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Showing posts from July, 2020

Wikipedia and Indic Contestations

- July 27, 2020

There is an interesting post by Dr. Subhash Kak on the medium. The post is titled “ Wikipedia or Trashpedia ”. It is a post or a rant or an exasperation or warning but nevertheless posits few pointers good or bad that cannot be ignored. Its contention is the on the nature and content of Wikipedia when it comes to dealing with non-European or non-Western cultures. Without doubt Wikipedia is the numero uno when it comes to information. It is perhaps the largest repository of information and to boost the same, it is dynamic. Hardly any information repository has come close to Wikipedia in achieving the compiling of information about almost everything under the sun and beyond in such a short period of time. It’s business model so as to speak has been of difference which has brought in numerous books and publications that extoll it to be classic example of what lies ahead in our production, distribution and consumption models. It is deemed as perfect platform for the emergence of what Toffl

Imagined History of the Left and Sitaram Goel

- July 25, 2020

There is an interesting and thought provoking post in Dharma Dispatch. The post discusses the agenda of the left and how Sitaram Goel sought to destroy the same. He perhaps could not in his lifetime but certainly with passage of time, the reputation of the left as custodian of Indian history has become discredited. The monopoly which Romila Thapar and her ilk enjoyed for more than four and half decades is on its final legs. The Supreme Court judgment on the Ayodhya Ram Temple issue was the final nail in the coffin of the left historical agenda in creating deracinated India. Unlike China, India let control of the history be dictated by a cartel controlled by the Europeans. The modern historical scholarship if one might term it so began from Max Muller and his successors. Post-independence they handed their baton to their Indian followers. These followers essentially of the left persuasion began dominating the narrative which was consolidated with suppression of any dissent by Rom

Jaishankar's Sermons

- July 23, 2020

There was an India Ideas Summit organized by US India Business Council which saw addresses by the top signatories including PM Modi and EAM Jaishankar. The theme was ‘Preparing for the Better Future’ and thus the address was expected to revolve around the same. The state of the pandemic originating in Wuhan along with the border tensions with China seemed an appropriate setting for India to woo US and make its shift to the US camp more explicit. As the world confronts a possible long Cold War between US and China, India has very little opportunity to pretend neutrality. As a matter of fact, India will be in the frontline of the conflict and possibly along with Japan or Korea may be facing the first line of attack from China. The recent manoeuvres from China along the Ladakh border are intimidation tactics to warn India of keeping itself away from the US camp. The Prime Minister talked about India and US being natural partners and invited the US MNCs to invest in India. India is

Path Dependency and Inequities of History

- July 19, 2020

There is an interesting podcast on Freakonomics about the inequality and compensating inequality. The link for the podcast can be found here . It is a two part podcast, the second of which is being awaited. But given the trajectory and the points of view expressed in the first of the series, some points could be discerned and can be discussed at some length in this post. There is no doubt about the deeply embedded racial and class inequality that persists not just in the US but also across Europe, Australia and Canada among other countries. These inequalities have not arisen out of recent events but are deeply interlinked to the historical trajectories. In Australia, the inequalities are linked to the White treatment of the Aborigines while in New Zealand, the Maoris have suffered historical injustices. The White Man’s Burden might have been formulated by Kipling but was in practice for decades before. In fact Karl Marx advocated his own version of White Man’s Burden when he soug

24 Akbar Road: History or Eulogy?

- July 18, 2020

Rasheed Kidwai wrote a book on the history of the Congress or rather the history of 24 Akbar Road, the headquarters post 1978 split. The book came out in 2011 with an updated e-book in 2013. The book was titled 24 Akbar Road: A Short History of the People behind the fall and rise of the Congress . The book is supposed to be tracing the roots of how Congress came to be associated with 24 Akbar Road and the anecdotes that give a flavour of the happenings at the party headquarters including the power struggles not just at the mid level in jockeying for favour of the family but between the family and its rivals. Given the updated e-eversion came out in 2013 when the party was under siege and waiting to be killed halal in the hustings a due a year hence, it seemingly was an attempt to shore up the image of the party and its crown prince. Therefore, it can be safely believed the new chapter on the Crown Prince was added to demonstrate his suave intellectual image something he has struggling

ICMR, Pandemic Data and Prophylaxis: Some Thoughts

- July 16, 2020

In the last couple of months or so, there have been number of posts on the Chinese flu and its consequent impact on socio-economic life in India and across the world. One of the recent posts talked about the Indian strategy in Unlock 2.0. Throughout the lockdown and unlock versions, there have been debates on the feasibility of the same or the alternative solutions to thereof. Many of the previous posts have captured these debates at good length. One post talked about the importance of the understanding the rate limiting step of the corona virus so that it might enable a mitigating strategy. Similarly, this post discussed the merits or the lack of it about the debate on herd immunity. This post talked about the possible strategy that needs to be factored in while exiting the lockdown. Also this post discusses the disruption in the healthcare equilibrium and how it needs to be tackled as the country faced the pandemic. The economic impact of the same among others is captured in s

Towards Classifying Sports

- July 14, 2020

Sports fascinate and provide an avenue for fulfilment of desires in more ways than one can imagine. There are thousands of sporting activities that occur all over the world. There have been many attempts at defining sports something few past posts have managed to do. Yet, to some, there is no consensus on whether an all-inclusive definition of sport can be obtained. This post is not to attempt another definition for sports but seek to classify sports in different ways. There have been many attempts to classify sports. Bernard Suits and his followers have attempted to classify into refereed and judged sports. The former are a subset of games whereas the latter might be sports but not games. There have been more attempts to refine the classification. However, the current post will not go into those dimensions at this stage but seek to build a preliminary broad based classification of various sporting activities irrespective of whether they are judged, refereed or otherwise. The fir

Woke, Archaeology and Alien Civilization Theory

- July 11, 2020

There is rather an esoteric article published on the CNN site. The article talks about archaeology which per se should not seem unusual. The link to the article is tweeted by the CNN Africa twitter handle. That again should not sound unusual. But what is unusual is the content of the article. It talks about the long standing esoteric theory of aliens responsible for civilization and thus many wonders of the ancient world thus attributed to them. These include the pyramids in Egypt to stone built structures in remote Easter Island as also in Stonehenge to Nazca lines in Peru. This unusual sort of an article is enough to rile up archaeologists across. It is natural for archaeologists to criticise these theories that seem outlandish. There is enough work done by archaeology that seem to point to the human origins to the building up of these ancient works. Yet the tone rather than pointing to the evidence for the human origins is pointing towards something else. This is the era of

Celebrating Sunil Gavaskar

- July 10, 2020

On his seventy first birthday, it would be interesting to analyse the legacy of the only genuine and successful opening batsman in Indian cricketing history, Sunil Gavaskar. To many, he represented a perfectionist and one of the first superstar batsmen in Indian cricketing world. His legacy stands magnificently though it 33 years since he last played for India. When he retired, he was at a stage where he could walk into a World Dream XI. Not just that, it would not be surprising he was picked as an opener for the all-time World Dream XI. He averaged over fifty in test cricket though his one day record was far less impressive. But then he played in an era dominated by test matches with one dayers just making their appearance. He began his career for Bombay and got selected into the Indian team touring the West Indies in 1971. There was controversy at the dropping of Tiger Pataudi as the captain (selection committee chairman Vijay Merchant used his casting vote to favour Ajit Wadek

Algorithmic Black Boxes, Data Scientists and Trade-offs

- July 09, 2020

There is a thought provoking article published in the Forbes on the directions in data science and their probable implications. Its title is quite catchy ‘How Data Scientists turned against Statistics”. At least on the title, it seems to capture a conflict that seems ongoing between the data scientists resting on their tools and the statistical methods and kit that one has got used to in the days of the small datasets. The article seems to posit a trade-off. The trade-off is the larger the datasets, the lower the statistical rigour by an individual analyst who will instead prefer to use automated tools. The sophisticated construction of statistical methodology and consequent inferences give way to automated construction of data collection methodological, analytical and inferential tools with little control in the hands of the data scientist. In the words of the author, the giant leap into the world of data has been accompanied by a giant leap of faith the outcome of which is there is

Trademarks, Generic, Descriptive and the Online Space

- July 07, 2020

At a discussion in a seminar some years back, there was an opinion increasingly felt that intellectual property rights (IPRs) were becoming increasingly technical. By its very characteristics, patents were technical, copyrights were technical in the digital days, while trade secrets too were technical more often than not. What was perhaps not technical was the trade marks. Yet, the opinion was veering towards trademarks would increasingly involve a technical components given the rise of dotcoms. This discussion came to the mind as one read the judgment of the US Supreme Court on the trademark registrations and the conditions associated with them. Trademarks offer distinctiveness to the products, firms, brands and services. They differentiate the offerings of one producer from another. In a universe predominated by differentiation, these are the tools to distinguish one offering from another while conveying what is different about them. At certain level, they seek to enable a firm

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