CFTRI: call for ‘accountability check’

 The Central Food Technology Research Institute (CFTRI)  takes up a sizeable  chunk of Mysore’s real estate.  Does the R & D done here and its benefits to  society add up to justify the size and scale of CFTRI’s Mysore establishment?

I find an answer in Dr Potty’s blog.  Where it says that CFTRI hasn’t come up with any new product since 1994.  Dr V H Potty, a former CFTRI deputy director  who blogs on food technology,   calls for an ‘accountability check’ by an  experts panel to find out how public funds earmarked for R & D are spent.

Referring to CFTRI’s  infrastructure,  an insider says the pilot plant and workshop on the campus are idle.  The person who comes up with this shocking info doesn’t identify himself in the blog,  saying  ”I wish I could write my name but having been bitten by him (CFTRI chief), I don’t think one has the  patience to fight him”.  According to this anonymous commenter,  in-house printing press, the supporting sections of the workshop, such as smithy,  foundry, carpentry, “are going waste”.

Dr Potty’s blog is an outcome of   collective frustration of the retired scientists,  who still retain their commitment to research in food technology.  As this technologist-blogger put it, ” Many retired scientists who are no more  in active service in their chosen field but are still committed to the  subject have been watching helplessly the high decibel claims like 1,000 patents, earth shaking technological achievements without any basis, tsunami  heroics and call for help from Katrina flood victims for foods, the supposed bonding with industry,  getting many regional,  national,  international and  extra terrestrial laurels for many of the imaginary achievements, etc etc etc .”  Dr Potty reckons it is time the  ’helpless watchers’  in the scientific  community stood up to “call the bluff”.

The blog has evoked considerable response, going by the number and the  substance of commments. But then the anonymity of an overheming proportion of  comments  undermines the force of their advocacy. The plain-talking  Dr Potty could do with more backers  who are prepared  ’to stand up and be counted’. 

Anyway,  Dr Potty’s blog should serve as a wake-up call for CFTRI administrators.  Two things are clear,  even without having  an ‘accountability check’.

1)  CFTRI should be more transparent to the public,  by encouraging visitors to the campus;  and  conducted tours of its faciities  during designated visiting days.

2)  Share under-utilised infrastructure such as the printing press, foundry, carpentry and other worshops with other public sector agencies in need of such facilitices.  CFTRI can do with an infrastructure audit  to ensure proper use and better maintenance of facilities developed with tax-payers money.

Ad.rage: When you want to smash the box

Ad.rage.  It hits TV viewers, usually during comercial break.

Symptom: You feel like lobbing your remote,  Iraqi journalist style,  at the TV set  in front.

A website on road rage has the logo that reads …When you just can’t take it anymore.  I feel ‘ragey’ about TV Commercials. The  ’breaks’  tend to get on your nerves as they get longer and more frequent.  I kept count as I watched  a movie on a Tamil channel the other day.

The feature film with 150-minute running time was interrupted for commercial break  thrice during the first hour, every 15 minutes during the next hour,  and once in 10 minutes in the final half hour of the movie. I sat through  it,  to keep count of the ads.

Each commercial break stretched seven or more minutes;  during which they showed 15 ads. What’s cruel, the same set of ads gets repeated in each quarter-hourly break; and a few of these ads are shown twice or more during a single commercial break.

A Tata Indicom commercial featuring Soundarya Rajnikant grabbed my atttention when I saw it first.  Here is a girl who, instead of following the footsteps of her actor father, chose a career in animation graphics.  Why? Because, as she says, she had set her mind on it. The ad. was informative, insofar as it told us about the career choice of Rajnikant’s daughter.

Anyway half-way through this movie – Rasigar Mandram – the Soundarya ad.  had been played out so often that it was getting to be a drag.  Soundarya who sounded smart and sprightly to begin with,  became bit of a bore. I started finding fault with the tone of her voice,  gait,  and with her very screen presence.  Before long the sight of Soundarya made me switch the channel.

This can happen to any screen celebrity.  Remember Amitabh?  His exposure in TV commercials didn’t do any good to Bachchan’s screen image.  Image-conscious celebrities,  who choose their films with their screen reputation in mind,  don’t seem conscious of the damage TV commericals can cause to their public appeal.

Film celebrities,  in the interest of their image,  would do well to have it written into the contract that their commercials  shouldn’t be repeated more than twice in any given TV programme.  It would also spare TV viewers the agony of having to watch their commericals repeated ad nauseum.

 We  can’t wish away commercial ‘breaks’ .  What we can  do is become online activists . Wish someone sets up an Ad Rage dot com where we can share our  thoughts ,  frustration on the tyrrany of  TV commercials,  and take a snipe at our pet hate commercials . If nothing else, this could be a way of getting  round the rage, by hitting the keyboard during commercial breaks.

An ad-raged blogger says  the commercial break is getting so long as to be useful;  she gets done during the break chores she would have otherwise left to be done before bed – wash dinner plates, let her dog out,  brush her teeth,check e-mail etc..

Calling IIT alumni

Every IIT could adopt a slum or cluster of villages, with development levels that are lower than the national average. The adopted area could then become a development laboratory.  And to implement socio-economic programmes  in the  development lab s   IITs could draw on the talents and financial support of their alumni.  This would be their  guru dakshina, suggests Prof.Kalyan Singhal,  an IIT-Bombay alumnus.

Other suggestions:  1)  Cost of  IIT undergraduate eductaion should be treated as student loans;  and, on graduation,  a percentage of  their earnings should go towards repayment of  loans.

2)   IITs could however  waive loan repayment in the case of students  who choose to do post-graduate work leading to Ph.D.   Pursuit of  intergrated solutions to the problems of villages and slums  should provide ideas for fresh areas of research.

3)  To promote,  what Prof. Singhal calls,  a  culture of innovation,  every engineering and polytechnic student could be asked to undertake intensive interviews with atleast two low-income families.  Based on their findings the students could propose ways to raise socio-economic well- being of these families.

According to Prof.Sighal,  such engagementof undergraduate students  with society would create a vibrant learning environment and help them  become better engineers, reserachers, managers and entrepreneurs. The professor has more on this in The Hindu edit-page article - Towards a renaissance of the IITs. Writer can be contacted at ksinghal@ubalt.edu

Flying shoes at Bush news conference

It happened so suddenly that you couldn’t believe your own eyes. Television viewers the world over watched US  President George W Bush duck his head to dodge a throw of shoes from a TV reporter in Baghdad. It happened at a joint-news conference he addressed with Iraq Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki during President Bush’s farewell visit to Iraq.

Live TV footage, I watched it on BBC, captured the flight of the shoe  as it zipped past the VIPs at the podium. I was struck by the president’s presence of mind in dodging a flying shoe, twice in quick succession.  I wish I had the presence of mind to reach for my amateur camera when I saw the visuals the first time.   I waited for  a re-relecast an hour later to get these  images. 

 The missle-launcher,  identified as an Iraqi TV reporter  Muntadar-al-Zeida,  used both his shoes to have his say.  They were size 10.  And,  as Mr Bush put it,  ”the guy wanted to get on TV and he did”

 He appeared calm and collected,   Mr Bush I mean.  In an interview with ABC news channel the president described the incident as,  perhaps,  the weirdest of things he had witnessed during his presidency. As  Mr Bush put it ,  “I’ve seen a lot of weird things during my presidency and this may rank up there as one of the weirdest….I thought it was unusual to have a guy throw his show at you. But I’m not insulted…I don’t think the Iraqi press corps as a whole is terrible.  And so,  the guy wanted to get on TV and he did.  I don’t know what his beef is”.

 NYT:  President Dodges Iraqi Journalist’s Shoes

Obamas: homeless in Washington

The White House,  I presume,  doesn’t take   sub-tenent,  even if he is the President-elect.  They have Blair House,  a guest residence in the WH neighbourhood.  But when Barack Obama sought permission to move in there  from Jan.5  his  request was  turned down by President Bush’s aides,  according to The New York Times.

Reason:  Blair House was booked till Jan.15,  and the Obamas were welcome to move in then.  The presdent-elect wanted to shift residence from  Chicago to Washignton  in time for his daughters to start school on  Jan.5 ,  when Sidwell Friends re-opens after  holidays.  The Obama children,  Malia, 10 and Sasha, 7,  have been admitted in this school.

Blair House,  where a president-elect can stay for a few days awaiting Inaguration,  is used  rest of the time for White House related parties and receptions. Visiting foreign dignitaries stay there.

Is this a non-story? At least one person thought so. Spokeswoman for first lady Laura Bush is quoted in NYT as saying, “you’re trying to make a story out of something that’s not a story”.

Rahul Gandhi on lal-batthi VIP

Rahul Gandhi has got it right ;  and  voiced it at the proper  place – Lok Sabha. He is cited as saying, public  outrage in the wake of  Mumbai26/11 was really about  prevelant perception  that the country had stopped valuing lives of the commoner ;  India only bothered about lal-batthi VIPs (the type that goes about in cars fitted with revolving red-light).

“We have to change how we view the lives of individuals,”  Amethi MP   said in Lok Sabha,  adding that the powers that be had to decide that not a single life would go  in vain.

Excellent thought;  which is best conveyed to people through official action.  They could decide,  for instance,  to review the system of providing state-sponsored security to politicians and other public figures facing threat to personal life.  Those in the Z category get  ’black cat’  protection.   If someone were to seek details under RTI Act pertaining to  the number of our politicians who enjoy this privilege,  we can get a sense of how many among them deserve such entitlement, from the security viewpoint.  Z category shouldn’t be seen as a status symbol.  Besides,  one wonders if  those once  given black-cat protection ever think of surrendering the privilege after they retire or the official perception of  threat to their lives is  considerably reduced.

Rahul Gandhi who in his Lok Sabha speech is reported to have said some sensible things would indeed neutralise , to some  extent,  the public outrage  he referred to ,  if only he were to follow up his words with a demand for a case-by-case review of  security-threat status of  lal-batthiwallahs   under black cat cover.  And ensure that the home ministry takes a critical look at the security entitlement criteria.

Mumbai 26/11: Bloggers chip in

In the begining there were bloggers. And there was a  flash-flood of posts on the Mumbai terror strike.  Many of them, bloggers, went beyond giving vent to their indignation; beyond fault-finding, finger-pointing, Paki-bashing, and came up with thoughts on steps we need to take not to get caught napping, again.

And then, someone came up with the idea of putting  together their thoughts.  Based on  the  collective thoughts of 100 plus bloggers   Ashutosh Didwania,  a public spirited IT professional,  devised an online survey to  elicit public opinion. IndiBlogger  weighed in with their  support structure to promote the 17-point survey.

To be meaningful, each of us, bloggers or not, could do our  bit create public awareness  about the survey ,  by spreading the word among our e-mail contacts.  Agreed,  this online  exercise  is restricted  to the Net-empowered among us.  The  survey,  though limited in its reach,  is  significant for its scope and content,  I reckon.

To give you an idea of the preliminary response to the  survey that went online a couple of days back,  nearly 75  percent of the first 100 who responded  favour diplomatic moves,  rather than  any military action. While recognising that both people,  in India and Pakistan, are victims of terrorism, 68 percent is for people-to-people contacts,  online and  through other means,  in mobilising people’s opinion against terrorist groups.  One in every 10 respondants, however, made it clear that they would have nothing to do  with those across the border.  I wonder, wouldn’t you, how many nay-sayers are  there over there. 

Click here to access RIM survey.

Ex-ISI chief holds forth on CNN

Are these ISI guys a law unto themselves?  The thought crossed my mind as I watched a post-Mumbai interview on  CNN with former ISI chief Lt.Gen.Hamid Gul(1987-89).  He brushed aside, as ‘a frame-up’, the US charge that he had links with Taliban and al-Qaeda.

I don’t suppose any ISI official , serving or retired, would admit to having had dealings with terrorist groups.  The TV interview gave me a sense of the  mindset of  those in the Pak intelligence agency  which is reported to have  a staff of  10,400 and tens of thousands of informers.   

Ex-ISI chief Gen. Gul  wouldn’t label as terrorist Osama bin-laden,  with whom he reportedly had a meeting in 1993.  The retired general was speaking to CNN on satellite video link from Islamabad. He expressed the  belief that Taliban was an Afghan  national resistance movement. He reckoned the US could not find a solution to Afghanistan without involving Taliban.

But then the US wouldn’t talk to terrorists, to which Gen.Gul suggested a way out – ‘remove the terrorist label from Taliban’. Former ISI chief certified Taliban,  saying ‘it was not found to be involved in any act of terrorism, anywhere in the world’.

Those who found this a bit much, were convinced, on hearing what he had to say on 9/11, that they and the  general  did not watch the same TV channels or read the same newspapers. According to the formet ISI chief,  the 9/11 attack on New York’s World Trade Center was part of a Zionist conspiracy. When interviewer Fareed Zakaria cut in to ask if they were Jews from within the US, or from Israel, the general said they were Israelis of the extremist kind.

If  TV viewers  wondered how come CNN let this man  hold forth in this vein, particularly  when there was  ’a mountain of evidence’ to  refute Gen. Gul’s  contention,   CNN presenter had the answer.  Fareed Zakaria noted that the interview was exclusive to CNN,  which got a ‘rare opportunity’ to talk to the man the US wanted,  for links with terrorists. Washinton is  reported to have drawn up a list of four persons  to be submited to the UN security Council,  for imposing sanctions (freezing of their assets). When the CNN interviewer mentioned this Gen.Gul  dismissed the whole thing as  a ‘frame up’.

Avaaz – voicing India-Pak solidarity

I am still hoping — just once — for that mass demonstration (in Pakistan) of ordinary people against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake. – Thomas L. Friedman in The New York Times.

 

A global civic advocacy group – avaaz.org – plans to send a message to terrorists that fellow citizens in India and Pakistan stand united in denying extremists their ultimate victory. “If hundreds of thousands sign it, our message will be unmistakable”, says the group’s website.

The solidarity message will soon be published in newspapers across India and Pakistan, and delivered to political leaders in both countries. Till date over 65,800 have signed the message, which says, simply, Mumbai: We will not be divided.

The India-Pak solidarity call finds its echo in the New York Times opinion pieces, by two high-profile writers – Tom Friedman and Amitav Ghosh. Both make out a case for a cross-border people’s movement against terrorism. This is seen necessary to strengthen the hands of the Pak government in tackling  elements within the Pak establishment that sympathise with and support terrorist groups.

Blanket denials by Pakistan, of terrorists presence in their midst wouldn’t help; nor would India’s tough posturing.  Does anyone honestly believe that Islamabad, even it musters the  will,  has the political capability to take on Lashkar-e-Toiba, let alone capture their operatives ? Lashkar, they say, have political clout and their source of funds include opium trade.

Amitav Ghosh, in an op-ed piece - India’s 9/11? Not Exactly - writes that  similarities between the terror strikes in New York and Mumbai shouldn’t lead New Delhi to respond the same way as the Bush Administration did  in 2001. India would do well to learn from Spain,  whose response to 2004 Madrid train blasts emphasised vigilance, patience, and careful police work in co-ordination with neighbouring countries.

Columnist Tom Friedman referred to Pakistani media that voiced their citizens’ anguish and horror over Mumbai terror strikes. The question is whether these citizens would be ready to take to the streets. Referring to violent protests in Lahore and Peshawar in 2006, against disagreeable cortoons published in Denmark the NYT columnist asks if they are ready ” to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai”

Says Mr Friedman, “while the Pakistani government’s sober response is important, and the sincere expressions of outrage by individual Pakistanis are critical, I am still hoping for more. I am still hoping — just once — for that mass demonstration of “ordinary people” against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India’s sake, but for Pakistan’s sake”.

It is all very well for Amitav Ghosh and Tom Friedman to call for India-Pak solidarity. In fact, I wouldn’t expect anything else from them. If it has to have an  impact on  people in the sub-continent and their leadership,  the solidarity call should come from editors in the mainstream media and  prime news channels in Pakistan and India.

NYT: A test for Pakistan on curbing militants

Red-circled by the media

Ram Gopal Varma  was red-circled by the media on Monday. Today it was the turn of a woman police officer in Bangalore.  Page One images in Bangalore Mirror shows  Sub-inspector Shilpa chatting on her cell while on bandobast duty at the funeral of Maj. Sandeep Unnikrishnan who went down fighting terrorist in Mumbai’s Taj Hotel.

It was an occasion for solemnity and silent reflection; and Ms Shilpa’s unpardonable lack of sensitivity is evident from the pictures in the media , red-circled for effect. On such occasions we refrain from instrusive use of cell phone, not because there is a law against it, but out of consideration for mourners in the gathering .

The police sub-inspector was there on duty; and it is conceivable that she might have had to make or take a call in the line of duty. But then she could have gone about it discreetly,  by moving away to a corner to use her cell. The sub-inspector deserved the red-circling by the media; but does it have to be so  blatant as to make a cover story of it , with screamer headline?