May 2007

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‘Wax’ing poetic

May 23, 2007 in South Asia | Permalink

“India has a growing middle class estimated at 300 million people.” Emily Wax

300 million is an astounding figure and just a shade below the US population. If indeed India has a “growing” middle class that is 300 million strong, then US and the rest of the world better take notice. There is just a small problem – the figure is almost entirely meaningless.

Middle class is a phenomenally slippery concept. The term was initially used to refer to the urban bourgeoisie. In its modern avatar, it was meant to refer to people who could afford certain amenities. As amenities have become the norm in the West, calls have been made to redefine the term again. The term itself though has a lot of emotional cache and almost 90% of the people in US, according to a survey in 1992, thought themselves as middle class. Statistically, we can define “middle class” as the class of income earners that is within one Standard Deviation of the mean. But for a country like India where the mean wage is less than $2/day, the statistical definition as above would be thoroughly bankrupt.

Main Course: Pass me the knife, please

Let’s briefly analyze Wax’s claim about the numbers in Indian middle class. According to World Bank, India’s GDP was $796 billion in 2006. Assuming that all economic activity was produced by the 300 million (about 1/4th of the real population) and the gains spread equally among them, Gross Income Per Person would be $796,000/300 = $2600/year or $7/day. All hail this “middle class”.

It is fashionable to use terms like “middle class” and then attach numbers like 300 million but both the term and the number are grossly inaccurate.

Newspaper Gestalt

Over years, stories on economic miracle in China and India have become de rigeur in newspapers. The stories are uniformly bankrupt for they fail to get even the basic figures right and put things in proper perspective.

A new foreign correspondent to India, like Wax, is expected to file in his/her share of these formulaic stories along with the expected special report on the heartrending poverty in rural China and India.

There is little hope that we will ever have better coverage or even that different topics will be covered, except the occasional Shilpa Shetty-Gere kiss induced frenzy, given that most foreign press reporters go to other countries with doltish prior hypotheses, look for confirmation, confirm them, and sigh with relief and move on to their next story. The whole problem is exacerbated by the fact that the tour of duties for journalists have shrunk.

On Wax

Emily Wax is a much feted reporter due to her coverage on Darfur. While I have never read her stuff from Darfur, it is unlikely that it will be any better than the shoddy reporting from India. Before her ridiculous article on the current state of Indian economy, she wrote an article on the Shetty-Gere scandal framing the story as a ‘Lexus and the Olive Tree’ kind of fight. Not once did she draw the reader’s attention to the frayed judicial system, or the poorly educated justices, or archaic laws.

Sidhwa’s Lahore – a lovingly embroidered family heirloom

May 21, 2007 in Books, Pakistan | Permalink

A city hasn’t been showered with such love since Dalrymple wrote about Delhi. Bapsi Sidhwa’s edited volume on Lahore in fact far exceeds it. After all, Dalrymple was nothing but a foreigner who had only spent a few years in Delhi when he wrote the book, while Sidhwa in her endeavor is accompanied by a range of distinguished authors and intellects, only tied together in their love for Lahore.

The love for the city, its landmarks, its famed cuisine, its gourmets, its brutalizing summers, its people, its stories, and its relationships shines through on every page.

Every great city deserves an admirer and chronicler of the caliber of Bapsi Sidhwa – someone who will perspicaciously and assiduously collect stories that celebrate her beauty and look unflinchingly, yet lovingly, at her bruised soul and her warts.

The Book

The book strikes an immediate rapport that is akin to being invited to an intimate familial Punjabi gathering. I felt alternately like a kid sitting on the lap of my maternal uncle being told stories about the city, a young adult guiltily listening to the adult conversation about the brutal tales about city’s history, and an objective adult reflecting on history, and politics.

There is a warm intimacy that suffuses each of the stories in City of Sin and Splendor: Writings on Lahore. The additional element of emotional immediacy comes from stories that talk about things we South Asians have grown up with. All of it is made available ‘naturalistically’ by the craft of authors who rarely go beyond what is known. It is an important talent. For authors are always tempted by superfluous cleverness. It is the Jane Austen method of writing in some ways – writing honestly, perspicaciously, and often with great wit about what is known without flirting with the unnecessary or the arcane. It is grounded writing. The authors use words that are well worn and apt and not ones with peripatetic grandiloquent pretensions. The resulting atmosphere in the book is not stifling because of the self restraint, but educated and homely.

I have never been to Lahore. Yet the city stands alive in front of me. Though I don’t eat meat, I savored the morning Nihari with Irfan sahib. I shared in the pain of partition with Ved Mehta and Sadat sahib. I stopped to celebrate the indomitable spirit of Ismat Chugtai. I stood ring side as Bina Shah described the long standing tussle between Karachi and Lahore. And I wore my heart on the sleeve when I read Ranamama by Urvashi Butalia. Butalia’s phrase, “cracked pistachio green walls” will always stay with me for it describes pitch perfectly the color of walls on some subcontinent homes. I also admired the honest revolutionary spirit of Habib Jalib’s Dastoor. How did he know the story of Pakistan before it was ever written?

Third World

We are third world denizens. Our cities have always seemed shabby and poor and slung in deep unending mediocrity. The heat has always been brutalizing, and atmosphere dusty and arid. We have always struggled to grow trees and grass in face of hot summers, scarce resources, and petty corruption. Culture has melted into a thick gooey nothingness pressed on all sides from globalization, self-serving politicians, and poverty. Immigration and sprawl have killed the remnants of other things. Our chowks are nothing but traffic choked dusty islands. Yet we have formed familial bonds and come to be part of our cities. We have found times and places to share. We visit each other’s houses and exchange stories. People come over when we are in need. We listen to the stories of our doodhwallahs (milk men), and our kaam waalis (maids) and though we love to cavil about them, there is an unsaid human connection. Perhaps that is a bit too sunny an assessment. But indulge me for a little. All of it is held together by the incessant chatter. Conversation is the glue that keeps us together. We haven’t yet made conversation into a stylized art of identity negotiation. It is these relations, these conversations, the unsaid courtesies, and the people that Sidhwa celebrates in her book.

Colonial Rule

The British Raj left its mark on Lahore. Kim’s Gun haunts the hollow haunches of the emaciated old city. The gardens and separate civil line quarters for the English Sahibs have entrenched themselves in to the modern hierarchy of the city. More importantly, the Raj has scarred us psychologically. We have never grown to be proud of our heritage and culture. Forever chastened by the West that raced ahead, we have never sat down and taken notice of our heritage. We do pay a lot of lip service to the heritage but seldom do we believe in it.

Delhi and Lahore

I am from Delhi, which in many respects can be seen as Lahore’s twin. The cities share similar climates, somewhat similar Punjabi dominated cultures, similar histories, similar old-new city Raj-inspired distinctions, and similar heartaches of partition. I could find flavors of Delhi in the book – the ‘gates’ of the old city, the civil lines area, the colonial bungalows, the partition stories, and the oncoming McDonald’s culture. In getting to know Lahore, I felt that I got to know my city better.

Contemporary Conditions and History

He whose light shines only in palaces
Who seeks only to please the few
Who moves in the shadow of compromise
Such a debased tradition, such a dark dawn
I do not know, I will not own

Dastoor, Hajib Jalib

Lahore has suffered from the vicissitudes of the people in Islamabad and Washington. The malaise in its contemporary politics, the perversion to its culture from the Islamists and the secularists, both equally delusional and equally adamant, is quickly reducing this great city.

The single most important fact is that the world is wrecked by a thousand mutinies everyday. With globalization and technological onslaught, the mutinies have multiplied. All unleashed, without prior thought. We try to craft our lives around one while we are led by our noses to the next. It is unsettling to stop and take stock of the grievous loss that we will continue to take on our world.

The elite Lahore

The remembrances of a city and the love of a city only come naturally to those with time for leisure. To that extent this book is about the padshahs of Lahore. The book is an ode of the ruling class to itself, to its culture, and to its land marks. Yet, often times the book is much more than that. The everyday street is never far in this book. The everyday street may not have the kaamwali (maid) in it, but it does have the patang baaz’s, the halwais, the richshaw wallahs, and more. It is that everyday street that I carry in my heart.

Links:

  • Flickr Photostream for Lahore
  • Lahore metroblog
  • Bapsi Sidhwa’s biography

    • Chaudhry, Musharraf, and Karachi

    May 15, 2007 in Pakistan, Politics | Permalink

    Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry was born in 1948 in Quetta, Balochistan. Chaudhry went on to work for more than a decade in varying capacities in Balochistan. So it is surprising that the firing of this Baloch has prompted little or no response in Balochistan. The fact isn’t surprising if you look a little closer. Mr. Chaudhry, now feted as a humanitarian crusader, never once raised his voice when the general sahib ordered a full-fledged military assault on Balochistan. The reason why I mentioned this anecdote is because it serves as a useful example for how much arm in glove was Mr. Chaudhry with the general before the glove was discarded and picked up by the opposition parties.

    There is one more twist to the tale – ethnicity. Chaudhry sahib is not an ethnic Baloch but a Punjabi abdagar, whom Balochis despise. We will come back to the ethnic angle later for no analysis of Pakistani politics is complete without analyzing the cross-cutting ethnic cleavages.

    The Upright Justice

    As Chief Justice, Chaudhry’s reputation rests on two cases – the now famous Steel Mill Case in which he ruled against selling of Pakistan Steel Mills to a group led by a friend of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz (whose own position is in doubt due to the fact that he holds dual citizenship). Just as a footnote – the sale, which was overturned by Chaudhry, was authorized by a Cabinet Committee on Privatization led by Shaukat Aziz.

    The second case that made his reputation was his decision to declare the Hasba bill, the NWFP Islamist bill, unconstitutional. Chaudhry was also vocal recently decrying Pakistani government’s complicity with US intelligence agencies and demanding the government provide information about the ‘missing people’.

    The Corrupt Justice

    Chaudhry was elevated to the position of Chief Justice by Musharraf in 2005. Since then Chaudhry sahib has played the role of an administration sock puppet admirably except, of course, in the cases mentioned above. There is little doubt that the humble justice’s wealth has grown with his position.

    Most of the charges filed against the ex-CJP seem like the de-rigueur perks that a government bureaucrat in a reasonable position considers his right in South Asia – use of multiple cars, requiring “senior officials to receive him at airports”, “using helicopters and planes to go to private functions”, and forcing officials to help his son get admission in medical colleges and then getting him appointed as a “Grade 18 Police Officer”.

    Somewhere among the litany of abuses is also this startling fact that Chaudhry wrote decisions on cases worth 55 million PKR. But the scale of corruption allegations can hardly be called dire – certainly not by South Asia’s lax standards. Critics point out more serious charges like property fraud and financial embezzlement dog other justices including two members of the Supreme Judicial Council which will hear the chief justice’s case. (BBC) The critics further allege that “the chief justice was singled out because of his past performance, they say, which created misgivings in official circles about his likely role in the coming legal battles ahead of national elections, due later this year.”

    Timeline– Chaudhry Dismissal to Karachi Clashes

    Significant political events don’t automatically happen. A political scandal much like an unheeded boil festers and then bursts in violence. A timeline can give vital clues as to the kind of infection, who joined in and when, and what spurred the final orgy of violence. So here is a timeline to give a sense of the ebb and flow of this scandal.

    March 9 – Justice suspended. More than the fact that he was suspended, it was the manner in which he was suspended that caught the attention. He was called up to General’s Rawalpindi residence, and held incommunicado for what people allege up to two days. The horror.

    March 12 – Lawyers Begin boycott.

    March 19 – Seven of the country’s judges resign including top judge of Punjab. Newspapers publish the picture of Chaudhry being shoved into a car.

    March 28 – Chaudhry gives a speech arguing for independent judiciary

    April 3 – Lawyers are still on strike. The SJC adjourns the hearings.

    May 6 – Chaudhry gives speech in Lahore

    May 13 – CJP Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, came to address the city bar association on the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Pakistani Supreme Court. Except it was not. It was a choreographed political move targeted to gain momentum against Musharraf. Except the move stalled and unraveled in its own strange way. Chaudhry never left the Karachi airport as PPP and MQM factions waged pitched battles in the streets killing nearly 40 and injuring 150 people.

    Detailed Timeline at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/south_asia/6649463.stm

    Karachi, MQM, Jamat-e-Islami, and PPP

    There are multiple centrifugal forces that make Karachi politics so volatile – the Mujahir-Sindhi-Pathan divide, the enormous class divide, the interaction between those two divides (ethno-class angle), and the divide created by self serving politics.
    The political fortunes keep shifting depending on who is in power in Islamabad and the wishes of the American puppeteers. This current phase of violence saw the lines being redrawn across the MQM –PPP axis but with one key variation – MQM and PML-Q (Musharraf’s party) are now aligned. There is a reason for the realignment – MQM is the only viable political force against Jamaat-e-Islami Islamic fundamentalists that the US government so abhors. There is little doubt in my mind that this is a temporary alliance for Muhajirs have never had strong allies. It is likely that this current episode will eventually end with PPP and Musharraf coming to some kind of deal to thwart both MQM and JI.

    Class and conflict

    One look at the people going to welcome Chaudhry is enough to tell that they were these super well groomed rich elites. PPP has today become a party with significant traction amongst the landowning elite. In Karachi, it is represented and funded by the industrialists and the business owners.

    Media and conflict
    There was of course bias in the way media – and here I mean Western media for that is what I had access to – covered this event – it was the story of how a hero for political freedom and his supporters were thwarted by the autocratic government backed militia. The truth on the street obviously was a bit different.

    Analysis

    The most worrisome aspect of the violence was the collusion between the police and government. The 13,000 strong paramilitary that was deployed to control violence stood casually by as both the MQM and PPP backed militia sparred with each other. What brought home the complicity of the police for me was this classic video clip of a person held by the police on the street still being beaten by, who I am sure, were Musharraf supporters. Some have alleged that the indifference of the paramilitary forces was because they are Punjabi dominated.

    The strangest thing in the whole Chaudhry scandal is not the Karachi violence but the alacrity with which lawyers banded together to protest the firing of the Chief Justice. Mobilization of lawyers seems like a handiwork of the PPP. It is unclear to me as to why would the lawyers protest – they didn’t protest when Mushy was made president. Why are they suddenly so worried about political freedom? It seems to be an exercise in political opportunism.

    Lastly we must focus our attention on Chaudhry. He is neither a crusader for freedom nor a deeply corrupt judge. Chaudhry is somebody who dallied with anti-government stance, found himself in the deep-end, got scared, found the rope thrown by the opposition parties and hung himself with it. Now Karachi hangs in balance with him.

    Further Reading:

    Interview with Eric Berlin, Executive Producer of BlogCritics

    May 10, 2007 in Interviews, Media | Permalink

    This is the third article in a multi-part series devoted to understanding some of the ethical aspects that dog blogging sites. The series will end with an analysis of Blogcritics.org and blogs in general. Prior two articles -

    Can you tell me about your current role in BC and how you came to be involved with it?

    Well, I am the Executive Producer at Blogcritics. I take the position to mean doing whatever it takes to move the site forward and take it to the next place, wherever that next place happens to be.

    I had been writing a sort of e-magazine by the name, Dumpster Bust, in 2003 and 2004 and I would distribute it to friends and fans via e-mail list. Then in November 2004, I started an eponymous blog. It had just been a month since I had started the blog when I discovered Blogcritics.org.

    It was an extraordinary moment — I’ll never forget it. I simply couldn’t get over how great it was to have a community where writers from all over the world could congregate and write about pop culture and politics and everything in between and chat and argue and laugh and hang out.

    I got pretty involved, pretty active right away, and became an editor a few months later I think.

    It was apparent to me from the very beginning what an enormous value that BC offers to both writers and readers. As a writer, I noticed that my own writing was improving, that I was reaching a much larger audience than I ever could have on my own, that I could access free review materials, and most of all, I was making connections and even friendships with great, interesting, wonderful people from all over the world.

    I became an Executive Producer somewhere around the late summer of 2005 and moved into helping provide editorial oversight, though over time my role has evolved to mostly take on business development and public relations.

    Tell me a little more about your decision to blog under real name plus what do you do for your “real” job?

    I use my name because I want to present who I really am, “expose” my writing and the person behind it.

    It’s a little strange being that “naked” before the world sometimes, but that’s a decision all writers much make

    My “real” job is producing websites for a company in Los Angeles. I do try to keep the two roles separate to an extent, though you can of course infer that there’s tremendous crossover in terms of what I have the privilege of learning and experiencing each day.

    Blogcritics is a passion and a job that has to fit into the cracks of my regular life, but that’s something that millions of fellow bloggers out there are also contending with. It’s a balance thing. Relatively few can pull a full-time wage from blogging so it’s an activity born of passion and devotion and even obsession for most!

    You do a full time job and still take time to volunteer.

    I think that people — including the 1,700 “writer-bloggers” of blogcritics, our passionate readers and commenters, our most involved site users, and most of all our hardworking and dedicated and monumentally talented editorial staff members (which includes many of the site’s best writers!) — put in so much effort because they are passionate about the site and our community and want to see it grow and prosper and do well.

    That’s certainly what drove me and what still makes me eager to get up in the morning, flip on the computer (it’s usually on all night, actually!) and see what’s happened since my last visit.

    By the way, I am now one of the three co-owners of Blogcritics.org so my position is no longer strictly a volunteer position.

    In your response, I think you were also alluding to the fact that the success of BC and the volunteerism that we see on it is due to its symbiotic nature.

    Yes, BC is symbiotic — I like to use the somewhat cheesy term “people power” — Blogcritics is a grassroots success story (we’ve never had a dime of investment) literally powered by its membership.

    So our “sinister cabal of superior writers” help one another to succeed, producing stories and work that is good and beneficial to the Internet community.

    BC has an open commenting policy and an open attitude towards accepting new writers. I am sure there must have been plenty of behind the scenes discussions about it. Tell me a little about the process of deciding about policies around BC.

    Open commenting has been around since I joined the site in 2004, and it really falls under the umbrella of creating a wide open community that is open to multiple viewpoints and that has as low a barrier to entry as possible.

    Because of the increased menace of spam, we may one day have to require membership for commenters, but for now we can maintain this arrangement as we always have.

    Tell me a little more about the vision you have for BC.

    Whew… that’s a big one! Blogcritics is in a very exciting phase right now in that we’re expanding into a suite of sites that we call the BC Network.

    Desicritics, our first network site, is now a year old and is thriving as a platform for people who live in and are passionate about the Desi world.

    Now we are looking to create specialty “niche” sites that can capture a new audience that isn’t necessarily into the more magazine-style format that BC presents

    GlossLip has now launched under the direction of Dawn Olsen and is a fantastic place to check all things celebrity and gossip, subjects in which there is an insatiable audience for new stuff, and particularly when it’s done with style and attitude and savvy, which basically sum up everything that Dawn is about.

    We’ve also just within the last few weeks launched BC Forums into private beta and will very very soon go wider with it. Just in testing, we’ve seen the explosive potential of this area — which provides yet another way for our community to communicate, interact, joke around, or just hang out.

    So that’s really the vision right there — providing new ways for our audience and potential audience to learn, interact, and communicate, creating cutting edge content-community networks online

    Eric, I was talking to the other Eric – Olsen- recently and he was telling me of he quickly realized that he would have to assume responsibility if the site had to go anywhere. There are always key actors in a grass root organization. In a way, I am questioning how grass root is a grass roots organization? You are creating a media company from bottom up and I am interested in understanding how norms and policies are decided and who are the key players

    Yes, Blogcritics is as grassroots as it gets — most people don’t realize this!

    The only full-time employee is founder and publisher Eric Olsen, so he is the “man at the helm” for emergencies, trouble shooting, fire patrol, you name it!

    Phillip Winn is our technical director and lives outside of Dallas. I live in Pasadena California and EO lives outside of Cleveland.

    And our editors live around the world — several key editors live in the UK which is great because it gives us “wide coverage” in terms of the unending 24 hour production cycle.

    So it’s all virtual, all grassroots, all people working together to create something that’s never been done before. That’s the thing that’s important remember: Blogcritics is singular in so many ways.

    That’s why it was named as part of the AlwaysOn 100 in the trendsetter’s category, I believe and that’s what makes BC so fascinating.

    Now Eric, a harder question! Do you see this as a model for running media organizations? Even mainstream ones? What the advantages to it? And what are the problems? Is this a model for a more accountable media?

    Well — I see your questions as taking on a few different issues. Let me start with the first one.

    I do see virtual organizations and small teams of founders working closely together as the present and future of software development. The barrier to entry is so much lower than it has ever been, which is a huge boon to the Internet industry and people who simply dig the Internet and technology.

    I’m not sure if it’s the model for “mainstream ones” — I think it depends on the particular circumstances but certainly it’s there as an option.

    At the same time there’s really no replacing in person day-to-day contact. As to your other question about a more accountable media, I think you’re talking about the role of the blogosphere in making the mainstream media and other institutions more accountable?

    I believe so but I am also interested in talking about ownership and editorial policy decisions that are decided differently than they are today. BC is creating a new type of socially owned media company and do you think media itself can be reorganized via this principle and what kind of issues do you see around it.

    Well, I think media in general is in a state of great flux with the role of traditional media companies declining in some ways and changing rapidly to deal with changing times while new and online media companies are gaining audience and credibility and dealing with the many issues that come along with that accountability and responsibility.

    Take for example Mike Arrington at TechCrunch — he’s an interesting case in that he outright declares that he’s not a journalist while reviewing start-ups and tech companies, issuing opinions, and so on, all while openly investing in many of these companies, reviewing competitors, etc.

    We’ve really arrived at a new place!

    It seems blogosphere itself is going under reorganization as media companies poach top bloggers and buy more electronic media assets. Do you see a more corporatized blogosphere in a few years time?

    I see a blogosphere that is maturing and dealing with issues that come with it, pretty similar to what I mention in terms of the greater online media community. I see the blogosphere and traditional media companies, which are online, incorporating elements of one another.

    Yeah,.. WP, NYT, BBC – all have blogs…

    Yes, I’ve recently covered how companies like Reuters and The Economist are incorporating blogs into their online offerings.

    My overarching theory on all of this boils down to a term I call “hybrid social media,” which I think is the future of news online.

    I have covered some of the issues you raise in the article, Netscape Is the Future of News.

    Very briefly, hybrid social news posits a future in which news will incorporate three main forms of content: original content produced by the online media company publishing the site, social news content driven by user submissions and user voting, and administrator or editor-selected content, which includes editor-selected pieces from all over the Internet, including those submitted by the general audience.

    Blogcritics.org has always tried to combat that trend by forming an open platform where competing ideas and ideologies and values can co-exist together under a big tent of sorts. That said, a lot of our stories revolve around popular culture so can therefore escape some of the combativeness found in the arena of politics.

    Though of course we do have a politics area that can get rowdy at times but generally does very nicely in bringing in a vast array of news stories, thoughts, and opinions.

    Movie Review: The Namesake

    May 9, 2007 in Films | Permalink

    The Film

    ‘The Namesake’ is a mediocre film based on an equally middling eponymous novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, the Pulitzer Prize winning London born author of Indian descent. It is a coming of age story of an ABCD by “another badly confused Deshi” (ABCD – Lahiri) [Washington Post]

    The novel traces the story of Gogol Ganguli, son of first generation Indian immigrants – Ashoke and Ashima – presented in the movie as cardboard characters, whose one-dimensional struggles superfluously adorn the movie –and his struggle to come to terms with his cross-cultural identity. Gogol goes through various expected phases of someone shooing away a psychological ghost – unexpressed anger, rebelliousness, and then rapprochement that comes at the behest of his father’s unexpected death and later through his wife’s infidelity. While the issues are real, they seem to have been frozen and then perfunctorily staked over by an inane screenplay by Nair’s usual collaborator – her Harvard peer Sooni Taporevala. It appears that by trying to cram in too much – a bi-generational story – it fails to do justice to any of the stories.

    Samosas, Rasogullas, and Indian Relatives

    Nair captures the perversities of an immigrant’s life with great humor and great eye for detail. We get to sit in the endless uncle-aunty parties full of Bengali food, and watch as our little ABCDs squirm when talked to by the way ‘uncool’ uncle and aunties. We get to see how the American raised children take in the soot laden, chaotic Indian cities and the clinging relatives on their visits to India. Of course the Indian relatives themselves remain caricatures of humans.

    Gogol wants his overcoat back

    Gogol’s overcoat has been done a disservice. Much like the name of Virgnia Woolf was expropriated by the mediocre and unrelated epoynomous play, “Who is afraid of Virgina Woolf?”, Lahiri leans on the exoticness of Gogol to rescue her. Lahiri doesn’t have the intellectual depth to even throw in a line about why Russian authors were popular in India. Gogol’s deeply ironical and existentialist short story Overcoat becomes a peg on which Lahiri tries to hang ‘the namesake’, Gogol Ganguli’s pretentious superfluous problems.

    Visual Metaphor and Nair

    The Atlantic Ocean shimmers exhibiting a grey luminescence; the humid chaos of Calcutta streets is viscerally alive; and the forlorn winter landscape of New York, marked by decay, stoically real. Mira Nair is a master auteur. She has an astute eye for capturing the elemental affective truth of a place. Nair is also edacious. While she has a wonderful aesthetic eye, she uses it with the indulgence of a nouveau aesthete. Nair unhesitatingly and unfailingly puts her camera in front of every scar, every photogenic shot, and includes it.

    Editing: Weaving a tapestry with unusual neighbors

    The movie has been edited in a way that provides for abrupt transitions between different environments. It appears to be a deliberate strategy to highlight the often times almost schizophrenic existence of an immigrant in multiple environments, and continuation and disruption that characters feel as they straddle (or travel between) different microcosms.

    The ‘missing’ girls of Asia

    May 9, 2007 in Politics, South Asia | Permalink

    According to China’s fifth national census, conducted in 2000, there were around 117 males for every 100 females. The sex ratios in much of Europe and US are quite the reverse with there being around 105 females for every 100 males. Amartya Sen in an essay for NYRB argued that the reason behind the discrepancy was misogyny. Emily Oster, who was a Harvard graduate student at the time, published an article in 2005 arguing that “perhaps as much as 45 percent of the gender imbalance observed in the Sen (1992) missing women populations in the period 1980–90 can be accounted for by hepatitis B.” Oster further argued “that the explanatory power varies significantly across space: 75 percent of the missing women in China are accounted for, versus around 20 percent in India.” Oster’s article received a lot of attention on its release. Luminaries like Steven D. Levitt used Oster’s research to take a jab at Amartya Sen. The paper was seen as a sign post of how sometimes prejudicial seemingly convenient explanations can be completely off the mark. The article also produced a fair amount of backlash with Monica Das Gupta, a senior researcher at the World Bank who had prior produced scathing articles documenting female infanticide in Punjab, arguing that Dr. Oster’s methodology was flawed. Das Gupta’s critique didn’t go unrequited and soon the argument had turned into a narrow academic debate. Just recently Das Gupta has renewed her assault with an article that uses some innovative statistics to dig a hole in Oster’s hypothesis. “Das Gupta found that data from a huge sample of births in China show that the only women with elevated probabilities of bearing a son are those who have already borne daughters.” World Bank

    The argument Gupta offers is persuasive, and there is little doubt in my mind that Gupta is right.

    Further Reading -

    May 22, 2008

    Oster admits that she was wrong

    Andy Gelman on Monica Das Gupta being right all along

    Interview with Lisa McKay, Executive Editor of BC

    May 9, 2007 in Interviews, Media | Permalink

    This is the second interview in a multi-part series that will end with an analysis of ethics etc. that underpin BC, and blogs in general. The first interview with Christopher Rose, Comments Editor at BC, can be accessed by clicking here

    Lisa McKay is the Executive Editor of Blogcritics.org. Lisa has been with Blogcritics.org since August, 2004.

    The interview was conducted via email a couple of months ago.

    You joined BC at a time when BC was much smaller than today. Tell me a little more about how you came across BC and what led you to join it.

    I came across BC a few months before I actively joined, while I was in the process of looking for good sources of movie and music reviews. It was unlike anything else I had come across – it still is, really – and I started checking in on a daily basis to read stuff. Eventually, I worked up the courage to post a comment here and there, and then decided that maybe I should actually join the site and try to get some writing done.

    You work full time, are a mother of a young son and a wife. How do you juggle your responsibilities?

    Actually, only two of those facts are true at present – my son just turned 21 and has been away at college for the past couple of years, so juggling parental responsibilities hasn’t been part of the equation for a long time. Having said that, I think that people make time to do the things they want to do if they want to do them badly enough. My husband and I both have pretty intense interests outside of our work and our family life (which includes a lot of shared interests), and we’ve been very supportive of each other’s pursuits, so part of it is that I have a built-in support system, and part of it is that I’ve become very good at multi-tasking and prioritizing. Even so, I wish I could use all 24 hours in the day sometimes.

    While writing an article about why you chose to ‘come out’, if you will, and start writing under your real name, you say that part of the reason was to lay claim on the articles that you have written. This works both ways – now people know whom to hold accountable when they see a ‘perceived’ injustice or have an axe to grind. Has blogging under your real name been a problem? How comfortable do you feel about commenting and blogging about contentious topics?

    It probably says something about the nature of what I write that using my real name has never been a problem. The place where the discussions really seem to get personal is in the political arena, where people seem to take everything to heart and can get quite ugly when they disagree. I don’t have the stomach for that type of discourse, so I stay out of that particular venue. I have opinions on pretty much everything, and I have no problem with expressing them when asked directly to do so, but I really don’t see those contentious discussions as serving much purpose. There are a lot of people who like to “argue” just so they can call names – it has nothing to do with actually listening to what other people are saying – and I just don’t have the time for it, as I see it as unproductive.

    At the heart of your decision to blog under your ‘real name’ is an ethical question that surrounds online media outlets – the issue of accountability. Of course there are real people behind these ‘false’ online identities and they often are accountable but somehow the cost free nature of leaving even the most borderline crazy comment or article under an assumed identity does probably sabotage perhaps reasoned commentary? What are your thoughts on the issue?

    While I understand the reasons that many people have for remaining anonymous online, I do believe that a false persona makes it easier to say things that one might not say when using one’s real name. The faceless nature of the Internet makes that easier anyway – even when using a real name, I think many people say things to faceless strangers that they would never dream of saying in person. Accountability online is certainly a different animal than it is with print media, or with television or radio journalism. This is still in many ways the wild, Wild West, and I think one probably has to work a bit harder in the blogging arena to build up a reputation and to build trust among one’s readership. Once you’ve built up that trust, it doesn’t matter if you’re using a pseudonym or not – you maintain integrity the same way you would if you were using your real name, by doing your homework and being honest.

    Blogcritics has grown exponentially over the past three years from a small fringe Internet outpost to a relative decent size media outlet. Tell me about some of the key inflection points in this journey – as you see them.

    Certainly the biggest change was when we went from a self-publishing site where anyone could publish just about anything they wanted to, to what we have in place right now, where every piece that’s published has been edited. We work very closely with our writers to make sure that we publish polished and well-written pieces while still retaining that which makes us unique, which is our multitude of voices. Our strength has been our continued refusal to homogenize what we do – writers find it easy to feel at home here because we don’t have an editorial “voice” in any of our content areas – we ask our writers to be excellent, but other than that, we ask them to be themselves. I’m not sure there are many places with a readership as big as ours that can offer that.

    Blogcritics is trying to create the norms of running a media organization on the fly. The key policy decisions – open commenting, open attitude towards accepting new writers, etc. – tell me about the behind the scenes struggle that has gone on around them and the kind of ethical questions that you have had to deal with to come to this place.

    We’ve certainly had our share of policy discussions about the open comments policy. As is the case with every site that allows open comments, we get our fair share of flakes and cranks and just plain ugliness. We have yet to come to the point where we squelch that in favor of having more civil conversations, and I think that’s another area where we’re unique. We do have a comments editor who applies our very liberal comments policy with a very gentle hand, and I think that’s about all the control we’re going to have on that for a while. Our open attitude toward accepting new writers seems to work very nicely now that we have editors in place. People are either excited about the challenges and take advantage of the opportunity, or they leave because they don’t make the cut or they don’t want to put in the work. In either case, that works to our advantage, and it’s raised the level of our writing tremendously. BC’s growth has been a really organic process, at least from my vantage point. There have been growing pains to be sure, but we move past them pretty quickly.

    Perhaps this current place is not the final resting place of this ongoing change. Tell me about your vision of blogcritics.org for the future?

    That’s a great question – I wish I had a crystal ball. The quality of what we publish just keeps improving – we’re attracting some really amazing writers, and the section editors are continually working to shape coverage and come up with new ideas. I envision us getting bigger and better.

    What kind of policy decisions do you think are integral to how you see BC? As in what kind of policies can you not see BC without, if any?

    Well, I think we’ve set some editorial standards over the past couple of years in terms of what we will and will not publish (in terms of quality, not content). I can’t see us without those any more – we’ve really raised the bar, and the writers have really risen to the challenge. This is part of the process by which we become accountable.

    How do you look at the role of a Critic? Is there merit in everybody being a critic kind of model? It certainly seems like a competitive market of ideas. What do you see are the positives and negatives of blogosphere?

    Well, it depends on what you’re looking for, I think. The blogosphere has certainly democratized the whole process of criticism, which isn’t to say that everything everyone writes is good, or even worth reading. Sometimes you want to stand around the office water cooler and talk with your friends about the film you saw this weekend, and the blogosphere can certainly provide you with that, and sometimes you want an informed opinion about something, which is what real criticism entails. I think one of the neat things about BC is that we provide both; we have some very enthusiastic reviewers who can give you a very entertaining man-in-the-street opinion about something, but they aren’t necessarily approaching it from an academic point of view, and we have other writers who are incredibly well-informed, educated, and knowledgeable about their area of expertise, and they offer a very different perspective. The challenge and the beauty of the blogosphere in general is that the reader needs to learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. In general, we may need to wade through more stuff, but in the end I think it sharpens our powers of discrimination and makes us better consumers.

    Blogosphere is widely credited with making mainstream media more accountable. Do you see that as its job? If not, then what do you see are the roles of the blogosphere?

    I don’t think it’s the blogosphere’s job to hold the mainstream media accountable. I think that’s our job as citizens, and we’re failing at it miserably. We have the media we deserve. The roles of the blogosphere are as varied as the folks who populate it; I don’t think it has a defined role, or is “supposed” to be one thing or another. It’s a tool, a means of communication, a marketplace of ideas, of commerce, of social interaction – it’s a way of organizing, presenting, and retrieving information. It’s a lot of things to a lot of people, and it’s continually evolving. It is whatever we want it to be at any given moment.

    It seems blogosphere itself is going under reorganization – as media companies poach top bloggers and buy more electronic media assets. Do you see a more corporatized blogosphere in a few years time?

    As soon as people figure out that there’s money to be made somewhere, things change. Certainly that’s happened in the blogosphere, but a lot of the people who are Internet entrepreneurs are also in the business of putting the tools of production and commerce into the hands of the end users. That’s us, and that’s a good thing. I think the business models we’re used to have changed, and are continuing to change. Since I have no business background at all, I wouldn’t even want to hazard a guess as to how this is going to look in five or ten years’ time. If you told anyone twenty years ago what we’d be doing online now, they wouldn’t have believed it.

    Interview with Christopher Rose, Comments Editor for BC

    May 8, 2007 in Interviews, Media | Permalink

    The following interview with Christopher Rose was conducted via email a few months ago. The interview is part of a series that will end up in an article that provides history and analysis of Blogcritics.org

    How did you come to be involved with Blogcritics.org?

    I just surfed in one day and was drawn in by the way the site is so open and accepting to all kinds of people. I made a few comments and then, nervously as I was a fairly novice blogger, applied to join. Afer a few months I was offered the role of Comments Editor, which I mostly love.

    Can you tell us a little bit more about your role in BC and how it has grown?

    Well, after becoming Comments Editor, I also started contributing ideas, some well received, about how we could develop the key qualities of the site into other areas. Hopefully some of this will start to become more apparent over the course of this year as we look to develop some more sites.

    You are part of three major projects aside from BC. Tell us a little more about those projects and how you juggle your responsibilities.

    Well, I don’t know how major they are but I love the potential the web offers to develop new ideas quickly and economically. In addition to my own three blogs, I love the idea of citizen journalism and have developed a repeatable model of how such sites can be launched and made interesting, relevant and profitable very quickly and this is something I’d like to develop more fully. I am also developing an entirely original idea which has the (modest) twins aims of making people’s dreams come true and ploughing a lot of money into micro-credit financing projects to help the world’s poorest people to help themselves. I think the micro-finance model is very strong due to its inherent sustainability and that it doesn’t create welfare dependency but actually empowers people to help themselves. The project just needs a little work on the payment system and a little legal clarification to be fully actualised but I need to find solutions to those two issues so if anybody reading this would like to help, I’d be very gratefu!. I also work as the Managing Editor for the Niner Niner family of blogs, which perfectly complements the work I do for Blogcritics. I am also developing four hopefully major new online projects, two for Blogcritics and two of my own. Taking on a bit more than I can handle is possibly one of my signature habits but I like to be busy – and life is for living, right!

    Ethics, Normative Standards, Policy Making and Blogcritics

    At the heart of your decision to blog under your real name is an ethical question that surrounds online media outlets – the issue of accountability. Of course there are real people behind these ‘false’ online identities and they often are accountable but somehow the cost free nature of leaving even the most borderline crazy comment or article under an assumed identity does probably sabotage perhaps reasoned commentary? What are your thoughts on the issue?

    I think it’s mostly a question of personal preference. I have several online identities, of which the most well known is Alienboy. It’s a name I started using for online gaming which was re-inforced by the fact that I live in Spain, so I am indeed literally an alien boy! I have a semi-dormant-due-to-lack-of-time blog called Alienboy’s World and when I first joined Blogcritics I carried on using that ID for a while. I then decided that the character of Alienboy just didn’t seem right for Blogcritics and reverted to using my full name. Alienboy still has a lot of plans for new sites that will be developed down the road aways but these are temporarily on hold. I don’t see the identity issue as an ethical question unless people abuse it by pretending to be other people, which is obviously totally unacceptable. As to sabotaging reasoned commentary, that’s actually a more complicated issue. Freedom of speech is obviously a major concern and ought to be protected but if people abuse that by making deliberately insulting or offensive remarks then I think there is a case for careful and restrained editing. It’s an incredibly fine line that calls for some serious and careful judgment before hitting the delete key and an issue that I try to keep in the core of my thinking at all times. In the end, I just do the best I can and hope that will be acceptable but it is impossible to please all the conflicting points of view all the time.

    Can you elaborate on how are norms created within a new media organization? The kind of decisions that you had to take, along with rest of the BC community, about the nature, editorial policy and style, commenting policy etc. of BC.

    Well, when an organization forms, obviously the decisions are taken by the people who start it up. The three people that own and maintain Blogcritics are mostly incredibly open to input and tolerant of a very broad range of views and I think that is an important part of what BC is about. It would have been a much less interesting proposition if “The Troika” had tried to imprint their own very diverse views onto the site and wisely they have largely avoided that. On the other hand, they’re all so very busy with stuff that it can be a bit hard to find out what they’re up to. I hope to be able to help bridge that gap and enhance the level of communication between us all over the coming months.

    Blogcritics is trying to create the norms of running a media organization on the fly. The key policy decisions – open commenting, open attitude towards accepting new writers, etc. – tell me about the behind the scenes struggle that has gone on around them and the kind of ethical questions that you have had to deal with to come to this place.

    Well, those policies were in place before I joined so I can’t shed much light on those early days but I feel they were absolutely crucial decisions. Dogma and other rigid belief systems are absolutely the enemy of all humankind and I very much doubt that I would have become involved with the site if it limited itself in that kind of way.

    In your role as a Comments Editor – you probably have to had to deal with ad hominem attacks, spam and other conflagrations with people using all sort of sophisticated ways to get their message across. Tell me a little more about the challenges and how you deal with them while maintaining a free open commenting policy.

    There is a perpetual and natural conflict between freedom of speech and the need to maintain the site’s neutrality, open door policy and simple readability. It’s obviously important to foster an atmosphere of mutual respect and try to maintain some basic level of good manners or simple common civility. On the other hand, to simply not allow any kind of personal remark would render the site sterile and stifling. Wisely, the site uses guidelines rather than rigid rules, which is much more time consuming to manage but I believe that is well worth the extra time and effort involved.

    How do you deal with people who post multiple comments under different names? Should this practice be frowned upon and why?

    It’s not actually that common. There are a few who like to do that for dramatic effect, which is fine. When it is done to create a false sense of support for somebody’s point of view, that is basically just lying and is not tolerated. The worst is when people pretend to be other already known characters in order to create false content and is also not tolerated.

    What kind of policy decisions do you think are integral to how you see BC? As in what kind of policies can you not see BC without, if any?

    I just think that as long as BC maintains its open door policy and avoids becoming controlled by dogma, it will remain the fascinating multi-faceted jewel it is.

    From the policy decisions of BC to how do you look at the role of a Critic? Is there merit in everybody being a critic kind of model? It certainly seems like a competitive market of ideas. What do you see are the positives and negatives of blogosphere?

    There is information and there is the interpretation of information. Making sense of the ever-increasing complexity of the world we live in is a vital part of contemporary life. There are many often conflicting takes on all that on Blogcritics and that dialectic struggle is part of what makes it so special.

    Blogosphere is widely credited with making mainstream media more accountable. Do you see that as its job? If not, then what do you see are the roles of the blogosphere?

    It’s both more complicated and simpler than that. There’s been a huge flattening of society worldwide, although obviously different parts of the world are at different points in that process, which has been going on for at least fifty years now. A lot of the old school mainstream media have imitated the blogosphere by adding comments space to their websites for example. That’s a step in the right direction but until they value it as highly as sites like Blogcritcs do, it often seems like a token measure rather than really getting the point. However, to answer your original question, it’s certainly not the blogospere’s job to make the MSM do anything. They will either come to understand the nature of the new world order we live in and adapt to it or they will fade away into history.

    Blogcritics has grown exponentially over the past three years from a small fringe Internet outpost to a relative decent size media outlet. Tell me about some of the key inflection points in this journey – as you see them.

    The two key points for me have been 1. the incredibly smart decision by the founders to accept all (legal) points of view on the site and not limit the Blogcritics space on any cultural or ideological grounds and 2. the later introduction of having all articles edited rather than self-published. This has been crucial in establishing a massively popular, well-written non-dogmatic site. The fact that the whole operation, editors and writers alike, is entirely voluntary is pretty impressive too. We really do work hard to help the writers improve their writing ability and bring their work to as wide an audience as possible.

    Perhaps this current place is not the final resting place of this ongoing change. Tell me about your vision of Blogcritics.org for the future?

    I think the main site can carry on as it is. I would like to see all the fantastic content by a diverse range of great writers put to better use. I think the simple fact that we have around 1,700 (and rapidly growing) writers offers a lot of potential for the rapid creation of other more focussed sites in the future. I have a few ideas for the kinds of sites we could develop; sites that would offer compelling content around specific themes and those conversations are ongoing. I don’t really know what other ideas the troika may be considering…

    It seems blogosphere itself is going under reorganization – as media companies poach top bloggers and buy more electronic media assets. Do you see a more corporatized blogosphere in a few years time?

    Probably both yes and no! Unless a company understands the interactive essence of the online world, its attempts to operate on the web will be compromised. For example, trying to prevent employees from expressing their views is symptomatic of the old way of doing things. It’s been well documented that companies that empower their workers and include their feedback in the company’s development have a competitive edge over those businesses that try to run an old scholl centralised command and control structure which sees workers as nothing more than cogs in a machine. I believe in transparency and that carries through all levels of a business in a particularly powerful way that transforms everything it touches, to the mutual benefit of all. A corporatized blogosphere that seeks to control what is said will always be inferior to one that allows true free expression.

    Interpretive approaches in Art History

    May 4, 2007 in Art | Permalink

    If social sciences have been sprinting breathlessly towards positivism, art history has been running, equally fast, away from it. Art history’s subjectivist turn can be traced back to postmodernism, and particularly hermeneutics and phenomenology, which pretty much gave immunity to virtually all kinds of interpretations–as long as they were not blatantly wrong in hard facts or flimsy with inconsistency and incoherence. (Kela Shang, Art Historian)

    Art history concerns itself not only with intentions of art-making, but also acceptance and reception of artworks, in other words, audience’s reaction and understanding of artworks, which can veer far away from original intentions, if any, set by the artist. When audience’s interpretations are sanctioned as legitimate, art historians argue what they feel might as well be what others perceive from the artworks they’re looking at, relaying the legitimacy to at times highly personal feelings.

    Ruing the loss of the historical perspective in Art History

    Richard Meyer is an engaging and impassioned speaker. While presenting, he regularly stops to regale the audience with one of his many endlessly entertaining stories based on astute observation. Meyer has been recently touring the lecture circuit giving his well rehearsed lecture on “What was Contemporary Art?” His lecture is about many things – it is about the history of Contemporary Art, a lament against increasing ahistoricism in Art History, and how ahistoricism helps commercial expropriation of Contemporary Art by the culture industry.

    Meyer’s historical argument, which is just based on three ‘events’ – Alfred Barr’s art course in Wellesley College in the early 20th century, a Harvard dissertation by Roselyn Krause on David Smith in 1969, and the 2001 (pre 9/11) advertisement campaign for Museum of Contemporary Art in LA led by Chiat Dey – also ironically provides an unwitting expose’ of the rich but particularistic accounts that pass off as history in Art History. Meyer, arguing for historicism in art history, is quite oblivious of ethical norms for practicing history. Art historians look at history as a way they look at art – they look at it to interpret and find hidden tapestries. By doing this, they can always convey a point – though never a historically accurate one.

    Perspectives from the End

    Contemporary art is obsessed with making ‘clever clever’ comments, says Donald Kuspit in The End of Art. He argues that it is the loss of aesthetics, and Contemporary Art’s singular obsession with sham intellectualism, that is behind the decay. Art, according to Kuspit, should be like religion. It should brook no dissent. It shouldn’t be a cultural tome over which the philistine poseurs negotiate their cultural identity and status.

    Art’s Hubris and Art’s End

    Only ethical practices can escape being subsumed from the oncoming onslaught of commercialism. Art History and criticism, which pride themselves in providing subjectivist approaches open to all distortions and all arguments, are fighting a losing battle. Artists have tried to fight by burrowing themselves in the anti-commercial ethic but they have found repeatedly to their chagrin that commercialism and culture industries have made them cultural items. It is a losing battle because artists rely on the same cultural industries that they fight against. It doesn’t mean that ‘good’ art has nothing to say – it just means it will never have an impact beyond dinner table conversations.

    Solutions Solutions
    There are two ways to fight it – make Art a religion by bringing back focus on non-negotiable aesthetics (Kuspit), or spend time creating a normative framework for art, art history, and criticism.

    Poverty and food

    May 2, 2007 in Health, Politics | Permalink

    NY Times recently reported on research conducted by University of Washington that provides further corroboration for the well accepted fact that a dollar buys you more calories of junk food than say green vegetables. The other associated argument presented in the article is that government subsidies for oil and corn are primarily responsible for the cheap junk food. In effect, tax dollars are subsidizing obesity.