Spanish, Konkani… and music videos

Colin <jazzgoa@yahoo.com> sent this note (together with copies of the two music videos):

 

Obligato-Goa’s sensational latino band has launched two music videos in Goa. A sizzling Spanish song called ‘La Paranda’ and a kicking Konkani kantaar called ‘Goa Amchem’. The band has decided to get together again after a two year break. The video DVD has been released for promotional purposes and is available free of cost. Call Carlos in Goa for your copy on cellphone 9822382824.View a low resolution clip of ‘Goa Amchem’ here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_aq6uSElyc4

goamusician : Message: Obligato launches music video

technorati tags:music, Spanish, Konkani, Obligato

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Check this mailing list: development communications….

We are a network of activists,academics and development practitioners working toward stronger alternative,participatory and people centered communications.(This) group will focus on demonstrating that development communication is an indispensable ingredient for meeting contemporary development challenges….

DevelopmentCommunicationInSouthAsia : DevelopmentCommunicationInSouthAsia

technorati tags:media, communications, india

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Check this mailing list: development communications….

We are a network of activists,academics and development practitioners working toward stronger alternative,participatory and people centered communications.(This) group will focus on demonstrating that development communication is an indispensable ingredient for meeting contemporary development challenges….

DevelopmentCommunicationInSouthAsia : DevelopmentCommunicationInSouthAsia

technorati tags:media, communications, india

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India joins Creative Commons camp of building sharable knowledge

Jan 27, 2007 – 10:45:52 AM Several million pages of web content use Creative Commons licenses. This makes tonnes of text, video, music, photos and educational content sharable to those with Net access.

By Frederick Noronha, IANS, [RxPG] Mumbai, Jan 27 – India’s entry into the global Creative Commons network that works to expand the range of creative work available for others to build upon and share has been welcomed by Joichi Ito, chair of the non-profit organisation.

Ito, chair of Creative Commons -, a 2001-founded non-profit organisation, told IANS:’India was probably the most significant country we had left out -. It is important – from an IT perspective and from a growth perspective. It is a large country, with a significant intellectual community, and a potential economic power.’

On Friday, the Indian Institute of Technology –Bombay saw the launch of the Creative Commons – licenses and project.CC has released several copyright licenses known as Creative Commons licenses, the latest being one suited to Indian legal requirements.

These licenses, depending on the one chosen, restrict only certain rights – of the work.I think India is not yet polluted with bad intellectual property thinking. Young people are more open to the possibility of accepting Open Source – here. Like Brazil, he said.

Said the US-educated Japanese campaigner, venture capitalist and Net entrepreneur: In the US even the kids think in terms of mainstream media metaphors. They say they have to ‘steal’ music.

The words they use also assumes they’re committing some crime.He stressed to see the Creative Commons license as something more than an act of rebellion.

Said Ito: Four years after its launch, Creative Commons has become more mainstream, getting acceptance from – companies like Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. -In India, we’d like to see – license being used for a very broad range of uses, whether it’s university producers and courseware, villagers with local content, or even Bollywood, he told IANS minutes prior to the launch of the project for India.

We’ve spent a lot of time discussing about the needs of professional producers to mass-produce content. But one of the main businesses on the Internet today is to create opportunity to share their own work. It’s a multibillion dollar market even today. It’s growing, said Ito.

Ito is himself also the general manager – for the Internet search-engine for blogs Technorati, chairman of Six Apart Japan, and Socialtext.

He is the founder and CEO of the venture capital firm Neoteny Co., Ltd. He is on the board of ICANN -, the Open Source Initiative, and Mozilla Foundation.Later he called on Creative Commons supporters to help make it ubiquitous.

We don’t win the argument until your grandmother can use Creative Commons – without having to install some fancy thing -, he said.He argued that even commercially-driven Bollywood, India’s mainstream films sector, could gain a lot from Creative Commons licenses.In markets where it was little known, like Japan for instance, it could allow its older films to be shared among viewers, allowing for its popularity and demand to be built up there, he argued.

In Brazil, one of the largest – record label has opted for allowing non-commercial copying of its music under the Creative Commons license, he argued. The ability to influence cultures beyond borders works well if you can legally share it, he said.

He advocated the license for documentary filmmakers – growing fast in India but still struggling to find their audiences.

Non-commercial, non-derivative licenses are what is needed. Quite a few documentary filmmakers use that. They want viewers to be able to copy their work, but don’t want it to be commercially reused -, said he.

Ito said Creative Commons’ developing nations license was one of those which was not doing well. We thought book publishers might have been interested in using it, to license their work in countries where they didn’t have a market -, he said.

But, others were doing fine, he added.Several million pages of web content use Creative Commons licenses. This makes tonnes of text, video, music, photos and educational content sharable to those with Net access.But the project has its share of critics as well, with some questioning how well it was living up to its perceived values and goals.

India joins Creative Commons camp of building sharable knowledge

technorati tags:creativecommons, india, knowledge, copyrights, copyleft

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Toys for tomorrow… a new mailing list

A cyber-network being built to promote discussion on toys in India — traditional and modern — and network people working on this issue. This list was inspired by a chance meeting with Sudarshan Khanna, a man committed to this idea, after many years, at the IIT Bombay’s TechFest, Jan 2007. –Frederick Noronha

toys-for-tomorrow-india : ToysForTomorrow(India)

technorati tags:toys, mailinglist, india, nid, nationalinstitutefordesign

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Simputer …. dead or fighting back?

Simputer project struggling to keep afloat

IANS,January 30, 2007

The Simputer is dead. Long live the Simputer. India’s most high profile IT hardware project has been fighting to keep afloat, but some pleasant surprises could still come the way of this handheld computing device. ‘

The Simputer was greeted with much optimism globally when plans for it were announced and prototypes put out to show its workability. But this didn’t work as smoothly as expected.

Now the production of the Simputer has ceased. People are still buying the “couple of thousand” computers available in his company’s stock, said Atul Chitnis, Geodesic senior vice-president (product technology and strategy).

Geodesic, with its offices at Andheri in Mumbai, has recently taken over part of the Simputer initiative.Chitnis argued that what was “interesting” was the huge amount of technology that “came out of the project” but never got used.

“This is still going into devices now itself. I can’t tell you more about that. But the Simputer is far from dead. This year itself will see (some of the fruits of that),” Chitnis told IANS.

Chitnis said the takeover of one of the two Simputer firms by Geodesic had given it the “added advantage” of global capital and market reach.He said the lack of applications developed by external hackers for the Simputer-as is done generally in the Open Source world-was another letdown to some users.

But the interface used for development, Picopeta’s Alchemy, has now been turned into the openalchemy.org interface.”It has now been picked up by a whole lot of developers. (Prominent German Open Source developer) Harald Welte demostrated in Bangalore recently how he’s working on this stuff. You should take a look at the promise of tools such as the open embedded distribution.

Soon, there will be no shortage of tools for the Simputer,” Chitnis guessed. Chitnis, long known as an evangelist for the Open Source approach to computing, said the Simputer was one reason why he moved on from his own consulting firm to being part of the Geodesic team, which now owns the Amida brand of the Simputer. “I’ve long been interested in the mobile space,” he said.

But, he felt, what went “wrong” with the Simputer was that it was given the “wrong image” as a “poor man’s computer”. Rather, he argued, it was meant to be a device meant to bridge the digital divide.”All sorts of promises were made. The government committed itself to deploying Simputers in its departments. But this never happened.”

Chitnis pointed to the superior nature of the Simputer design. When he went to the Wizards of Oz event in Berlin recently, a casual display of the Picopeta-sold Amida Simputer saw geeks “dropping everything and playing with the features of the Simputer”.

“They were almost all Western geeks, impressed with technology that came out of India five years ago. It’s amazing what Indians could achieve.”According to him, the “problem” was that Simputer efforts were led by an “innovator company, not a marketing company”.

Also, the two Simputer licensee companies, Encore and Picopeta, took very different stances on the role of the Simputer. One marketed it to commercial markets, while the other saw it as a tool to bridge the digital divide, he said.

ZDNet India > News > hardware > Simputer project struggling to keep afloat

technorati tags:simputer, digitaldivide, BytesForAll, india, Geodesic

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Everybody is laughing…

Joichi Ito is talking about the right for political free speech while remixing… this is at the launch of Creative Commons (India) at the IIT Bombay. He showed a few secs of a great footing of George Bush and Tony Blair… singing a … love duet together!

technorati tags:CreativeCommons, Joichi, Ito

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Photos from Techfest, IIT Bombay

Here’s the place for sharing pics from Techfest@IIT Bombay
Techfest Photographs (techfest.picsquare.com)
just dropped in to check out the launch of CreativeCommonsIndia.

technorati tags:creativecommons, iit, iitbombay, mumbai, bytesforall, photos, photosharing

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Robotics, dinosaurs… and IITians’ "social responsibilities”

Fun, robotics, videoconference talks from someof the planet’s big names in science and tech, and a drastic re-lookat alternatives to the copyright model are on the menu for this year’sTechfest2007, the student festival of one of India’s premiertechnology training centres, IIT-Bombay.
“In a little while, there will be something like 20,000 people takingpart here,” said Asst Prof Shishir K Jha, of the Shailesh J. MehtaSchool of Management.
Draped in a sea of banners that indicate the support from affluentindustrial and other sponsors to this event in a prestigioustechnology training-grounds, the IIT-Bombay was busy with students andothers thronging the three-day evening that begins on Republic Day andgoes on till Sunday (January 28).
Organisers project it to be a mix of fun, technology and brainpower.Technoholix, an “after dark” festival, will showcase “robowars” where30-pound and 60-pound robots will “fight it out” in a specially builtantenna.
Said organisers, “You may have seen it on TV, but we promise to demoit live for an altogether different experience.”
“Illusions” is the name for a virtual reality park, with French artistMiguel Chevalier projecting a special interactive wall mural.Chevalier is known internationally as one of the pioneers of virtualand digital art.
Playmotion! will let visitors play games like ShufflePack and socceron a screen — with their shadows!
One of the prominent speakers is Dr John Nash, eminent mathematicianand Nobel laureate. He was popularised by the Academy Award winningfilm ‘A Beautiful Mind’, a 2001 film inspired by the life of Nash andhis experiences of schizophrenia. Nash is to deliver a lecture viavideoconference on game theory and other mathematical concepts.
Thanks to videoconferencing, another of the world leading cyberneticsexperts — Prof Kevin Warwick, also known as the Human Cyborg — willtalk on coming Sunday evening about neural implants and its impact onthe human body, drawing on his own experience of having a chip implanted in his arm.
Giving the festival a social thrust, a debate on the “responsibilityof being an IITian” will also be focussing on “India’s most-hyped”students. Taking part will be IITian-turned-editor Sandipan Deb, LokParitrana president Tanmay Rajpurohit, Mastek CEO Ashank Desai, andWebaroo’s Rakesh Mathur, among others.
Others offering lectures include former Bell Labs president Dr ArunNetravali (via video conference), Centre for SETI (Search forExtra-Terrestrial Intelligence) Research Dr Jill Tarter, India’sleading astrophysicist Dr Jayant Narlikar, Skybus and anti-collisiondevice rail pioneer Rajaram Bojji (formerly of the Konkan RailwayCorporation), and political activist Dunu Roy on how society isclosely interlinked with science and technology.
The Royal Society, Britain’s oldest existing scientific society, willexhibit its Summer Science exhibition for the first time outside theUnited Kingdom, at Techfest 2007, IIT Bombay organisers said.
Exhibits will include a life-sized model of the winged dinosaurPterosaur, mind-reading machines, systems to forecast unpredictablenatural disasters (like tsunamis and earthquakes), and specialstructures that can be used for construction in space, apart formalternative sources of energy.
IIT Bombay’s own R&D exhibition will focus on a “silicon locket” tomonitor cardiac disease, “virtual surgery” and prosthetic designsystems, and an urban disaster management plan, among others.
If you want updates of the events, you can get them via SMS. And toadd to the “fun” there are events of juggling and others taking place,of all places, in the swimming pool, apart from promises of “sandanimation”.

technorati tags:iitbombay, iit-bombay, mumbai

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Lack of awareness, prejudices and ignorance… (and) warm wishes always

Someone calling herself Kylie Suarzes sent me this note, published here in full (excepting the deletion of two names of journalists, mentioned a bit disparagingly), without comments:

Dear Frederick, Hi! I trust this mail finds you in good health. First of all it was good to read your work in the Goan Womans ebook.

I enjoyed reading it thoroughly and felt so proud to be a Goan. But I want to mention that chapter nine ‘Goan women in fine print’ was absolutely Incomplete.

First of all you forgot to mention a leading young goan journalist — Cheryl Rodrigues, who started her career with Herald only in class XI.

She won the Best poem competition in Herald in class VII and has been pursuing writing since then. Her articles were one of the best as far as I remember and were much appreciated by all readers. She was so creative and covered good issues. She contributed not just to Herald Friends (Youth supplement) but also to the magazine Herald Insight, under Ethel Da Costa.

She covered some of the best stories for the youth and the Goan community at large. She interviewed some of the best personalities too.

Yet you had not a word of mention about her.

She went ahead to write for Home and Garden, a magazine started by Guru Sardessai in Panjim. She also worked as a Radio journalist for programmes like Yuvvavani. and as a Radio Jockey on All India Radio.

Thanks to her influence and inspiration, she got the so-called good writers …. [names deleted –FN] involved in Journalism. She was the Pioneer and they only followed her footsteps.

So much so that when she went to pursue Journalism in one of the best colleges, Bombay College of Journalism (Mumbai), [names deleted-FN] only followed suit. Nothing much can be said about their writing, which lacks structure and a good editing style.

Cheryl went International by becoming the Desk editor and staff writer for Kuwait Times, and continued some of the best stories for them and yet Mr Frederick you had of appraisal for her.

How can anyone write an article without mentioning Cheryl Rodrigues, anout spoken talent that even [names deleted -FN] can vouch for. It is nothing but a shame. As a matter of fact, I’m sure she will be more than disappointed to even hear about this.

This is what discourages us Goans. Few writers like you, inspired by your lack of awareness, prejudices and ignorance tend to shun out some ofthe brillinat achievers our society has produced.

Thank you. I look forward to your response in this regard.

Warm wishes always,

Kylie Suarzes

technorati tags:media, journalism, goa

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Boss, Baga?

“

“Boss, Baga?”

As I cycled back to Saligao on a leisurly Sunday evening, with Aren chattering in the front of my exer-cycle, I realised someone was asking me for directions. The guy was on a motorcycle.

Two decades after grumbling that Goa doesn’t have adequate road-signs, we are just there… with still no adequate sign-boards.

Somewhere along the way, a beginning was made. But if you’re cycnical (like I am sometimes), you would say it was only an attempt at giving some crumbs to political supporters of the government of the day.

Meanwhile, the 2.5 million claimed (claimed, because Goa hardly has any set of reliable statistics on this) tourists visiting Goa each year… and even locals travelling in another part of the state… have to just keep fumbling for directions in this pocket handkerchief-sized state!

[Photo above shows commercial billboards… we have enough and more of these … causing unneeded visual pollution.]

technorati tags:goa, trnasport, roads, signboards

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Boss, Baga?

“

“Boss, Baga?”

As I cycled back to Saligao on a leisurly Sunday evening, with Aren chattering in the front of my exer-cycle, I realised someone was asking me for directions. The guy was on a motorcycle.

Two decades after grumbling that Goa doesn’t have adequate road-signs, we are just there… with still no adequate sign-boards.

Somewhere along the way, a beginning was made. But if you’re cycnical (like I am sometimes), you would say it was only an attempt at giving some crumbs to political supporters of the government of the day.

Meanwhile, the 2.5 million claimed (claimed, because Goa hardly has any set of reliable statistics on this) tourists visiting Goa each year… and even locals travelling in another part of the state… have to just keep fumbling for directions in this pocket handkerchief-sized state!

[Photo above shows commercial billboards… we have enough and more of these … causing unneeded visual pollution.]

technorati tags:goa, signboards, Goa, infrastructure, transport

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Reena Martins’ stories…

Colleague Reena Martins, based in Mumbai, has these two stories in The Telegraph titled The ills of the pills (“An abortion with no surgery involved is a dangerous trend and it’s picking up among the young in the country”) and Sappho comes out of the closet (“In a radical change from previous behaviour, lesbians are coming out into the open with their sexuality”). She’s from Salcete… a part of the Goajourno and even surviving Goanet (it can be tough for women posters out there!).

technorati tags:media, relationships, reenamartins, thetelegraphkolkata

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Missed opportunities, journalistic regrets, and Capn Crunch

Journalistic regrets? One thing I could always kick myself for is having run into Cap’n Crunch aka John Draper (many years back) both at a payphone booth in Goa at Calangute and at Porvorim (where Ricky’s office was then located)…. and not realising the role this man had played in the history of technology. The Wall Street Journal has a nice story titled. The Twlight Years of Cap’n Crunch: Silicon Valley legend John Draper made his name with brains and branks, before slipping to the margins:

In the decades since Mr. Draper gained fame for his hacking skills as a “phone phreak” — he once claimed to have gotten then-President Nixon on the phone — Silicon Valley has aged and matured. Pioneers that Mr. Draper worked with, such as Apple’s Steve Jobs, have gone on to become wealthy members of the business establishment.

THEN THERE is “Cap’n Crunch,” part of an aging community of high-tech wunderkinds. Once tolerated, even embraced, for his eccentricities, Mr. Draper now lives on the margins of this affluent world, still striving to carve out a role in the businessmain stream.

Although his appearance and hand-to-mouth existence belie it, Mr. Draper developed one of the first word-processing programs as well as the technology that made possible voice-activated telephone menus. He receives invitations to speak to foreign governments and international conferences. At a recent celebration of Apple Inc.’s 30th anniversary, Mr. Draper, sporting a straggly beard, stood to contribute a story, causing the room to break into applause.

technorati tags:Goa, capncrunch, johndraper, historyoftechnology, draper

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WilliamDrums… and three MP3s

WilliamDrums aka William D’Souza <williamdrums at yahoo.com> is a well-rated drummer, going by what prominent fellow musicians say. He recently sent me three MP3 files. Interesting stuff!

The first is called Blue Fuse and was performed on Guitar Jaggi that is broadcast from BPLRadio Indigo. It involved the work of Chennai based bassist Prakash David and Mapusa-based Williams on the drums. It’s a live recording done at the M.F. Hussein’s Art Gallery in Bangalore during 2004

Next was Demo Five, another version of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. Says William: “What I’ve done is I’ve sung a different tune on the same chord structures with me using my musical toybat to recite my Indian format and also playing drums with Jaggi Guitarist and Prakash David on bass.”

Finally, the third is called Evergreen, and is from an album by Gerard Machado’s Network, released by BMG Crescendo. Musicians involved were Gerard Machado on the guitair, Freddy Melville on piano, Prakash Hule (nephew of Gerard Machado, presently in the US as bassist) and William himself on drums soloing on the song using “Indian carnatic style konnokol (rythum spoken).”

He also mentioned a CD of his performances with international bands that came down to Goa, back in 1979-80, called the Anjuna Jamm Band.

technorati tags:goa, music, mapusa drums

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Goan women… and the written world

Aloke Fernandes <alokefer at gmail.com> sent me these inputs:

Am a regular reader of your blogs and posts on various goa-linked forums.In response to an old query posted by you on Goacom [I guess he means Goanet.org –FN] — on
notification of new goan authors, below are two recent releases, both
by Goans, and both based in part on fictional villages in Goa

• Nandita da Cunha.Novel: The Magic of Maya. Info at http://nanditadacunha.blogspot.com
• Sonia Faleiro,Novel: The Girl,Info at http://soniafaleiro.blogspot.com

There are also short stories (again based on Goa) by Nisha da
Cunha, and a non fictional account by Maria Aurora Couto but I do not
have a link to that. I have read and enjoyed all these books, especially the short
stories by Nisha (the only non-Goan in the list above!) … most of which
however have a darker side to them. You could update your database/
reviews section with any of these if you like. Do let me know if this
is of any use.

Thanks so much Aloke. Your post (though I knew these names, fiction doesn’t interest me as much as non-fiction….) suddenly drew my attention to the fact that in our, patriarchal, Goan society, women writers are fairly well well represented. As it happens, I kept up till late last night, reading some chapters of Imelda Dias’ How Long Is Forever? An Autobiography of a Woman Ahead of her Times.

technorati tags:goa, books, women, womenauthors, writers, goabooks

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Newsrack… a great tool

Newsrack is a great tool. You can use it to keep track of news on issues related to keywords of your interest. Written by a friend, Subramanya “Subbu” Sastry <sastry at cs.wisc.edu>

In Subbu’s words:

I am Subbu and I have been working on the news monitoring tool NewsRack, one of which is accessible at http://floss.sarai.net/newsrack Currently, over 250 users have registered with NewsRack….

At this time, NewsRack is able to track news from 5 different Hindi sources:

• Dainik Jagran
• BBC-Hindi
• Navbharat Times
• Dainik Bhaskar
• Hindustan Dainik

and one Kannada source

• Kannada Prabha

This list is expected to grow in the future.

So, at this time, on NewsRack, it is possible to track only Hindi news from the above sources, or it is possible to track English and Hindi (and Kannada) news at the same time for the same topic. As an example, check the coverage for the ongoing Singur land acquisition saga http://floss.sarai.net/newsrack/Browse.do?owner=subbu&issue=Land+Issues&catID=3

It would be good as an example to set up something entirely in Hindi .. so
feel free to email me if any of you has a need for tracking a particular
topic using the above Hindi sources.

Check out the Goa-linked stories on Newsrack.

technorati tags:india, freesoftware, documentation, floss, sarai.net

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Blog of the "Vicious Beast”

Derek Cordeiro very modestly showed me the template and blog he had created for himself. Derek, 22, is a Goa Engineering College student and the guy who keeps my comp(s) working… in fine shape. He has done it for years, and I’ve had no complaint whatsoever. One can always rely on his ingenuity to find some solution to any (or so it seems) problem one things of in the IT world. His blog says:

This blog isn’t about anything specific. I usually focus on alternate technology, better technology, Free/ Open Source Software, Books(Technical) and various events in my life… Viciously Yours, The Beast.

Looks neat. Well made. Looking forward to more blogs. Specially from the GNU/Linux community in Goa… and everyone else too.

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Oh, rats!

Tom and Jerry (MGM) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Riza (8) was narrating this little funny to us all, about her brother Aren (3).

I suspect she’s feeling shy to write about it in her blog … and she does think twice about the impact of any potentially-embarassing information “leaked out”. She does let things slip sometimes, though 🙂

The kids have been watching a lot of TV these days… which is obviously, not a good thing.

Tom and Jerry (MGM), has turned into one of Aren’s favourite. Who doesn’t know of the series of theatrical animated cartoons produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, featuring a cat and a mouse? Not if you’re thoroughly cartoonolised, like us here. Indian animation is slowly just building up, and Goan animation…? Forget about it!

Riza claims Aren got to asking her, “Riza, can you get a Jerry for me?” (He talks in a sing-song way, and can be realllly polite and charming, if he wants to.)

With a broad grin, Riza narrates that she simply told him: “Aren, we already have so many Jerries (rats) in our house!”

Yeah, fighting the rat population in this part of the globe can indeed be quite a challenge. We even discussed this issue even on Goanet in the past. Expats think it’s a joke, I guess.

One can still laugh when one sees some of the answers here and here. To be fair, Goanetter Gabe Menezes was kind enough to get a tiny device that is meant to create an electronic noise and chase away these not-so-charming Jerries. Rahul Alvares, a nature enthusiast from the neighbouring village of Parra, who has ‘pet’ snakes to feed, was helping us with sourcing the right ‘traps’, so that he would get occasional food for the creepy-crawlies at his home. This works upto a point; the rats start gnawing at the cages (successfully) and you also need patience to keep on at it! Okay, can’t blame anyone here….

Wikipedia says: Rat is the term generally and indiscriminately applied to numerous members of several rodentfamilies having bodies longer than about 12 cm, or 5 inches (Smallerthin-tailed rodents are just as often indiscriminately referred to as mice).^[1] In scientific usage, a rat is any one of about 56 different species of small, omnivorous rodents belonging to the genus Rattus.

Some more Wikipedia facts:

By most standards, rats are considered pests or vermin.They can be very destructive to crops and property. Rats can quicklyoverpopulate when they live in a place where they have no predators,such as in certain cities, and their numbers can become hard tocontain. Because of this, the entire province of Alberta, Canada has upheld and maintained a rat-free status since the early 1950s; it is even illegal to keep pet rats there.

Rats have a significant impact on food production. Estimates vary,but it is likely that anything between one-fifth and one-third of theworld’s total food output is eaten, spoiled or destroyed by rats andother rodents.

Rats can carry over thirty different diseases dangerous to humans, including Weil’s disease, typhus, salmonella and bubonic plague. Black rats are suspected to have had a role in the Black Death, an epidemic which killed at least 75 million people in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia in the mid-late 14th century.

A variety of rat control methods have been used throughout humanhistory to either reduce or eliminate rat populations in homes,markets, farms, and industrial sites. The two most widely used methodsare rat poison and rat traps, though cats and dogs have also been employed to hunt rats. Professional rat-catchers can be found in many developing countries.

Because rats are nocturnal, daytime sightings of rat activity canmean that their nesting areas have been disturbed or, more likely, that there is overpopulation of them in the local area. It is typically at this point that vermin control measures tend to increase.

Rats often chew electrical cables. Around 26% of all electrical cable breaks are caused by rats, and around 18% of all phone cable breaks. Around 25% of all fires of unknown origin are estimated to becaused by rats.

Rats, particularly roof rats (Rattus rattus), can enter theattics of homes where they mate and nest. This problem occurs commonly in coastal, temperate climates and affects even the cleanest, well-kept homes.

Oh, it seems like they’ve got a very bad press!

But, for now, the challenge is to get Riza to narrate this story … in her own words, on her own blog. Maybe I should try more determinedly when she’s back from school tomorrow. Christmas has been one big blur of parties for the kids (okay, they’re only kids once!) what with their grandmum and uncle down from Mumbai.

technorati tags:goa, india, rats, rodents, aren, riza, goanet

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Looking at Goa’s heritage… in its various shapes

One of my favourite Goa-related journals was released the other day. Parmal. It’s latest issue has on its cover this photo showing traditionally-attired Goan Hindu young women at a festive celebration. Parmal is published by the Goa Heritage Action Group, and calls itself “an annual publication brought to you by the GHAG, an NGO (non-governmental organisation) based in Goa dedicated to the preservation, protection and conservation of Goa’s natural, cultural and man-made heritage”.

Prava Rai is Parmal‘s editor. She does a great job of it. It fits in with my view that some of the so-called “non-Goans” (and returned expats) are among those who are contributing the most significantly to Goan society today. The simplistic barrage against them notwithstanding.

Prava says in the editorial: “The danger of equating heritage with identity fosters untenable claims to the bones, belongings, riddles and the refuse of every forbear into the mists of time: ipossible claims in the face of historical reality.”

My view of the GHAG is that it tends to be a bit elitist in nature. Sometimes. This places it somewhat closer-to-comfort to the Establishment than it perhaps should be, and blocks it from taking more strong, campaign-oriented stands. But, on the positive side, it helps them get an official hearing. Sometimes. Their approach also means they do a great job to generate content that has much relevance to the debate about Goa.

This issue contains articles, among others, focussed on the mother goddess cult (by Portuguese studies specialist Ana Paula Lopes da Silva Damas Fita), the feminine space in Goan houses (architecture writer Heta Pandit), sacred groves (field ecologist Nirmal Kulkarni), the Fontainhas Festival of the Arts (artist and journalist Deviprasad C Rao), Goan residential architecture (Sanskrit scholar and prof of theology Jose Pereira), the parish churches of Goa (civil engineer-turned-author and Goalogist Jose Lourenco), the legacy of the house of Menezes Braganca (sociologist Nishtha Desai), forgetting Pio Gama Pinto (by SOAS-London educated researcher Rochelle Pinto), and Mumbai-based freelance writer Veena Gomes-Patwardhan’s The Stars of Yesterday (from the Konkani stage).

If you’ll allow me to brag a little (which is what one is usually doing!), we managed to point to the interesting ideas of some writers by having them e-published on Goanet Reader… and Parmal/Prava did a good job of following up. Of course, we should be doing far, far more on this front….

technorati tags:goa, books, heritage, ghag, goaheritageactiongroup, parmal

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F[L]OSS … in the neighbourhood

It was nice to see my essay on Free and Open Source Software in Pakistan (unexpectedly) make it to the cover of the Linux For You magazine. Thanks to the International Open Source Network for giving me the opportunity to compile this in the first place, and making it sharable! I need to work on some of the corrections and additions that I received feedback on. It was very interesting working on this report… and spreading the word about how much is actually happening in a way that sometimes doesn’t get the attention it deserves.

technorati tags:floss, foss, pakistan, freesoftware, gnu/linux, southasia, linuxforyou

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BytesForAll.net … getting a new (cyber) home

Warren Noronha (no relative!) is telling me right now on Gmail chat about his updates on the BytesForAll site (actually, a major overhaul and shift-over). Take a look, and get a sneak preview:

Bytes For All | Computing and the Internet for the Majority of the World

Of course, it’s not yet formal. Or even offically ribbon-cut 🙂

Here’s a quote I quite liked:

“The root of wealth or poverty lies in the ends we have inmind, not in the means to those ends. If the hand is ready then findingthe instrument of action should not be difficult” — Rabindranath Tagore

Bytes for All (B4All) is a networked space for citizens in SouthAsia. It experiments, highlights and organizes debate on the relevanceof ICT to development activities. South Asia – often considered as anICT powerhouse, is also the home of highest number of poor people inthe World. Poverty is not just about income or GDP, its also abouthuman development, access to better life, education, health,opportunities, empowerment and human rights. In human developmentindex, South Asia doesn’t stand brighter either. We do not create thehype that technology will solve all problem overnight. Rather weemphasize that causes to poverty are related to socio-political issuessuch as, un-equal distribution mode of a society, unfair trade regime,lack of good governance etc. Then what technology can do? We believe,technology can play an important role in facilitating the objectives ofthis socio-political solutions. Therefore when we talk about ICTsolutions to poverty, we are not devoid of context and reality. Werefer ICT as a process that can help achieving certain objectives moreeffectively, quickly and without the need of any gate keeper. To ourview, ICT doesn’t replace the need of good governance or people’srights to get equal opportunities, rather ICT can complement thisprocess. When you read Bytes for All, please understand this is ourspirit.

My first impresions: neat and tidy. A few pics and…

Thanks to everyone who shared this dream and made it possible. (Primarily Partha … and Warren… and many, many more volunteers. Reba “Ms Spider” Shahid. Archana Nagvenkar. Zunaira Durrani. Shahzad. Farrah in the NWFP. Jehan Ara. Subhrangshu Choudhary. Ridhi D’Cruz. Nalaka. Abhas @ DeepRoot.co.in, Monjur Mahmud. Lasanthi. Farhad. Prayas @ Crimsonfeet.org, Mahrukh. Sajan Venniyoor. BNNRC. Sangeeta Naik. Faoud Bajwa. Daryl Martyris. And I’m sure I probably missed out some names!

We would be simply pretending and making untrue claims if we didn’t acknowledge that this was taken forward by dozens if not hundreds who helped in every possible way… along the route.)

technorati tags:bytesforall, BytesForAll, ICT4D

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Visitors… with a Saligao link

Vivian Pinto and family

Vivian Pinto, a friend from the Net (SaligaoNet actually), dropped in with his family of Valerie, Marcus and Dominic. One of his sons has a PhD in Maths (and his twin-sister, whom we didn’t meet, is also in the field.) Some subject to choose to specialise in! Marcus and Vivian have been in education for their working lives.

On reaching back to “cold England”, he wrote:

Our visit to Goa was quite enchanting; the scenery, the beaches, the food, and most of all the friendly people. We have hundreds of photographs; would have had more if our camera hadn’t stopped functioning. [A wave hit it at the beach, they said.] We’ll send some rather striking ones, of the church on Christmas Eve, to Saligaonet. [Oops, Vivian, SaligaoNet can’t take photographs … only plaintext messages! –FN]

We have been reading about the regional plan. Sometimes we despair of some politicians;how they pass from plans to schemes, from principles to platitudes. I don’t know the full significance or background but it does seem that it will have irrevocable effects on the future of Goa

When the school term starts, I will investigate the possibility of establishing a link between a school here and The Lourdes Convent school in Saligao.

Incidentally,
the Pintos have a Saligao link. But, as Vivian put it, “sadly I don’t
know anyone personally but we are quite happy to indulge the common and
amusing Goan pastime of finding links across space and time. My
grandfather was Frank Pinto do Santana, my father, Wilfred Pinto….My great grandfather was Jacob Pinto, who married Ernestina Pinto. I believe Joe Fernandes …. might know him.”

technorati tags:goa, expats, visitors, saligao, saligaonet

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A "bright” idea?

Sometimes… you just need a bright idea! (I liked this photo which I accidentally took. To be honest, my photos are seldom well thought out. Those that work — when they do — are based on intuition. Anyway, photography is a very relaxing activity to me. As is blogging!)

technorati tags:photography, blogging

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Hunting…. for old images

If only we could manage to collect.. and share… all those historic old photographs lying across Goan homes … in a way that helps to retain Goa’s visual history.

technorati tags:goa, photographs, oldimages, india, visual, visualhistory

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A beach, midnight… and radio

Flickr: Photos from fredericknoronha

Know what? I wouldn’t waste my time sitting on a Goan beach called Calangute at midnight. After all, I’ve grown up in the place, and have known the beach areas as far less consumerist and less-hyped.

Above is Calangute (incidentally, it deserves a better entry on the Wikipedia) as seen on a post-New Year night currently. It’s the same place (almost) where in the early ‘seventies the Barneto kids and us (Ricky and myself) collected dead mackeral by the sackful. It was only later that we realised this was caused by pollution from the Zuari Agro Chemicals fertilizer plant, and the dead fish could be safely used only as natural manure! (And while taking a look at the Net, one came across this very unusual presentation…)

Anyway, the other day, Sajan, Stalin and Jessica — my friends from the community radio network in India — were down. So that’s where I ended up. At midnight.

As I was mentioned to them, I got involved with the CR-network by accident. (Okay, not entirely by accident, because since my school days I’ve loved radio, and been a great fan of it. Even now, my weekly quota for TV would be something like 30 minutes — each week! To show my consistency, maybe I could say that, as a kid, I tuned in to Radio Sweden (just an example), wore its tee-shirt, and in later years, got interviewed by it, and even visited its broadcasting centre when the chance arose.)

But in the case of the community radio campaign, it started like many things in life, by chance, serendipity and accident (almost). Coming across the issue in the alternate media, an email to Sucharita Eashwar (whom I’ve never met till this day), joining a 1999 (if one recalls right) Unesco-sponsored conference in Hyderabad … and starting a mailing list as a follow-up. Happily, the mailing list continues. Through it, we were able to network, share the CR idea with others, and campaign. On November 16, 2006, community radio became a possibility in India. It now depends on how effectively the authorities implement their own policy. And we’ve got to be ready to push further for it.

While we caught up on issues and ideas, there was this fireworks display. See above photo. Why? Just to keep the tourists entertained, I guess ….  and we were tourists too 🙂

technorati tags:goa, communityradio, radio, beach, calangute, cr-india

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Challenging the Chip: The Underbelly of IT

Interesting! Despite all the optimism about ICTs, this cannot be ignored! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenging_The_Chip Challenging The Chip From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Main Category: Non-fiction book stubs

Challenging The Chip is a 2006-published book on “labour rights andenvironmental justice in the global electronics industry”. It ispublished by Temple University Press, Philadelphia. In three parts,the book looks at global electronics, environmental justice and labourrighs, and electronic waste and extended producer responsibility.Infour apendices, the book also deals with the principles ofenvironmental justice, the computer take-back campaign, sampleshareholder resolutions, and the electronics recycler’s pledge of truestewardship.

This 357-page book (ISBN 1059213-330-4) was put together by “scores ofpeople around the world (who) have been involved over the course ofseveral years in the conceptualization, development, editing andproduction (of it)”.

Contents[hide]

* 1 “Downside not addressed”

* 2 Third World women’s labour, pollute surroundings

* 3 Comments on the book

* 4 Regions covered

* 5 Contributors

* 6 Editors

* 7 External links

[edit] “Downside not addressed”

Says an introduction to its contents: “Of the millions of wordswritten over the past several decades about the electronics industry’sincredible transformation of our world, far too few have beenaddressed (to) the downside of this revolution. Many are surprised tolearn that environmental degredation and occupational health hazardsare as much a part of high-tech manufacturing as miniaturization andother such marvels.”

[edit] Third World women’s labour, pollute surroundings

Editors Ted Smith, David A Sonnenfeld and David Naguib Pellow also comment: “Although most consumers are eager to enjoy their latestcomputers, televisions, cellular phones, iPods, and electronic games,few relate the declining prices of these and other electronictechnologies to the labor of Third World women, who are paid pennies aday. Fewer still realize that the amazingly powerful microprocessorsand superminiaturized, high-capacity memory devices harm the workerswho produce them and pollute the sorrounding communities’ air andwater.

[edit] Comments on the book

Dr. Sandra Steingraber, author of the book Living Downstream: AnEcologist Looks at Cancer and the Environment calls this book”essential reading for anyone who owns a cell phone or a computer” andsays “our digital possessions connect us not only to globalinformation but also to global contamination and injustice”. MITProfessor of Technology and Policy and co-author of Technology,Globalization, and Sustainable Development calls the work “animpressive, comprehensive critique and hopeful, but realistic,blueprint for transforming the global electronics industry into asustainable one encompassing technological advance, environmentalimprovement, and equitable, safe, and secure employment”.

Jan Mazurek of the University of California at Los Angeles’sDepartment of Urban Planning and author of Making Microchips says that”contrary to high tech’s clean image, this pioneering work illustratesthe industry’s environmental and economic downsides from thebirthplace of Silicon Valley to the four corners of the globe to whichthe industry recently has spread”. Mazurek comments that this book is”told from the compelling and passionate perspective of workers andactivists involved in these struggles”.

[edit] Regions covered

Chapters of the book cover “Made in China” electronics workers,Thailand’s electronic sector’s corporate social responsibility,electronic workers in India, workers in and around Central and EasternEurope’s semiconductor plants (Russia, Belarus, Slovakia, CzechRepublic, Poland and Romania), Silicon Valley’s Toxics’ Coalition andworkers’ struggles, Mexico, Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park, otherissues from Taiwan, high-tech pollution in Japan, the electronic wastetrade, e-waste in Delhi, producer responsibility laws in Sweden andJapan, among other themes.

[edit] ContributorsIts contributors include David A Sonnenfeld, Boy Lüthje, Joseph LaDou,Anibel Ferus-Comelo, Apo Leong, Sanjiv Pandita, Tira Foran, AndrewWatterson, Andrew Watterson, Shengling Chang, Leslie A. Byster, TedSmith,David N. Pellow, Glenna Matthews, James McCourt, Connie García,Amelia Simpson, Raquel E. Partida Rocha, Hua-Mei Chiu, Wen-Ling Tu,Yu-Ling Ku, Robert Steiert, Leslie A. Byster, Ted Smith, FumikazuYoshida, Jim Puckett, Ravi Agarwal, Kishore Wankhade, Chad Raphael,Ted Smith, Ken Geiser, Joel Tickner, Naoko Tojo, David Wood and RobinSchneider.

[edit] Editors

This book is edited by Ted Smith, David A Sonnenfeld and David NaguibPellow, with Leslie A. Byser, Shenglin Chang, Amanda Hawes, Wen-LingTu, and Andrew Watterson. Its foreword is by Jim Hightower.[edit]

External links* Asian Monitor Resource Centre (AMRC), Hong Kong* Basel Action Network (BAN), Seattle* Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), Amsterdam* Computer TakeBack Campaign (CTBC), California* Enviornmental Health Coalition, California* International Camapign for Responsible Technology, San Jose* International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health* International Metalworkers’ Federation, Geneva* Lowell Centre for Sustainable Production* People Organized in Defence of Eartth and Her Resources (PODER)* Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, SVTC, San Jose* South West Organizing Project, Albuquerque, NM* Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, Albuquerque* Taiwan Association for Victims of Occupational Injuries, TAVOI, Taipei* Taiwan Environmental Action Network, Taipei City* Texas Campaign for the Environment* Thai Labour Campaigns, Bangkok* Toxics Link, New Delhi* Worksafe! A California Coalition

bytesforall_readers : Message: Challenging The Chip

technorati tags:ict, environment, chip, pollution, electronics

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Food, photography… an expat, and bebinca

“

PHOTO: Edgar de Montreal

Edgar de Montreal”, obviously a Goan expat based there, sent me this link to Art Gourmand Nice. I particularly liked his photo of the bebinca, the sweet, sweet Goan sweet (currently on top of his blog). His blog is described thus:

Am a Montreal-based food photographer….passionate about allthings gourmandaise, an eye for design, a touch color..all flavoredfrom where I come from, a land once know for its spice and religion andbeautiful beaches, green hills and a laid-back and friendly peoples:Goa.Sadly, today its a tourist hot-spot open land-grab artists and mindlesspoliticians ….This photo blog is devoted to gourmand pictures…and afew odd pictures from Quebec and Goa.

Once known? Are we Goans just too much full of moan and complain, doom and gloom?

technorati tags:goa, blog, photo, canada

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Lusostalgia… and the ‘golden’ pre-1961 days

On Goanet one of the recurring themes is a dispute over how we understand Portugese rule in Goa. If it was so good (for us!) how could it be so bad?

Maybe it’s all a question of how we view things. Gabriel de Figueiredo in Australia and Paulo Colaco Dias in the UK were arguing this issue recently. Gabriel cited the post below:

Province to Colony

Friday, Feb. 01, 1963

A year after Indian troops ended Portugal’s 451-year rule over its tiny colony of Goa on India’s west coast, native Goans were longing last week for the bad old days of colonial oppression.

Under the Portuguese, Goa’s virtually duty-free status had ensured it a higher standard of living than neighboring India. Teachers and minor government officials, paid nearly three times as much as their counterparts across the border, could easily afford such imported luxuries as Belgian sausage and $2-a-bottle Scotch whisky. Field laborers carried transistor radios, and peasant women dabbed their ears with Chanel No. 5. A steady stream of ships carried high-grade Goan ore to Europe as well as Japan. “All you had to do to make money,” said one Goan trader, “was to type a few letters.”

But independence from Portugal brought Goa under the control of India’s austerity economy and stifling bureaucracy. About the same time, foreign demand for its iron ore slumped; production dropped from 1,000,000 tons in 1961 to 650,000 tons last year. Wage scales were adjusted downward to an Indian scale, but the cost of living climbed by 3%. Indian import restrictions abruptly cut off the flow of foreign goods, bankrupting many small merchants, and forcing Goans to pay more for Indian merchandise of a lesser quality.

Hesitant Indian officials referred even minor bureaucratic decisions to New Delhi, where they became lost in a labyrinth of red tape. It was over a year before local merchants were allowed to pick up goods imported and paid for before liberation, by which time much of the stuff had rotted away on the docks of Mormugão harbor. Though Portugal oppressively banned all political opposition, it did give Goa a considerable amount of local autonomy. Under New Delhi’s rule, Goa hoped at least to become a separate state. But the neighboring Indian states of Mysore and Maharashtra, covetous of Goa’s economic potential and of Mormugão harbor, which is one of the finest harbors on the subcontinent, have each begun a campaign to annex it.

All in all, morale is low. Grumbled one Goan bitterly: “Under the Portuguese we were considered a province. Under India, to our surprise, we find we are treated like a colony.” Source: TIME magazine.

In response, this blogger just cited Robert S “Bob” Newman’s essay. While this blogger is very much and persistently vocal about post-1961 corruption, environmental degradation, barely-representative politics, and the large-scale “transfer” of resources, one feels that justifying Portuguese colonialism is hardly the answer.

During the Salazar regime (established in 1926) and particularly after World War II, Portugal tried to hold on to the fragments of her Indian empire by belatedly encouraging some development projects and by turning Goa into a duty-free port.

It had long been known that Goa was extremely rich in iron-ore deposits, and in 1947 the Portuguese began issuing leases for developing them. The leases were taken up mainly by local Hindu merchants, who paid as little as Rs 300 for the priviledge of becoming mine owners. With the infusion of foreign capital from India and elsewhere (specifically, Japan and West Germany), the Goan mines developed rapidly in the last decade of colonial rule.

There were also attempts to expand the road network, electricity supply, and school system, all of which had been neglected up to then. “Only in the last two years … were textbooks for Marathi … primary schools prepared under government supervision and published in Goa.”

The number of scholarships for study in Portugal was increased, and many Hindus were given the opportunity to attend the metropolitan universities — an opportunity rarely available until this period.

After 1947, Portuguese salaries were very high compared to those paid in India; and retirement pensions were equal to the salaries. Cheap luxury goods and the availability of imported staples made Portuguese rule palatable to many; even today, older Goans yearn for the days of cheap whisky, cheese, olives, and Japanese textiles.

In general, the prices of many consumer goods were about 50 to 70 per cent below Indian levels, while incomes were nearly double — a situation which encouraged large-scale smuggling of goods into India.

The Portuguese succeeded in creating an artificial prosperity based on iron-ore exports, high salaries, and low prices for duty-free goods. Aimed at the politically-aware middle class and the intellectuals, however, the system offered little if anything to the vast majority of people — those engaged in agriculture and fishing. In fact, farmers and fishermen were reduced to subsistence levels,since their products could not compete with the cheap imported foods. There is good evidence that Portuguese efforts to mollify anticolonial feelings were superficial at best.

The only bank in Goa until 1961 was the Banco Nacional Ultramarino, which gave no interest on deposits. There were no separate departments or sections of government for various aspects of economic affairs (industry, agriculture, fisheries, forests, mining, land survey, statistics, price control, etc). Rather, all activities were lumped together under a Directorate of Economic Services.

Portugal, a poor country itself, had neither the capital to invest in Goa nor the industrial output to supply Goa’s needs — not even the ships to bring goods and take away iron ore. The Goan economy was doubly colonial; subject to a do-nothing Portuguese administration, it was also exploited by Japanese, European, and American interests who bought the iron ore and invested in some domestic facilities. Japan and West Germany together took 70 per cent of Goa’s iron-ore production in 1960. — Robert S Newman, ‘Goa: The Transformation of an Indian Region’ in “Of Umbrellas, Goddesses & Dreams: Essays on Goan Culture and Society” (academic references not included above, available in book, Other India Press, Mapusa 2001, ISBN 81-85569-51-7

Tell me what you feel, then….

technorati tags:goa, lusostalgia, portuguese, colonialism, goanet

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A book … paying tribute to an educationist from Goa

My cyber-critic (with whom I have a strange equation of jousting on mailnig-lists but also sharing some common interests … and having very different perspectives though which we understand Goa) Cecil Pinto thrust two copies of Principal Edward J Soares 1898-1955 (2006, limited copies, not for sale) when we met up last at his office, with Domnic.

This book is devoted to an educationist from a village in Bardez, “a visionary educationist who believed in the refining power of discipline”. Soares was the founder-principal of St Thomas High School at Aldona, which has been going strong since 1923.

Those who have even a nodding acquaintance with the history of the Bardez taluka of Goa would know the big role migration played here. Over the decades. Schools like St Joseph’s (Arpora), Mater Dei (Saligao), and later St Britto’s (Mapusa), St Anthony (Guirim), St Mary’s (Mapusa) etc played a key role. It helped in preparing youngsters from this moribund Portuguese colony of those times to learn English skills, travel far and wide, and take advantage of the growing colonially-defined English “global” markets.

So, do does education give certain localities a head-start? Or, do those villages which already have a head-start invest more in better educational options? Or, is it just a checken-and-egg situation? We’ll never know ….

This 64-page book focuses on the educationist, his family.. and has some tributes penned by others. It would be nice if these could be shared via cyberspace (specially via Aldona-Net) so that the “oral history” of what makes Goa could be kept alive. There are also two essays on “education today — reflections and suggestions”. One useful listing is of all those who passed out from this school, till 1955.

Was surprised to learn (while discussing this book) that Fr Anil Soares sj came from this family… I knew him as a principal of Britto’s who was willing to use the Jesuit-run school to teach poor children from a Mspusa construction colony in the afternoons in the 1980s… and experiment I volunteered in for awhile.

It would have been nice if this book was priced. Or even made copyefted (both are not contradictory ideas!) Maybe, one day, it could grow into a more comprehensive book about Aldona village, if there isn’t one already.  It’s edited by Antonio V Francisco Fernandes and you could get more details from Savio Figueiredo of Rendeep Cybercafe in Aldona.

technorati tags:goa, aldona, books, booksfromgoa, bardez

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desiBlogs….

Interesting links to blogs from across India. Got to get back there, and check it out in more detail.

desi Blogs – Indian Blog Directory and Best of the Blogosphere

technorati tags:india, blogs, desi, desiblogs

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People’s agenda… can we take it ahead?

Goapeoplesagenda – Scratchpad Wiki Labs – Free wikis from Wikia – A Wikia wiki

Can we sustain this? Nandkumar Kamat’s suggestion for a people’s agenda for Goa…. Check it as it stands now. Some inputs from Saligao, Aldona… obviously many more people (and sections) need to be involved, if we are to claim that it is representative. Have written to educationists and others to offer their inputs. Feel free to add yours … or simply email me.

technorati tags:peoplesagenda, goa, politics, goapolitics, india, agendasetting

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Portugal, India… the changing equation

Telugu Portal – Business on mind, Portugal president in India tomorrow – Business/Economy – Latest News

Obviously, Portugual is interested more in trade (maybe technology)… and markets. Not history or nostalgia, now….  End of the road for Lusostalgia?

technorati tags:goa, portugal, indo-portuguese-relations, colonialism, foreigntrade, india

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Building a pre-election, citizen-crafted agenda

Dr Basilio Monteiro (above) and the New York-based St John’s University’s last weekend’s ICT-for-development conference  at the Hotel Mandovi saw the raising of many issues — besides just traditional ICTforD themes. As a non-purist, who believes that technology is intricatly connected with real-life, and that we should not pretend otherwise, this was a welcome change.

Dr Nandkumar “The Guy In The Red Shirt” Kamat had many points to make, given his vast and encyclopaedic knowledge. Nandu has a lot to say. Usually. This blogger often appreciates his points (even if we sometimes disagree… and he sometimes takes him time in making them).

One of the very valid points he made was the need for citizens to build up their own pre-poll people’s agenda. As Nandu put it optimstically: “When a (political) candidate comes to my house during the elections due later this year), he will not tell me what I will do, (Instead) I will tell him what he will do.”

[There’s not much time left. Elections are just months away.]

That’s optimistic. Knowing the way politics in Goa operates (based on community, caste, emotive issues, shrewd manipulation … including more recently of “environmental” issues) this is unlikely to happen in the near future. But it is a very interesting goal. Who knows, it could be made to happen. One day.

Microbiologist-activist-and-man-of-many-roles Nandkumar Kamat explained the context thus: “Some 35-40% (voters) never go to the polling booth. They make a huge difference (in the ultimate results). We need a people’s agenda. A peple’s political agenda. Because the Leftists were using the lever (in New Delhi), we got some (postiive) reforms there. Those ruling Goa have no Common Minimum Programme. Instead, here it’s a policy drafted by (dream-merchants like those selling the) monorail, skybus… superhighways… things that were never discussed in any five-year plans. These (dream-merchants, and lobbyists) are the people running our government. In the years to come, there will be a mafia ruling Goa’s political identity. Take the case of what happened (with hill-cutting at) Sant Estevam, a very fragile island. Even the Chief Secretary could not believe (his eyes when he saw) the photos of what we showed him. How do I expect the rule of law in this state? The law is being purchased.”

Interesting points all. Given the deeply-fractured, and easily divided-and-ruled nature of Goan society, there may be pessimism over this working out. But, who knows… Maybe we could try… build a wiki where various inputs are received… and compiled.

Of course, that’s a big job. One could always make a start. What if I was crafting a ‘agenda’ just for the village I live in, Saligao … currently represented by the deputy chief minister of Goa ,no less (who has done a great job in side-stepping crucial issues over the years)? It might read something like this (an incomplete, one-sided list maybe. Your suggestions are welcome):

• Improve the badly neglected public transport system in Saligao, specially to Panjim, Porvorim.
• Build badly needed libraries in the village. Never done so far by public authorites.
• Improve educational facilities, specially of weaker institutions (govt primary school, for eg)
• Stop village-level corruption (fuelled often by those protected by politicians)
• Garbage dump on hilltop above community residences a major hazard.
• Agricultural productivity in village needs to be addressed urgently.
• Encourage local entrepreneurship, lack of credit in village is a serious issue
• Career-guidance and drop-out problem need urgent steps
• Activity centre for the elderly.
• Health-care facilities virtually non-existent locally …
• Illegal (or even ‘legal’) land conversion in villages needs addressing asap.
• Renovation of long-negelected village market place.
• Playgrounds for children in the village (not just big sports complex, as long talked about)
• Commercial water sale from the village needs to be monitored, controlled.
• Drop of village water table (due to above) badly affects agriculturists
• Sharp drop in home-bred  livestock  needs to be urgently addressed
• Livelihood opportunities for weaker sections need specially-crafted locally-suited  schemes
• Opportunities for girl-students needs a special re-look
• Strengthening educational opportunities in the village
• Soil erosion, largely untapped.
• Increasing Saligao’s green cover, including diversity of hilltop cultivation.
• Study impact of industrial estate inappropriately sited on hilltop, including wastes runoffs
• Deforestation in some areas, such as Salmona spring locality.
• Noncultivation of village fields, issues need to be addressed, with action
• Inter-community relations needs creative solutions to be improved.
• Telecommunication infrastructure needs strengthening.
• Expat population needs to be better involved in growth and development of the village.

These are just some suggestions. Do add your ideas to the list. Craft one for your own village. If we get a response, we could compile these issues. And try to cover the interests of diverse sections too!

technorati tags:goa, saligao, politcs, village-agenda, grassroots, issues

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Sitars, scanners … and sounds

My comp’s desktop is a mess currently. So many tools open, trying to do so many jobs… at the same time… but there’s a reason for it…. There’s the Xsane scanning software opened. Two browsers (Firefox and Flock aka The Social Browser. The latter is something that makes blogging a very easy task). There’s Sound Juicer, the music-playing software of my GNU/Linux Ubuntu distro. And the usual other things… Evolution for email, a Nautilus file-browser, another Wikipedia page, a dozen or so bookmarked to read via Whizz RSS the intersting Inter-Press Service stories coming in from the region I still unrepentingly prefer to refer to as the Third World.

Information-clutter, here we come!

That’s at one level. At another level, it’s very exciting to hear the unexpected sounds emerging from Colin ‘Bassman’ D’Cruz‘s The Brown Indian Band: Fusion Lounge. Got tempted trying it out, then got immediately inspired to scan the image, and blog it instantly… without delaying for another day. On a relaxed Sunday afternoon, it’s some mellifluous sounds emerging from the speakers of my GNU/Linux-driven comp. The sitar mixes with the guitar, almost flawlessly. There’s the tabla too. And much more that misses my untrained ear. East meets West, as interpreted through the eyes of a hard-core Goan (even if Colin and his many groups haven’t got the deserved respect from the home-state of their origins).

Colin is a great guy, a nice musician (maybe these ajectives should be reversed…) The number of bands he permuted and combined in his career took him to the (now Coke-owned) Limca Book of Indian records –he’s been part of five to six dozen bands when one last read.

Now, it’s a fusion venture. (It was a pleasure to encounter his last experiment, decked in Latino flavours and called (Obligato), quite some years back, when I was writing for the Herald). This time around, with names like Bhupali Blues, Bhairavi Bounce, Chandra Funk and Todi Trip… Colin gives us his new serving. This guy never gives up. More than that, he knows how to keep striving to make his work visible. Including online. As an independent — musician, journalist, or whatever… — that isn’t always easy. Thanks Colin for keeping me informed about your ventures, for sending me updates… and apologies for the looooong delay in taking note of it! Here’s wishing you well.

technorati tags:goa, music, fusionmusic, india, indian, indianmusic, musicfromindia, goan

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Yesterday’s politicised students, fighting for change… and relevant tech today

Photo Karina Vasquez

An ICT-for-development workshop got underway in Goa today.It is being organised by the St John’s University of New York and the Diocesan Centre for Social Communications Media. Expectedly, and in keeping with Goa’s size, it is a small event.

Dr Ashok Jhunjhunwala (green shirt, front row, fourth from left), known for his CorDECT wireless in local loop telephony solutions, and also for inspiring so many students to do innovative work at IIT-Chennai, was among those present. We spoke about how politicised students of the yesteryears had turned into the key movers and shakers in a movement to now make technology relevant to the common(wo)man. “IIT Kanpur was at the centre of it all. We were in between two movements, the Jayaprakash movement, and the Naxalite movement,” he said. And he also spoke of the latter influences of Gandhism and his links with the PPST (the Patriotic, and People-Oriented Science and Technology movement, with its inexpensive and hardly glamourous publications, which I saw as a young journalist … and which probably influence a whole lot of other youngsters too).

Of course, Dr Jhunjhunwala was someone who influenced me too… with his 2001 seminar on telephony for the ‘developing’ world. It’s interesting to see how, over the years, the possibility of using ICT for more than just export dollars is getting a serious re-look. But, what’s to be done to prevent the debate from being hijacked? ….

technorati tags:India, ICT4D, politics, history

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Blog comments… on the Goa ICTforD event

Two more blog entries (earlier ones) on the (small) Goa ICT-for-development event are called Free and Open Source Software and St. John’s hosts conference on ICT and Development in India.

technorati tags:goa, ict4d, BytesForAll

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Book on Goan music, a tribute from a grandson

Joao Paulo Cota <joao_cota at hotmail.com> emailed to say: “Following my recent trip to Goa, mostly for the centenary celebrations of my late grandfather, Maestro Jose Santana Cota, please find attached three tracks which are at the back of the book the Cota family has produced in his memory. Sobit Sundori is a folk piece and it is about a village milkmaid who sells milk door-to-door. Marcha de Santa Cruz and Serenade are two pieces for the brass band that he specifically composed for his “Banda de Santa Cruz”, the brass band he formed in 1929 and that is still active today! I am playing the flute track for the Sobit Sundori and the other two pieces were generated electronically using the Sibelius 4 musical software. The book Sobit Sundori I is available for sale in music shops in India.” Okay, got to get that one….

technorati tags:music, Goa, India, Cota, santacruz, goanmusic, joaopaulocota

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E-cheat… Goa… and Batavia

Echeat? eCheat – Free essays, free term papers, custom essays Yes! Did I hear you ask, what’s that? Their description: “It’s not cheating. It’s collaborating.”

Whatever!

The only thing I could find related to Goa was this:

The Colonial Capitals Of Goa & Batavia. [ Click here to purchase this essay ] A 7 page paper comparing the Dutch and Portuguese colonial capitals of Goa and Batavia. Issues concerning trade and imperialism are explored in considerable detail. Bibliography lists 6 sources. Filename: Goaand.wps

Poker stuff….

So, can someone tell me what this poker stuff is all about? The links I can find online are here. Sun, sea, poker, stereotypes

technorati tags:Goa, tourism, stereotypes, poker, India, Asia, hotels, Dabolim, airport

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