisher? By all indication it seems so…! He flies around the world, take our MPs on his personal plane for cricket matches across the globe, dines with global celebrities which includes soccer stars, F -1 drivers, Hollywood stars and not to say voluptuous models. His 312-foot yacht, the Indian Empress cost almost $89 million. Mallya also owns a Scottish whisky company. News reports suggest that he “once personally flew in his private jet from New Zealand to Scotland with three bottle of whisky found left from British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1907 Antarctic expedition.” His vintage cars have envied the rich and the famous. And not the last, the most waited calendars of the year- The Kingfisher calendar. Often appearing flanked by almost nude models in photoshoots, Mallaya almost barred himself in family homes.

Mallaya in a live televised press conference on Tuesday blamed high fuel costs, fierce price war between a handful of airlines for all the ills. He has also sought soft loan from the government. But the sentiments against any financial help are very high. Main opposition party BJP has vociferously opposed any such move by the government. The All India Bank Employees' Association has also voiced its sentiment against the bailout. Rahul Bajaj is more critical of the issue. He said, “Those who die must die."

It’s very strange to see Kingfisher in red despite the fact that civil aviation industry has seen passenger growth rate of 20 per cent this year. Good pitchers, as Don Cooper once said, after a tough outing, bounce back. Real good pitchers don't let too many poor games get in there. Hope Vijay Malaya will take this crisis as a lesson and will walk with a little more caution in times to come. Kingfisher’s failure will do irreparable damage to India’s growth story. Market runs on sentiment and India can’t afford to fail Kingfisher as it will lead to a huge perception crisis. Let’s wait and watch.

And for the government there are issues which need to be regulated in order to keep the aviation sector in good health. Fuel costs are high internationally, so government can’t do much and certainly cheap money and not cheap fuel is the biggest hindrance. The FDI limit is 49 %, but intriguingly it bars foreign airlines to invest in domestic sector, a regulation which is flawed and at worst demoralising. Secondly its high-time government should privatise Air India. When one player in the industry can use taxpayers’ money to stay afloat and keep fares low, the rest of the industry will have to compete on its terms. A weak Air India will keep the rest of the industry weak, too. And lastly our airports need investment and upgradation. Barring Delhi & Mumbai most Indian airports are run on public money. Privatise airports as well. This will increase competition even among airports.

Rahul Dravid - Perhaps the last classical batsman

Is he most under applauded batsman India has ever seen? Below are a few facts -

• Not many can bat for 835 minutes (its not a typo) like he did in this epic match in Adelaide, or when he batted for 12 hours for his 270 in this match. Not to mention the Adelaide victory was the first for India in a generation and the Pakistan series ended up being India’s first ever series win there.
  
  
• Ask any bowler and he will name Dravid in the top 3 of “most difficult to dismiss” players, and yet he is the first to be dismissed by the viewers and critics!!
  
  
• He is the player who has formed the platform around which many big names have hit knocks of a lifetime. May it be Sehwag’s triple century , or Laxman’s 280, or during many of Sachin’s tons, he was the player at the other end. Cricket is a game of partnerships, and he has shared 19 century partnerships with Sachin (a world record), 11 with Laxman, 10 with Ganguly and 10 with Sehwag.
  
  
• In many pitches that appeared to have landmines buried on a good length, Rahul Dravid has waged a war. Ducking, weaving, blocking, watching partners come and go, jabbing, leaving, ducking, weaving… Not many have batted for more than 600 minutes (like here when he scored a double when all others struggled to get even a fifty.
  
  
• You need to see him sweat during a match to understand his concentration levels. Right in the beginning of his career, he batted 541 minutes in the first innings of this match and followed it with another knock in second innings while the rest struggled to put bat to ball.

Revenge...!

Click the pic to have better view

After Jatt boyzz..!

GoM accepts Chawla panel recommendations on natural resources

Ms. Roopshree Nair is finance correspondent with news agency Press Trust of India (PTI). Her job is to keep close eyes on Finance Ministry. She covers Dept. of Economic Affairs and Dept. of Revenue.

New Delhi, Oct 13: The government has accepted most of the recommendations of an expert panel on allocation of natural resources that favours a move towards market-linked solutions, according to sources in the Finance Ministry.

The committee headed by former Finance Secretary Ashok Chawla was formed earlier this year to suggest and recommend ways and means for distributing natural resources like minerals in a transparent manner.

The Group of Ministers (GoM) has accepted all recommendations of the Chawla Committee, except one, that relates to seeking permission of the Supreme Court to evolve guidelines for de-reservation of land currently classified as forest land.

Recognising that the proposed Mines and Mineral Development and Regulation Act (MMDRA) is a significant step towards modernising and reforming India’s mining industry, the panel has recommended that sections on bidding should be broad-based and allow states to move towards clear and appropriate bidding processes.

The proposed Act should not preclude any form of open, transparent and competitive bidding, it said.

The committee has also recommended making amendments to the draft MMDR Act such that an independent regulator is tasked with reviewing licensing systems and towards designing a more competitive bidding process.

The panel also calls for the incidence and structure of royalty to be reviewed “through a transparent process” to represent a fair value for the mineral, as it is the primary source of revenue.

The panel has also suggested that for large mining leases, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) as in the case of ultra mega power projects (UMPPs) could be established in which all preliminary clearances for mining can be embedded.

It also recommends that for minerals likely to be found as surfacial deposits without making use of high technology, state governments should be incentivised and enabled to take up exploration so that adequately prospected ore bodies can be put to bid.

Besides, on the petroleum sector, the panel recommends expediting the creation of a National Data Repository (NDR) by linking databases of National Oil Companies (NOCs) and other private firms to share the data for blocks for which information has been submitted to the government.

All other information with the Director General of Hydrocarbons (DGH) can be structured as a common database, it added. On the issue of de-reservation of land which is currently classified as forest land, the government is understood to have said that this may not be accepted because the Supreme Court has in a past order clarified that forest will not only include forest as understood in dictionary sense, but also any area recorded as forest in the government record irrespective of ownership.

Moreover, sources added, many areas which are currently barren are important and unique wild life habitats. The sectors examined by the panel include land, mining, coal, petroleum, natural gas, telecom, forests and water.

What has killed 500 children in India?

Country's national child rights commission has ordered the government of Uttar Pradesh to report on the status of an encephalitis epidemic that media reports claim has killed as many as 500 children in the poverty-afflicted state over the past two months, the Times of India reports.

In a letter to the state chief secretary, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights ( NCPCR) said that the issue amounted to violation of 'children's right to life, survival and development,' the paper said.

Almost always first reported as a "mystery virus" or "mystery fever," epidemics of encephalitis have become an annual ritual in northern India over the past several years, seemingly without any aggressive government action to combat the problem.

Jobs, well done..!

The real challenge before me or anyone else is to write about Steve Jobs that isn't already written.

3 Apples changed the world, 1st one seduced Eve, 2nd fell on Newton and the 3rd was offered to the world half bitten by Steve Jobs. That’s the way God carved the world as it is. Jobs, as we know was not a computer scientist- ignorant of both hardware and software before he made Apple what it is today. From PC to MP3 player to ubiquitous smartphones- all existed before Apple got there.

Then what really was Job’s contribution in making Apple what it is today? The answer is- he just reinvented the entire industry. Jobs did something that few would have dreamt of achieving. He rigorously experimented with both old and the news technology, be it PCs or the old world music – with incredible fastness.

The most cherished and acknowledged CEO of his age Jobs defied many tenets of business astutely. He never believed in consumer research, never did he conduct any market survey. With simplicity at his sleeves, he rarely flaunted his’ corporation clout. He believed in the wisdom of his instinct. His intuition about Apple was nearly flawless and we saw the products always lived up to his towering claims.

This year Apple’s market captalisation crossed that of Exxon Mobil, making it the planet’s most valuable company. This feat but does not come without initial hiccups. For nearly first 20-years of his career, Jobs lived with notorious reputation of being associated with many products that failed in the market. The failures were so immense that he was handed pinkslip by the same company he co-founded. Steve was literally kicked out of the Apple. The impression was palpable -Jobs lost to indomitable Bill Gates. But then this was only true for those years until iPod arrived at the stage. Jobs legacy would have died unnoticed, unsung -but that was not to happen.

Born in 1955 in San Francisco to an unmarried graduate student and adopted at birth by Paul and Clara Jobs, Steven Paul Jobs grew up in Silicon Valley just as it was becoming Silicon Valley.

Time magazine claims that the company was co-founded with Steve “Woz” and Ron Wayne on April fool’s day in the year 1976, i.e. 4-years before I was born. He was 21-years old. Woz loved computers and Jobs wanted to make money out of it. The inside of their first product Apple II was more of Woz’s technical genius and Job’s style statement. In times when PCs were looked as ‘moronic’ machines, Apple’s design was fresh elegance in the offing. Apple II soon became the bestseller.

Jobs was source of inspiration for his co-workers. Hardworking and perfectionist to core he always liked to have intelligent people around him. Those who didn’t fit into this were brutally shown the doors. Some call him autocratic, but that’s the way geniuses are.

In 1985, Jobs was handed over the pinkslip after his failure to boost the company’s Macintosh sales. Post-Apple Jobs started Pixar- an animation film company. After initial shocks in 1995 Disney released Pixar’s first feature, Toy Story, which became year’s top-grossing movie and gave Jobs his first taste of success. Meanwhile Apple’s fortunes were drowning faster than expected. 1996 saw Jobs returning to Apple.

During his first months back at Apple, Jobs dumped board members, cut staff, slashed costs, killed dozens of products and accepted a $150 million lifeline from perennial bête noire Microsoft. Jobs rolled out an advertising campaign — "Think Different" — that got people talking about the company again. And he presided over the release of the striking all-in-one iMac, which came in a translucent case crafted by Jonathan Ive, the British industrial designer who would be responsible for every major Apple product to come. In 1998, it became the best-selling computer in America.

Little by little, Jobs started acting less like a turnaround artist and more like a man who wanted, once again, to change the world. Then came the iPod, and rest they say is a history of innovations and reinventions.

Thank you Jobs. You made the ugly world of technology, beautiful for us.

Jobs died at 56. I have 25 years left to achieve what Jobs did. Let’s see.

Can Modi and the BJP win the next election?

Modi’s past matters; those who think he can translate the support of his fans into electoral success may be disappointed

Indians vote for parties, not individuals. And the last time Indians overwhelmingly voted for one party was in 1984 in that extraordinary election following Indira Gandhi​’s assassination, giving a huge majority to the Congress. Since then, no party has secured a working majority on its own, and prime ministerial aspirants have been compromise candidates, whom most coalition partners will accept, and equally important, dislike least. There is no reason to think the next election—scheduled for 2014—will be any different.

That’s worth recalling because of the emerging myth, that because on 12 September the Supreme Court “exonerated” Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi​ (it did no such thing), he is now free to pursue his national ambition, if that. Citing his economic track record, Modi’s many fans believe the time has come for him to move to the centre, and lead a Bharatiya Janata Party​ (BJP)-led coalition government. Modi hasn’t made such claims.

And yet, immediately after the Supreme Court verdict, Modi went on a three-day fast to promote amity and harmony—an odd choice, since by his own claim, Gujaratis have been living harmoniously and amicably for the last decade, except for a few troublesome days in early 2002 with which, of course, he had nothing to do and about which he doesn’t like being reminded.

The verdict hasn’t ended Modi’s legal problems, because it was not a ruling on Modi’s guilt or innocence. The riots of February-March 2002, following the burning of a compartment carrying Hindu kar sevaks, continue to cast a shadow over Modi.

In the decade since, prosperity has increased in Gujarat. Modi’s supporters eagerly mention the praise he routinely gets from business leaders for streamlining procedures, enabling quicker business decisions, and highlight the investment in social and physical infrastructure. With the BJP’s leadership unsure about who would lead the party—there is the eloquent Arun Jaitley​, the feisty Sushma Swaraj​, and the still-eager Lal Krishna Advani​ dusting off his Toyota to start a new rath yatra—Modi may feel his time has come, because of disenchantment with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance. That a US diplomat calls him incorruptible in a memo released by Wikileaks adds to Modi’s stature for his fans, but the US still won’t issue him a visa. (That’s because of Modi’s poor record in protecting minority rights and religious freedom in Gujarat. In the same memo the same diplomat raises these concerns; a bristled Modi responds by complaining about the conduct of the US army in Abu Ghraib—as if anything connects the two, or as if one justifies the other).

Modi’s past matters, and those who think Modi can translate the undoubtedly passionate support of his fans into electoral success may be disappointed. Collective bliss, even if aided by the applause of tycoons and endorsement by The Economist, which likened Gujarat with Guangdong, doesn’t translate into an electoral majority. For that to happen, first, the BJP needs a majority of its own. Its share of the popular vote in 2009 was 18.8%, giving it 116 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats. It needs to at least double that to come anywhere near forming a majority. The highest share the BJP has ever enjoyed was the year it formed the government in 1998—25.59%—but even then its share was less than the Congress at 25.82%.

Besides votes, it will need an acceptable prime ministerial candidate, a condition Atal Bihari Vajpayee​ fulfilled.

If Modi’s fans are vociferous, for his foes, he remains radioactive, and unless he can show that the BJP’s performance in 2014 is entirely his doing, other leaders will see him as a regional satrap. So, the BJP has to win, win big, on its own terms, and Modi has to show that he alone got those votes—more than the party has ever won, to get more seats than it has ever won. For that math to work, the BJP’s other leaders—and those outside, like Nitish Kumar​—would have to rein in their ambitions.

And then remember this: Chief ministers have rarely made effective transitions from the state to the Centre. Of the 13 prime ministers, only five have been state chief ministers—Morarji Desai​, Charan Singh, Vishwanath Pratap Singh​, H.D. Deve Gowda, and P.V. Narasimha Rao. Of them, only Rao completed his prime ministerial term. None necessarily had a great record as chief minister. Think also of chief ministers who were stalwarts in states—Jyoti Basu in West Bengal, Mohanlal Sukhadia in Rajasthan, Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra, Laloo Prasad in Bihar. None made the transition to the top in Delhi.

This means ruling the state and the Centre are different; that the record at the state has little bearing on potential at the Centre; and to succeed nationally, the candidate needs wide acceptance, an ability to compromise, and the skill of forming coalitions with those with whom he disagrees.

That’s not how Modi is usually described.

If Gujarat were really Guangdong, none of this would have mattered.

We did it. How dare you take away this credit from us?

Al-Qaida has sent a message to the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asking him to stop spreading conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks.

Iranian media on Wednesday reported quotes from what appears to be an article published in the latest issue of the al-Qaida English language magazine, Inspire, which described Ahmadinejad's remarks over the 11 September attacks as "ridiculous".

In his UN general assembly speech last week, Ahmadinejad cast doubt over the official version of the 2001 attacks.

"The Iranian government has professed on the tongue of its president Ahmadinejad that it does not believe that al-Qaida was behind 9/11 but rather, the US government," the article said, according to Iranian media. "So we may ask the question: why would Iran ascribe to such a ridiculous belief that stands in the face of all logic and evidence?"

Read more

If Novartis wins, cancer patients lose

It’s a battle, cancer patients across India are watching with bated breath. Losing this case in Supreme Court will make a potent anti-cancer drug Glivec® almost inaccessible to poor patients of blood cancer. A Division Bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Mr. Justice Dalveer Bhandari and Justice Mr. Deepak Verma on September 6, 2011 transferred this case to another bench of the court. This is the latest happening in the case which has held the nerve of cancer patients and activists alike since 1999.

So, why is Glivec®- an anti-cancer drug whose patent is with Swiss pharmaceutical giant Norvartis, so important? And what will be the ramification of SC’s judgment? Let’s first understand what this wonder drug is– Imatinib mesylate is a new crystalline form of anti-cancer drug which Novartis sells under the brand name Glivec®. The original molecule of this drug is patented out of India. Companies like Natco, Ranbaxy and Cipla produced and sell Glivec (Imatinib mesylate) to myeloid leukemia patients for about Rs.8,000 per month, affordable, to some extent. But this was stopped in 2004 when Madras High Court stayed local firms from selling Glivec® copies. Novartis sells the same drug for about Rs.1.2 lakh per month.

Novartis claims that it should have an exclusive right on production and sale of this drug as it holds the original patent in the United States. The company in 1999 filed for the patient of this wonder drug at Chennai regional patent office. Further in 2004 Madras HC stayed in local companies from selling this drug.

The turning point in the whole episode came in 2005 when India amended its product patent law to comply with its obligations under the TRIPS Agreement and consequently, Chennai patent office rejected Novartis’s claim of exclusive patent in 2006.

While refusing the patent, the Controller General of Patent office sighted Section 3(d) of India’s new patent law that doesn’t permit any modified form of an invention that was known prior to 1995. Patent right can only be given if the claimed modification results in increased “efficacy.” The same year Novartis challenged Section 3(d) of the Indian Patent law in the Chennai High Court which was dismissed in 2007.

Between 2007 and 2009, the case was hanging with the Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) and finally landed in the Supreme Court. Having lost its case in the lower court, Novartis is now asking the Supreme Court to interpret “efficacy” clause in Section 3(d) of Indian patent law in a way that will allow it exclusive patent.

Interestingly, the one reason cited by Intellectual Property Appellate Board (IPAB) in not giving the exclusive patent to Novartis was “excessive pricing” of the drug. The IPAB felt that the high price of life-saving drug Glivec® will make it almost unaffordable to ordinary cancer patients. It was perhaps for the first time that the tribunal used the price of a drug as a reason to reject a patent appeal.

There are approximately 2 lakh chronic Myelogenous leukemia or blood cancer patients across the country with 40,000-50,000 people getting affected each year. A patent on the new form could give Novartis a 20-year monopoly on the drug, thus “ever-greening” the patent. This could be dangerous.

A report published in Mint on July 5, 2009 quoted Novartis’ view point on the issue. Defending the company’s claim it said, “Novartis has provided Glivec at no cost to more than 37,000 patients in 80 countries.

In India, more than 11,000 patients currently receive their medicine through this program.” But this cannot be an excuse for high price of this life prolonging drug. Even if the apex court rules against Novartis, the company has the option to move to the international judicial bodies. Until then, fingers are crossed. Hope, patient will prevail upon the patent.

But, why are the titans clashing?

Rajiv K Mishra

The reasons for the Chidambaram-Mukherjee fued are difficult to fathom.

Everybody knows Chidambaram was rather reluctant to relinquish finance but the UPA leadership needed a strong, efficient mascot for the home ministry in the aftermath of 26/11 and Chidambaram was the choice of both Sonia Gandhi and the prime minister. Rahul, too, is favourably disposed towards Chidambaram and is understood to have approved his move to the home ministry.

The problem was compounded when Pranab was made the finance minister. Like Chidambaram, Pranab Mukherjee had also held the finance portfolio more than once in the past. Both think of themselves as some kind of finance whiz kids and brook little interference in their ministries. After Chidambaram’s exit, most of his chosen officials were also shunted out. Worse, Mukherjee also made sure that none of the ex finance minister’s suggestions and recommendations got accommodated in his regime, either in successive budgets or any other policy initiatives and key appointments.

It is common knowledge in the finance ministry that the surest way to get a proposal shot down in north block is to somehow attribute the same to Chidambram.

There were other reasons for the mutual mistrust and dislike.

Mukherjee has always been a little resentful over Chidambaram’s better rapport with the Gandhi family. It’s no secret that Mukherjee has never been able to score as highly on the loyalty test as a Manmohan Singh and a Chidambaram with the first family of the Congress. The finance minister’s detractors ensured that the Gandhi’s never forget the momentary spark of ambition he had shown in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi’s assassination when he was indiscreet enough to let his ambition of becoming the prime minister get the better of him.

That one false move has been like an albatross around his neck ever since, used by his detractors to pull him down whenever Mukherjee looks destined for better things.

Mukherjee’s supporters also suspect Chidambaram of getting the finance minister’s office bugged. Chidambaram was also blamed by the finance minister’s supporters for his embarrassment in the Baba Ramdev fiasco and Mukherjee’s exclusion in the early rounds of negotiations with Team Anna last month.

Mukherjee also suspects the home minister and people close to him as targeting one of his close aides through the media. (Read Omita Paul)

In short, there are a number of personality issues between the two, which is quite a pity really because there’s no turf war between Chidambaram and Mukherjee who come from Tamil Nadu and West Bengal respectively. Their interests don’t clash other than their common passion for the finance ministry.

Mukherjee was itching to get even with Chidambaram and the 2G scam seems to have provided him with an opportunity.

The government and the Congress will not desert Chidambaram in a hurry because if the home minister goes, the next target is the prime minister himself. So Chidambaram will be defended almost to the last man unless the Supreme Court takes a contrary view.

But the real worrying factor for the government and the Congress is that there’s nobody who can probably act as a stern referee in this issue and if need be call the warring ministers and read them the riot act.

The Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, is a curious bundle of contradictions. There are times when he simply looks disinterested. On other occasions he comes across as powerless. He certainly does not have the political authority and clout required to effectively intervene in a fight which involves heavyweights like Mukherjee and Chidambaram.

So Manmohan Singh can’t play a decisive role in ensuring a much needed truce at this stage.
The Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, is the only person who could have made a meaningful intervention. But with nobody (outside the family) in the know of her health status, it’s anybody’s guess whether she is in a position to mediate.

It all looks very gloomy from the UPA’s and the Congress’ perspective. Already crippled and under attack on the issue of corruption, lacklustre governance and weak leadership, the ruling alliance has now to face the trepidation of two of its giants sparring like suicide bombers in a meaningless ego tussle.

It's Nitish vs Rahul in 2014

This statement was on the expected line, with script well written in advance at 1, Anne Marg. JD(U) spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP, Shivanand Tiwari’s criticism of Narendra Modi’s fast came as no surprise to political pundits. Tiwari cleverly chose the same phrase which former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee used on April 4, 2002 suggesting Modi to follow the ethics of governance. Tiwari said, “Modi had failed to discharge raj dharma in Gujarat.” He further questioned the partisan approach adopted by the Modi government in delivering justice to the 2002 riot victims. “When he can't do justice to five crore people in a state, how can he do justice to 125 crore in the country?", said Tiwari. JD(U) president Sharad Yadav also took a dig on Modi’s fast by saying that, "it has become a fashion for people to go on fast."

Old rivals
It is not that Narendra Modi is ignorant of the fact that he has a tough competition or to say only competition from Nitish Kumar. From time to time, Modi has shown conciliatory gesture towards Bihar CM but Nitish has remained unmoved by such moves. Immediately after the devastating Kosi floods of 2008, Gujarat was the first state to send aid to Bihar. But after an advertisement published in Bihar dailies purportedly by Modi, claiming Gujarat had donated liberally to Bihar after Kosi floods, Nitish quickly signed a Rs. 5 crore cheque returning aid to Gujarat with full media hoopla. The second controversy added more fuel to the already existing fire with the publication of Kumar’s photograph with that of Narendra Modi in another advertisement. Nitish got irked and canceled the dinner party he had thrown for the BJP’s leaders at his residence. Nitish in no way wanted to be seen along with Modi so much so that he said strict “no” to Narendra Modi’s campaigning in Bihar during the 2010 state polls.

Advantage Nitish
More than the personal rivalry it’s Nitish’s compulsion not to be seen standing along with “communal” Modi. Though not enough numerical strength in the House, but Lalu Yadav’s RJD is still a force to reckon with. RJD’s Muslim-Yadav combination formed bulk of the vote bank on which Lulu directly or by proxy ruled the state for 15-years. In spite of being an alliance partner with the BJP, Nitish during his six-year rule has kept his secular image intact and further has dented RJD’s Muslim votes. The Bihar chief minister has successfully projected himself as a moderate, secular and progressive leader who believes that any association with Modi would adversely impact his secular appeal and further his ambition for the top job at South Block.

Now coming back to Shivanand Tiwari’s jibe, let’s enquire into what actually prompted the statement at this juncture when elections are 3-years away. Modi’s fast in no way was hurting Nitish’s secular credentials. Nitish by avoiding Ahmadabad had already sent strong message to the minorities that he by no means supports Modi and his fast. But that was not enough. Spin masters in Patna must have realised that mere abstinence won’t help much. A strong and open missive to secular forces was need of the hour, so that no doubt remains that, who stands where. In short, Nitish wants to see himself as a rallying point for non-congress forces in a post election scenario in 2014. Anti-BJP clamour is also growing in JD(U) with some senior leaders suggesting Nitish to snap ties with the BJP.

Where Modi looses
Firstly, Modi’s Prime Ministerial ambition will not go unchallenged within his own party. 84-year-old, L.K. Advani is still nurturing Prime Ministerial ambition. This octogenarian is still rocking and will very soon embark on a new Rath yatra. Then comes Sushma Swaraj, Jaitley, Ananth Kumar and Venkaiah Naidu, collectively called the Delhi Four ( D4). Though, a Sanghi at core, Gadkari also adds to distance between Modi and his PM candidature within the BJP. Modi is distant six in the list of PM candidates in his own party. For a moment let’s assume that RSS will vociferously push Modi’s candidature, but will it do at the cost of antagonising other senior leaders in the list. Further, even if under RSS’ pressure Modi is projected as the candidate for the top job, will the already depleted NDA’s composition be the same as we see it today? JD(U) which after BJP will bring the maximum number of seats will be the first party to dump the alliance. Many others will follow for sure.

Nitish the PM
Like US, in India we don’t have approval rating mechanism. So let’s rely on the “most definitive” mood of the nation survey conducted by India Today during August this year. The India Today poll reflects, “corruption to be the single biggest reason for the erosion in support of the UPA government.” The finding of the India Today poll gives 29% votes to the UPA, 27% votes to the NDA and 44% votes to the others if elections take place today. UPA is still 2% above the NDA despite “earth shattering” allegations of corruption against the incumbent. The situation will more or less remain the same in 2014 as experts feel that worst is over for the government and spin masters are out in damage control mode. Or even if the government’s fortune goes further down it won’t add to NDA votes. This situation will give impregnable lead to Nitish Kumar, the favourite poster boy of development and secularism.

Migrants influx in Delhi - But where are they coming from?

Click to enlarge.

How US newspapers remembered 09/11