Pearls and swine
bereft of me
Long and weary
my road has been
I was lost in the cities
Alone in the hills
No sorrow or pity for leaving
I feel (chorus)
I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
Friends and liars
don't wait for me
I'll get on all by myself
I put millions of miles
Under my heels
And still too close to you
I feel (chorus)
I am not your rolling wheels
I am the highway
I am not your carpet ride
I am the sky
I am not your blowing wind
I am the lightning I am not your autumn moon
I am the night
I am the Highway -Audioslave
One of my favourites :) ...for good times as well as times when all is not well ...
Friday, 30 May 2008
UNTIE TIED AID
I was part of an international conference in Milan where [b]Tied Aid[/b] was one of the issues on the table.
Tied aid is foreign aid that must be spent in the country providing the aid (the donor country) or in a group of selected countries. A developed country will provide a bilateral loan or grant to a developing country, but mandate that the money be spent on goods or services produced in the selected country. ( Source -Wikipedia)
According to the UN report with the exception of four countries namely Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom most of the major donors offer tied aid as developmental assistance with binding conditions which seriously limit the recipient country’s market access thereby jeopardizing their economic independence.
Instead of offering Tied Aid and exploiting the less advantged nations , the donors should make an effort as much as possible to provide Untied Aid. I know its not possible for all the donor nations yet countries like UK have made it look quite possible. ( Tied aid is now illegal in the UK by virtue of the International Development Act, which came into force on 17 June 2002, replacing the Overseas Development and Co-operation Act (1980). wikipedia)
However, untying aid should go hand in hand with the promotion of local enterprises on the basis of targeted procurement instead of reinforcing dependency on the donor nations. I think UN agencies ; international and local NGOs can provide assitance in this regard.
Check out this article on the issue of tied aid.
"Stingy Samaritans-
Why Recent Increases in Development Aid Fail to Help the Poor"
By Pekka Hirvonen
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/oda/2005/08stingysamaritans.htm
In recent years, aid amounts have been on a constant rise. In 2004, official development assistance to poor countries reached its highest level ever. The United States alone provided almost $19 billion in aid – more than ever before.(3)
But the recent increases do not tell the whole truth about rich countries’ generosity, or the lack of it. Measured as a proportion of gross national income (GNI), aid lags far behind the 0.7 percent target the United Nations set 35 years ago. Moreover, development assistance is often of dubious quality. In many cases, aid is primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries or to benefit powerful domestic interest groups. Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient. Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it, and, all too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.
This paper presents an overview on the volumes, targeting and geographical allocation of development assistance over the past five years. It analyzes various features in rich countries’ development assistance policies that make aid both insufficient and inefficient – despite the recent increases in nominal aid amounts that make rich nations seem generous.
Tied aid is foreign aid that must be spent in the country providing the aid (the donor country) or in a group of selected countries. A developed country will provide a bilateral loan or grant to a developing country, but mandate that the money be spent on goods or services produced in the selected country. ( Source -Wikipedia)
According to the UN report with the exception of four countries namely Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom most of the major donors offer tied aid as developmental assistance with binding conditions which seriously limit the recipient country’s market access thereby jeopardizing their economic independence.
Instead of offering Tied Aid and exploiting the less advantged nations , the donors should make an effort as much as possible to provide Untied Aid. I know its not possible for all the donor nations yet countries like UK have made it look quite possible. ( Tied aid is now illegal in the UK by virtue of the International Development Act, which came into force on 17 June 2002, replacing the Overseas Development and Co-operation Act (1980). wikipedia)
However, untying aid should go hand in hand with the promotion of local enterprises on the basis of targeted procurement instead of reinforcing dependency on the donor nations. I think UN agencies ; international and local NGOs can provide assitance in this regard.
Check out this article on the issue of tied aid.
"Stingy Samaritans-
Why Recent Increases in Development Aid Fail to Help the Poor"
By Pekka Hirvonen
http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/develop/oda/2005/08stingysamaritans.htm
In recent years, aid amounts have been on a constant rise. In 2004, official development assistance to poor countries reached its highest level ever. The United States alone provided almost $19 billion in aid – more than ever before.(3)
But the recent increases do not tell the whole truth about rich countries’ generosity, or the lack of it. Measured as a proportion of gross national income (GNI), aid lags far behind the 0.7 percent target the United Nations set 35 years ago. Moreover, development assistance is often of dubious quality. In many cases, aid is primarily designed to serve the strategic and economic interests of the donor countries or to benefit powerful domestic interest groups. Aid systems based on the interests of donors instead of the needs of recipients’ make development assistance inefficient. Too little aid reaches countries that most desperately need it, and, all too often, aid is wasted on overpriced goods and services from donor countries.
This paper presents an overview on the volumes, targeting and geographical allocation of development assistance over the past five years. It analyzes various features in rich countries’ development assistance policies that make aid both insufficient and inefficient – despite the recent increases in nominal aid amounts that make rich nations seem generous.
Monday, 26 May 2008
One of my Favourite Novels- White Teeth , Zadie Smith
Excerpts from my thesis on the text.
White Teeth is full echoes of other texts, authors and dramatists like Shakespeare, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Salman Rushdie, Euripides, Rabindranath Tagore, E M.Forster, Robert Burns, J.D.Salinger, James Baldwin, Sophocles, etc, and singers like Bob Marley, Freddie Mercury, and Herman Hupfled, philosophers like Sartre, Nietzsche, films like Taxi Driver, Godfather, Rambo and biblical texts like Quran, Bible etc. It is characterized by ‘eclecticism’ which postmodern critic Jean-Francis Lyotard identifies as “the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and ‘retro’ clothes in Hong Kong”(Ex.1,L.103 )Her characters are not only ‘always already’ embedded in their ‘unique’ contexts but are also sites of evolving new subjectivities similar to what structuralist critic Claude Levi-Strauss characterizes “as the place where something is going on”(qtd in Chandler,Ex.1.L.72). In mapping such emerging identities, Zadie Smith, a London based Anglo-Jamaican writer, falls direct in line of succession of postcolonial immigrant writers like Salman Rushdie, Hanif Kureishi, Monika Ali, Caryl Phillips, etc. especially in using ‘extradiegetic’ references.................
‘Multiculturalism’ as a concept is comparatively a new approach in defining the coexistence of various ‘ethnic’ communities. As Dohra Ahmed has pointed out in her review of White Teeth, the concept has been much exploited in the Liberal politics of the new ‘Cool Britannia’ slogan of the 1990s and the capitalists venture to turn “the new ‘hybrid’ nation into a product for global consumption”(Ex. ,L .6). At the same time the term seems to be a paradox in itself for it assumes a fixed preconceived notion of the existence of ‘pure’ and homogenized cultures. The capitalists venture has inadvertently overlooked the ‘difference’ within the notion of ‘ethnicity’. Zadie Smith in this novel has tried to bring out precisely the very conflict of identities that exists ‘in-between’ the domains of difference. Her work reflects the “new politics of difference and diversity” that Stuart Hall explains in his essay ‘New Ethnicities’ (259). It brings out a new version of Dickens’s London by extending the boundaries of ‘Englishness’ to include the emerging new ‘Hyphenated selves’. It reiterates what Homi Bhabha asserts in the introduction to his major book Location of Culture, “The western metro pole must confront its postcolonial history, told by its influx of post war migrants and refugees, as an indigenous or native narrative internal to its national identity”( 6). In White Teeth, Smith has tried to give voice to conflict between the first and subsequent generations of immigrants in trying to find a middle path between the urge to be recognized and the desire to ‘merge’ with others....
©Interesting novel...give it a try!!!
A Bra-Burning Chappal throwing feminist !
Role of a lifetime...
The English department of the Mumbai University was hosting an international seminar on ‘Resistance literature’. And for the cultural events on the fourth day we decided to do a poetic drama titled CRACKED IMAGES, FROZEN FRAMES (first read at Prithivi Theatre –Mumbai on 6th March 2000) by one of our own professor Dr.Sridhar Rajeswaran. I was asked to choose a role and out of the three characters- doctor, patient and companion –I opted for the companion. And then we started to read out the lines for the very first time.
Here goes some of my lines ;)
“Do something!
Open your f***ing eyes
I cannot cope with your being like this
I left you all right
But did you not deserve it?
You drove me to it.
You and your racing
Your car hurtling downhill as though to break the sound barrier…..”
..............................
…..“You and your flashes of brilliance.
Epileptic discharge of mutilated cells
Self-titillating intellectual
Masturbating passionate living
With angels in the void of a library
At least they are all dead.”
......................................
…..“You know well why I stopped
The sexual and the political are so commingled
By the fact of our very existence
Bodily time is species time
The sexual and the political
Are they not part of body processes?
Is not private and public spaces intertwined?
Break your old icons
Of virgin mother and nurturing whores.”
.......................
We started discussing whether we still need a kind of 'radical feminism’ in the world today. Two opposing views emerged. One side arguing that ‘radical feminism’ was the need of the hour at the first stage of the feminist movement to get quick attention and today we no longer require it. The other side pointing out that history is not monolithic and there are multiple histories and today at many places we still require some kind of active radical feminism to change things.
The English department of the Mumbai University was hosting an international seminar on ‘Resistance literature’. And for the cultural events on the fourth day we decided to do a poetic drama titled CRACKED IMAGES, FROZEN FRAMES (first read at Prithivi Theatre –Mumbai on 6th March 2000) by one of our own professor Dr.Sridhar Rajeswaran. I was asked to choose a role and out of the three characters- doctor, patient and companion –I opted for the companion. And then we started to read out the lines for the very first time.
Here goes some of my lines ;)
“Do something!
Open your f***ing eyes
I cannot cope with your being like this
I left you all right
But did you not deserve it?
You drove me to it.
You and your racing
Your car hurtling downhill as though to break the sound barrier…..”
..............................
…..“You and your flashes of brilliance.
Epileptic discharge of mutilated cells
Self-titillating intellectual
Masturbating passionate living
With angels in the void of a library
At least they are all dead.”
......................................
…..“You know well why I stopped
The sexual and the political are so commingled
By the fact of our very existence
Bodily time is species time
The sexual and the political
Are they not part of body processes?
Is not private and public spaces intertwined?
Break your old icons
Of virgin mother and nurturing whores.”
.......................
We started discussing whether we still need a kind of 'radical feminism’ in the world today. Two opposing views emerged. One side arguing that ‘radical feminism’ was the need of the hour at the first stage of the feminist movement to get quick attention and today we no longer require it. The other side pointing out that history is not monolithic and there are multiple histories and today at many places we still require some kind of active radical feminism to change things.
Saturday, 24 May 2008
"The Chilled-Monkey Brains" A la carte Hollywood
Today, I, unfortunately, had to subject myself to the ignominy of watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
If ever there is a serious doubt on the geographical IQ of the Hollywoodians , one should just go through the above mentioned movie to clear all possible misconceptions.
After crash-landing somewhere in the Himalayas , Indiana Jones ,his sidekick and a soigné caucasian female (who follows the hero like a stereotypical Xanthippe ), how in the hell did they reach a village full of starving people who bore not even a slight semblance to the people of Leh-Ladakh, Kashmir or anybody living in the foothills of Himalayas??????
And then closer to the subject of this Blog , the Pankot Palace, which sounded more like Buncombe/Bunkum Palace to me , shocked me to utter disgust with their a la carte dishes. The nightmarish smorgasbord featured live snakes ( which were ravenously gulped down by the obsequious guests/aids) , steroid-boosted bugs, and the height of mythomania- the Chilled-Monkey Brains for dessert !!!!
Zero points to Hollywood for coughing up this daub creation !
If ever there is a serious doubt on the geographical IQ of the Hollywoodians , one should just go through the above mentioned movie to clear all possible misconceptions.
After crash-landing somewhere in the Himalayas , Indiana Jones ,his sidekick and a soigné caucasian female (who follows the hero like a stereotypical Xanthippe ), how in the hell did they reach a village full of starving people who bore not even a slight semblance to the people of Leh-Ladakh, Kashmir or anybody living in the foothills of Himalayas??????
And then closer to the subject of this Blog , the Pankot Palace, which sounded more like Buncombe/Bunkum Palace to me , shocked me to utter disgust with their a la carte dishes. The nightmarish smorgasbord featured live snakes ( which were ravenously gulped down by the obsequious guests/aids) , steroid-boosted bugs, and the height of mythomania- the Chilled-Monkey Brains for dessert !!!!
Zero points to Hollywood for coughing up this daub creation !
Sunday, 18 May 2008
Not being able to put on the Adult"hood"
"Another belief of mine; that everyone else my age is an adult, whereas I am merely in disguise.”
Margaret Atwood
Everytime one feels positive of better times ahead, there are thousands around ( supposedly mature and wise people) to pull you back to the bottom of the pit .... Dreams are squeezed out of your system and you remain but a shadow of yourself ...
The best part of being at the bottom of the pit is that it can't get any worse and that better times are still ahead :)
Margaret Atwood
Everytime one feels positive of better times ahead, there are thousands around ( supposedly mature and wise people) to pull you back to the bottom of the pit .... Dreams are squeezed out of your system and you remain but a shadow of yourself ...
The best part of being at the bottom of the pit is that it can't get any worse and that better times are still ahead :)
Saturday, 17 May 2008
One life...
so many unspoken words
.....................................................................................the weight unbearable
.......................so many broken threads
.......................................................................thoughts unspeakable
.............................paths galore
........................................................................................crossroads, junctions, bylanes
and one life to make it there....
.....................................................................................the weight unbearable
.......................so many broken threads
.......................................................................thoughts unspeakable
.............................paths galore
........................................................................................crossroads, junctions, bylanes
and one life to make it there....
Wednesday, 14 May 2008
Seriousness and life
"It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness which would do credit to any college student, but the monkey is serious because he itches.”
Robert M. Hutchins
"True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness "
Friedrich Nietzsche
Robert M. Hutchins
"True, we love life, not because we are used to living, but because we are used to loving. There is always some madness in love, but there is also always some reason in madness "
Friedrich Nietzsche
How do societies collapse?
I read a book called Collapse by Jared Diamond, thanks to the thoughtfulness of my friend who decided to gift it to me.
Diamond is talking about how societies commit ‘ecocide’ and about external factors that contribute to its collapse…and I thought it would be interesting to discuss the possible ways societies we live in can collapse if we don’t give attention to certain changes happening around us and the possible ways we can counter the ill effects.
For example in Mumbai, the rapid urbanization is more or less done without keeping in mind the ecological balance. Aren’t we literally digging our own graves by being negligent of the fragile environment we live in?Basic things like separating the waste into recyclables and the disposables are not being enforced into practice.
What about the human aspect? When I read Goldsmith’s 'National Prejudics some six years back ,I thought we might all be moving towards the idea of a global citizenship. But the more we move ‘ahead’ we are falling for claustrophobic ideas of nationality, regionalism, and religious fundamentalism.
Still , I want to be optimistic. I like to count the good things ….and yes there are a lot of positive things happening in this world. But don’t know why…I think the bitterness is more newsworthy and hence our news channels exclusively focus on it…so watching news gives me a headache most of the time…A communal riot is one thing which never fails to shock me. The same people we grow up , one day, try to harm us. What is it that drives such madness? The reasons may be economic, psychological, political or combination of it in brainwashing. But are the people who engage in such crimes even aware of what they are doing? Do they repent later?
Sunday, 4 May 2008
Highway to hell !
Best ride ever ! cruising down the Mumbai-Pune highway at the speed of light! ( ok a little bit of exaggeration doesn't hurt anyone)
I never enjoyed high speed rides ...i used to prefer a safe ride anytime but this time I cared a little less ! I don't know why this kamikazi feeling hit me :?
Well here's a tribute to ACDC :)
Living easy, living free
Season ticket on a one-way ride
Asking nothing,
leave me be
Taking everything in my stride
Dont need reason,
dont need rhyme
Aint nothing
I would rather do
Going down, party time
My friends are gonna be there too
Im on the highway to hell
No stop signs, speed limit
Nobodys gonna slow me down
Like a wheel, gonna spin it
Nobodys gonna mess me round
...................And Im going down, all the way down
Im on the highway to hell
I never enjoyed high speed rides ...i used to prefer a safe ride anytime but this time I cared a little less ! I don't know why this kamikazi feeling hit me :?
Well here's a tribute to ACDC :)
Living easy, living free
Season ticket on a one-way ride
Asking nothing,
leave me be
Taking everything in my stride
Dont need reason,
dont need rhyme
Aint nothing
I would rather do
Going down, party time
My friends are gonna be there too
Im on the highway to hell
No stop signs, speed limit
Nobodys gonna slow me down
Like a wheel, gonna spin it
Nobodys gonna mess me round
...................And Im going down, all the way down
Im on the highway to hell
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