FN: Frederick Noronha’s blog

Yash is a Systems Engineer with an entrepreneurial spirit based in Mauritius. He founded the first and only Ruby User Group locally — Rubidius. It has its homepage here and its could-be-more-activemailing list here. Earlier this year he “predicted that the future of web apps will be based on Ruby on Rails.”

Rails sustainable productivity for web-application development is a full-stack, open-source web framework in Ruby for writing real-world applications with joy and less code than most frameworks spend doing XML sit-ups

Says Yash: “My interests lie in Business, Free and Open Source Software, Optimizing Business Processes and Investments, Music and technology in general. Favourite GNU/Linux distro: Yoper. (Your Operating System, Y Operating System, YOS.) Favourite programming language: Ruby (you’d have guessed that). I started programming with an Oric Atmos using self-taught BASIC. Today I’m more interesting in the strategic management issues of I.S. and Business integration.”

Check out Yashlabs here.

Free/Open Source Software: A General Introduction by Kenneth Wong and Phet Sayo is a 60-page booklet, part of the Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme’s e-Primers series. What makes it interesting is not just that it is written in a simple and easily-accessible style, but also the fact that it is freely downloadable. (From www.iosn.net)

Its preface calls the Free and Open Source (FOSS) movement one of the “new technologies and … new opportunities… that is playing out before us today”. It also calls it many things at the same time. Including, a “revolutionary development process, disruptive technology, ideological movement, new knowledge and standards, and more”.

This primer launched the series which is focussed on the FOSS movement. One would prefer the use of the term FLOSS, since the “libre” concept is obviously a crucial one here. But then, the power of the corporate world is such that they define concepts and one has little choice on whether it should be Linux (rather than GNU/Linux), Open Source rather than Free Software, and FOSS rather than FLOSS.

That apart, this book contains some useful material. It starts off with definitions: about the Free Software Foundation, the Open Source Initiative, the FOSS development method (reduced
duplication of effort, building upon the work of others, better quality control, and reduced maintenance costs), and a brief history of FOSS.

Then we go to the meat of the issue: why FOSS?

Also: Is FOSS free? How large are the savings from FOSS? What are the benefits of using FOSS (security, reliability and stability, open standards and vendor independence, reduced reliance on imports, developing local software capacity, reduced ‘piracy’, localization possibilities, etc)?

There’s the other side of the balance-sheet presented too: what are the shortcomings of FOSS?

This primer admits to the lack of business applications, hassles when it comes to inter-operability with some proprietary systems, and limitations on the availability of documentation and the ‘polish’ with which products are presented.

From there, we go to FOSS success stories. These are pointers to projects where large governments (or supra-governments like the European Union) took strongly pro-FOSS policies. There are studies from The German Bundestag servers, the city of Munich, the experiences in France, UK’s policies on FOSS procurement, and the migration to FOSS in the city of Turku in Finland.

From the Americas success storiasia, es come from California, Texas and Oregon — even if the pro-FOSS laws were still to be passed at the time of writing. Then, there’s Peru, Brazil, and, in Asia, China, India, Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan.

Wong and Phet, who obviously have a good overview of the subject they’re writing about, shift to some successful FOSS projects. These include Bind (the DNS server, without which internet addresses such as yahoo.com or even microsoft.com would not function), the Apache web server, the Sendmail email server, the secure network administration tool OpenSSH, and the Open Office productivity suite.

Richard M Stallman, the father of the Free Software Movement and a guest of the International Open Source Network, would probably be happy with a section of this book(let) that explains the difference between the “Linux” buzzword, and the concepts like GNU/Linux. Newbies to this entire idea are told about where they can download GNU/Linux from — don’t try unless you have a fat pipe to the internet, it’s just easier to very-legally make copies of a distro that someone else has. Issues like download time, installation and compiling time, quality assurance and learning time are also very briefly touched on.

With so much packed in a small book, you might just realise that we’ve still only reached half-way through the title. Quite rapidly, the authors shift to more complex issues — licensing
arrangements, the GNU General Public License, BSD-style licenses, and issue like whether FOSS can be combined with proprietary software.

We move on to localisation (”the process of creating or adapting a product to a specific locale, i.e. to the language, cultural context, conventions and market requirements of a specific target ‘market’), methods for localizing, and a case-studies of FOSS in government and education.

Having seen how some of this works on the ground, it might be risky to rely solely on the printed word to judge how things work in this field. For instance, a more thorough evaluation of the Goa Schools Computer Project (or, Goa Computers in Schools Project, as it has also been called) stills awaits being done. And it would be best done by someone who has empathy and appreciates the potential, without necessarily being a close observer-participant as this reviewer has been.

Finally, we end with a glossary… much-needed for a subject as geeky as this. There’s also a list of interesting URLs of different GPL compatible and incompatible software licenses. As noted above, what makes this book different is not just that you are free to “copy, distribute and display” it, but also make derivative works from it and make commercial use of this work. Further, the authors are generous in crediting all the persons whose work, comments, feedback and copyedits went into creating this work. We are reminded at the end about the agendas of the two UNDP-linked institutions that brought it out (www.apdip.net and www.iosn.net).

Clearly, there’s no reason why this needs to be read by both those gung-ho and those skeptical about the potential of FOSS. You can’t claim that the costs (there’s none) or lack of access (it’s just a URL away) kept you from reading it. — Frederick Noronha

Chamindra de Silva informs that Sahana phase I is currently being deployed in Pakistan together with the support of NADRA (National Database and Registration Authority) of Pakistan, IBM Crisis Response Team and IBM Pakistan. NADRA has a comprehensive people database as they build and maintain the central system that maintains the registration of people (identity card, passport, etc). In Pakistan, however the system is not web based and under tight security controls. Thus Sahana fills the gap of making the data accessible to the other organizations involved in the relief effort such as the NGOs. Apart from that NADRA does not have the equivalent of the request management system and organization registry which is built into phase 1. This is what the integrated system should look like.

This is the deployment model presented by them, in PDF format.

Chamindra is keeping notes and lessons learned on this deployment at the Reliefsource wiki

* * * * * * * * * *

Shahzad Ahmad writes: “Just sharing this news item. The Tsunami fame, [Free/Libre and] Open Source Software product SAHANA is already almost deployed by Chamindra de Silva with support from the IBM crisis response team and NADRA (National Database Registry of Pakistan). PSEB was also extending support to them I remember. The difference here… SAHANA yet has to hit the media while Microsoft is already getting coverage.”

Microsoft offers technological assistance in quake-affected areas
Representative hands over monetary assistance to PM and MKRF By Schezee Zaidi, The News, 21/10/2005 http://jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2005-daily/21-10-2005/main/main6.htm

* * * * * * * * * *

Irfan Khan says: For updates on the deployment of
Sahana in Pakistan, check recent entries in

Sanjiva Weerawarana’s Blog

and

Geek with an attitude (Buddhika Siddhisena’s Blog)

Atul Chitnis announces that the overseas speakers for the foss.in event to be held in Bangalore in end-November will include: Jonathan Corbet, co-author of “Linux Device Drivers”, and editor of LWN.NET, aka “Linux Weekly News”; Andrew Cowie of Linux Australia; Harald Welte, who’s chairman of the netfilter/iptables project, and the man behind GPL-violations.org; “Mr.Wizards-of-OS” Volker Grassmuck; the man behind the
Apache project, COLLAB.NET’s Brian Behlendorf; “Mr.PHP” Rasmus Lerdorf; the Diva of Open Source, Danese Cooper; Yahoo!’s Jeremy Zawodny; the man behind Linux Sound and Audio Dave Phillips; and the legendary hacker Alan Cox.
———————————————————-
FOSS.IN/2005 is a major Free/Libre & Open Source Software Event being held from Nov 29 to Dec 2, 2005 Bangalore Palace. See http:// foss.in/2005 and the blogs of techies and others associated with the event.

APC member BytesForAll’s mailing list[1] recently played host to a strong, and at times polemical, debate on proprietary-versus-FLOSS (Free/Libre and Open Source Software). In this debate, there were these couple of great posts here [2] and here [3], that put things neatly in perspective — thanks to David Geilhufe who is co-founder of the SocialSourceFoundation.org [4] and Sunil Abraham of Mahiti.org [5].

This debate threw up a range of issues about the role of FLOSS in the ‘developing’ countries, its role in localisation, how it competes with proprietorial software, why its benefits haven’t yet reached regions like Africa, and how diverse approaches to software could actually make a difference in the real world. BytesForAll is a South Asian voluntary network, founded along the free software principles of volunteering, but focussing on information — and how information and communication technologies could be more relevant to the common(wo)man, specially in South Asia.

It all started with a rather critical-of-FLOSS post by University of Manchester’s Dr Richard Heeks [6] offering a
link to an eDevelopment Briefing titled “Free and Open Source Software: A Blind Alley for Developing Countries?” [7].

It calls the 1980s shareware “FOSS forerunner” to have had “zero” impact, says data from Africa shows only five percent of computers “in developing countries” have any open source software running on them, and notes that proprietorial software dominates “even in Cuba… where the US embargo should make conditions highly propitious”.

Besides, the briefing says that “piracy” and the “limited size of initial purchase price within total cost of software
ownership” there is actually no “evidence of FOSS delivering cost savings”.

Says the briefing: “In particular, proprietary software may not be open source but it is certainly free for the great
majority of developing country users, thanks to piracy.” It points to the lack of awareness of FOSS in Africa, and the lack of international links needed to be part of an “active, global community of like-minded developers”.

One early response to this brief text came from BytesForAll co-founder Frederick “FN” Noronha and is here for viewing [8]. Noronha, who goes by the initials of FN, argues, “The “5% of computer systems” overlooks the role played by FLOSS in servers, in keeping the Internet running, in giving unprecedented access to developers of the Third World to take part in a global movement, and more.” This study, argues this post, overlooks the potential of FLOSS in large ‘developing’ countries like India, China, Brazil and South Africa. It points to another study — from Finland — which it says is more open to the benefits of FLOSS in the “developing” world. See the report here at this Maailma site.

FN also adds, “By saying ‘proprietorial software is free’ for the bulk of the ‘developing’ world, the study is guilty of
both tolerating/encouraging the illegally copying of software (’piracy’ is a loaded term, unfortunately accepted by
academia too) and missing the essence of what Free Software is all about (offering the freedom to be used, copied, studied, modified and redistributed). We are not fighting just for the right to remain ‘pirates’….”

Richard “RMS” Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation joining in the debate with these comments. [9].

There was a longish debate on benchmarking FLOSS. Javier Sola, a Spanish-Chilean working on Khmer language localisation in Cambodia, added some interesting points [10].

Javier, who works with APC member the Open Forum of Cambodia, argues: “Academics should make sure that they look at all factors when they write something like this. In this case the author has not come even close to it. He has, among others, completelly ignored the power of localisation, diminished as “techies and amateurs” some of the people that have clearer ideas of what is needed for real migration and used anectdotal data for his conclusions.”

Sunil Abraham argues how proprietorial software could kill — no exaggeration, due to its delays and restrictions — in a post-Tsunami situation. He also argues that “because Sahana (a Free/Libre and Open Source Software project to cope with disasters) is FOSS, the earthquake stricken people from Pakistan and India don’t have to spend money earmarked for food on software.” Then, in an almost tongue-in-cheek Sunish manner, he argues that FLOSS “increases the responsiveness of an organisation. This is important whether it is peoples lives or greater profits.” [11 ]

David Geilhufe has this very interesting response to argue that FLOSS offers “viral diffusion” (to enable its uncontrolled spread, of course in a positive way), local control and lower barriers to entry. Well put, and very well argued.

Here’s [12] what David argues eloquently: “There is no religious war here, but I think the staunch defenders of
proprietary code get stuck on analyzing the software… this isn’t the important part. One needs to analyze the innovation and use of software… that, I believe, is where the real ICT impact lies.”

David’s Social Source Foundation [13] is here. It is “a nonproft organization that exists to create open source,
mission-focused technology for the nonprofit and NGO sector.”

Another link is the OpenNGO.org [14] network. OpenNGO calls itself “an open source project to create a set of web-based tools designed to meet the needs of small U.S. nonprofit organizations and non-governmental organizations across the globe.”

Meanwhile, another strong debate continued at the Global Knowledge for Development mailing-list, visible at the archives here [15]. Some supported Heeks views, while others said academia was missing the point on FLOSS.

Said Mark Davies: “As an African business, and as an African software development business, I still don’t get it. There’s so much enthusiasm for FOSS, there’s so much conference mind-share spent on this topic, and yet I don’t see an illuminating discussion about the opportunities for risk/reward for people like us.” [16 ]

After facing a lot of counterpoints, Heeks responded: “You can read this message in two ways: either that FOSS will never deliver; or that the FOSS community needs to rethink its strategies. Or, of course, if you’ve devoted months or years to FOSS and don’t like the message, you’ll try to denigrate the writer, deny the data, and so forth.” [17]

Klaus Stoll the president of Fundacion Chasquinet [18] in Quito, Ecuador also swam against the tide. He wrote: “…yes, my organization Chasquinet Foundation works with Microsoft and yes it is the same organization that produced and published the open source tollbox for Telecenters in Latin America [19] and yes we have as a policy in our organization that people should have a right to choose. What counts for us here at the grassroots are real ICT tools for Development, be they open source or otherwise, what counts is if they make a real positive impact in improving peoples lives.”

African NGO Kaibassa argued here[20]: “We at Kabissa have a very practical orientation and don’t really push open source in our trainings or through our services and Web site unless it’s just staring in our faces as just plain better. Open source content management systems and other server-based tools and desktop applications like Firefox and Thunderbird spring straight to mind. In the meantime, I hope you and other software developers in Africa are aware of and considering attending Africa Source II.”

But one key perspective came from Richard “RMS” Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation [21]. He commented: “The choice between free (freedom-respecting) and proprietary (user-subjugating) software is not a technical choice. It is an ethical and political issue about people’s freedom. To be neutral on issues that merely concern technology is fine. To be neutral on ethical and political issues about freedom is nothing to be proud of.”

[1] BytesForAll mailing list
[2] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6855
[3] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6849
[4] http://www.socialsourcefoundation.org
[5] http://www.mahiti.org/
[6] Richard Heeks
[7] http://www.manchester.ac.uk/idpm/dig/briefings.htm
[8] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6769
[9] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6794
[10] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6775
[11] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6848
[12] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6855
[13] http://www.socialsourcefoundation.org/
[14] http://www.openngo.org
[15] http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/2005/Oct/”
[16] http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/2005/Oct/0321.html
[17] http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/2005/Oct/0319.html
[18] http://www.chasquinet.org
[19] http://tele-centros.org/tc-toolkit2.0/
[20] http://www.edc.org/GLG/gkd/2005/Oct/0334.html
[21] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bytesforall_readers/message/6837

‘Learning Curve’ is a newsletter from the Azim Premji Foundation. You can find out more about it by writing to them. The interesting thing is that these guys aren’t pushing IT into schools, but actually trying to improve the quality of education itself.

In one recent issue (Issue V, March 2005), a number of interesting topics and writers were covered. Ssomeone at APF probably sent me a copy, because we met up recently at the Asiasource camp in Bangalore, and one continues to show an interest in their work — ITforDevelopment, and education itself.

It’s nice to see India’s best IT brains being applied to local real-world concerns back home (rather than for the export dollar alone… no offence meant, but we all need to get more relevant in terms of where Indian talent gets deployed).

Azim Premji Foundation head for advocacy and research S Giridhar argues: “Teachers, the Parent Teacher Association (or the School Development Monitoring Committee) and the parents are three gears of a school system that must mesh smoothly… Systemic accountability requires the alignment of forces — not just the school but the other two key arms of the system: academic wing and the ’senior management’.”

J Shankar, head of the foundation’s technology initiatives, says: “Today, there is a dire need for us to cut down time spent on satisfying material needs and devote more time for developing abilities, gifts and talents.”

Civil servant Amarjeet Sinha says in an article on ‘education for life’: “India has been very successful in allowing individual excellence to grow. It has produced some world class managers and IT experts. As a mass education, however, we do not achieve as much as we ought to, as we
do not sufficiently address the issue of relevance and education for life.

Three other writers — Sridhar Rajagopalan, Vyjayanthi Sankar and Mili Chandraker — from the Ahmedabad-based Educational Initiatives Pvt Ltd — have a guest column on measuring learning.

They say: “Learning is intrinsic and subjective; it is not neat, linear or simple even to understand, let alone measure. Yet efforts to systematically understand it better do yield positive results.”

They give practical examples to evaluate how children from different school systems perform on the same item — rural government schools; urban, English-medium schools; private, urban, regional-medium schools; and urban municipal schools.

THERE’S ALSO A report on the Child Friendly School Initiative. It involves “a holistic intervention for the all round development of a child through head teachers (school management and leadership in both administrative and academic sides), teachers (subject matter expertise, motivation, higher orientation to child-centric practices), parent body (demanding accountability, relevance of education, and playing an effective role in school management), education officers (effective as change agents), and a focus on issues of sanitation, health and gender.”

APF says it has a reach of 580 schools in Andhra and Karnataka.

TECHNOLOGY INITIATIVES: Think of a single PC with three display terminals, three keyboards and three ‘mouses’, which can be simultaneously used as if they are three independent computers. This innovative idea from the Azim Premji Foundation is being deployed in the computer aided learnign centre at the Byatarayanapura Higher Primary School in Bangalore South District and in another school.

Cost of installation is lower; with a single CPU (central processing unit), the maintainence cost is less. Total cost of ownership — including power consumption, UPS capacity and battery backup — is reported as “substantially lower”.

Five new titles of CDs have also been produced for children in schools. They are: Friendly Animals and Journey on the Clouds (English), Swatantra Divas, Fun with Chinchoo in Mathematics and Khel-Mel (Hindi), released in February 2005. This makes the total number of master titles available at 70. There are now 68 titles in Karnataka, 42 for Andhra, 35 for Tamil Nadu and Pondicherry, 18 for Urdu medium schools, six for Orissa, 14 for Gujarat, three for Punjab and one for Kerala. As an aside, one might add that if this material was made copyright-free, copylefted, creativecommons.org or under a similar license, the good work of the APF could spread in ways it never perhaps anticipated!

Other reports come in about computer-based assessment in Andhra Pradesh (50,000 students took part); a learning guarantee programme; and info on the policy planning unit in Karnataka.

K Subramaniam argues explains about mathematics education research in an article “What Is It and Why It Is Important?” He argues: “Many different players need to contribute to substantially enahance the general level of learning of mathematics in our (Indian) schools: policy makers, curriculum designers, textbook writers, teacher trainers, researchers and, above all, teachers. It would probably be correct to say that among all these groups in the country, the smallest and least developed is the community of researchers in mathematics education.”

Foundation research consultant Sujata Reddy writes on the social context of elementary education in rural India. There is a report by Rishikesh BS on an observation study of school practices under the Learning Guarantee Programme-2004. This study found that a school’s good performance could be “linked to three broad aspects” — a head-teacher in command of the situation and leading by example; professionally-behaved teachers who are punctual and create an interactive learning environment; and an active and ‘understanding’ School Development Monitoring Committee.

Gurumurthy Kasinathan of APF closes the issue with a focus on an initiative between Karnataka’s (the IT giant firm’s home state) and the Azim Premji Foundation. Called Pramata, this is an acronym for the Kannada name for ‘Process Reengineering and Officers’ Training’. Sounds quite corporate!

Finally, this 16-page bulletin ends with very brief but useful one-para reviews of ‘Child Labour and the Right to Education in Sought Asia: Needs versus Rights’ (Naila Kabeer, et al, Sage India 2003); ‘The Emerging Mind, BBC The Reigh Lectures (Vilayanur Ramachandran, MacGuru 2004); ‘Shiksha Aur Samajh’ (Education and Society, Hindi, Rohit Dhankar, Aadhar Prakashan, Panchkula 2004); Language Disadvantage; The Learning Challenge in Primary Education (Dhir Jhingran, APH, 2005).

For this unusual bio — “Azim Premji (born July 24, 1945) is an Indian businessman, and the richest person in the country (from 1999 to 2005 according to Forbes). He is a graduate in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, USA. At the age of 21, Premji joined Wipro, his father’s vegetable oil business (then) (in 1966) after the sudden demise of his father” — see the Wikipedia. [8]

Wikipedia adds: “In 2000, he was voted among the 20 most powerful men in the world by Asiaweek. He was also among the 50 richest people in the world from 2001 to 2003 according to Forbes.”

But it’s probably unfair to call him the Indian Bill Gates. At least Mr Premji didn’t rewrite the rules for as critical a tool as software, which was once freely shared like books and knowledge, but one generation ago began to be treated like “property”! Undeniably, the Indian IT model has gained hugely from proprietorial software, even if that has meant that this crucial tool is mostly too unaffordably-priced for the vast majority in the country itself to afford!

Anyway, this job on education deserves to be appreciated for what it is. And if you’d like to join in online discussions about education, do sign-up here. — Frederick “FN” Noronha, October 13, 2005

October 3 is a day when I spend usually on going back down memory lane, and reminiscing. So is October 10. The first day was when I entered for a full-time job into a newspaper office, in 1983. The second date was when the paper which we joined as college kids actually hit the stands.

We thought Herald would be a big splash when it came out (with a dateline error) with its English-avatared first issue. Nobody, or almost nobody, noticed it. The Navhind refused to carry an advertisement about the birth of a ‘rival’ newspaper. To add to the tragi-comic situation,
the Herald poster which was put up in a very few parts of Panjim read, “Announcing the birth of a new English (language) daily….” or something to that effect. Below it there was the photo of two singers with a guitar!

On Monday, the Herald’s few ad-packed extra pages reminded it was the 22nd anniversary of Herald’s and our entry into journalism. Some comments on the occasion, mostly in response to what the Herald is saying (or not saying):

* Editor Robin Abreu’s brief front-page piece is titled ‘Dev Borem Korum’. In addition to Rajan Narayan’s almost patented phrase, he also signs off with an additional ‘Devan Tumcher Bessaum Galum’. I think Rajan has added to the Konkani language and localspeak with repeated use of terms like DBK and Pratapsing *Raoji* Rane…

* Robin is as much a man of few words, as Rajan is loquacious. While we did learn some positive things from Rajan and he was at first a great boss (specially in the early days), one of his traits as editor was to virtually fill the entire paper with his own writing. This has been commented on elsewhere; I think by RK Nair. Sometimes, this left less space (in both senses of the word) for his team. Perhaps an editor should spend his or her energies in getting out the best from others, rather than dominating the publication himself or herself….

Robin terms Herald Goa’s “largest read paper” and says it is “getting stronger and stronger”. His contention that “the changes over the past one year” have been undertaken “to meet the varying demands of our readers” can however be debated.

Firstly, most changes are advertiser-driven and seem shaped with the trends being brought in by papers like the Times of India. The ascent of the marketing sections over editorial is clearly visible in many papers, including the Herald. This has little or nothing to do with providing a
better product to the reader. (In fact, readability of such papers has gone down.)

Instead, it has everything to do with jazzifying and sexing-up the product, under the (mistaken) belief that everyone wants a glamorous, colour and snazzy paper in between their hands, one that appeals to their emotions rather than to their brain, and one which is advertiser-friendly and conflict-free (it doesn’t care about local concerns and ignores them often).

THE NEXT THING that drew my attention was Uday Bhembre’s article on Page 5, titled ‘Remembering with gratitude’. It acknowledges “the contribution of Herald to the success of the language agitation in 1986″.

As someone working there in the heat of the “agitation”, I felt then as I feel now that it was a lot of hot air, misplaced chauvinism and all that has resulted in frustration and unfulfilled promises. Few might the details of how the “agitation” was used for selfish purposes by its leading lights. I know at least one senior who was arguing for a raise in salary on the basis that the newspaper had “brought 75,000 people to the Azad Maidan” (or words to that effect).

I couldn’t agree more with Bhembre’s view that “Herald… should not try to be a ‘national’ paper, in the sense that it should not ignor elocal news and run away from issues of local interest”. He has an apt example when he says, “As a reader, I do not expect any local newspaper to ignore the controversial VCD product by the Government, and devote its columns to discuss films like Lagaan or Swades…” Well put.

Bhembre says, “Herald should improve its Sunday magazine”. Does the Sunday magazine still exist? It seems to have been given a quiet burial some months ago, or at least reduced to a shadow of its former self.

Bhembre also adds that the Sunday magazine should “discuss books published in Goa especially in Konkani”. Why Konkani? Because a lobby has hijacked a language and turned it into a barely-read one, which has no takers in its own language? It is quite a comment on the failure of the language protagonists that they need reviews of Konkani books in an English-language newspaper.

Also, Bhembre seems to be contradicting himself when he argues that “in the present times, Goa needs newspapers which fearlessly protect the interest of Goans” and at the same time says “Herald has the potential; but to fit into that category it will have to practice free,
fair and fearless journalism in the interest of the country in general and Goa in particular”.

The first statement suggests that the “interest of Goans” are somehow distinct from those of others. Or that someone who is not a Goan is impinging on these. The actual fact is that many of our contradictions lie within *our* society itself. Bhembre goes on to talk about the “interest of the country”. As if Goa is one undifferentiated mass, and so is India.

Bhembre also adds: “There is a perception in a section of the Goan population that Herald looks towards a particular community as a constituency. This perception needs to be dispelled.”

This is a debatable proposition. In a Goa where every paper is seen as a mouthpiece (or largely read by) one community or caste group or lobby (even the BJP has its own organ now!), the Herald gets consistently blamed as being a newspaper read mainly by the Catholics.

Which it is. But what’s wrong with that?

In my view, the Herald (or any other paper in a similar position) need not be apologetic about this. Worldwide, papers have a preferred readership, when tends to be a group whose views are reflected and re-echoed in the newspaper they read. Sometimes the group might be based on politics (liberal, conservative, radical), or religion (Urdu papers, Marathi papers in Goa, former Portuguese papers here, etc).

This is not a crime! Anyone running a paper will try to echo the views and concerns of his basic readership constituency.

Unfortunately, the Herald gets put on the defensive, even while nobody even seems to notice that papers like the GT also show signs of wanting to cut into the “Catholic readership” market.

What *is* wrong, I think, is to polarise readers of one community against the other, and to lead readers into believing that the ‘other’ are evil enemies out to destroy you. Many papers in Goa — sometimes Herald too in the past — have adopted such an approach, which is not just very unfortunate but also dangerous to the future of Goa.

Herald needs to be more honest about where it stands, and try to adequately serve the Catholic readership — which otherwise gets very little media space in Goa. It also needs to give a honest, liberal and secular leadership to the community. It needs to question corrupt politicians, specially those of a Catholic background, who are otherwise adept at throwing dust over the eyes of the common(wo)man without ever being challenged on the basis of the support they draw from the cornered minority community, which is itself a significantly large minority.

At the same time, papers like the Herald have a crucial role in building understanding between different sections of the Goan population, both communities and castes, locals and migrants, etc. Just highlighting a few reports about Hindu religious festivals isn’t going to fool anyone
or ever be sufficient.

JOE D’SOUZA, one of the preferred columnist of the Herald currently, has another piece titled ‘A tribute to the voice of Goa’.

He calls the Herald (actually O Heraldo, the shrunken O’s at either end were a typographical trick intended to continue getting newsprint quotas in the days of the license-permit raj) a “predominantly Portuguese daily” started in 1900.

Predominantly? I thought it was wholly Portuguese … Those weren’t days days of multiculturalism anyway. Or am I wrong?

But the bloomer in Joe’s piece is that he mistakes A.C.Fernandes, the man who went in for the shifting of Herald from being a Portuguese-language daily to an English-language one, with AC’s father, J.D.Fernandes. Actually, the latter is also the name of the far-older stationery shop (named after A C Fernandes’ father, and Raul-John-Oswald Fernandeses’ granddad, so others tend to get confused too).

For Dr Joe to get it wrong, not once but twice, is understandable. For a newspaper to forget its own history is — and that too, going just 22 years back — is surprising. This is the problem with a lack of ‘insider’ understanding of issues, an issue we have been debating on the Goajourno mailing list recently.

See http://puggy.symonds.net/pipermail/goajourno/2005-October/002367.html

What is also more noteworthy is the piece also erases the role played by Rajan Narayan in the Herald. There’s no mention of this name. It’s like the case of Leon Trotsky, who was wiped out of photographs when he fell out of favour with revolutionaries in Russia.

On a related point, in the early days of the Herald (maybe the first year or two), Rajan Narayan actually named the entire team that brought out the paper in his anniversary edit. Right down to proof-readers and peons! But over the years, this was forgotten as the then-editor took on a larger-than-life image himself, and the Herald-is-Rajan, Rajan-is-Herald era began.

Dr Joe claims that “Herald alone was the voice, which proclaimed (sic) about the extensive damage done by unscientific mining and haphazard urbanisation taking place in Goa”.

Actually, a closer look at the issues of the time shows that the paper was largely silent at the peak of what it later described as the rule by the Gang of Four (four of the controversial Congress politicians) and actually lionised politicians like Ravi Naik when they were in power, and unleashed the land conversions of the early ‘nineties. (Ravi was heroised as the man who had the guts to jail Churchill Alemao; later on, Alemao himself came in for praise, after becoming, at one stage, the Godfather General of Goons!

Joe would also like to believe that it was his and Norman Dantas’ work in the Herald (I have great respect for Norman’s work generally) that resulted in a House Committee to look into the Nylon 6,6 DuPont issue. Actually, a high level of industrial rivalry (don’t forget the Nylon 6
link to the Ambanis and others) was more responsible in one of the few successful environmental protests in Goa. Believing otherwise would be an exercise in self-delusion.

Joe also credits the Herald with standing up to the BJP when it was in power and Goa was facing the “manipulation of the press”. I think the GT played a much more significant role. That too, even when the Parrikar regime seemed almost-invincible, not only in early-2005, by which time its fall was imminent.

It is also questionable to portray the BJP as the only “arm-twisting” force affecting the Goan press. What about other politicians, including the Congress during its long years in power, and other smaller players too?

Just a few thoughts. Your comments are welcome. FN