Internat Scholars

"The Hindu" is a respected Indian newspaper.  When it reveals on its front page what amounts to a big scam, it must attract the attention of many readers.  The report is shocking to say the least. Scholars are being tricked into publishing their research work as papers in dubious "International@ journals, who would print anything for a fee. And many genuine work has appeared in such journals, which make a mockery of the peer reviewed system being followed by genuine scientific journals published by genuine universities, institutions, scientific societies all over the world. Earlier I had published a blog on how PhD scholars in India indulge in outright robbery, stealing parts of  published work and pasting them into their own papers. Even a respected scientist of repute was in the dock when his name was associated with a paper published  by a scholar he was guiding, who took the  illegal shortcut of snitching large portions from published work. To get a number of papers in their name, unscrupulous researchers now pay to get their papers published by unknown publishers of journals that have come up like mushrooms after a monsoon. They publish everything, from science to economics in one journal  without editing or peer review. They falsely associate reputed scientists and other scholars as being on their editorial board or as "honorary" reviewers.  They even mange to get DOI for the papers and a surfer hits these papers thinking they are genuine publications. Perhaps organized criminal gangs operating out of Easter Europe or South America or Somalia may be behind this scam.  However, real papers are appearing in these false journals which have zero impact factors, uploaded by foolish scholars attracted by the offer of seeing their precious papers published abroad. The only way scholars in India can save themselves is to publish their work only in Indian journals of repute, published by institutions or organizations like NISCAIR or Universities and  long established Societies etc. It is very difficult to get papers published in reputed journals in USA or Europe as peer reviewers thoroughly scan the work and reject them if they do not come up to the exacting standards set by the journals or the institution which publishes them. Millions of dollars are being spent by scholars which could have been used  for better purposes.  It is about time, all Universities, Institutions and Societies with the UGC and the HRD Ministry  put a stop to Indian scientists paying for publishing their work in  journals which are big frauds. And scholars should not quote references in their papers to such inferior papers published in unknown journals who claim to be "international". 

"The Hindu" is a respected Indian newspaper.  When it reveals on its front page what amounts to a big scam, it must attract the attention of many readers.  The report is shocking to say the least. Scholars are being tricked into publishing their research work as papers in dubious "International@ journals, who would print anything for a fee. And many genuine work has appeared in such journals, which make a mockery of the peer reviewed system being followed by genuine scientific journals published by genuine universities, institutions, scientific societies all over the world. Earlier I had published a blog on how PhD scholars in India indulge in outright robbery, stealing parts of  published work and pasting them into their own papers. Even a respected scientist of repute was in the dock when his name was associated with a paper published  by a scholar he was guiding, who took the  illegal shortcut of snitching large portions from published work. To get a number of papers in their name, unscrupulous researchers now pay to get their papers published by unknown publishers of journals that have come up like mushrooms after a monsoon. They publish everything, from science to economics in one journal  without editing or peer review. They falsely associate reputed scientists and other scholars as being on their editorial board or as "honorary" reviewers.  They even mange to get DOI for the papers and a surfer hits these papers thinking they are genuine publications. Perhaps organized criminal gangs operating out of Easter Europe or South America or Somalia may be behind this scam.  However, real papers are appearing in these false journals which have zero impact factors, uploaded by foolish scholars attracted by the offer of seeing their precious papers published abroad. The only way scholars in India can save themselves is to publish their work only in Indian journals of repute, published by institutions or organizations like NISCAIR or Universities and  long established Societies etc. It is very difficult to get papers published in reputed journals in USA or Europe as peer reviewers throughly scan the work and reject them if they do not come up to the exacting standards set by the journals or the institution which publishes them. Millions of dollars are being spent by scholars which could have been used  for better purposes.  It is about time, all Universities, Institutions and Societies with the UGC and the HRD Ministry  put a stop to Indian scientists paying for publishing their work in  journals which are big frauds. And scholars should not quote references in their papers to such inferior papers published in unknown journals who claim to be "international". 

Rethinking on Electric power

My son sent me a mail alerting me to a site that showed how a normal reading lamp could be converted into by replacing its bulb with a LED strip powered by a  9 volt battery.  I am fascinated by this kind of thinking on converting our  high power  machines into low voltage devices. From the time of Tesla and Edison, we have been using high  line voltages between 110 to 230 Volts, AC or DC. And electrical engineers have stuck to designing machines that work only at high voltages and currents. We already have small devices like cell phones that work wonderfully on low voltages and negligible current consumption. In addition, we have hand held torches powered by rechargeable batteries that can be charged using hand wound systems like old telephones, or from solar panels or wind power generators. Solar lanterns are the  latest craze in many countries.  We have the technology to design low power devices. The current thinking has to be changed. We cannot continue to build huge dams across rivers , destroying forests and disturbing wild life. Further dams have a limited life, high maintenance and their efficiency decreases due to silting and low inflow whenever the rain fall becomes deficient. We can instead use solar panels on rooftops to power low power lighting, and work low power appliances. We could redesign refrigerators to work on 12-18 volts , using a built in inverter to work compressors or better use solid state cooling systems that are silent and use very little current. In fact the electric system in each home should be redesigned to work on low power, between 12 to 18 volts and all appliances redesigned to work at low , safe voltages. For too long have we been making machines that work only on 230 volts and 5 to 16 amps. Everything we use can be made to work on low voltages.  Only our lazy nature and the stupid belief that we will be able to power everything  through big power stations that burn fossil fuels or work on nuclear energy. Koodankulam Nuclear Power station in Tamil Nadu has acquired much controversy over high public opposition from local residents who fear   silent radiation, nuclear meltdown or  Fukushinma  and Chernobyl style accidents, compounded by unplanned for tsunamis or ocean flooding caused by climate changes. Hence, investing n wind power and solar systems or even tidal power systems can be better and safer alternatives. So far the poor public has been fooled by the so called experts that we need huge power stations to power our industries. This is a big lie. The famous BMW car is manufactured in USA using power made from methane piped in from landfills. I wonder if this technology is so outdated that we cannot use it for powering our own industries in India. We really must ask our  industries to switch over to lower power devices and newer technology. Burning diesel and Natural gas or coal is becoming expensive and  we will have to  reduce their consumption as these fossil fuels will either run out or become too costly to recover economically. Let us hope, some intelligent people begin working on this plan to save our planet. We cannot continue this conspicuous consumption any more.

The Wisdom of the Buddha

Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha after attaining enlightenment while meditating under a Bodhi tree.  What we skip over is the fact that the tree symbolizes a perfect system that is deeply rooted in the soil of knowledge, its branches holding out the various aspects of wisdom, all brightened and enriched by the sun that falls on its heart shaped leaves.  We tend to equate wisdom with knowledge. The Buddha never claimed he was the only wise person in the world and that he had a monopoly on dispersing understanding among the witless masses. What the Buddha had attained was gained after years of meditation, deep thought and discussion with sages whom he closely questioned. He had to torture both his mind and body to attain that wisdom.

His enlightenment or what we call ‘wisdom’ or ‘teachings’ came from the analyses he made of the collective knowledge then prevalent in the Indian subcontinent.  He never assigned any extra spiritual source to his knowledge or interpretation of the answers to the woes of humankind. That was the real kernel of his wisdom, which he tried to communicate to other human beings.

The Eight fold path he suggested to his followers was the righteous way to a better life, or Nirvana, the end of all worries that harassed humankind. He was perhaps the master who taught the real art of living, sans dependence on gods and spirits, freeing the human mind using Sankhya philosophy. Yet, within his lifetime, the collected wisdom broke down and became the subject of debates and vociferous fission leading to the very frictions that Buddha wanted humankind to overcome. Humankind has neither, then nor now attained or acquired the Wisdom the Buddha had. It has remained an esoteric philosophy to be discussed in Universities and monasteries amid chants, incense and tantra rituals.

It must be remembered that the economic conditions that prevailed during the life time of Gautama were very harsh and trying for the ordinary people of the Indian subcontinent.  Agriculture and herding depended on the whims of the elusive monsoons. Floods, draughts, landslides, petty wars and robbers made life a hell for the peasant. Human empathy had dried up when there came upon the land two sages, the Buddha and Mahavira, preaching a philosophy of understanding and deep compassion.  To some extent they stopped the mad race for material wealth and power then prevalent and turned the efforts of powerful rulers towards real welfare measures for their subjects. 

Their teachings were  the last straw held out to the depressed citizens of the subcontinent, drowning in self created sorrow of thinking that they have been caught in a never ending cycle of rebirths, called Karma.  They liberated the minds of most people and led them towards a more positive understanding of the whims of Nature. This was the wisdom of the two Sages who tried in their own way to reform the then known civilization of its myriad ills and superstitions.

But has the wisdom of the Buddha permeated to our minds? Sadly, this wisdom resides perhaps in the minds of few followers of the Buddhist philosophy left on Earth like the Dalai Lama.  The economic conditions now prevailing has given an unprecedented advantage to humankind. Most people have a better chance for a better life, better food, better job conditions, purchasing power and fast growing technical equipment to ease the burden of living on this whimsical planet.  Science it is claimed has enabled creation of vast knowledge databases for technical exploitation by humankind. Yet this is not “wisdom” as mere knowledge is being bandied about to create more and more chimeras of conquering Nature, mistakes that will ultimately lead this intelligent creature called Homo Sapien   being declared extinct, sometime in the near future. Humankind, in its own arrogance had never shown a willingness to accept the Wisdom of the Buddha.

Eating our friends

Humankind has an enormous appetite. Imagine the number of cattle that get eaten all over the world. A lot of poor chickens, ducks and turkeys besides other birds are being daily sacrificed on the altar of the Goddess of Hunger. Many cows, goats, camels and sheep bleat helplessly as they are mowed down by the relentless scythe of remorseless humankind, all for their delicious flesh.

 But if this huge appetite continues, we will finish off eating all the animals on Earth, elephants, whales, snakes and hippos included. Humans trawl the high seas with ‘high techno gizmos’ pulling in great white sharks, swordfish, tuna, dolphins and manta.  Many relish them raw. Poor octopi hide in the forests of coral to escape the greedy eyes of humans.  We can understand the poor Jorawa tribals on the Andaman spearing fish for dinner. But what about this extended, organized massacre of our sea life?  Whaling ships pull in huge carcasses which end up as sushi.  Others go about scraping up the sea floor for fish to feed the guts of hungry folk all the way from Florida to Fukushima. The excuse to eating fish is to escape from the plaque that clogs up our veins and cholesterol piled up from eating too many chickens and goats! Humans need proteins, you know! Remember how the American bison was almost wiped out by a hungry horde of Europeans ?

The World appears obsessed with food and drink and more food and drink.  Humans are slaves to their stomachs. Warning: Masterchef shows are injurious to your eating habits.  And calculate the piles of shit that humankind   flushes out in to rivers that all end up in the Seven Seas, polluting it for millennia. Of course we add plastics bags and toxic chemicals to add flavor to the sea water. And we happily consume the fish that consumes our shit.

Unlike our ape ancestors who chewed on branches and grass and seasonal fruits, we are gorging ourselves on everything under the sun. We domesticated grass seeds calling it rice, wheat, barley and oats.  The ancient civilizations of Southern America were good farmers for they domesticated the potato, tomato, cassava, capsicum and what not along with corn and the Soya bean.  Humans now slash down prime forests to plant bananas, sugar cane, oil palm and rubber. 

Ultimately, tropical and temperate forests will disappear and all the soil will be washed down the Amazon or the Mississippi or the Ganges or the  Nile. Deserts will sneak in and cover every corner with sand and dust. Or the ice in glaciers and the Antarctic will melt; seas will rise and drown the coastlands and islands. So goes the warnings from Climate change and global warming.  Polar bears and Grizzlies will wander in front of the White House seeking Presidential intervention to save them from extreme poverty. And we will find Gorilla meat on the menus of New York restaurants! That is till we eat them all up and go onto our chimpanzee cousins. Giraffes and zebras and wildebeests and kookaburras, cats and dogs and capybaras, will go onto the limited menus from Paris to Beijing.  You can hear the gnawing and crunching of bones as humankind gnaws steadily through the population of fellow beings on this beautiful planet.

Luckily the Dodo and the dinosaurs died out long back. Wonder whether the great lizards were all eaten up by some early unknown humanoid ancestors.  All this talk of meteoroids from outer space causing species extinction appears a cover up by smart scientists to save the dignity of their voracious ancestors. At least Noah had the good sense to build a boat to save a selected population of wild life when global warming upset things.  Humankind will cruelly crucify any Messiah of Climate change who advocates vegetarianism and restraint on energy usage.  However, World carbon emission levels will drastically go down, if our over smart politicians and administrators shut up their mouths and eat less food during their world conferences in Doha and Rio. Like Nero they are fiddling while the fires of hunger burn up the stomachs of hungry folk in Africa, Asia, America and Oceania.

  Food is the basic need for a hungry world.  All our efforts, production of energy and agriculture all go towards filling the cooking pot.  In the Mahabharata, there is a character called ‘Began’ who had an enormous craving for animal and human flesh.  He was ultimately eliminated by the legendary Bhim, who himself is known as ‘Vrigodhara’ or ‘One who has an insatiable Wolf like craving for food!  Kumbakarna, brother of Ravana, is also depicted as having an enormous hunger whenever he wakes up after a six month sleep. Don’t we see the significance of these depictions of hungry demons?

The warning is to stop gobbling up limited global resources!

Ultimately, when we run out of grass seeds, trees, pumpkins, elephants and potatoes we will turn to eating each other. Bon appetite, Mon Amis.  But the disturbing thought is what will we eat up after nations consume other nations, tribes chew up other tribes and a handful of hungry animals like hyenas will hunt each other in Central Park, New York and under the Eiffel Tower, Paris?

Dreams and Humankind

The caveman must have dreamt of saber tooth tigers chasing him through the savanna like grasslands of Africa, running for his life.  He must have screamed and woken up to see the frightened eyes of other tribesmen looking at him with wondering eyes. In his primitive speech he must have explained that he was having a nightmare. Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein after a dream.  It is said that Beatle Paul McCartney heard a beautiful melody in a dream and on waking he played it out on his piano. Otto Loewi (1873-1961), the  German born physiologist, who had  won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1936 for his work on the chemical transmission of nerve impulses,  obtained the spark of intuition during a dream and  had written it down on a piece of paper.  On waking, he was unable to read what he had written.  Luckily he again dreamt of the same idea and waking up, he went to his laboratory, did an experiment that conclusively proved that nerve impulses were basically chemical. Abraham Lincoln's     dream that someone had assassinated the President, later turned out to be  tragically true. 

 Chemist Friedrich August Kekulé von Stradonitz discovered the tetravalent nature of carbon, explained the formation of chemical- organic "Structure Theory" and the structure of the Benzene molecule, all because he dreamt of dancing molecules. In 1845, Elias Howe who  was working on an idea of a  sewing machine, was unable to figure out  a practical  method to enable the thread to go through  the needle. Then he had a dream.  He was taken prisoner by a group of natives who began to dance with spears which had holes near their tips. On waking up, he applied this technique and made a practical sewing machine.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,  after he saw the story in a dream. He was upset when his wife prematurely  woke him up  as he had been screaming in terror. Stevenson realized  that he could turn the dream into a superb  horror story. One of India's greatest mathematicians, Srinivasa Ramanujan (1887-1920)made substantial contributions to analytical theory of numbers and worked on elliptical functions, continued fractions, and infinite series.  He always attributed that he got his inspiration   from goddess Namakkal who appeared in his dreams.  Louis Agassiz (1807-1883), the Swiss naturalist, zoologist, geologist, and teacher who had emigrated to the US in 1846, saw in a number of dreams the actual fish he had seen as a fossil.  On partially waking up from his third dream, Agassiz made a drawing of the fish as it would have been when alive and later he was astonished as it exactly matched the fossil specimen. There are other cases of authors who had written short stories and novels based on their dream sequences. I had a friend who once dreamt that he escaped being run down by a car just in front of the flyover near the office. The very next day, he had an actual experience of nearly being hit by a speeding car, exactly in the same place he had seen in his dream.

The Poor man's Gandhi

The Poor Man’s Gandhi

India should certainly be happy to have a young leader who has the welfare of the poor in his heart. One leader happens to be a prince in waiting of an important political party and is scion of a family with a prominent political heritage. His proclamations, predilections   and predicaments are the grist of the media mill.  Yet he is reluctant to take on the burden from his ailing mother and take the plunge into the whirlpool of Indian politics.  He wants to remain for ever and ever, the poor man’s leader visiting Dalit homes and eating the simple bajra roti with raw onions.

However this personality happens to be the butt of many internet jokes and anecdotes. The Parsi community of Mumbai declared that anyone in their community earning less than Rs. 90,000 was “poor”.   Based on this was the joke that the Prince, who slept in the humble huts of the poor in Rae Bareli, would make a beeline for the houses of Parsis who are “poor” and eat with them.  Of course, there is an invisible link in this joke. His grandfather, hailing from the Parsi community was a promising, progressive and pragmatic parliamentarian.    Indians do wish that his grandsons could have shown themselves to be close clones of this fearless crusader who took on his own father-in law. Somehow neither cousins of the first political family of India have shown their real mettle in Parliament.  That is unfortunate as the party goes from crisis to crisis; the government is like a rubber raft spinning down rocky rapids.  And a tired, aging leadership is at the helm of affairs.

Indians now how have two princes in waiting under the wings of two mothers who don’t talk to each other any longer and exist at opposite poles of the political spectrum.  What can we do to enthuse two reluctant gladiators, force them to come on the political ring and slug it out?  Not many in either parties support this move.  We have too many aspirants for the higher jobs and too little seats of power.  Though the young workers want to desperately ride on the shoulders of the political family, they do not want to be seen as supporting a closed family rule, a dynasty. And the opposition is ready to stone them for this particular dementia, forgetting that they too would support dynastic rule if they just manage to get sufficient parliamentary seats and come to power.  Coming to power is the mantra of the unwashed masses of India.  Even the heavy rains of the monsoons cannot wash off the dirt of corruption from the faded khadi shirts, dhotis and saris.

The Indian poor really do not matter to the Indian politician, excepting when making silly speeches before the bodies of farmers who ended their hapless lives due to the harassment of an insensitive bureaucracy.  The poor are ready to extend hospitality to the visiting political princes with the hope that they would get their voices heard in the corridors of power.  But the poor man’s Gandhi is not yet ready.  The aspirants for this job are still reluctant, hesitant and lack confidence in their own talents.  How long can they hide under the shadows of their peers?

What once prompted a   Gujarati  lawyer in South African  to give up his vocation, travel to India and take on the job of    liberating the  enslaved masses of a sub-continent; working  against an empire that had the world in its cruel talons ?   It was his oversized ego that prompted the Mahatma that he may be the poor man’s saviour.  The very same Indians, who made him into a Mahatma, then shot him in cold blood.   That is perhaps what makes the princes in waiting reluctant to become the Poor Man’s Gandhi in present day India.  Indians could turn on their mentors and sacrifice them, if they felt their leaders were not capable of leading them any longer.  So why take the risk and become victims to terrorism and needless violence? The Revolution would soon eat up its own children.  I give no names and the readers can make their own guesses.

The Great Tax Wall of India

The Great Tax Wall of India

 The Government of India has suddenly woken up after a long Rip Wan Winkle sleep. It realized too late that the concessions given to foreign direct investors through tax havens like Mauritius were being used to launder Indian black money.  Unpaid taxes, money obtained through fraudulent schemes, money laundering, bribery, political corruption, under invoicing of export, speculation, slush money and what not, are being quietly brought back to India to buy up more money, land or power.  Of course most of the money is being mostly used for buying influence and paid into the wide pockets of politicians who in turn transfer it abroad to have it later brought back through the same method, to buy more influence and pay off the law agencies to look the other way.  Meanwhile some political parties flooded the media with reports of vast sums of money (Rupees 12,000 crores, it is said) stacked away by Indians in Swiss banks.   And the poor Income Tax people want to dig up the vaults of the Padmanabha swami Temple in   Trivandrum (Kerala) as if the Swiss have secretly deposited Indian gold there!

It is now clear that billions of dollars have been white washed and hung out to dry in tax havens. These criminal masterminds populate plush apartments in luxury hotels in Dubai, Colombo, the Bahamas, the Barbados, Cyprus, Mauritius, Bangkok, Singapore and elsewhere.  Only the omnipresent sleuths of the US Treasury burn the midnight oil, tracking the traces left by bad dollars that go to finance the empires of the drug cartels. Little do they care that most of the illegal money laundering is based on the free flow of cash that is generated in India. You do not require of the ubiquitous ‘ISI’ of Pakistan to ruin the Indian economy.  Indians are very self sufficient in financial frauds, thank you.  We are perfectly capable of both tremendous economic growth and massive economic ruin. And we are proud to have London School of Economics and Harvard experts to oversee the fall of the Great Indian Rupee Empire. Now you need a sack full of rupees to buy a dollar!

The Supreme Court of India threw out the case against Vodafone as technically unsustainable; the Indian Government could not levy a hefty tax on proceeds of a sale of majority shares between two telecom companies that did not take place in India.  So what prompted the Finance Ministry to stealthily draft the “Vodafone” tax Bill to ostensibly rein in international skullduggery by MNCs? Nothing within the tax laws in India justified the Indian move.  So they made the new Act and gave it retrospective effect just to squeeze the telecom companies some of their ‘ill gotten’ money. 

Following the resignation of Pranab Mukerji as Finance Minister on 26 June, some suspicious moves were made by some Finance big wigs.  The Finance Ministry Mandarins hastily drafted the bill and leaked it through the media till the Prime Minister’s Office caught them in the act.  It appears the poor PM was not shown the draft despite having taken over the burden of the Finance Ministry on his fragile shoulders. Why the haste? It does appear the Revenue people are hungry to get their hands on the 20,000 crore rupees that Vodafone is supposed to pay as back taxes. But it does not gel easily with Indians who like to analyze and speculate the hush-hush of money deals. Wise and money savvy Indians had supported the tremendous growth of Reliance.  So, it appears that someone within the Finance Ministry could stand to gain from the passing of the bill.  Or are the political brokers putting the pressure on Vodafone?

The permit Raj created by this new Great Tax Wall of India would make the harassed Indian industrialists to make a bee line for the Finance Ministry.  And then the mandarins can play their Game of Foxes and open a casino in North Block.  Flush funds could flow into personal accounts in Swiss banks of bureaucrats and make them invulnerable to the machinations by the unwashed politicians who till now had the upper hand in the open handed piracy of industrial India.   Who does not know that selling and buying influence is better than dealing in stocks and shares on Dalal Street?   The government had often boasted that they dismantled the “Permit Raj” whereby the  nexus between corrupt officials and corrupt politicians made  the Indian citizen run around in circles, till a hafta ( bribe) was quietly paid.   So the hapless telecom companies refused to pay ‘proper respects’ to the powerful mandarins and political brokers.  It was very foolish of them.  A donation to the politicians or their parties would have saved them all this embarrassment, harassment and saved them millions in attorney fees.  Their attorneys did not read between the lines in the Bofors case, which was quietly buried in some unmarked grave in the Alps.  So have numerous tax frauds and commissions and cases; disappeared into the caves of the gnomes in Switzerland.

 It must be remembered that it is not only African and Philippine despots who deposit their ill gotten gains of massacres in tax havens. The majority of depositors in Swiss banks are wealthy Indians who hate to drop even a paisa in the begging bowl of the Indian Government, as taxes. Are we not proud that among the biggest frauds in the World are Indian frauds, who have made their millions through all kinds of insider trading and cooking the books? When a man named Telgi offered to print stamp papers free for all Indians, the angry bureaucrats put him jail, poor chap.

 We do not need to teach our PM, simple economics or how to run the Finance Ministry. The more complicated taxes you have, the more frauds you create. My dear Indian citizen, at least be honest and pay your taxes regularly. Otherwise how can we pay the Russians for all the junk we have ordered? And Anna has already made ‘hazare’ statements on how corruption is eating away the innards of our nation. We need to breach the Great Tax Wall and let in some fresh air before another “Bhopal tragedy” of poisonous corruption kills or corrodes our brains! 

Pirates of the Web

The World wide web is a vast tropical jungle. Before the advent of this convenient medium of  worldwide communication, the poor beggars of the Twentieth Century had to huddle on the London pavement, with a torn blanket in front, begging for a few coins from some sympathetic passersby.  That is passe. Now you get web begging spam mail by thousands. So and so is suffering from such and such disease and  urgently requires a huge sum of money for treatment. Please send the money to my account , or ring me on this number, etc, etc.  I do wonder if the recipient of this mail would not wonder how a person who has  easy access to the internet and can afford  a desktop or laptop, has hit so low as to beg for a living on the Web.it may be the Great European Depression. Some persons are so  dirt poor that they are able to go on the internet to solicit funds, with open hands   and  expect that some fools would fall for the sob stories  and wire them hard earned money. While half the World makes money, the other half lazes along and lives off the hard earners , the classic ant and grasshopper story.  Nowadays the grasshopper has become a web locust.
 And  then comes along  absolute  web frauds, who offer  money spinning methods that a mentally retarded snail would not fall for.  I recently got a mail from some bloke trying to interest me in supplying some kind of herbal extract, which he claimed he has already found a supplier, but he  has no money, does not want his company to find out, only wants a banker to pay for the consignment, will offer a commission and so on. The whole thing sucks and is a big scam.  Luckily the mail server has dumped this in the spam bag and issued a red band warning . Yet we do  find  a few idiots falling for  the  dangled bait like a hungry shark snapping at a tuna. On one side you have widows sobbing their hearts away in tear jerking e-mails but in a language that  is mostly full of spelling mistakes that identifies the sender's probable nationality as some one comfortably sitting in the scam capital of Rumania. You get mails from some familiar names, screaming that they had been mugged while visiting Spain and needs money urgently. It appears the robber took away everything ,wallets and credit cards, passports and hankies etc. ,leaving behind a very bruised ego. And they expect that  before you can say Jack Sparrow, you would send them the money or talk to someone on a dubious hotel number who would tell you how to despatch the sum. Then you get the smart ones who say you have won fabulous amounts and wants to know how to send it to you, bank details of course included! Then the old Nigerian scam of  seeking your urgent help in transferring  large sums money out of the country.
 The Pirates who sneak around on the Web are  just as dangerous cut throats, as the  'black beards'  who once roamed the Caribbean Sea.  This time they are after your bank account and credit cards not doubloons and pieces of eight.  Since this is also piracy, we have to bring back the harsh punishment for cyber begging and piracy: hang them on the yardarm or make them walk the plank.
The latter method is better, as we can feed them to the Great White Sharks, and prevent their extinction. And  if you get unsolicited mail from bums and tramps, just dump them in the trash can. And burn your credit cards and stop using internet banking. Go back to using hard cash: euros or dollars or pounds or lira or yen or yuans. When someone asks for money via e mail, send them  a  picture of  Benjamin Franklin and give this legend under it: "Go fly a kite when the lightning strikes"! Probably the greedy beggar would  send a reply mail, demanding that you give him money to buy a kite!

A Tale of Two Eco-worriers

 “A Tale of Two Eco-Worriers”, (RD, June 2012) defines the environmental concerns of many of us. Lucy Siegle and Bittu Sahgal have shown that ordinary people too can do something to augment worldwide efforts to minimize the carbon footprint.  Indians through decisive efforts can reduce carbon emissions and stop wastage of water. Saving water is a great concern for humankind as unpolluted fresh water resources on this planet are now limited to mountain glaciers, lakes and ice at the poles.

               

 Living for two years in Jaisalmer, in the middle of the Thar Desert, taught me a lot about saving precious water. Yes, we must reuse water from laundry and bathing for watering plants. I have also used a drip irrigation system based on small piece of a coconut coir rope fixed to the end of a used PET water bottle with the other end placed into the soil close to the roots of my potted plants. The slow drip of water for days keeps my precious plants healthy without any waste.  Placing a closed PET bottle of water in the water tank of a closet can save hundreds of liters of fresh water flushed daily into sewers.

 Yes, we should restrict our urge to keep on buying expensive new clothes and reuse old clothes. Yes, land now used exclusively for growing textile fibers like cotton and flax can be turned to producing food crops like potatoes and vegetables.  But restricting  use of woolen clothing, common in the colder climes, would not do much to reduce carbon emissions since people would just turn up the radiator and  burn more fossil fuel just to keep warm. However, we must change the present trend by people in tropical climates to wear clothing like those worn in colder places. Why do we insist on wearing pants, jeans, woolen suits ties and leather shoes in warm and humid Mumbai, instead of using traditional clothing which is more comfortable? Our carbon footprint only goes up with our increase of aping the West. Of course, we can ape Bollywood trends of going about in minimal clothes, if it can save the environment! But most humans would not agree to go around stark naked just to save the Earth!

Yes, we must popularize usage of mass transit public transportation based on clean fuels and stop needless conversion of precious land to roads. People roaring around on powerful motorcycles and expensive SUVs run on fossil fuel just add to carbon emissions. Can we not make ownership of private vehicles very difficult as in Singapore?  Usage of e-bikes and e-cycles like in Paris should be encouraged for moving around in crowded cities here.

Yes, recycling is the precious mantra we must all adopt. Everything can be reused or converted back into raw materials, saving on energy and reducing carbon emission. Yes, we should not burn fallen leaves and other branches but let the earth worms, termites and soil bacteria convert them into compost. Vegetable cuttings and other kitchen waste with a small drop of yogurt kept in a closed plastic garbage bag, turns within two weeks into powdery compost which can be used for growing vegetables in a used plastic sack on your terrace.  Old Plastic bags can be reused many times by cleaning them. We must recycle them and avoid discarding them in garbage heaps or into drains or rivers. 

And there is one way to control the mosquito without chemicals. Place some water in   used coconut shells, overnight, on your balcony or terrace. Everyday, carefully dump the mosquito larvae in these shells into you fish tank.. Within a few months, incidence of mosquitoes will decrease dramatically in your entire mohalla, if everyone follows suit. That is the crux of the problem. Like most Indians we remain selfish and give little importance to cooperative civic behavior, till someone leads the way. I wish Anna Hazare would divert his battle on corruption by politicians and instead  work  on reducing  carbon emissions.

Would a Phd make a better teacher

When I was a student in a primary school in Singapore, there were a number of teachers who had only education up to high school level.  But they knew their subject and could teach us wonderfully well. Among them was a teacher who could recite stories so well that we started harassing him for stories during his hour. The system then was to complete six years of primary schooling and then go on to do four years of higher schooling leading to a  Cambridge School Certificate (O-level). Not one of our teachers had a PhD. They however knew the psychology of a school student.  I remember Mr. E.R.Robeson, a wonderful teacher who had a mixed parentage. His spoke fluent Quandongese as his mother was a Chinese and fluent English, from his father who was an Eurasian. He had a good sense of humor and loved to talk to us on many subjects. Built like a wrestler, he drove a huge motorcycle. He could overhelm you with his personality, something a PhD  holder can never  do. These were real teachers.  Not the quacks of today.
Some years ago, the Human Resources Department of the Indian Government through its University Grants Commisison decided  that all College teachers , then teaching in colleges must acquire a doctorate in their subject.  For new posts, they insisted that only doctorates be recruited and that too after a tough eligibility test.   In addition, all Universities had to arrange for Refresher courses for  all teachers. Teachers whoe acquire doctorates  got three increments in their salaries which were then hiked. Teachers went in droves for training courses and other took off to join PhD courses under various guides.  No one checked to ensure the quality of the PhD they were acquiring.  The loosers were the students who found that the teachers lost interest in teaching anything.  They neglected their work and the students ended  their academic sessions with low or  poor marks in end of the year examinations. Who was the winner? The Teacher who, returning from the FIP ( Faculty Improvement Programe;some called it Family Improvement Programe) was out of touch with the latest subjects. Most teachers remained computer illiterate and poked like a chicken at the key board, painfully spelling out words. Their PhD was worthless to improving their teaching skills.
The UGC should have ensured that the Universities select the teachers for PhD after evaluating their teaching skills, perhaps through  the very same refresher courses they were organizing.  The teachers were left to pick and choose trheir guides who unfortunately could not come up with anything innovative when deciding on the subjects for research.  The guidies themselves  turned out to be  poor teachers.
 The ancient Indian system of Guru-Shisya ensured that the skill of the teacher was the sole criterion  when parents and guardians sent their children to them for schooling.  Nobody tied to find out if the Teacher or Sage, was a qualified PhD holder.
The idea that someone could work for a couple of years on some esoteric subject, cooking up some chemicals or testing water in wells and ponds or researching on the love life of a chameleon, could become good teachers, just by waving the magic wand of a PhD thesis.  In fact, even    highly qualified Professors who guide several research scholars, at times fall foul of cyber cheating. Many cut and paste their thesis, liberally borrowing from past work without changing a single comma. Again the sufferers are the poor students in colleges and schools who have to suffer  these specimen as teachers!
Who ever had thought that the teacher with a higher academic qualifications would also be a good teacher, must be hanged  with a nylon rope from a jackfruit tree and stoned to death with cowdung. Students are to be taught not to just acquire marks and become doctors, engineers or administrators.  They have to be trained to acquire human skills , compassion and ethical behaviour.  They are not mere automatons to satisfy the greed of parents and guardians who see in them as economic earners for life. No wonder, students nowadays turn violent, indulge in smoking, drinking liquor, using dangerous drugs or indulge in hooliganism.
Where are the PhD qualified teachers, the highly qualified 'Gurus' who trained these hapless students? Many enjoy their retired lives, on high pensions or indulge in coaching more helpless students who aspire the hights of academic excellance to become high earning doctors,IT specialists and so on.  Education in the Twenty First century is an industry controlled by a mafia that only wants wants mediocrity, not excellence.   In the end, we  are already seeing changes in our society, like Japan, there are too many suicides by students, frustrated with the pressures of  a harsh, unreal world of study, study and study.
Chinese students, have proved to be excelling in international competitions in Mathematics and Sciences. It would be relevant to find out, how many of their teachers have PhD degrees. Why do we wallow in this myth that only Phd holders can become good teachers ?