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April 11, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Signals from Haidergarh Enron raises a stink Of cops and robbers |
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EU’s growing concern over Taliban activity
Corruption, camera and coming clean
The mantra of our age: deny, deny, deny CBSE exams end but greater challenges lie
ahead
Working parents happier
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The Congress may call it the second Tehelka, but the rigging and misuse of official machinery in Haidergarh was not quite out of the ordinary. Many of these allegations were not substantiated by election authorities, who were extra vigilant this time considering the sensitivity of the constituency. Mr Rajnath Singh being an astute politician and the Chief Minister to boot, his victory was almost a foregone conclusion. He took no chances, though. A large number of National Democratic Alliance (NDA) leaders campaigned vigorously for him. The interest was more in the margin of victory, which ultimately proved to be more than 41,000 votes. Though the triumph gives legitimacy to his government, he cannot really exult over it, considering that the Bharatiya Janata Party has lost the Sadabad seat to the Rashtriya Lok Dal of Mr Ajit Singh. So, from now till March next when elections are due in the state, he will have to be on his toes to revive the party. What is remarkable about the Haidergarh result is that the Bahujan Samaj Party — which had supported its allies, the Samajwadi Party in 1993 and the Congress in 1995 — has almost caught up with the SP. While Mr Rampal Verma (29,059 votes) of the SP trailed far behind Mr Rajnath Singh (70,231 votes) to reach the second position, Mr Mata Prasad Choudhary of the BSP ended a close third with 28,650 votes. The BJP will have to take a close look at the emerging trend and so will the SP. Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav is no longer able to project himself as a sole challenger of the BJP. Muslim votes are also slipping out of his hands. Interestingly, Mr Yadav did not raise the Tehelka exposes during electioneering, for whatever reasons. He also made a tactical error. His own community was greatly annoyed with him for dropping a Yadav candidate at the eleventh hour. The Congress has got a severe drubbing in Haidergarh. Its nominee polled a mere 1,649 votes, even less than the 2,087 votes that went to an Independent. That is a major embarrassment, considering that the Congress had emerged victorious in the constituency whenever the BJP could not claim it. In fact, the seat was vacated for Mr Rajnath Singh by Congress MLA Puttu Awasthi, who has been a Jitendra Prasad loyalist. This development was indicative of the disenchantment with the central leadership in Congress circles. Mr Awasthi had a good rapport with Muslim voters, who reportedly voted for Mr Rajnath Singh in large numbers. |
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Enron has raised a protective wall around itself to contain the damage flowing from the Madhav Godbole report and to hit back at the MSEB’s punitive rebate demand of Rs 402 crore. If the board’s action was ridiculous, so is the power plant’s counter- attack. It has raised the political force majeure clause in the power purchase agreement (PPA) which is really intended to protect its economic interests from changes which are purely political in nature. Essentially it is an insurance against government take-over or any unreasonable unilateral decision which makes the functioning of the power plant unviable. In its notice served on the Centre, the state government and the MSEB, it says that the pointed criticism and threats of the Chief Minister and the Power Minister and the delay in the submission of the Godbole committee report on ending the Enron-MSEB face-off as the factors forcing it to invoke this stringent provision. It also wants to narrow the options of the state government to pull out of the second phase of the Dabhol power project. The company has a genuine grievance, intensified by the imposition of the penalty of Rs 402 crore. From November onwards the MSEB has stopped drawing power and making payment, which it is obliged to do even if it does not accept any electricity. Enron demanded and got the money from the central government under counter guarantee. The December bill is still pending and when the company pressed for payment the MSEB demanded power of a certain MW without any advance notice. There was a delay of a few hours and another clause of the PPA came alive resulting in the penal rebate. The fight between the two cannot get any dirtier. The Centre is behaving as though everything is normal. It has not acted as vigorously as it should have all these four months since the dispute erupted. It has now decided to concede the demand of the company to seek conciliation and, if that fails, go for arbitration. Actually the initiative should have come from the Centre, in which case it could have remained in control of the situation. Now it is reacting to a reasonable stand of the company and looks a bit helpless. It is reasonable to suspect that the Centre wants to be a shadowy figure, not wanting to show its hand to potential investors in infrastructure. An ambivalent posture suits it. Or, does it? Any investor will like to know the ground rules in unmistakable terms and the Enron experience is a negation of this. |
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Indulging in acts of corruption appears to have become the birth right of most politicians. The rules of the game are simple. The one who gets caught with his hands in the till becomes a hero in the eyes of his followers. But he still has to silence a troublesome opposition demanding his head. So the next part of the game is to spot a crook among the rivals for drawing level on the uncertain scale of corruption. The tehelka tapes showed the stinking underside of the National Democratic Alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata Party. Mr George Fernandes, Mr Bangaru Laxman and Ms Jaya Jaitley were the principal victims of the daring expose. The Congress and other Opposition parties celebrated the event by stalling proceedings of the two Houses of Parliament. But the Congress has had to abruptly cancel the celebration of the BJP’s fall from grace. Mr Vincent George was as close to Ms Sonia Gandhi as Mr Fernandes is to Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee. However, while Mr Fernandes continues to enjoy the trust of the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition’s Man Friday has had to go into hiding because of the CBI raids on his premises. The timing of the raids made it look like vendetta, but the enquiry into the assets of the Congress President’s George was ordered nearly a decade ago. Now even his wife has been brought into picture. But getting a George for a George was only the beginning of political version of the game of cops and robbers. The exposure of one Bangaru has resulted in the Congress having to face the embarrassment of owning the misdeeds of two of its state level leaders. The media reports about Chhatisgarh Chief Minister Ajit Jogi having procured an allotment letter for a petrol pump from the “quota for the jobless” from his Congress colleague and friend Mr Satish Sharma should, to some extent, satisfy Mr Laxman’s political urge of blood for blood. But getting a “tribal for a Dalit” was evidently not enough. The BJP-led NDA had “lost” three senior leaders to the tehelka tapes. It needed one more from the Congress for an honourable draw in the game of corruption. It did not have to wait long. The resignation of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee President V.S. Koujalagi, allegedly involved in a bribery scandal, means that the two major political parties are ready to play cops and robbers again. |
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EU’s growing concern over Taliban activity As public attention in India remained focused on the announcement of the appointment of the suave, sophisticated and experienced Mr K.C. Pant to initiate negotiations with a wide cross-section of public opinion in Kashmir, few people appeared to take note of a dramatic development in the approach of the European Union towards developments in Afghanistan. Even as Mr Jaswant Singh was in Europe, engaging the European troika, Paris was rolling out the red carpet for a high profile welcome to the “Lion of Panjshir”, the legendary Ahmed Shah Masood. Appalled by the Taliban’s treatment of women, its advocacy and export of medieval Islamic terrorism and its wanton destruction of Buddhist treasures of mankind, the European Union has evidently decided that it is time to take off the gloves and turn its moral indignation into effective action to deal with the Taliban. Given the generally cautious approach of the Europeans to developments in distant lands, the significance of these developments should not be underestimated. Masood was on an extended tour of Europe last week at the invitation of the President of the European Parliament Nicole Fontaine. He was warmly received in Paris by the President of the French national Assembly Raymond Forni and by Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine. Asked whether he was seeking military assistance in Europe Masood responded: “Faced with the aggression of Pakistan, I give myself the right to seek aid anywhere” and for good measure added: “What happened to the British (in the 19th century) and to the Red Army will also happen to Pakistan” in Afghanistan. Masood availed of his visit to Europe to call for more concrete support for the anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Masood’s visit to Europe comes at a time when the actions of the Taliban and its Pakistani backers are becoming a source of serious international concern. Emerging fully armed and trained, from Taliban controlled areas of Afghanistan hundreds of jehadis of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) are engaged in a struggle to overthrow the secular government of Islam Karimov from bases in the Ferghana Valley. The IMU is also targeting the governments in Tajikistan and Kyrgystan. At the same time hundreds of Pakistani “volunteers” assisted by scores of Chechen fundamentalists are actively assisting the Taliban in military operations against Masood’s forces in northern Afghanistan. Even as extremist Sunni groups like the Sipah-e-Sahiba enjoying close links with the Taliban, target their Shia brethren across Pakistan, the Taliban themselves are having no compunctions in slaughtering Shias in Bamiyan and elsewhere in Afghanistan. Iranian concern at these developments is only understandable and natural given the way Iranian diplomats have been targeted and killed in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the meantime even as General Musharraf and his Interior Minister Lt General Moinuddin Haider proclaim that they will clamp down on sectarian groups indulging in violence in Pakistan, everyone knows that there is a wide chasm between rhetoric and reality in the Musharraf dispensation. Given the mutually reinforcing links between the ISI on the one hand and extremist religious parties like the JUI and the Taliban on the other, it would be naive to imagine that the good General who seeks to offer unsolicited advice to our Prime Minister on how to deal with the “Tehelka” episode has either the will, desire or ability to clamp down on the jehadis in his country. The jehadis are, after all, the children of the ISI. As Mr Pant commences consultations with the J&K Government, political parties, NGOs and organisations representing different sections of civil society he will have to bear in mind the character of the ruling Punjabi dominated military establishment in Pakistan. Much as its apologists like American Academician Dr Stephen Cohen may argue otherwise, we cannot ignore the fact that our neighbour is ruled by a “rogue army” that undermines democratically elected governments at home, even as it promotes jehad abroad. The very existence of this army establishment is premised on a belief and need for compulsive hostility towards India. It was after all General Musharraf himself who proclaimed in Karachi in April, 1999, that low intensity conflict with India would continue even if the Kashmir issue is resolved. It should, therefore, be evident that neither General Musharraf nor the military establishment he heads will end support for jehadi terrorism in Kashmir, unless they are compelled to realise that the price the army establishment is paying for its misguided policies far exceeds any benefits it can hope to derive. While General Musharraf has called Prime Minister Vajpayee’s “Ramzan Ceasefire” and its subsequent extensions a “hoax”, the reactions of ISI supported “jehadi” groups to Mr Pant’s appointment are revealing. The Lashkar-e-Toiba has described the move as “part of the political design to subvert the ongoing struggle”. It has said that India has undertaken the move to ease the pressure that its security forces have faced from militant attacks. Mushtaq Zargar, the terrorist released in wake of the hijacking of IC 814, who now heads a jehadi outfit called Al Umar Mujahideen, has stated that there will be no cessation off jehad against India and that no one will be allowed to talk to India, adding that “traitors will be dealt according to Islamic Law”. The two salient features that emerge from such statements are that the ISI still believes that India can be forced out of Kashmir by “bleeding” it and that any Kashmiri individual or group seeking to talk to Mr Pant will be targeted and eliminated. While mainstream political parties, NGOs and organisations representing ethnic and religious groupings would publicly interact with Mr Pant, the nature of contacts with the Hurriyat and Kashmiri militant groups like the Hizbul Mujahideen will necessarily have to be discreet, carefully planned and free from the glare of the media in the initial stages. While Syed Geelani declares the Kashmir issue to be a religious and not a political problem, echoing the views of the Islamabad based, ISI supported United Jehad Council, other Hurrriyat leaders have necessarily to be discreet in joining issue with him or disagreeing with Islamabad’s policies publicly. They are all, after all, politicians who have an understandable fear of the guns of the jehadis. One hopes that even as Mr Pant pursues his efforts, contacts between Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control will continue in some form or other. The growing discontent about being treated as virtual colonies of Islamabad in POK and the Northern Areas needs to be constantly kept in focus. Even as the political initiatives of Mr Pant proceed ahead, New Delhi cannot lose sight of the fact that there has been a marked deterioration in the security situation in J&K since the moratorium on offensive operations was announced in November. While predominantly Kashmir militant groups like the Hizbul Mujahideen have been relatively silent during the last two months, the jehadi groups like the Lashkar or the Jaish-e-Mohammed led by Maulana Masud Azhar, that are made up almost exclusively of Pakistani nationals, have stepped up attacks on the security forces. More importantly, they appear to have established bases and hideouts in major urban centres like Srinagar and Anantnag. These jehadis have also utilised the moratorium on offensive operations to muster local support and threaten and intimidate the human assets of the security forces. When the snows melt on the Himalayan passes next month, new groups of jehadis belonging to these groups will be infiltrated across the LoC and function from secure bases and hideouts in the valley. New Delhi has to realise that continued extensions of the ceasefire with no signs that support for crossborder terrorism from Pakistan is going to end is going to lead to a dangerous deterioration in the security situation. Thus, while action to fence the international border north of Jammu is a good development, we cannot allow the security situation in the valley to further deteriorate by asking our armed forces to operate with one hand tied behind their backs. The safety and welfare of our men in uniform is far more important than a few diplomatic pats on our backs commending our restraint. |
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Corruption, camera and coming clean I am not rich enough to be able to enter the official residence of Union Ministers and strike lucrative deals, but I do have my sources in the highest places. One of them has just given me the photocopy of the first draft of a Prime Ministerial speech reportedly being prepared by some of the top brains of the country. My mole swears on the wad of currency notes that I gave him that it is 100 per cent authentic. According to him, a few paras may be revised; some lines may be added and some deleted, but the basic concept will remain the same: "Mere deshwasion, I address you with a deep sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. Thanks to concerted efforts of my government, there has been a marked decline in bhrashtachar in the country. This month, only seven scams came to light, as compared to as many as 12 last month. Such quick turnaround is unprecedented in the history of Bharatvarsh. You will see even faster elimination of corruption during the coming days, once the Press begins to practise self-restraint as we will force it to. "At the same time, I must add that the surfacing of more than the average number of scams recently is in no way indicative of any decline in moral values. You should not be misled by the jugglery of numbers and instead analyse the total amount involved, which is peanuts. A wrong impression has been created because despite inflation and the subsequent increase in the cost of living, the definition of what constitutes a 'scam' has not been revised. In future, only those cases that involve more than Rs 50 crore will qualify to be called scams. "Still, we are not sitting idle on the scams that have already been exposed. I assure the nation that no guilty person will be spared. The security staff of the officials concerned has been suspended and asked to explain how journalists with video cameras could escape their attention. "As far as the VIPs themselves are concerned, I know for certain that they are absolutely innocent, but still enquiries have been ordered, wherever feasible. They are hapless victims of an unholy attempt by the ISI and other enemies of the nation to destabilise the government. "I caution the opposition not to say a word about the scandals at this stage. We should sit across the negotiating table and hold consultations in-camera while the Research and Analysis Wing completes its dossiers on their leaders. Since the honours are more or less even, we should issue a joint declaration that corruption is a global phenomenon and its unprecedented growth in recent times is only a conclusive proof that we have entered the world trade order in right earnest. "I advise my partymen to defend the minor indiscretions, if any, of their beloved leaders by highlighting how low and competitive the rates of speed-money charged by them, if proved in court, in spite of being our top functionaries, were. In fact, the rates may be the lowest in the world. I am happy to announce that a Group of Ministers will go abroad soon to conduct a comparative study and present the larger picture before the world. If all goes well, they will be able to attract a lot of foreign capital. "It is a pity that instead of understanding such nuances of high diplomacy, certain vested interests are busy trying to discredit the government. Their mischief will be countered in a pro-active manner. We are exploring the possibility of prosecuting all nosey journalists and their supporters. "The Information and Broadcasting Ministry is equally determined to stamp out such indecent exposures. In future, no TV channel will be allowed to air similar corrupting tapes. If necessary, we will not hesitate even to put a blanket ban on video cameras, WTO or no WTO. "Jai Hind." |
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The mantra of our age: deny, deny, deny The current hit single “It Wasn’t Me by Shaggy” (featuring Rikrok) celebrates, with wickedly infectious glee, the uses of shamelessness. A man caught red-handed cheating on his girl must, or so the song tells us, at all costs, and in the face of all the evidence, deny, deny, deny. Now who and what does this remind us of? There have been some great champions of brazen denial in recent years: Diego Maradona ignoring the video evidence of his notorious handballed goal against England and ascribing it to the “hand of God”; OJ Simpson swearing to dedicate his life to finding his wife’s “real” killer (any hot leads, OJ?); Neil Hamilton and Jonathan Aitken denying their proven corruption to the point of their economic ruination; and of course the great denier himself, Bill Clinton, passim, from “I did not have sex with that woman, Ms Lewinsky” to the rejection of any improprieties in his last-gasp Pardongate. The barefaced denial, the giving of the lie direct, has become, in this age of saturation media coverage, an increasingly prominent feature of public life. It is now routine for even the age’s greatest monsters — the war criminals of ex-Yugoslavia or Cambodia — to deny their atrocities, knowing that their power of access to the world’s airwaves is almost certainly greater than any journalist’s power of access to the truth. When great crimes are openly admitted — Timothy McVeigh boasting about the Oklahoma bombing, the Taliban taking pride in the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas — it’s so unusual that you find yourself fighting the urge to praise the criminals for their plain speaking. I once sat in a courtroom in Australia, listening to the testimony of a truck driver accused of murder — of having deliberately crashed his vehicle into a bar he had been thrown out of, killing and maiming many people. The man had clearly been carefully coached in the important contemporary art of saying the thing that is not. His dress was sober, his eyes downcast, his manner shocked and decent; and for a long time, and almost persuasively, he denied his guilt. But in the end the coaching couldn’t save him. After he’d repeatedly denied that he was the sort of man who could do such a thing, he made the mistake, under cross-examination, of saying why. “For me to half-destroy my truck,” he explained reasonably, “is completely against my personality.” The jury quickly found him guilty and threw away the key. What did for him was that flash of unpalatable truth. A more skilful liar — or rather, denier — would have known better. “It wasn’t me.” Many such consummate exponents of the arts of brazen obfuscation are presently in the news. In Britain, successive governments have colluded with the British agricultural lobby to unleash not one but two plagues upon the world. The first, BSE, was the result of (1) turning cows into cannibals and then (2) allowing farmers to save energy costs by giving their cattle food that hadn’t been boiled long enough or at high enough temperatures to kill the deadly germs. But of course the Tory government of the day did not admit its complicity; nor did the farm lobby own up to its part. Instead, both parties pretended, for a long time, that the links between BSE and its crossover human variant, CJD, were “unproven”. And now here comes foot and mouth, and we discover that three years ago the present Labour Government declined to outlaw the use of pigswill as feed (even though many of our European partners had done so), and failed, once again, to ensure that the swill was boiled long enough or at high enough temperatures to be safe. Once again, the decision was cash-driven: the farm lobby wanted to cut corners and save money, and the farm lobby got its way. Do we hear the government or the lobbyists admitting they were wrong? Of course not. “It wasn’t us, it was this Chinese restaurant that imported illegal meat.” So that’s all right then. We can just blame the Chinese. We all know the kinds of things they eat. Meanwhile, in India, the BJP-led government has contracted an acute case of snout-in-trough disease. The sting operation carried out by the excellent website tehelka.com — what a difference the internet has made to press freedoms in India! — showed many of the country’s leaders accepting bribes on videotape. There have been some resignations, but no admissions of guilt, and much talk, by the shamed leaders and other governing party figures, of a sinister “conspiracy’’ against the ruling coalition. The new BJP party President has spoken of creating a new code of conduct for people in public life, but at the same time has refused to expel his corruption-tainted predecessor. Apparently, and in spite of the video evidence, it wasn’t necessarily him. And now, as the USA, the world’s greatest contributor to global warming, repudiates the Kyoto treaty designed to reduce environmentally harmful emissions, President George Bush goes so far as to claim that the link between greenhouse gases and global warming has not been proven. (“It wasn’t us.”) This is what the cigarette companies used to say about cancer, and it’s about as persuasive. But the President has a big megaphone, and if he goes on repeating his claims he may even make them stick for a long, damaging time. Just sometimes a song stumbles on a truth about the spirit of the age. The Shaggy/Rikrok hit is cheerfully unrepentant about its amoral little discovery. Deny your wrongs and you will right them. As Nancy Reagan might have put it, “Just say no.” It’s plainly an irresistible proposition. You hear it everywhere right now, hanging in the air like a mantra. All together now: “It wasn’t me . . .” By arrangement with The Guardian
CBSE exams end but greater challenges lie
ahead Fun and games were far from their minds when 298,000 odd students finished writing the last of the annual Indian school leaving examinations on Monday, what with tough entrance tests to engineering and medical colleges still looming ahead. While more than 490,000 Class X students had breathed a huge sigh of relief on March 27, the Class XII students caught up on Monday, wrapping up the mammoth examination exercise that was conducted by India’s Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). “This is make or break time. I have to give my best shot to the entrance exams for engineering. I just have to get into a good college,” said Rajneesh Sharma, a Class XII science student in the Capital who wishes he could “freak out like the 10thies (Class 10 students)” instead of having to “slog it at home.” “I have butterflies in my stomach. The rest of my life rests on my exams — CBSE and entrance — these are the marks that will decide what I become later on,” R. Varun Nair, a Class X student from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in the Capital said. Right through till June when Delhi University and other varsity campuses in the country come alive with hoards of students trying to get into the courses on offer, science students will be busy giving various state and all-India entrance examinations. Varun’s friend, Abhijeet Dutta, who also finished his exams, said: “Most of my friends are busy with exams. While I have to wait till the results are out and start doing the rounds of colleges, my friends are busy pouring over their books.” The CBSE had conducted exams for 793,344 students from 5,521 schools at 2,335 centres in India and abroad from March 7 to April 9, of which 100,000 students wrote there papers from the Gulf. Though the board was dogged by a few controversies — Class X students who gave their Sanskrit exam found a photograph for a 15-mark question in their language paper missing, there were reports of anomalies in the maths, economics and French papers as well — things have been smoother than in previous years. Earlier, CBSE Controller of Examinations Pavnesh Kumar had said that while there were problems with the Sanskrit paper, there were no problems with the other papers. “The schools have sent their complaints, the subject experts will study the complaints and decide whether there were any problems,” he said. The CBSE, meanwhile, has gone on to the next stage of evaluation. “Our experts are meeting and fixing marking schemes that will be followed by evaluators,” CBSE spokesperson Rama Sharma said. “The first stage is complete. There still is the correction and results that have to be declared. Our work has just begun”. But for a “lucky” few CBSE Class XII students exams got over in March. “I have been partying with friends who don’t have any exams to give and are carefree like me,” Neha Dara of Delhi Public School said. “I have been going to the movies, spending time hanging out with friends, attended a wedding and will probably go out for a holiday before I get busy with college admissions.” But for most students like Anuradha, who is giving her medical entrance examinations, it is time to study botany or zoology, pour over diagrams and mug up equations, all the while keeping fingers crossed to get through to their desired college.
IANS |
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New parents are more likely to be happy in their relationship if they both work, according to an Australian study presented at the “Helping Families Change” conference held in Melbourne recently. Suzanne Higgins from Victoria University’s School of Nursing surveyed couples who were first-time parents of babies’ aged between three and 15 months. About half the women returned to part-time or full-time work one month into the 10-month study. Initially, there was little difference between the single and dual income families, but after four months of returning to work, the mothers in the dual income group reported significantly higher levels of marriage satisfaction than those women who had decided to stay at home. The men in the dual income group were also happier with their marriage than those who were the sole breadwinners for the family. Almost 60 per cent of the 69 couples surveyed had a combined annual income of more than (Australian) & 60,000. Interestingly, the study also found that women did most of the housework in both the dual and single income families. They also spent more time than the men looking after the baby. Men participated a bit more as time went on in the study, but women were taking more childcare responsibilities.
WFS
In the dark California’s ongoing power shortage has given other states a special opportunity to lure high-tech companies to move. For instance, Minnesota has put a billboard in the Silicon Valley proclaiming that while they may have snowy winters, they don’t have power problems: “White Outs — Occasional. Black Outs — Never” it proclaims. Other states have been just as inventive in attracting corporate attention, with Tennessee sending flashlights and Michigan dozens of cases of glow-in-the-dark mouse pads.
AP
Reviving a lost art Roopa Vohra is working at reviving the lost art form of Thewa jewellery which was patronised by the Mughal kings. Once the preserve of tribals in Rajasthan, exquisite jewellery pieces are made from glass and 23 carat gold. Vohra has patented Thewa and sells handcrafted pieces to politicians, bureaucrats and film personalities. “It took me months to explain even what I was looking for. Some people in Rajasthan had forgotten Thewa jewellery and others had not even heard of it,” she says.
WFS
The
new generation of Japanese robots A family of souped-up answering machines, mechanical tomcats and servants wired to do our bidding is competing for a place in our homes. In Japan, some of these robots are even threatening to rival flesh-and-blood family and pets as the country’s rapidly greying society looks to technology for a helping hand and companionship. At the forefront of robot technology since the 1970s, when manufacturers rushed to automate factory floors, Japan has no problems with machines taking over the living rooms. Technologists brought up on a fare of cute and helpful robots in the media are striking up robo friendships as more practical robots such as Aibo make it into the nation’s, and the world’s, homes. Electronic pets are all very well, say the scientists, but we should develop more humanoid robots to help around the house. Better mobility is just one reason. Even more important, say researchers at America’s leading robotics laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it is easier to interact with and control something human-like. The robot would also find it easier to learn from us if we interacted with it on a normal level, says Professor Rodney Brooks of MIT’s artificial intelligence laboratory. “An important aspect of being human is interaction with other humans. For a human-level intelligent robot to gain experience in interacting with humans it needs a large number of interactions. If the robot has humanoid form then it will be both easy and natural for humans to interact with it in a human-like way.’’
Guardian |
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Trees, plants, men, animals, grass - these and all other things I see as different coverings like pillow cases, some made of fine cotton, and others of coarser stuff, some round in shape and others square. But within all these pillow cases there is one and the same substance, cotton. In the same way all the objects of the world are stuffed with the unconditioned Sachchidananda, I feel as if the Mother has wrapped Herself in different clothes, and is peeping out from them. **** When I look on a woman of character belonging to a respectable family I see in her the Divine Mother arrayed in the modest garb of a chaste lady; and again when I look upon the public women of the city sitting in their open verandahs arrayed in the garb of immodesty and shamelessness, I see in them the same Divine Mother sporting in a different way. —Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna, 1000, 1003 ***** I have seen lovers promising each other that they will love each other forever and forever. And not knowing anything about the next moment!.... If they are a little alert, they will say: “It feels in this moment, it is a truth of this moment....”That is why lovers always prove to be deceivers to each other. In the end they think they have been cheated. They have both promised things which they cannot deliver. —Osho, The True Sage **** He who backs out after promising help to the needy is wicked. **** Those who break promise go straight to hell. —From Dr Manjula Sahadeva, Maharishi Valmiki Ke Upadesh |
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