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November 19th, 2009
01:04 am - Shailesh Gandhi kisses your privacy goodbye
Recently, I blogged about an important dispute related to the Right
to Information Act. The dispute dealt with two issues 1) that of hard copy
verus soft copy data 2) protecting the privacy of students.
Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi ruled on this issue. The good
news: IITs have to provide a soft copy of the data. The bad, rather ugly
news: can kiss your privacy goodbye.
Here is a quote from this truly horrible ruling (the PDF is here. It is
only 3 pages. You can read it yourself)
the Commission rules that merely giving the name of the person and the
pin code with the marks obtained cannot be considered as an invasion of
the privacy of an individual
If revealing an individual's test scores publicly does not violate privacy,
I don't know what does.
I hope somebody appeals this ruling to a High Court or the Supreme Court.
After all, India's courts have consistently ruled that the right to privacy
is a fundamental right. The courts have also ruled that the right to
information is a fundamental right. The RTI act talks about the conflict
between the right to privacy and the right to information.
information which relates to personal information the disclosure of which
has no relationship to any public activity or interest, or which would
cause unwarranted invasion of the privacy of the individual unless the
Central Public Information Officer or the State Public Information
Officer or the appellate authority, as the case may be, is satisfied that
the larger public interest justifies the disclosure of such information
As someone who cherishes both the right to privacy and the right to
information, I am sure there will be complicated situations that courts
will consider in the future, in deciding when public interest justifies
disclosure and when it does not. This case, in my opinion, doesn't even
come close to causing a conflict. No public interest is served by revealing
a student and their test score to the public. Mr. Shailesh Gandhi did not
even bother to articulate when that would be true in his ruling. Violating
an individual's fundamental right to privacy at the very least deserves a
few more drops of ink.
PS: Thanks to Prof. Gautam Barua for his comment :)
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November 1st, 2009
10:02 am - Important RTI dispute involving the IITs
Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi is going to hear an
important dispute relating to the Right To Information act. Prof.
Rajeev Sharma, a computer sciences professor at IIT Kharagpur has filed an
RTI application seeking test scores of all applicants who appeared in the
IIT Joint Entrance Examination in 2006. The JEE exam board is stalling the
process.
It has been very hard to get complete information on this dispute.
Reporting, like it is usually the norm, has been pathetic. Here is what I
understand of where this dispute currently stands.
Some irregularities in the JEE exam
The plaintiff Prof. Kumar has been doggedly seeking
information about the IIT JEE 2006 examination. He alleges
irregularities in calculating which students made the cut. In fact, the
Calcutta High Court is currently hearing a case on this very issue.
The court asked the IITs to submit the formulae used to calculate
applicants who are offered admits. The IITs have submitted several
different formulae on different occasions. Moreover, they
destroyed all answer sheets before they were supposed to.
Soft-copy versus hard-copy
Now, let's come back to the RTI application that that IITs have not yet
responded to. Times of India has reported that this is an issue of
soft-copy of data versus hard-copy. The paper reports that the IITs have
offered to provide printouts of the data (running to tens of thousands of
pages) at cost to the plaintiff. This clearly would be ridiculous.
However, I am not sure if this is the case. Prof. Gautam Barua, Director
of IIT Guwahati, who is also responsible for the entrance examinations,
responded to me that the dispute was not one of hard or soft copy, but one
of privacy. I could not reach the reporter and got no response from Prof.
Kumar. So, I have to give the IITs the benefit of doubt.
Privacy issue
Prof. Barua claimed to me that the IITs offered to provide the data after
removing personally identifying information. In fact, a news
report seems to corroborate this claim.
IIT Guwahati Director Gautam Barua has said that he had offered the
appellant data for scrutiny with the names made anonymous. IIT Guwahati
[...] had refused to provide marks and personal details of candidates on
a CD as requested by Prof Rajeev Kumar of IIT Kharagpur.
Releasing personal information of applicants would be ridiculous. However
Prof. Barua did not clarify where he stood on the soft-copy issue.
Where it stands now
To me this is such an open and shut case. There is no question that privacy
should not violated. There is also no question that information should be
provided in the most accessible form, in this case a soft-copy. I don't
know why this has been dragging for so long.
Prof. Barua agrees that they have not provided the application any
information yet, and are waiting for the CIC's hearing. This puzzles me.
They could have provided a soft copy of data without private information on
their own accord.
Resolution?
Shailesh Gandhi is going to hear this soon. I hope he clarifies one
important piece of this issue. The RTI act clearly specifies that
information includes electronic data and that citizens have a right to this
data in an electronic form or in the form of printouts. The act does not
specify that a soft-copy, where available, should be preferred. I hope he
does that.
"information" means any material in any form, including records,
documents, memos, e-mails, opinions, advices, press releases, circulars,
orders, logbooks, contracts, reports, papers, samples, models, data
material held in any electronic form and information relating to any
private body which can be accessed by a public authority under any other
law for the time being in force;
["right to information"] includes the right to
obtaining information in the form of diskettes, floppies, tapes, video
cassettes or in any other electronic mode or through printouts where such
information is stored in a computer or in any other device;
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October 22nd, 2009
08:29 pm - On climate change, 'Glenn Beck types' descend on Indian TV
Sagarika Ghose is currently a senior editor on CNN-IBN. I am
not particularly a fan of her. To be fair to her, I might be
misrepresenting her by taking issue with a couple of occasions where she
has been, let's say, less than stellar. As with all of Indian news channels
in English, she is an active champion of the shouting match
culture. Don't take my comments to be condemnation of her, but
merely two incidents where I did not like what she did.
Climate change is in the news because India's Minister of State for
Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh recently suggested that India
should look to curb its CO2 emissions. CNN-IBN had a shouting
match to discuss "India selling out to the West on Climate Change?".
Sagarika Ghose then went on to tweet these enlightening words
- 1. Interesting point raised last night: our problem is poverty, not climate. lets first get rich, then we can go green.
- 2. The richest countries in the world are the greenest. the fact is we need hell-for-leather development, nothing will happen to our skies!
- 3. Is even the science of climate change dodgy? is there any evidence that CO2 is bad for us? who says the climate's changing for the worse?
- 4. for those interested--read The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lamborg. huge amounts spent on "green" tech is a waste of money
- 5. @scanman lamborg says drought deluges were regular 100 years ago when no greenhouse gases.Difference: today you see them on TV!!.
It is reasonable to say that India should ignore climate change since
poverty is a larger issue (assuming that development conflicts with the
climate), but to totally misrepresent facts and science is atrocious.
She mentioned Bjorn Lamborg. I recommend that you watch his
awesome TED talk on what global priorities we should set. Among
other things, this talk argues that we should not fight global warming now.
Addressing the problem and accepting a scientific fact are two separate
issues. I have not read his book, and do not know if he outright denies
global warming. Even if he does, she should have put it in perspective in
light of the overwhelming scientific consensus being in the other camp.
About the Indian media, I was happy that we did not have clowns like Glenn
Beck who grossly misrepresented facts in topics they were not experts on.
I have to to change that view now.
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October 7th, 2009
12:33 am - Statues make for better judges in India's Supreme Court
India's founders could have installed statues in the Supreme Court to
function as judges and these statues would have done a better job than
India's current crop of judges in the Supreme Court. For one, these statues
wouldn't be able to hear any stupid cases. Like the one about Mayawati and
her statues.
I am absolutely annoyed over India's Supreme Court hearing this case. I am
no student of law, and would appreciate if any one could point out what I
am missing here.
Just to recap, this is the story. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister
Mayawati seems to be megalomaniac. She wants to unveil several statues of
herself throughout the state, costing taxpayers about Rs. 5.5 billion ($
120 million). Unsurprisingly, this has riled up several people. Activists
are seeking all avenues to stop this nonsense. A common strategy in such
situations is to approach the judiciary. So far so good.
They file a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in India's Supreme Court. For
any case there needs to be a litigant, the affected party. Presumably, a
few taxpayers file a case against the government claiming that their tax
rupees are wasted. For them to have a case shouldn't the administration
have done something unconstitutional, or have broken the law? How can any
democratic system allow any case where litigants argue about an
administration and legislature's spending priorities? Some folks might want
to spend money on education, some might favor welfare measures, while
others might like statues. Aren't elections meant to settle these issues?
What legal basis do courts have to hear such cases? And what basis are they
going to use to make any judgement? Are they going to prevent the
government from installing Mayawati's statues? What if the statues were
those of Gandhi? What if the plan was to install one statue of Gandhi? When
does a rightful expenditure become wrongful and what authority does the
court have? Forget the authority, what capability do they have? How did
judges suddenly assume they were smart enough to decide how to allocate a
state's budget?
What next? Are they going to direct the Central Government to invade
China?
I usually use the word moron to describe such actors. In this
instance, doing so would be insulting to morons.
One interesting outcome of the case is that, the Supreme Court threatened
to get the Central Government dismiss the UP State Government if they
would not follow the court's orders. Now, I do agree that any government
should faithfully follow any court's orders. Disobedience should be an
impossible solution. Otherwise, our system of Rule of Law would break down.
What happens if the Central government refuses to listen to a court's
orders? The court stages a coup?
In this situation, statues serving as judges would have done a better job.
They would not have heard this case at all.
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September 5th, 2009
09:50 pm - India's police state in Manipur
I very briefly mentioned about Indian Government atrocities in
Manipur, while talking about the abject state of civil liberties in
India.
On July 23rd this year calm unarmed Chongkam Sanjit, a 27-year old was
murdered by Manipur police. Here are a series of pictures that
document Sanjit's murder. Shoma Chaudhury's excellent story from
a month ago goes over the history of violent state overreach in Manipur.
CNN-IBN has an educative news story on the same issue.
Manipur's story seems to like that of Blackwater in Iraq.
Only that it is by India's own government on its own people.
PS: I have written several posts where I have complained about India's
media and CNN-IBN. I have to give them their due for this story and others
by Arjit Sen. Good reporting.
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August 19th, 2009
04:39 pm - "We are morons": Gujarat State Government
The Gujarat state government banned Jaswant Singh's book
"Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence" and had this to say:
Jaswant Singh's book questions role of Sardar Patel during the partition
of India as well as his patriotic spirit. This is an attempt to tarnish
the image of Patel who is considered the architect of modern united India
[...] So, the state government has decided to ban the book with immediate
effect for wider public interest
Translation: "We are morons. We exercise our constitutional right to be
stupid." My first reaction was, "You could do that?"
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August 17th, 2009
07:39 pm - Is Indian outrage over Khan's questioning justified?
A couple of days ago, the leading news story in all of India's news
channels was that of actor Shahrukh Khan being questioned by US Customs and
Border Protection at Newark Airport. A brouhaha was raised (I can't tell by
whom). But from this screenshot from NDTV, one might conclude that the
entire country is up in arms. (That's a different topic for another day).
Famous Indians on twitter were surely expressing their
displeasure. Shashi Tharoor tweeted
This also happens to 100s of innocent Muslims daily who don't have 1
billion ppl to stand up for them. Raises real qsns abt US procedures
I am not sure if means the billion comes because he is Indian or because he
is Shahrukh Khan? Then we have our bone-headed Union Cabinet Minister Ms.
Ambika Soni who wants a tit-for-tat
I have always felt - even when I was frisked there - that the way they
frisk us we should do the same for them here
Yeah, right. This is how a Union Minister wants to organize our security
apparatus -- to spite people.
I am bewildered by these folks' (and new channels) reactions. And I am
still trying to figure out what exactly outrages them. Is it the fact that
an Indian star was stopped, or is it the fact that an Indian was stopped,
or that the US government is (only) alleged to have resorted to racial
profiling at its borders? After all, SRK was still not yet inside the US
when he was stopped. Visiting the US is after all a privilege (not a right)
and the CBP is well within its rights and duties to check who they let in.
And which country have these folks been living in all along? My friends
tell me several stories of being stopped by police within Indian territory.
I too have an incident where I had my civil liberties violated. I was
travelling in a cab in Chennai. A cop stopped the vehicle and shined a
torch light into the car to see what's inside and then let us go. He
violated my right to privacy. Now, your reaction on hearing about this
incident will likely be one of ridicule. "Keep all your privacy, 4th
amendment stuff in the US. This is India." If that is your reaction, I have
made my point.
Where where these folks when recently the story broke, of a
young unarmed man shot by police while being detained by them?
The news channel websites did not have such elaborate coverage. A year ago,
the Andra Pradesh government admitted to torturing Muslim youths.
No one seemed to care. Recently, Human Rights Watch released a report
detailing abuses by Indian Police. Not a sound was heard from
India's political class. Don't know if there are 1 billion ppl or
the government that represents them standing behind these victims.
Indians are silent about such violations of civil liberties and even abuses
and murders by government officials within India, but raise a hue and cry
when one was merely stopped not within the US, but at its borders.
Fascinating.
I have to mention how Shahrukh Khan has conducted himself. In a dignified
manner he answered in an interview
They said my name was common. I was too polite to ask, 'common to what?'
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July 2nd, 2009
02:25 pm - My thoughts on the ruling against Sec. 377
I am really happy today over the Delhi High Court ruling parts of Section
377 unconstitutional. The ruling is available in PDF format
here. The entire judgement is awesome. The judges did not restrict
themselves to narrow legal issues, but spoke overwhelmingly about broad
constitutional issues such as privacy, dignity and equality.
In the run up to the court case there was a lot of discussion about
homosexuals accelerating the spread of HIV/AIDS, and that was one argument
for same-sex intercourse to remain illegal. I was always baffled by such
discussion and to me the issue was about privacy and individual liberties
in a democratic society. It was clear to me as day, that Section 377 is
unconstitutional. I am glad that the Judges spoke about civil liberties in
no uncertain terms.
Here are a few nuggets from the ruling:
- The ruling cites court cases from various countries including Lawrence
v. Texas which struck down sodomy laws in the United States.
- I did not know that the Indian Constitution (like the United States
Constitution) does not have an explicit "Right to Privacy." On the issue of
privacy there are mentions of Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v.
Casey.
The Court went above and beyond what it was called to do. In a single
stroke, it accorded protection against discrimination on the basis of
"sexual orientation." I found this really surprising.
We hold that sexual orientation is a ground analogous to sex
and that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is
not permitted by Article 15. Further, Article 15(2)
incorporates the notion of horizontal application of rights. In
other words, it even prohibits discrimination of one citizen by
another in matters of access to public spaces. In our view,
discrimination on the ground of sexual orientation is
impermissible even on the horizontal application of the right
enshrined under Article 15.
The Court clearly understands that a Government or a Constitution cannot
grant fundamental rights to people. Sweet :)
In the present case, the two constitutional rights relied upon i.e.
'right to personal liberty' and 'right to equality' are fundamental human
rights which belong to individuals simply by virtue of their humanity,
independent of any utilitarian consideration. A Bill of Rights does not
'confer' fundamental human rights. It confirms their existence and
accords them protection.
Kudos and thanks to Chief Justice Ajit Prakash Shah and Justice S.
Muralidhar.
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11:09 am - India not too late in decriminalizing homosexuality
Today, the Delhi High Court stuck down discriminatory provisions of Section
377 which criminalized homosexual behavior. This is not too late, compared
to what happened in the United States. It was only six years ago, on June
26, 2003, that United States Supreme Court struck down sodomy law in Texas.
The case is Lawrence v. Texas and was ruled 6-3. Add a couple of
Scalias and Thomases to the court and they'd have ruled against
freedom.
The Delhi High Court ruling talks clearly about liberty and equality
guaranteed by the Constitution of India. A win for human rights.
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09:59 am - Women in the workplace
A couple of days ago I visited Doordarshan's Chennai studios for a
recording. After I left, I couldn't help but think about gender roles and
women in the workplace.
Nearly every person I encountered was a male. When we entered the studio
room, there were a coterie of about ten men, whiling away their time (which
I guess is typical of a state-run enterprise, but let us not get to it
now). Security personnel at the gate, a group of people collecting
information on who enters or leaves the place, camera crew, sound
engineers, and the show's producer were all men. Employees in the make-up
room were all women, reinforcing gender stereotypes. There was one woman in
the studio who checked the sound level, and two there were two female
janitors.
I am curious to know why there were no male employees in the makeup room.
Or, why all cameramen, light operators, studio foreman and the producer
were all men. Is this because women were denied opportunities by their own
families, or because society discriminated against them?
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July 1st, 2009
09:18 am - Al Franken wins
My final score on election night (Nov. 4, 2008) is 2-3 (won 2, lost 3).
Al Franken has finally won the Minnesota Senate race after the state's
Supreme Court ruled in his favor. I like Al Franken for this video,
where he rips stupidity (aka Fox News) apart.
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June 27th, 2009
09:02 am - Why is privatization a bad word?
Government-owned businesses are running huge losses. Air India is Rs 10,000
crores in the red. Tamil Nadu's transport corporations lost Rs 700 crore last year.
Whenever privatization is mentioned as a solution, politicians oppose it
strongly. Tamil Nadu's Minister for Transportation recently said
that state owned transport corporations "would never be privatised,
whatever the losses they incurred and they would continue to function as
government undertakings." J Jayalalitha is organizing protests in
Neyveli opposing any move on the part of the central government to divest
itself of stake in Neyveli Lignite Corporation.
I am sure there are good arguments from both sides of this issue. What
surprises me most is why parties exhibit no ambivalence. After all, they
present a strong case for privatization, when it comes to Tamil TV
channels. The leading parties in Tamil Nadu all "have their own" private TV
channels. The DMK family owns Sun TV, Jayalalitha owns Jaya TV, PMK owns
Makkal TV. These channels are all successful. So are private channels
without any political affiliation. Hardly any one watches state-run
Podhigai.
Tamil Nadu's citizens overwhelmingly view and support private TV channels.
If privatization can work for TV channels, why can't it work for a
transport corporation?
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May 25th, 2009
09:39 am - Stop saying girls outshine boys
Stop saying "Girls outshine boys," because they don't. It is this time of
the year, and board exam results across the county are announced. The
recurring theme is girls do better than guys. I was always puzzled on how
this could be possible. The data is crying out loud asking someone to take
a look. Where are all the anti-Larry Summers of India?
This year, 82.28% of girls cleared the CBSE exams while only
71.29% of boys did. In this article from 2004,
[Educator Rita Kaul] feels that "the methodology of CBSE exams is more
suited to the girls who find cramming easier. Boys, on the other hand, do
better in entrance exams that are application-based."
Great. Thanks for sharing your feeling.
Everyone conveniently ignores the most important story here. Only 41% of
candidates in this year's CBSE exams are girls. Girls do not get
educated as much as boys do. (I know this is just one board, but after
cursory glance at numbers in state boards exhibit the same disparity. World
Bank development indicators convey the same.) It is likely that
underperforming girls drop out at higher rates than underperforming boys.
People and the media either want to ignore this, or think it is just the
norm and not newsworthy. At the very least the media can afford some
attention to this fact and get people thinking for a moment before they go
back to discussing IPL's closing ceremony.
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May 20th, 2009
01:32 pm - The Devil in Dover: Book review
The seemingly never-ending battle between religion and science in the
United States reached a federal court once again in the Dover
trial, a case pitting the theory of Intelligent Design
(ID) against Darwin's theory of Evolution by Natural
Selection. For those who don't know, ID is a relatively new
concept that contends that living organisms we see around us today are too
complex to have come about by evolution and must have been "designed" to
take their present form by their "designer". ID makes no attempt explain
who the designer is, or what mechanism the designer employs. At the surface
it sounds like a good idea and hence the debate in school boards around the
US that students should be exposed to alternate views.
What is not well known is that intelligent design itself is simply a
substitute for Creationism as described in Genesis, with all references to
God replaced with designer and creation replaced with intelligent design.
In fact, the primary text book for ID Of Pandas and People is a
find-and-replace job on a creationist text book. A draft of the book even
had the term "crintelligent designism", a result of a poor
find-and-replace.
The trial in Dover was specifically about whether or not ID is
religious propaganda and whether teaching it would be a violation of the
establishment clause of the First Amendment to the US
constitution. I originally came to know about the details behind the trial
from this talk by Ken Miller, who is a professor of Biology
at Brown University and who testified during the trial.
In the library here, I came across a copy of The Devil in Dover by
Lauri Lebo stacked among other newly released books. I was
hesitant to pick up this book since I already knew a lot about the trial.
But I am glad I did. The book is very well written. The author has brought
a dull courtroom battle to life. In addition to the trial, the book
illustrates attitudes and actions in the small town, lies and hypocrisy
amongst the school board, the conservative movement using social issues as
a wedge to retain power, and parents and teachers' resolve to stand up for
truth, science and the US constitution. Throughout the narration, the
author intertwines her own personal conflict of faith with her father. It
is a gripping book and I could not put it down.
Here, a couple of quotes. Mr Callahan's testifying how much he
cares about the US constitution:
[PLAINTIFF COUNSEL]: [...] Mr. Callahan, do you feel that, as a Plaintiff
in this case, you've been harmed by the actions of the Dover Area School
District [...]
[PLAINTIFF]: Yes.
[PLAINTIFF COUNSEL]: And can you tell us how you've been harmed?
[PLAINTIFF]: I think it goes to the heart of the complaint. It's a constitutional
issue. I'm a tax payer in Dover. I'm a citizen of Dover. I'm a citizen of
this country. [...]
And, you know, I've been -- there have been letters written about the
Plaintiffs. We've been called atheists, which we're not. I don't think that
matters to the Court, but we're not. We're said to be intolerant of other
views.
Well, what am I supposed to tolerate? A small encroachment on my First
Amendment rights? Well, I'm not going to. I think this is clear what these
people have done. And it outrages me.
The best line was from Judge Jones to conclude the trial:
[DEFENCE COUNSEL]: Your Honor, I have one question, and that's this: By
my reckoning, this is the 40th day since the trial began and tonight will
be the 40th night, and I would like to know if you did that on purpose.
THE COURT: Mr. Gillen, that is an interesting coincidence, but it was not
by design.
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May 17th, 2009
10:40 pm - Fortunate to have India's democracy
My friends know I was clearly excited on the day the votes in
India's parliamentary elections were counted. I was very nervous that
voters might return a fractured verdict. Voters proved all the pundits
wrong by voting for stability with a clear preference for the leading
coalitions UPA and NDA and rejecting the "parking lots." and
showed how smart they were. Rural voters thrashing NDA's India
Shining campaign is still fresh in memory. India's voters have
come of age. This is a great time for India's democracy. It makes me so
proud to be an Indian.
We just have to look at our neighbors to understand how lucky we are ---
Burma, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. I was watching Fareed Zakaria interviewing
Pervez Musharraf on CNN and startled to hear this exchange.
ZAKARIA: Do you believe that the Pakistani military is a professional
military, in control of the nuclear weapons, dedicated to fighting the
Taliban? Or is there a need for some transition? Is there a need for a
strategic mind shift?
MUSHARRAF: Five hundred percent, there is no need of any mind shift.
These aspersions are caused by those who want to weaken Pakistan.
Pakistan's strength is its army. And anyone who wants to weaken
Pakistan attacks the Pakistan army and the ISI. And unfortunately, I...
ZAKARIA: And you stand by both, the ISI and the army?
MUSHARRAF: Yes, yes. Yes, indeed. So, I personally think that there is
some vicious campaign going on against Pakistan. Because if anyone wants
to weaken Pakistan, attack these two institutions ...
Musharraf is indeed correct. Pakistan's strength is its army. I feel bad
for our neighbors. And I feel so fortunate to be able to say my country's
strength is its democracy.
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May 16th, 2009
03:08 am - My thoughts on India's elections
Great job India. In the land of elephants and cell phones, India's Election
Commission has done an outstanding job conducting fair elections and with
prompt results (I'm looking at you Minnesota).
Overall result I wanted a clear mandate and I was not too concerned
which party won. I favored the UPA over NDA. Glad that they won. Surprised
at the resounding positive verdict in favor of UPA.
The left's rout has been the sweetest part of this elections. I view
them pretty much like Republicans in the US now. In the latter part of the
previous Lok Sabha, all they did was oppose. Their policies hurt the poor
people they claim to stand for. Dead because of their brain-dead opposition
to the nuclear deal and their screw up in Nandigram. Good riddance.
Hindutva seems to have been kept at bay, at least for now. The BJP ran
stupid personal attacks against Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Did you know
that building a temple at Ayodhya was a part of their manifesto? And throw
in Varun Gandhi. Thank Lord Rama, they failed.
Nice tweet by thecomicproject
@b50 I believe in pulling out all stops to win, but BJP whined..and
whined. I guess a country wants winners not whiners.
The incumbents won. Looks like India is rewarding NREGA, farmer loan
waiver, "inclusive growth", and a clean leader in Dr. Singh. I like the
clear message from India. Congress by itself has 200 seats, the highest by
any single party since 1991.
Karunanidhi has come out on top yet again. This man is shrewd. Some
thanks should go to Captain Vijayakanth for taking votes from AIADMK. PMK
is fully routed. Sweet :)
3 for the price of 4 Laloo Prasad Yadav offered Congress only three
seats as part of its seat-sharing. Congress went alone in Bihar. Laloo's
RJD now has only 4 seats in all. And, two of these are won by Laloo
himself. He has to give up one. "3 for the price of 4" heard on NDTV.
ECI's website is down on this day :(
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May 11th, 2009
02:29 pm - My tweet mentioned in Glenn Greenwald's blog

Here's a small moment of fame. My tweet and EliLake's
reply are mentioned in Glenn Greenwald's blog.
Glenn Greenwald wrote an article pointing out the US mainstream
media's silence in covering US arrests of journalists while covering
similar behavior on the part of Iran. It is in his usual style --- long,
well-researched with lots of pointers, presenting his arguments in a way
that would convinces most rational thinkers. The article also showed
screenshot of a tweet by Eli Lake. I was amused at this comment and
asked Eli Lake' what his response was. His response,
@mssnlayam Apples and oranges. Roxanne Saberi wasn't using her press card
as cover for terror. Also it's moral idiocy to equate US and Iran
I tweeted back deconstructing his argument:
@EliLake Implying journalists mentioned in the story to have been jailed
by the US (and released w/o charge) are terrorists? Any evidence?
and
@EliLake "moral idiocy to equate US and Iran" No one did. I see US the
leading light for freedom. I also recognize hypocrisy when I see it.
Greenwald himself has a detailed response on his blog.
Eli Lake finally had this to say:
To all the lefties rushing to Greenwald's defense. Yes our government is
more lawful, civilized and humane than Iran's. I stand by that.
I find it funny how people totally move away from the pertinent discussion
and talk about something totall unrelated. Instead of commenting on the
actual cases of journalists arrested (and later released without charge)
that Greenwald has pointed out, Lake goes on a tangent babbling on what he
likes about the US. Nice strategy: set up a strawman (Greenwald and
lefties), pretend that they claim Iran is more lawful, civilized, and
humane than the US, and beat down the strawman.
I understand Twitter is not suited for talking about complex issues, but
not points for totally evading the question. I am really curious to see if
Lake has a coherent response.
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May 5th, 2009
07:36 pm - Ron Paul on Swine Flu makes me rant
In the past I have effused on how much I liked Ron Paul. He is one
(probably the only) politician who is consistent, honest and speaks his
mind. More importantly, he is smart and rational. Though I don't always
agree with him, I have had no difficulty understanding why he comes to a
particular policy position.
Few will disagree that Ron Paul is an idealist. He focuses not on
nitty-gritty practical details but on broad philosophical issues. It is
however a problem when he tries to argue on the practical implications of
his policy positions. Like most people, he observes what happens around him
and highlights instances that affirm his ideology. Which is fine except
that sometimes he tries to have it both ways. For instance, his comments on
Hurricane Katrina and the recent H1N1 swine flu outbreak to present is
limited government philosophy.
According to Ron Paul, big government is bad. A big federal government is
unconstitutional (I am not capable of reasoning whether or not something is
unconstitutional, so I will not get into that discussion.) A bloated
federal government cannot well serve its people.
Here are his arguments (paraphrased):
- Hurricane Katrina was a fiasco because people expected the
federal government to act. And oh, have I not already said that the
federal government is inept?
- The Obama Administration is blowing out of proportion the possibility of
the swine flu pandemic. They want to accumulate more power by
making use of this opportunity.
This bugs me. He can't blame the government for both acting and not acting
(in different situations). Imagine if swine flu really becomes a pandemic
with consequences much worse than Katrina? And Ron Paul, if alive, will
then be claiming "I told you so. Federal government inaction caused this
pandemic." He can't have it both ways.
By making such naive reflexive arguments, Ron Paul risks sounding more and
more like the other morons on the right.
PS: I still like him.
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April 26th, 2009
06:33 pm - How I stopped wasting time
I have been working really hard the past few months. I slowed down a bit
last week to cool down, recharge and become active again. In this post, I
will write how I morphed from an procrastinating grad student to a
productive one.
I know from my conversations with my friends that grad students waste a lot
of time. They usually operate in bursts --- they scramble the month before
a paper deadline, but otherwise spend a lot of time being idle. They spend
a lot of time consuming blogs on various topics. Want to find an expert on
the torture memos, the stimulus package, NFL draft prospects, the Indian
Premier League, or fivethirtyeight.com's poll numbers? Ask around for grad
students and you are sure to find intelligent grad students well-versed in
these various topics.
On top of this, they usually live in a persistent state of guilt, because
they do not do what they are supposed to. They cannot allocate a Saturday
to read a book they badly want to. Why? Because they do not want to feel
guilty of not working on a Saturday. Instead they will choose to spend the
entire day idle doing nothing.
I was one such student. I could be easily distracted away from my work. I
used to procrastinate a lot. I wanted to break free, focus on work, and
work hard at that. I have say, I succeeded and here is how it happened.
Economist article on why people procrastinate
I read an article in the Economist that was kind of stating
the obvious, but it had a profound impact on me. The crux of the article is
that people procrastinate when they are tasked with huge abstract tasks.
The problems that I am trying to solve in grad school are vast open-ended
problems with no end in sight. It is easy to get bogged down thinking about
accomplishing an enormous task and make no progress as a result. The key is
to understand this, split your problem into small concrete sub-tasks,
and device a course of action that you can evaluate every couple of days.
For instance, we are beginning to work on an idea for PLDI submission (due
in November). We have absolutely now clue how it will pan out nor what we
need to do to get there. Nevertheless, we have a rough roadmap, and I have
an immediate task at hand that should take me two to three days. I can
evaluate at the end of three days where I am, but during that time I can
think just about this task and not be saddled by the big picture.
Scrum for research
Early last Fall, our research group starting using "Scrum for
Research" as suggested by our friend over at Maryland. Our
group meets thrice a week, MWF. Each meeting that lasts about 15-20
minutes. Each person gets to speak for two minutes on what they did in the
two days prior to the meeting and their plan for the next two days. While
this can seem like a very demanding environment to work in, we really like
it. Trying to come up with tangible goals that we can reach in two days
makes us efficient and productive. If you are doing systems research, you
should try to incorporate scrum into your research workflow.
Aftermath
I have become very organized outside of work as well. I pursue my other
interests without feeling guilty, have great weekends and eagerly look
forward to going to school early on Mondays.
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April 12th, 2009
12:32 am - My endorsement: The party that has promised a time machine
It is election time in India. There are so many parties and factions and
coming up with whom I would endorse has been an intense though experiment.
I have finally found a winner. My support goes to the Samajwadi Party (SP)
led by Mulayam Singh Yadav.
Parties promise free electricity for farmers, free rice and so on. No party
has managed to match SP's vision. SP promises to invent a time machine and
will take us all to a future time where things will be dramatically
different. People will no longer be divided on the basis of religion or
caste. They will no longer die of old age. There will be no more
unemployment. Every one will be employed in hunting and gathering.
More from the party manifesto:
The Samajwadi Party has vowed to work against the use of English in
education. [...] Wherever work can be done by hand, computers would be
abolished. [...] The SP has also come out against mechanized farming
[...]
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