A fresh view of Disraeli's Sybil

Benjamin Disraeli: though he wasn't much of a novelist, he definitely knew how to turn a phrase. When he finally made it to the Prime Ministership of England (the first person of Jewish descent to ever do so), he famously retorted "I have made it to the top of the greasy pole." And on the Indian Mutiny of 1857 he said, "The decline and fall of Empires are not affairs of greased cartridges." By which he meant, "Uhh, might they have motivations besides religion for revolting against our massive, rapacious Empire, which is starting to seem just a little too Roman?" (Despite ambivalence about Empire early in his career, in the 1870s, Disraeli would go on to embrace it -- probably because it was the only rhetoric the Tories could use that sounded remotely populist.)

The Hindu, in its latest monthly literary review, has a new review of Disraeli's best-known novel, Sybil, which is about the Chartist agitations in England in the 1830s and 1840s. I'm not entirely sure why The Hindu is publishing a review of Sybil now, but there it is. And here are two paragraphs:

No one previously had articulated the existence of two totally antagonistic communities that represented "two nations" with such candour. Disraeli saw its dangers and wished to take steps to quickly defuse the gathering tensions. Sybil, or the Two Nations, which contains the key to Disraeli's mind, was first published in 1845 and is set during the period 1837-1844. It depicts the storms of Chartist agitation and social disturbance in England. The Chartist movement was, of course, a working class movement that wished to bring about equal political and social rights for all classes by legal means.

Here is a dramatic exchange between the aristocratic Egremont and a young stranger in Sybil. Egremont exclaims that "our queen reigns over the greatest nation that ever existed". The riposte is immediate. "Which nation?" asks the younger stranger, "for she reigns over two"... "Yes,"... "Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws." "You speak of — " said Egremont, hesitatingly. And the young stranger replies, "THE RICH AND THE POOR."

Ah yes, the rich and the poor. Remember them?

[Side note: Why is the literary review section of The Hindu such compelling reading? The writing seems to be fresh & the perspective eclectic. The New York Times Book Review, in contrast, would never carry such a straightforward, plot-intensive review of a book written 140 years ago apropos of nothing in particular. Incidentally, Tabish Khair is at it again. The Indian James Wood? His latest provocation will likely require a separate post]

Is Bangalore in Trouble?

And just when I was about to buy land near the new airport!

Indian Express. I don't have any trouble believing it -- one hears a lot about the terrible traffic in Bangalore, for instance. But I find the substantial thesis of this piece questionable. The author is arguing that the Congress government has blocked improvements and infrastructural investment since coming to power six months ago.

The patience that Singh prides himself on has worn thin in the gleaming glass towers and lush campuses of 1,200 IT firms and their 2 lakh employees. About a million people and industries feed off them—taxis, retail, banking, auto sales, hotels—firmly driving Bangalore’s booming economy. At stake, then, is much more than the future of investments worth about $15 billion (Rs 64,500 crore) made in this gridlocking, crumbling city of 7.2 million.

Since the Congress party began its coalition government with Singh—an affable leader with a love for Ghalib and ghazals—at the helm in June, Bangalore’s attempts to transform itself are rapidly unraveling: flyovers are stuck, so is a new international airport and metro, and the roads are simply falling apart.

Worse, the signals are all bad: a dedicated team of officers overseeing the upgradation of Bangalore has been systematically dismantled; and a unique government partnership with the city’s big names (headed by Infosys MD Nandan Nilekani), which oversaw the city’s progress over the last four years, has not just been ignored but even mocked by ministers in Singh’s government.

If true, that would be bad. But is the Congress abandoning growth? Are they deliberately halting the building of the airport or the highway flyovers? This article seems to have nailed the traffic problems down tightly, but it isn't really explaining the political scenario responsibly.

Online Art Exhibit: Ranbir Kaleka

Delhi/London based artist Ranbir Kaleka has an online exhibit of his painting, digital photgraphs, and installations at Another Subcontinent.

His work seems to allude to German expressionism and surrealism. And there are some video installations, though you can't actually watch the videos online (would have been nice).

Very serious, high quality stuff. The image quality and organization of the site is also pretty impressive.

More tweaks and twists on Outsourcing

I have often complained (confessed?) that I don't understand economics, especially the economics of outsourcing. There are certain fundamentals at play that I grasp (and everyone grasps), but the fine points are a bit nugatory.

And it's all in the fine points -- for instance, the question of whether the jobs that are sent abroad are really replaced with more rewarding, "creative" gigs here in the U.S. Is it really true that everybody could potentially be benefiting, as my Indo-Republican (leaning), Software-engineer wallah friends tend to claim? Another question is whether the profit sustained by U.S. firms that outsource is greater than the net flow of capital out of the country. And a third question: are the recent stats on outsourcing taking into account the distinction between intra-firm 'outsourcing' and external contract-work?

And there are a dozen other problems and questions that have been circulating in the real media as well as the blog world this fall. Not many have been answered very comprehensively, it seems to me.

Today, I came across two further tweaks and twists on the story. The first, from an essay published in an IMF journal called Finance & Development, (and summarized on Rediff) suggests that the U.S. is actually very much in the black when it comes to "business services imports" (a codeword, I gather, for various kinds of corporate and high-tech outsourcing). In other words, for at least some kinds of outsource work, the U.S. is much more a destination than it is a sponsor.

US business service imports as a share of GDP have almost doubled in each of the past several decades, from 0.1 per cent in 1983 to 0.2 per cent in 1993 and 0.4 per cent in 2003.

[UPDATE: See Drezner's reading of this. He acks. me]

The second surprise is that for all the ballyhoo (or should I say "bollyhoo"?) about India's job "imports," it is, according to the numbers given to the International Labor Organization (ILO) very much a net-outsourcer to the U.S., Germany, Japan, and the U.K.! To the tune of $11 billion!

These numbers might be suspect. The $11 billion number might look a little different if we were to see some trend-lines, for instance. Did the ILO compile the same statistic 10 years ago? Anyone know how to find out?

Still, if these reports are true, then virtually all of the conventional debates about white-collar outsourcing as a) a looming danger to the U.S. economy, and b) an immediate benefit to the Indian economy, are completely off-track.

Brain Gain! NRIs return to India

NPR : India Benefiting from Reverse Migration.

America's loss.

Church and State in Italy

It seems to run much more smoothly than in the U.S.. Two interesting quotes:

Abortion is legal here and not much debated anymore. Yet religious sentiment runs deep enough that Friday night comes in Italy with the adventures of Don Matteo, handsome crime-solving priest. One study, in fact, showed that 27 percent of all protagonists on public television are priests, nuns or saints (though it is also hard to ignore that other large percentage on Italian television: near-naked women).

And also:

--Perhaps the most Catholic politician in Italy is not a conservative, as might be expected in America, but Romano Prodi, the former European Union chief and leader of the center-left.

--Italians routinely ignore the conservative Pope John Paul II in matters of private morality, like contraception, divorce or marriage (far fewer Italians are marrying, in the church or out), but admire him deeply for his stands on issues like caring for the poor or his outspoken opposition to the war in Iraq, unpopular in Europe.

--Crucifixes may hang in public schools, but without the heavy political overtones that come with displays of, say, the Ten Commandments in public places in America.

I could live with that.

Delinquent Chacha, by Ved Mehta

Delinquent Chacha - Ved Mehta. The Complete Review has read this novel, not me.

This blog post is just an excuse to savor (and promulgate) the title. You can also see the original cover of the novel at vedmehta.com.

[BTW A 'Chacha' is a younger paternal uncle]

Rushdie Praises Urban Grime, Tired Princeton Students Remain Awake

Via the Literary Saloon, I read this article in the Daily Princetonian about Salman Rushdie's recent visit there.

"I almost have an ideology of dirt," he said. "Whenever anybody wants to 'clean things up' -- ethnic cleansing, for example -- people start dying. What we need is a little dirt. Cities are more dirty, and therefore more democratic and freer."

Hard not to agree.

Overworked Software Engineers Unite!

In Salon: "keyboard jockeys" at Electronic Arts are filing a class action lawsuit to get back pay of thousands of hours of uncompensated overtime.

As much as we academics like to complain about overwork, it's people in high tech who really get stuck with it. (Doctors and lawyers too, but that much we already knew.) Academics work plenty (sometimes), but we have the small side-benefit that -- at least in the humanities -- we can do much of our work from home.

But regarding the EA employees, is any of this legally actionable? I'm skeptical. Judging from the Salon article, at most they can get compensation, and even that is questionable, since California exempts computer programmers from laws limiting overtime. Interestingly, the best shot legally for the EA employees filing the suit is if their work is considered part of the entertainment industry -- in which case the exemptions to overtime laws don't apply.

Note to software friends: you might have less difficulty with these things if you had unions...

(Then again, I'm an academic. What's a union?)

According to your latest novel, you have Alzheimer's

Iris Murdoch's last novel, in comparison to her early works, shows a reduced vocabulary and simplified verbal patterns that point to early Alzheimer's.

I guess it holds together, but this type of study still makes me feel a little queasy.

International AIDS Day. And, some unhappy anniversaries.

International AIDS Day. India has 5.1 million people infected with HIV, which is the second most in the world after South Africa. (Also see Crooked Timber)

No one really knows how many people are infected with the disease in China.

We are also approaching the 20th anniversary of the chemical disaster at Bhopal, where 2,000 people died immediately (and 6,000 would soon die of injuries), and where no one -- still -- has been brought to justice. (See Sepia Mutiny)

And just a month ago was the 20th anniversary of the assasination of Indira Gandhi, which was followed by widespread communal violence against Sikhs in India.

1984: a really, really, really bad year. (I haven't even mentioned what was happening in Sri Lanka... or Northern Ireland... or Ethiopia)

2004: not so great either.

Harvard Law Professor is Unseasonably Optimistic

William Stuntz is an Evangelical and a Law Professor at Harvard. In this column in Tech Central Station he argues that the Red-Blue divide might not be so very great, particularly on the question of Evangelical Christians.

He has some decent insights along the way on the substantial similarities between University rituals and Church rituals. Universities are, indeed, still a bit churchy at times. (To Stuntz's points of comparison, I would add: the religious origin of the words "Dean" and "Canon," and the pseudo-priestly get-up worn at graduation.) Stuntz reads these similarities of ethos, ritual performance, and intellectual bent as signs that Evangelicals and University Professors might one day soon be holding hands again. It's all fine -- if a little sketchy, except for one glaring puddle of lump: he just isn't convincing at all on the question of how to get over the abortion divide.

These men and women vote Republican not because they like the party's policy toward poverty -- cut taxes and hope for the best -- but because poverty isn't on the table anymore. In evangelical churches, elections are mostly about abortion. Neither party seems much concerned with giving a hand to those who most need it.
That could change. I can't prove it, but I think there is a large, latent pro-redistribution evangelical vote, ready to get behind the first politician to tap into it. (Barack Obama, are you listening?) If liberal Democratic academics believe the things they say they believe -- and I think they do -- there is an alliance here just waiting to happen.

Nice try, but I don't see it. Is he suggesting that the way for Dems. to win the hearts and minds of Evangelical Christians is to a) give up on abortion rights, and b) go all out for the redistribution of wealth?

Thanks to Tyler  for the tip.

 

New Derek Walcott poems: The Prodigal

The Odyssey - Derek Walcott, the greatest living English-language poet. By Adam�Kirsch. Nice review.

Melvin Durai, humorist: Indian accents and airplane passengers

Via Sepiamutiny, I read a self-deprecating piece of satire by Melvin Durai about Indian accents. Certainly, Indian accents come in for a lot of ridicule. (Meanwhile, Colin Farrell's overrated incomprehensible mumbling is considered "sexy")

But I have two small objections. 1) Some of us actually like Indian accents! And, 2) there are different kinds of Indian accents, depending on what Indian language a person speaks primarily. Gujurati speakers speak English quite differently from Tamil speakers. Also, a person's class-background and education make a huge difference. The bottom line is, the  nasal/musical sounding Indian accent that many American comedians make fun of doesn't sound at all like most of the Indians-from-India I know.

You may or may not like Durai's piece on Indian accents (I'm not very fond of it). But at Durai's website you can find links to other columns he's written. Some are pretty funny. I like the following paragraph from this column on airplane security:

I'd like to draw your attention to the back of the plane, where you'll see that we have an Indian man flying with us today. Please do not panic. He has been through a special 16-hour security check. We even tested the oil in his hair. You'll be glad to know that it isn't flammable. Among the items we've confiscated from this man are two sharp pencils, one orange and a bottle of a caustic, tongue-burning substance that he claims is lemon pickle. Anyway, I just want you to know that this man will soon get up to use the restroom, escorted by three armed flight marshals. His activities in the restroom will be observed with 206 cameras, one for every bone in his body. He has been instructed to keep his hands raised above his head at all times, so you might not want to use the restroom after him.

Ah, the joys of Flying While Brown.

By the way, I met Melvin Durai a few years ago, when I gave a lecture on the history of Sikhs in America at a Sikh youth camp in Pennsylvania. (This was back in my "Sikh American pride" phase; I'm over it now.) He reported it for the local newspaper, and quoted me. I gave out a handout with information drawn from this UC Davis website.

India’s first Professional DJ Academy

Via BoingBoing.

There is an article in Mid-Day about DJ Nasha, who is starting India's first professional DJ academy. The reference to drug abuse is just kind of silly.

There is also a link to a DJ Nasha audio session on BBC that I haven't listened to yet (I never got around to installing RealPlayer in my office).