The Murder of Marcelo Lucero. How could this happen?
Q. If a sovereign nation-state has long articulated a code of racialized, supremacist Whiteness, is the murder of Marcelo Lucero, incomprehensible and inexplicable OR possible and predictable?
See "Theory of Systemic Whiteness" in this Blog (or Google it)
It is important to read something of the history of Suffolk County where Marcelo Lucero an Ecuadoran immigrant lived before he was murdered by Suffolk County teen and high school athlete Jeffrey Conroy and his pals. What kind of place is Suffolk County? What is its history, demography? Suffolk County is 86% White. (Note: racial categories are self-ascribed and this self-ascription is mandated by the US Census Bureau which has racialized the census from its inception. Even this fact is part of the structural, systemic, ideological content of Whiteness. Whiteness is first and foremost a system of unearned,unequal, unshared, dominant POWER.
Finally it is important to focus on WHITENESS rather than racism. To call someone a racist is to impugn their individual behavior rather than to place that individual's behavior within the context of "White supremacism". That individual can and must be held responsible and accountable for his/her actions, but those actions are explainable with the larger societal context.
But again "white supremacism" is attributed
dismissively to belong to a few 'ignorant' individuals or even small radical fringe groups like the KKK, neo-Nazi and punk groups. By imputing white supremacist ideas to only a few misguided and violent individuals, the real POWER of structural systemic and ideological Whiteness is made invisible and its dominant power is further strengthened.
In contrast to the term "racism" or even "white supremacism" the term "WHITENESS" focuses on a power construct of structural, systemic and ideological supremacist racialization, by which so-called OTHER(s) like Lucero are permitted to be constructed as despicable,somehow less than HUMAN, which is a central organizing strategic principle of the US racialized history of slavery of Africans and genocide of indigenous peoples, as well as directly related to contemporary experience.
Q. Are Palestinians and Iraqis the new "others" along with Latinos in the contemporary American racial experience?
An essential raw data source for the demographics of Suffolk County would be:
http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet (For Suffolk County). You might even want to compare census factfinder data for Nassau County. Both these counties together make up Long Island.
It is also important to analyze press reports on the murder. In particular the comments of Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive are important in providing political context for the murder.
Most important read the comments of Lucero's brother, Hispanic civic leaders, ACLU officials, prosecutors and defense attorneys.
We cannot come to grips with the murder of Marcelo Lucero unless we examine the
Systemic, structural and ideological constructions of Whiteness that were central in to murder of Marcelo Lucero. The demonized construction of the racialized OTHER is central to the affirmation of Whiteness.
Both the murder and the search for justice are part of the American Experience.
Chithra KarunaKaran
Ethical Democracy As Lived Practice
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
======================================================================================
This article is protected by New York Times copyright.
link to New York Times article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/nyregion/14immigrant.html?emc=eta1
New York Times article
Title:
A Killing in a Town Where Latinos Sense Hate
Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times
image
Caren Cajamarca, 9, of Patchogue, N.Y., at a memorial near the site of the fatal stabbing of Marcelo Lucero last Saturday night. Prosecutors call it a hate crime.
By KIRK SEMPLE
Published: November 13, 2008
PATCHOGUE, N.Y. — It was an occasional diversion among a certain crowd at Patchogue-Medford High School, students said: Drink a few beers, then go looking for people to mug, whether for money or just for kicks.
Skip to next paragraph
Joselo Lucero, brother of the victim, Marcelo Lucero, said Marcelo had warned him to stay safe.
Friends of Jeffrey Conroy, a star athlete at the school, say he was known to do it, too. And last Saturday night, after drinking in a park in the Long Island hamlet of Medford, Mr. Conroy, 17, and six other teenagers declared that they were going to attack “a Mexican” and headed to the more ethnically diverse village of Patchogue to hunt, according to friends and the authorities.
They found their target in Marcelo Lucero, a serious-minded, 37-year-old immigrant from a poor village in Ecuador who had lived in the United States for 16 years, mostly in Patchogue, and worked in a dry cleaning store, sending savings home to support his mother, a cancer survivor.
After the boys surrounded, taunted and punched Mr. Lucero, the authorities say, Mr. Conroy plunged a knife into his victim’s chest, fatally wounding him.
The attack has horrified and puzzled many in this comfortable Suffolk County village of 11,700. Prosecutors have labeled it a hate crime and County Executive Steve Levy called the defendants, who have pleaded not guilty, “white supremacists.” And some immigrant advocates on Long Island have described the attack as a reflection of widespread anti-Latino sentiment and racial intolerance in Suffolk County.
Interviews with business owners, students, government officials and immigrants in the area suggest that illegal immigration has been a wellspring for anger and tension in the neighborhood, with day laborers drawing the greatest fire. Indeed, a number of people — adults and students alike — drew sharp distinctions between assimilated immigrants, who they said should be welcomed as friends and neighbors, and newly arrived illegal immigrants, who they said do not belong.
“No disrespect here, but I’m a firm believer that if you want to come to this country, you should have a job waiting for you,” said the co-owner of the Medford Shooting Range, who gave only his first name, Charlie, and is known by the nickname Charlie Range.
He said he was offended by the behavior of some day laborers — throwing trash in the street, urinating in the bushes, hooting at passing women — and complained that illegal immigrants were crowding rental apartments and swelling the ranks of criminal gangs.
“How do you stop the illegal alien influx?” he wondered aloud. “How do you stop the rain?”
Thousands of immigrants from Latin America have flowed into Long Island in the past two decades, attracted by employment opportunities, particularly in the construction industry, which until recently was booming. Patchogue’s Latino population has risen sharply during this time, village officials say, with Ecuadoreans now being the single largest Latino group.
According to the 2000 census, Latinos were 24 percent of Patchogue’s population, up from 14 percent in 1990, and government officials say the percentage has continued to grow. In just the past five years, the Latino student population of the Patchogue-Medford School District has risen to 24 percent from about 4 percent, said Michael H. Mostow, the district’s superintendent.
Anti-immigrant hostility has led to several highly publicized attacks in recent years in Suffolk County, including the near-death beating of two Mexican day laborers in 2001 and the burning of a Mexican family’s house in 2003, both in the nearby town of Farmingville.
Immigrant advocates have accused some local politicians, particularly Mr. Levy, of helping to fuel anti-immigrant sentiment by promoting tough policies against illegal immigration. But Mr. Levy said this week that the attack on Mr. Lucero “wasn’t a question of any county policy or legislation; it was a question of bad people doing horrific things.”
For all the parsing of motives and rationales in the case, many Latino immigrants here describe Suffolk County as a place where daily life can be a struggle for acceptance in a predominantly white population, particularly in this time of economic crisis. Rocio Ponce, a Brentwood resident and real-estate agent from Ecuador, said that many residents had developed a hatred against recent Latino immigrants “because they think they’re coming to take their jobs.”
* 1
* 2
Next Page »
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: November 15, 2008
An article on Friday about fear and anger in Patchogue, N.Y., after the stabbing death of an Ecuadorean immigrant in what prosecutors have called a hate crime, referred incorrectly to Jeffrey Conroy, 17, a high school athlete who has been arrested in the case. He has not been offered a lacrosse scholarship to the University of Maryland, as several of his classmates reported. (His lawyer, William J. Keahon, said on Friday that Mr. Conroy had been offered athletic scholarships to other colleges.)
More Articles in New York Region » A version of this article appeared in print on November 14, 2008, on page A25 of the New York edition.
Need to know more? 50% off home delivery of The Times.
Past Coverage
* THE ISLAND; Salvadorans, Building Their Own Cultural Bridge (May 4, 2008)
* As Primary Nears, Voters Critique Field (February 3, 2008)
* Lawmaker on L.I. Wants Worker Status Verified (February 1, 2008)
* Filipino Nurses, Healers in Trouble (January 27, 2008)
Advertise on NYTimes.com
A Killing in a Town Where Latinos Sense Hate
Published: November 13, 2008
(Page 2 of 2)
Latinos say the attack against Mr. Lucero, if not his murder, was foretold. Some report being threatened and physically harassed in the streets, with bottles thrown at them and their car windows smashed during the night. Anti-immigrant epithets and racially motivated bullying are common in the hallways of the schools, children say.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
James Carbone/Newsday
Jeffrey Conroy, front, 17, and other suspects in Mr. Lucero’s killing.
“They tell us to go get a green card, ‘Go back to your community!’ ” said Pamela Guncay, 14, an Ecuadorean-American born in the United States.
Many Latinos, particularly those who are here illegally, say they would never report such incidents because they do not trust the police and fear deportation.
“We’re here to work, we’re not here to do any damage,” pleaded César Angamarca, 45, who rents a room in a small house where Mr. Lucero lived. “We’re working honorably.”
Friends of Mr. Conroy and the other suspects insisted that the defendants were not racist and said they were shocked that a frivolous escapade by bored, drunken teenagers had quickly turned tragic. They pointed out that one of the defendants, José Pacheco, 17, is the son of an African-American mother and a Puerto Rican father, and that Mr. Conroy counted Latino and black classmates among his closest buddies.
“They were good kids,” said Sean Ruga, 19, who graduated from the high school in 2006 and remained friends with the defendants. “It’s not something I could see them capable of doing.”
Mr. Pacheco’s uncle, Jerry Dumas, said his nephew was with the group because he was looking for a ride home and would not have knowingly joined an attack against a Latino, especially considering his ethnic heritage. He also said that Mr. Pacheco’s parents had themselves been apparent victims of violent racism: When they moved into the Patchogue area in the early 1990s, Mr. Dumas said, their house was burned down twice.
Mr. Conroy was the best known of the defendants and, according to prosecutors, the leader of the group. He was on the school’s lacrosse and wrestling teams, according to his friends, and his lawyer, William J. Keahon, said he had received “a number” of offers of college athletic scholarships.
Jeffrey Francis, 18, who is black, said Mr. Conroy befriended him soon after he transferred into the school this fall. They were on the wrestling team together, he said.
Acquaintances of the defendants said it was not unusual for groups of students from the high school to go out looking for people to mug. “It was just for fun, or for money,” said Taylor Fallica, 15, a student at the high school who said he was a friend of Mr. Conroy and the other defendants.
A friend who said he had been hanging out with the seven defendants in the park that night said there had not been much in the way of a plan before the group set out.
“We were just chilling, having a few beers,” said the friend, who requested anonymity because he had also been interviewed by the police and feared making contradictory statements.
Toward midnight, he recalled, “they said they were going to go jump a Mexican,” and they left.
Mr. Lucero had come to the United States to help support his family in Gualaceo, Ecuador, said his brother, Joselo, 34, in an interview this week in Patchogue, where he lives. Their father had died when they were young and Marcelo assumed the role of father figure in the family, Joselo said.
Marcelo Lucero was a hard worker and had little social life, according to his brother and a resident in a house where he rented a room. When Joselo joined Marcelo in Patchogue in the mid-1990s, the older brother frequently counseled him on how to take care of himself and be safe.
“He was a like a protector,” Joselo recalled. “He told me: ‘You have to be a man here. There’s no mom here anymore.’ ”
As the mob descended, Mr. Lucero’s friend managed to escape and contact the police, who rounded up the suspects minutes later.
Mr. Conroy was charged with first-degree manslaughter as a hate crime and first-degree gang assault; the others were charged with first-degree gang assault. They were arraigned on Monday and the case was sent to a grand jury, which began reviewing evidence on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office.
Joselo Lucero said his priorities were now to get his brother’s body back to Ecuador for burial and to ensure that justice was served. But he said he felt no bitterness or vengefulness toward his brother’s attackers.
“I don’t really feel hate,” he said.
“I feel sorry for the families, in some way, because they have to be responsible for their kids.”
Since Mr. Lucero’s death, local officials have almost universally played down any suggestion that ethnic and racial tension had been prevalent in the community. Nonetheless, local, county and state officials have responded to the killing with various plans, including the introduction of sensitivity task forces, outreach programs in the Latino community and community forums.
“It is imperative that we bridge the divide,” Patchogue’s mayor, Paul V. Pontieri Jr., said on Thursday, “and realize that the things we have in common far outnumber those that divide us.”
END of New York Times article A Killing in a Town Where Latinos Sense Hate
Gordon M. Grant for The New York Times
This article is protected by New York Times copyright.
===================================================================================
KarunaKaran, Chithra Theory of Systemic Whiteness
=====================================================================================
Reading List
Ababio-Clottey, Aeesha, and Marianne Williamson. Beyond Fear: Twelve Spiritual Keys to Racial Healing. HJ Kramer, 1999.
Armour, Jody David. Negrophobia and Reasonable Racism : The Hidden Costs of Being Black in America. New York: New York University Press, 1997.
Bailey, Alison, and Jacquelyn Zita. "The Reproduction of Whiteness: Race and the Regulation of the Gendered Body." Hypatia 22.2 (2007): vii-xv.
Bash, Harry H. " If I'm So White, Why Ain't I Right? Some Methodological Misgivings on Taking Identity Ascriptions at Face-Value." Critical Sociology 32.4 (2006): 675-97.
Bell, Derrick A. Faces at the Bottom of the Well : The Permanence of Racism. New York, NY: BasicBooks, 1992.
Berard, Tim J. "The Neglected Social Psychology of Institutional Racism." Sociology Compass 2.2 (2008): 734-64.
Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists : Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
Brown, Michael K. Whitewashing Race : The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003.
Butterworth, Michael L. "Race In "The Race": Mark Mcgwire, Sammy Sosa, and Heroic Constructions of Whiteness." Critical Studies in Media Communication 24.3 (2007): 228-44.
Dei, George J. Sefa. "Critical Perspectives in Antiracism: An Introduction." The Candaian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 33.3 (1996): 247-68.
Dwyer, Owen J., and John Paul Jones III. "White Socio-Spatial Epistemology." Social & Cultural Geography 1.2 (2000): 209-22.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. 1st ed. New York Berkeley, Calif.: Grove Press ; Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2008.
Gillborn, David. "Rethinking White Supremacy." Etnicities 6.3 (2006): 318-40.
Griffin, Anya T. "Racism, Stress, and Health in African American Females: The Impact of Stress Experienced from Perceived Racism on Cardiovascular Reactivity in African American Adolescent and Adult Females." Dissertation. Fielding Graduate University, 2005.
Guess, Teresa J. "The Social Construction of Whiteness: Racism by Intent, Racism by Consequence." Critical Sociology 32.4 (2006): 649-73.
Hartmann, Douglass. "Rush Limbaugh, Donovan Mcnabb, and a Little Social Concern: Reflections on the Problems of Whiteness in Contemporary American Sport." Journal of Sport and Social Issues 31.1 (2007): 45-60.
Hill Collins, Patricia. Black Sexual Politics : African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004.
Hoelscher, Steven. "Making Place, Making Race: Performances of Whiteness in the Jim Crow South." Annals of Association of American Geographers 93.3 (2003): 657-86.
Holloway, Sarah L. "Burning Issues: Whiteness, Rurality and the Politics of Difference." Geoforum 38.1 (2007): 7-20.
Hooks, Bell. Black Looks : Race and Representation. Boston, MA: South End Press, 1992.
Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. Color of Violence : The Incite! Anthology. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2006.
Leary, Dr. Joy Degruy. Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome: America's Legacy of Enduring Injury and Healing. Milwaukie, Oregon: Uptone Press, 2005.
Levine-Rasky, Cynthia. "Framing Whiteness: Working through the Tensions in Introducing Whiteness to Educators." Race Ethnicity and Education 3.3 (2000): 271-92.
Lewis, Amanda E. ""What Group?" Studying Whites and Whiteness in the Era Of "Color-Blindness"." Sociological Theory 22.4 (2004): 623-46.
Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness : How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Rev. and expanded ed. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006.
Markovitz, Jonathan. Legacies of Lynching : Racial Violence and Memory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2004.
Memmi, Albert. The Colonizer and the Colonized. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967.
Memmi, Albert. Racism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Mills, Charles. "White Ignorance." Suny Series, Philosophy and Race. Eds. Shannon Sullivan and Nancy Tuana. vols. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007. 13-38.
Mills, Charles W. The Racial Contract. Ithaca, N.Y. ; London: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States : From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Ortega, Mariana. "Being Lovingly, Knowingly Ignorant: White Feminism and Women of Color." Hypatia 21.3 (2006): 56-74.
Prividera, Laura, and John W. Howard III. "Masculinity, Whiteness, and the Warrior Hero: Perpetuating the Strategic Rhetoric of Us Nationalism and the Marginalization of Women." Women and Language 29.2 (2006): 29-37.
Pulido, Laura. "Rethinking Environmental Racism: White Privilege and Urban Development in South California." Annals of the Association of American Geography 90.1 (2000): 12-40.
Said, Edward W. Orientalism. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin, 2003.
Said, Edward W., Moustafa Bayoumi, and Andrew Rubin. The Edward Said Reader. New York: Vintage Books, 2000.
Saxton, A. "Whiteness and Reconciliation: A Discursive Analysis." Australian Psychologist 39.1 (2004): 14-23.
Shearer, Tobin Miller. Enter the River : Healing Steps from White Privilege toward Racial Reconciliation. Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1994.
Simpson, Jennifer Lyn. "The Color-Blind Double Blind: Whiteness and the (Im)Possibility of Dialogue." Communication Theory 18 (2008): 139-59.
Staurowsky, Ellen J. "“You Know,We Are All Indian” Exploring White Power and Privilege in Reactions to the Ncaa Native American Mascot Policy." Journal of Sport and Social Issues 31.1 (2007): 61-76.
Sullivan, Shannon, and Nancy Tuana. Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance. Suny Series, Philosophy and Race. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007.
Sullivan, Shannon, and ebrary Inc. Revealing Whiteness the Unconscious Habits of Racial Privilege. American Philosophy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2006.
Tochluk, Shelly. Witnessing Whiteness : First Steps toward an Antiracist Practice and Culture. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2008.
Trepagnier, Barbara. Silent Racism : How Well-Meaning White People Perpetuate the Racial Divide. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2006.
Vanderbeck, Robert M. "Vermont and the Imaginative Geographies of American Whiteness." Annals of Association of American Geographers 96.3 (2006): 641-59.
Vanderbeck, Robert M. "Inner-City Children, Country Summers: Narrating American Childhood and the Geographies of Whiteness." Environment and Planning A 40.5 (2008): 1132-150.
Washington, Harriet A. Medical Apartheid : The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present. 1st ed. New York: Doubleday, 2006.
Welcome, H. Alexander. ""White Is Right": The Utilization of an Improper Ontological Perspective in Analyses of Black Experiences." Journal of African American Studies 8.1 (2004): 59-73.
Williams, David R., and Ruth Williams-Morris. "Racism and Mental Health: The African American Experience." Ethnicity & Health 5.3/4 (2000): 243-68.
Wise, Tim J. White Like Me : Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Rev. and updated ed. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2008.
Yancy, George. What White Looks Like : African-American Philosophers on the Whiteness Question. New York: Routledge, 2004.
October 12, 2008 12:27 PM
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Ethical Democracy is GREEN Democracy
As I continue to investigate for my own understanding, what it takes to make progress toward becoming an ethical democratic nation-state, I became interested in the role of IT's in helping us develop ethical green democratic nation-states.
Global South nation-states can learn from such models especially when they are located in Global South nation-state geopolitical contexts.
I was encouraged by the following news report which contained a lot of measurable specifics:
Patni centre gets LEED Platinum rating
Green IT-BPO centre
Patni centre gets LEED Platinum rating
The eco-friendly facility is now the largest LEED Platinum rated building outside USA and the second largest in the world
Friday, October 03, 2008
Email This Print This Comments RSS Bookmark in Sulekha
BANGALORE, INDIA: Patni Computer Systems, a leading global IT and BPO services provider was awarded the prestigious LEED Platinum (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating for its Green IT-BPO Centre inaugurated earlier this year in Noida.
Set up with an investment of Rs. 175 crores, this Green IT-BPO centre is spread over 5 acres of land and seats over 3,500 people. It has been jointly audited by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) and US Green Building Council (USGBC) and publicly reviewed by the more than 10,000 membership organizations that currently constitute the USGBC. The LEED Platinum rating recognizes the company's commitment to superior standards of quality, and efficient utilization and conservation of energy, water and natural resources.
Commenting on the occasion, Narendra. K. Patni, Chairman & CEO, Patni said, "We are extremely proud of achieving the LEED Platinum certification for our Knowledge Centre. This reiterates Patni's commitment to energy conservation to reduce adverse environmental impact. A Platinum certification is indeed a significant step for Patni as we consciously embrace a greener business model."
Said P. C. Jain, Chairman of the IGBC, "We are delighted that a leading IT and BPO organization like Patni is one of the front runners in the green architecture brigade. We are confident that Patni's initiative will inspire other companies to pledge their support for environment conservation."
Patni currently offers a variety of outsourcing facilities and this Centre will support the company as it diversifies into other areas of operation. It will also give Patni employees a healthier and environmentally-friendly workplace, thereby increasing productivity levels. Studies from institutes like IGBC have shown that there is almost a 15% increase in employee productivity by using such green initiatives.
Green facts on Patni Knowledge Centre
* Climate responsive architecture
* Over 50% green area
* 75% of the area receives natural daylight
* 95% of the occupants get access to outside views
* Zero discharge building; 100% recycling of sewage
* Drip water irrigation and solar water heating
* Interior materials with low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions
* Healthy air quality with CO2 sensors for adding fresh air on demand
* Maximum use of eco-friendly recyclable material.
===================================================================================
also check this out -- green IT in Silicon Valley:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Green-t.html?ei=5070&emc=eta1
Global South nation-states can learn from such models especially when they are located in Global South nation-state geopolitical contexts.
I was encouraged by the following news report which contained a lot of measurable specifics:
Patni centre gets LEED Platinum rating
Green IT-BPO centre
Patni centre gets LEED Platinum rating
The eco-friendly facility is now the largest LEED Platinum rated building outside USA and the second largest in the world
Friday, October 03, 2008
Email This Print This Comments RSS Bookmark in Sulekha
BANGALORE, INDIA: Patni Computer Systems, a leading global IT and BPO services provider was awarded the prestigious LEED Platinum (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) rating for its Green IT-BPO Centre inaugurated earlier this year in Noida.
Set up with an investment of Rs. 175 crores, this Green IT-BPO centre is spread over 5 acres of land and seats over 3,500 people. It has been jointly audited by the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) and US Green Building Council (USGBC) and publicly reviewed by the more than 10,000 membership organizations that currently constitute the USGBC. The LEED Platinum rating recognizes the company's commitment to superior standards of quality, and efficient utilization and conservation of energy, water and natural resources.
Commenting on the occasion, Narendra. K. Patni, Chairman & CEO, Patni said, "We are extremely proud of achieving the LEED Platinum certification for our Knowledge Centre. This reiterates Patni's commitment to energy conservation to reduce adverse environmental impact. A Platinum certification is indeed a significant step for Patni as we consciously embrace a greener business model."
Said P. C. Jain, Chairman of the IGBC, "We are delighted that a leading IT and BPO organization like Patni is one of the front runners in the green architecture brigade. We are confident that Patni's initiative will inspire other companies to pledge their support for environment conservation."
Patni currently offers a variety of outsourcing facilities and this Centre will support the company as it diversifies into other areas of operation. It will also give Patni employees a healthier and environmentally-friendly workplace, thereby increasing productivity levels. Studies from institutes like IGBC have shown that there is almost a 15% increase in employee productivity by using such green initiatives.
Green facts on Patni Knowledge Centre
* Climate responsive architecture
* Over 50% green area
* 75% of the area receives natural daylight
* 95% of the occupants get access to outside views
* Zero discharge building; 100% recycling of sewage
* Drip water irrigation and solar water heating
* Interior materials with low volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions
* Healthy air quality with CO2 sensors for adding fresh air on demand
* Maximum use of eco-friendly recyclable material.
===================================================================================
also check this out -- green IT in Silicon Valley:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/05/magazine/05Green-t.html?ei=5070&emc=eta1
How Did U.S. Individualism Become U.S. Exceptionalism?
Individualism is the core value of the U.S. nation state.
At what point did U.S. Individualism become U.S. Exceptionalism?
I'm in the process of researching this question mainly for my own understanding of what it takes for a sovereign nation-state to develop Ethical Democracy.
Why?
Because lessons from the U.S. history of democratic nation-statehood can be important cautionary lessons, as other nation-states, particularly in the Global South develop more complex democratic institutions and democratic civil society.
Our Global South nation-states can attempt to avoid the destructive trajectory of U.S style militarist predatory market fundamentalism masquerading as democracy.
At what point did U.S. Individualism become U.S. Exceptionalism?
I'm in the process of researching this question mainly for my own understanding of what it takes for a sovereign nation-state to develop Ethical Democracy.
Why?
Because lessons from the U.S. history of democratic nation-statehood can be important cautionary lessons, as other nation-states, particularly in the Global South develop more complex democratic institutions and democratic civil society.
Our Global South nation-states can attempt to avoid the destructive trajectory of U.S style militarist predatory market fundamentalism masquerading as democracy.
Saturday, September 27, 2008
The "I" in Psychology: The Ethical Self & the Nation-state
In "The Financial Advisor as Handholder", the New York Times today asked the following question and solicited reader comments. Read my response to the question, as well of course, the article.
=====================================================================================
September 27th, 2008 9:60 am
Q. How have you changed your thinking about money in recent weeks?
In response to the question, which in itself is disingenuous, my answer is, not really. Just leaving out "How" would make it less of a leading question and invite a more open-ended, thought-provoking, reflective response.
My Comment:
I read Ron Lieber's NYTimes piece (see below) with interest (though I am not earning any) in this bailout phase of late capitalism.
Psychology as a discipline cannot reasonably or logically be divested of its moorings within US style militarist democracy.
I teach psychology at my public higher ed institution.
It would be intellectually remiss of me NOT to present,
especially to my students of color who constitute the majority of our enrollment, that psychology is solely the scientific study of "I" (it is, but not solely)
and that that "I" in the U.S. is embedded in a macrostructural ideology of inequity, predation and supremacist notions that reject other perspectives, lifeworlds and diverse trajectories of the self within and across the nation-state.
Who are the handholders? Whose hands are in temporary need of holding? Who will be the main beneficiaries of this collapse? The same individuals embedded in the institutions that wreaked havoc in the first place.
Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
Theory of Systemic Whiteness
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Back to Article »
The Financial Adviser as Hand-Holder
* comments (2)
By RON LIEBER
Published: September 26, 2008
How have you changed your thinking about money in recent weeks?
* Post a Comment »
* Read All Comments (2) »
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARTICLE by RON LIEBER
After all, uncertainty breeds anxiety. This week alone, we witnessed the market plunge on Monday, a tussle over the scope of the federal bailout that grew on Tuesday and the unfamiliar sight Wednesday night of watching our normally cocksure president pleading for support on national television.
By Thursday, Washington Mutual was dead and gone and on Friday, the politicians in Washington still hadn’t settled their differences over the bailout. We can only hope that the package will allow the federal government to quickly clear bad debt from companies’ books and grease the wheels of the economy. But who knows how long it might take or if it will even work?
All of these uncertainties weigh heavily on our minds. So this week, I turned to financial planners and investment advisers who got their start as psychologists or studied the field as graduate students, plus a few ringers who are adept observers of minds and money, even though they have formal training only in the latter.
I asked them this: At this troubling moment, what’s the best way to reorient how we think about money, before we make any rash decisions about what to do with whatever we have left?
Start, just for a minute, by giving yourself over to the worse case. The visceral fear here is of dying in the poorhouse, as Richard Schroeder, a certified financial planner with Schroeder, Braxton & Vogt in Amherst, N.Y., put it. And his answer to clients who articulate that nightmare is this: the markets will eventually recover.
So let’s reel ourselves back from the edge of oblivion. Most of us can take some comfort in the fact that we have time on our sides. Managing our money is a process that unfolds over decades, not days. It’s easy to forget that, when one company after another is falling victim, week after week, and we can track their disintegration on an hourly basis.
“The individual needs to go back to that personal road map,” said Sharon Rich, a financial planner with a doctorate from Harvard who studied women, psychology and education. “Where are you right now, where do you want to be and how do you get from here to there?”
And then apply that to an investment portfolio. “I think reminding people in this environment of why we’ve chosen the investment strategy that we have is a good thing for those who are a little bit antsy,” said Constance Barber, a certified financial planner with Barber Financial in Natick, Mass., who got her start as a school psychologist. “We’ve usually not set this up because it’s money that you’ll need tomorrow.”
Even if we don’t need the money right now, it doesn’t feel good to look at a retirement portfolio and find that it’s down 15 percent from its peak a year ago.
“People rely on selective memory when they’re only looking at losses from the high point that the portfolio reached,” said Victoria Collins, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and has worked as a certified financial planner for more than two decades.
This was a point echoed by many people I spoke with this week. On one hand, it’s certainly depressing to be down to $340,000 from $400,000, for instance. The basic math doesn’t help the mood either, given that after a decline of 15 percent, a portfolio needs to gain 17.6 percent just to get back to $400,000 again. “This is real money in people’s lives,” said Ms. Rich, who runs Womoney, a financial planning firm in Belmont, Mass. She noted that some people added up how many years it took them to save the money that just disappeared.
We can mimic that mindset if we choose, or we can consider what our balance was, say, a decade ago. Chances are we’ve made a lot of progress since then, if we’ve been saving all along. “There are clients who will say, ‘Yes, it’s down, but look where I started,’ ” said Ms. Barber, the former school psychologist. “ ‘I’m hanging in there, and we’ve come a long way, baby, and it’s O.K. for now.’ ”
Next, put down the retirement account statement and consider the credit and debit card bills and the checkbook. Ms. Rich put some clients with job security anxieties through this exercise this week. It isn’t a budgeting drill exactly. “The question is how the way I’m spending reflects my values and what I think is important in the world,” she said.
For those of us who pay someone to clean our house, she said, perhaps having a clean house isn’t really that important when we reconsider. Or if we think it’s crucial for our children to experience nature, perhaps a series of day trips can have the same effect as going to the Grand Canyon.
School costs are an issue here too, Ms. Rich said, and she noted that such reconsideration may mean spending more, not less, on certain items.
One tricky part about the last several weeks is confronting all the headlines declaring this the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. “Most of the individuals that I find who need more handholding are the ones who’ve had some connection with the Great Depression,” says Ms. Collins, the Berkeley Ph.D., who is now an executive vice president and principal with Keller Group Investment Management in Irvine, Calif.
These people tend to be retirees, who may have had parents who told them stories about living through the 1930s or are old enough to remember it themselves. If they have little or no earning capacity now, they feel especially helpless when they see parts of their portfolios disappearing.
“I try to remind them that even they don’t need all of that portfolio today,” she said. “You’re only withdrawing a certain amount.”
Ms. Rich suggested that people reach out to someone else to discuss their situation if they don’t have a hybrid financial adviser-shrink to counsel them through the crisis. It could be a peer, a family member, a member of the clergy or staff at a senior center.
Even that support network may not be enough to bring the most anxiety-prone among us back from the edge. “For those who cling to doomsday scenarios we can also say, ‘So what?’ ” Mr. Schroeder, the financial planner in Amherst, N.Y., said in an e-mail message. “If the markets go to zero, if the whole system crashes, there is no safe haven, so it doesn’t matter whether you buy Treasuries. The currency will be worthless and there will be chaos in the streets. Your only alternative is to stock up on guns, ammunition and goods that are easily tradable and will become valuable, such as sewing needles, good Scotch, etc.”
Now, forget about hoarding sewing supplies and remember that things are much more likely to get better than they are to get that bad.
How have you changed your thinking about money in recent weeks? Post your comment at nytimes.com/yourmoney or write to rlieber@nytimes.com.
More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on September 27, 2008, on page C1 of the New York edition.
* Health Care Costs Increase Strain, Studies Find (September 25, 2008)
* Retirees Filling the Front Line in Market Fears (September 23, 2008)
* YOUR MONEY; Minimizing Your Own Exposure To Risks (September 20, 2008)
* Wall Street and You: Sorting Out the Changes in the Financial World (September 16, 2008)
image of
Victoria Collins, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology, is an executive vice president for Keller Group Investment Management
Readers' Comments
Most E-Mailed
1. Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way
2. Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets
3. Talks Implode During a Day of Chaos; Fate of Bailout Plan Remains Unresolved
4. DealBook: Wachovia Begins Early Deal Talks with Citi
5. S.E.C. Concedes Oversight Flaws Fueled Collapse
=====================================================================================
September 27th, 2008 9:60 am
Q. How have you changed your thinking about money in recent weeks?
In response to the question, which in itself is disingenuous, my answer is, not really. Just leaving out "How" would make it less of a leading question and invite a more open-ended, thought-provoking, reflective response.
My Comment:
I read Ron Lieber's NYTimes piece (see below) with interest (though I am not earning any) in this bailout phase of late capitalism.
Psychology as a discipline cannot reasonably or logically be divested of its moorings within US style militarist democracy.
I teach psychology at my public higher ed institution.
It would be intellectually remiss of me NOT to present,
especially to my students of color who constitute the majority of our enrollment, that psychology is solely the scientific study of "I" (it is, but not solely)
and that that "I" in the U.S. is embedded in a macrostructural ideology of inequity, predation and supremacist notions that reject other perspectives, lifeworlds and diverse trajectories of the self within and across the nation-state.
Who are the handholders? Whose hands are in temporary need of holding? Who will be the main beneficiaries of this collapse? The same individuals embedded in the institutions that wreaked havoc in the first place.
Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
Theory of Systemic Whiteness
http://EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Back to Article »
The Financial Adviser as Hand-Holder
* comments (2)
By RON LIEBER
Published: September 26, 2008
How have you changed your thinking about money in recent weeks?
* Post a Comment »
* Read All Comments (2) »
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ARTICLE by RON LIEBER
After all, uncertainty breeds anxiety. This week alone, we witnessed the market plunge on Monday, a tussle over the scope of the federal bailout that grew on Tuesday and the unfamiliar sight Wednesday night of watching our normally cocksure president pleading for support on national television.
By Thursday, Washington Mutual was dead and gone and on Friday, the politicians in Washington still hadn’t settled their differences over the bailout. We can only hope that the package will allow the federal government to quickly clear bad debt from companies’ books and grease the wheels of the economy. But who knows how long it might take or if it will even work?
All of these uncertainties weigh heavily on our minds. So this week, I turned to financial planners and investment advisers who got their start as psychologists or studied the field as graduate students, plus a few ringers who are adept observers of minds and money, even though they have formal training only in the latter.
I asked them this: At this troubling moment, what’s the best way to reorient how we think about money, before we make any rash decisions about what to do with whatever we have left?
Start, just for a minute, by giving yourself over to the worse case. The visceral fear here is of dying in the poorhouse, as Richard Schroeder, a certified financial planner with Schroeder, Braxton & Vogt in Amherst, N.Y., put it. And his answer to clients who articulate that nightmare is this: the markets will eventually recover.
So let’s reel ourselves back from the edge of oblivion. Most of us can take some comfort in the fact that we have time on our sides. Managing our money is a process that unfolds over decades, not days. It’s easy to forget that, when one company after another is falling victim, week after week, and we can track their disintegration on an hourly basis.
“The individual needs to go back to that personal road map,” said Sharon Rich, a financial planner with a doctorate from Harvard who studied women, psychology and education. “Where are you right now, where do you want to be and how do you get from here to there?”
And then apply that to an investment portfolio. “I think reminding people in this environment of why we’ve chosen the investment strategy that we have is a good thing for those who are a little bit antsy,” said Constance Barber, a certified financial planner with Barber Financial in Natick, Mass., who got her start as a school psychologist. “We’ve usually not set this up because it’s money that you’ll need tomorrow.”
Even if we don’t need the money right now, it doesn’t feel good to look at a retirement portfolio and find that it’s down 15 percent from its peak a year ago.
“People rely on selective memory when they’re only looking at losses from the high point that the portfolio reached,” said Victoria Collins, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and has worked as a certified financial planner for more than two decades.
This was a point echoed by many people I spoke with this week. On one hand, it’s certainly depressing to be down to $340,000 from $400,000, for instance. The basic math doesn’t help the mood either, given that after a decline of 15 percent, a portfolio needs to gain 17.6 percent just to get back to $400,000 again. “This is real money in people’s lives,” said Ms. Rich, who runs Womoney, a financial planning firm in Belmont, Mass. She noted that some people added up how many years it took them to save the money that just disappeared.
We can mimic that mindset if we choose, or we can consider what our balance was, say, a decade ago. Chances are we’ve made a lot of progress since then, if we’ve been saving all along. “There are clients who will say, ‘Yes, it’s down, but look where I started,’ ” said Ms. Barber, the former school psychologist. “ ‘I’m hanging in there, and we’ve come a long way, baby, and it’s O.K. for now.’ ”
Next, put down the retirement account statement and consider the credit and debit card bills and the checkbook. Ms. Rich put some clients with job security anxieties through this exercise this week. It isn’t a budgeting drill exactly. “The question is how the way I’m spending reflects my values and what I think is important in the world,” she said.
For those of us who pay someone to clean our house, she said, perhaps having a clean house isn’t really that important when we reconsider. Or if we think it’s crucial for our children to experience nature, perhaps a series of day trips can have the same effect as going to the Grand Canyon.
School costs are an issue here too, Ms. Rich said, and she noted that such reconsideration may mean spending more, not less, on certain items.
One tricky part about the last several weeks is confronting all the headlines declaring this the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. “Most of the individuals that I find who need more handholding are the ones who’ve had some connection with the Great Depression,” says Ms. Collins, the Berkeley Ph.D., who is now an executive vice president and principal with Keller Group Investment Management in Irvine, Calif.
These people tend to be retirees, who may have had parents who told them stories about living through the 1930s or are old enough to remember it themselves. If they have little or no earning capacity now, they feel especially helpless when they see parts of their portfolios disappearing.
“I try to remind them that even they don’t need all of that portfolio today,” she said. “You’re only withdrawing a certain amount.”
Ms. Rich suggested that people reach out to someone else to discuss their situation if they don’t have a hybrid financial adviser-shrink to counsel them through the crisis. It could be a peer, a family member, a member of the clergy or staff at a senior center.
Even that support network may not be enough to bring the most anxiety-prone among us back from the edge. “For those who cling to doomsday scenarios we can also say, ‘So what?’ ” Mr. Schroeder, the financial planner in Amherst, N.Y., said in an e-mail message. “If the markets go to zero, if the whole system crashes, there is no safe haven, so it doesn’t matter whether you buy Treasuries. The currency will be worthless and there will be chaos in the streets. Your only alternative is to stock up on guns, ammunition and goods that are easily tradable and will become valuable, such as sewing needles, good Scotch, etc.”
Now, forget about hoarding sewing supplies and remember that things are much more likely to get better than they are to get that bad.
How have you changed your thinking about money in recent weeks? Post your comment at nytimes.com/yourmoney or write to rlieber@nytimes.com.
More Articles in Business » A version of this article appeared in print on September 27, 2008, on page C1 of the New York edition.
* Health Care Costs Increase Strain, Studies Find (September 25, 2008)
* Retirees Filling the Front Line in Market Fears (September 23, 2008)
* YOUR MONEY; Minimizing Your Own Exposure To Risks (September 20, 2008)
* Wall Street and You: Sorting Out the Changes in the Financial World (September 16, 2008)
image of
Victoria Collins, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology, is an executive vice president for Keller Group Investment Management
Readers' Comments
Most E-Mailed
1. Stopping a Financial Crisis, the Swedish Way
2. Government Seizes WaMu and Sells Some Assets
3. Talks Implode During a Day of Chaos; Fate of Bailout Plan Remains Unresolved
4. DealBook: Wachovia Begins Early Deal Talks with Citi
5. S.E.C. Concedes Oversight Flaws Fueled Collapse
Thursday, September 25, 2008
The More Things Change......
I wrote the following response to an article "Don't go Changing" that appeared in Inside Higher Ed today
The More Things Change.........
Did I read too fast and miss the corollary? More of the same. As much ( or as little?) change from the academy as from other components of the entrenched U.S. system.
Change — part of the vocabulary of commodified discourses in late capitalism in its bailout phase?
Still, the enduring optimism that change can occur through our own efforts sustains many of us.
Chithra KarunaKaran City University of New Yorkhttp://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Chithra KarunaKaran, City University of New York, at 11:50 am EDT on September 25, 2008
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hopefulness?
Great article. I wonder, though, if the disproportionate language used to describe change in higher education is generated less by a desire for change (i.e. a hopefulness), than a recognition that change is being demanded, and that in the absence of real change, the language of change will have to do. Colleges and universities in many developed countries are being asked by governments, taxpayers, and think-tanks to change how they conduct themselves. In the U.S., for example, the Spellings Commission made ‘threatening noises’ about increased scrutiny and transparency requirements for post-secondary. In this climate, it’s not wise to appear to be sitting on your hands. Just like the politicians Rafael Heller cites in his article, higher education’s rhetoric of change may be more tactical than visionary.
Keith Hampson, Director, at 10:45 am EDT on September 25, 2008
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sept. 25
Don’t Go Changing
By Rafael Heller
Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, “Change we can believe in,” will never be mistaken for a classic of the genre. It has none of the poetry of “morning again in America,” the precision of “a chicken in every pot,” or the back-slapping bonhomie of “I like Ike.”
Nevertheless, Obama has succeeded in placing “change” at the rhetorical center of this year’s presidential contest. In just the last few weeks alone, he introduced his new and improved tagline, “the change you need,” John McCain countered with “change you can trust,” Joe Biden scoffed, “That’s not change, that’s more of the same,” and Sarah Palin hit back at “candidates who use change to promote their careers,” as opposed to “those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.”
Of course, sophisticated pundits and politicos would never let themselves be snookered by this sort of rhetorical gamesmanship. They’ve called out Obama on his messaging numerous times, dating to the Iowa caucuses when, for example, the editors at USA Today asked, “As the candidate of ‘change,’ what changes does he want? Could he deliver them?” Obama “seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public” with nothing more than the “vague promise of ‘change,’” complained the Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson. And even John McCain — who was against such tactics before he was for them — rebuked Obama for making “an eloquent but empty call for change.”
Higher education, on the other hand, seems very much to enjoy snookering itself. Academic reformers have been making lofty appeals to change (and its souped-up partner, “transformation”) for years now, rarely stopping to ask what, if anything, such terms mean or whether anybody could deliver on them.
A quick search of scholarly publications turns up literally hundreds of titles such as “10 bellwether principles for transforming American higher education,” “Organizing adjuncts to change higher education,” “Transformation of the community colleges for the 21st century,” “Virtual transformation: Web-based technology and pedagogical change,” “Transformation of higher education: The transdisciplinary approach in engineering,” and “Transforming library and higher education support services.”
Appearing in the pages of the Journal of Transformative Education are pieces such as “Mentoring for transformative learning” and “Transformative higher education: A meaningful degree of understanding.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning chimes in with “Teaching and learning in the service of transformation” and “Creating change in engineering education.” Fordham University Press just released Class Degrees: Smart Work, Managed Identities, and the Transformation of Higher Education, Routledge offers Strategic Leadership of Change in Higher Education, Jossey-Bass presents Latino Change Agents in Higher Education and even TIAA/CREF, the retirement planning giant, has gotten into the act, with Transformational Change in Higher Education.
Recent events have included the National Conference on Civic Engagement: Creating Agents for Change, the Annual Conference on Teaching for Transformation, Vision 2020: Digital Ubiquity & University Transformation and the 18th annual Teaching for a Change conference. The state of New Mexico hosted Changing for Learning’s Sake: A Focus on Assessment and Retention, Wisconsin Women in Higher Education Leadership sponsored Women Moving Forward: Navigating Change, the Council on Independent Colleges offered workshops on the Transformation of the College Library and the U.S. Department of Education held an event that it billed as a “National Higher Education Transformation Summit.”
Meanwhile, it’s business as usual at the University of Michigan’s Work Group on Organizational Change and Transformation in Higher Education, the University of Maryland’s project on Change and Sustainability in Higher Education and the independent National Center for Academic Transformation. The American Council of Education’s Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation finished up its work a few years ago, taking with it ACE’s series of occasional papers titled On Change. However, for academics still needing a fix, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO continues to host discussions of “Working Together to Transform Higher Education,” the report of the 2003 World Conference on Higher Education.
So what’s wrong with all of this change-mongering?
To be fair, much of it perfectly harmless. People have to find something to name their articles, conferences, and institutes, and if nothing clever comes to mind, then “transformation” makes for a convenient rallying cry. As Barack Obama knows (and let’s not forget Walter Mondale, who went with “America needs a change” for his 1984 campaign slogan, and Jimmy Carter, who had a somewhat more successful 1976 run with “A leader, for a change”), change sounds like a pretty good thing to pursue. It captures people’s attention, makes them feel hopeful, and probably helps draw them to workshops and conferences.
The problem isn’t that academic reformers try to put a positive spin on their work. Rather, the problem is that they’re not very good at it, whether as producers or consumers of rhetoric.
As producers, they’re simply unimaginative. Again and again, they dip into the very same rhetorical well, as if there were no means by which to inspire audiences but to speak of transformation, and no way to stir people to action but to warn them that they live in a time of great change (as though that couldn’t be said of every decade since the Mesozoic era), one that compels a response.
And as consumers of this sort of rhetoric, academics are far too easy to please. Journalists and politicians pride themselves on their ability to dissect the candidates’ slogans and bumper stickers. But college professors and provosts seem all too happy to take such language at face value, smiling sweetly at the latest call for transformation.
Perhaps the appeal of such promises stands in inverse relationship to their likelihood of being fulfilled. As numerous historians of higher education have documented, for all the bold words and big plans of academic reformers, the “basic grammar” of higher education — the familiar ways in which faculty teach, students learn, departments function, administrators govern, and so on — has proven to be extremely durable, evolving little over the past century. It could be that reformers go easy on the vaguest of slogans precisely because they know how difficult it is to achieve the concrete goals toward which they work so hard, such as to get students to drink less and study more, to create tenure systems that reward excellent teaching, to graduate much larger numbers of low-income students, to devise a truly coherent undergraduate curriculum, and so on. Maybe academic reformers talk so often about transformation precisely because they see so little of it and they need the occasional dose of hopefulness.
Some such hopeful “audacity,” as Obama would put it, may be necessary, inspiring faculty and administrators to press on with the painfully slow and necessarily incremental march of academic reform. But too much of it can ruin their sense of direction, leading them to believe that “change” is actually a meaningful objective, and leading them to mistake every new curricular policy or departmental initiative for a dramatic transformation.
Those of us who care about higher education certainly wouldn’t want to forego the audacious optimism that sustains us, but it may be time to ditch, or at least tone down, the empty calls for change.
Rafael Heller is an independent consultant and education writer in Washington.
The More Things Change.........
Did I read too fast and miss the corollary? More of the same. As much ( or as little?) change from the academy as from other components of the entrenched U.S. system.
Change — part of the vocabulary of commodified discourses in late capitalism in its bailout phase?
Still, the enduring optimism that change can occur through our own efforts sustains many of us.
Chithra KarunaKaran City University of New Yorkhttp://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Chithra KarunaKaran, City University of New York, at 11:50 am EDT on September 25, 2008
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hopefulness?
Great article. I wonder, though, if the disproportionate language used to describe change in higher education is generated less by a desire for change (i.e. a hopefulness), than a recognition that change is being demanded, and that in the absence of real change, the language of change will have to do. Colleges and universities in many developed countries are being asked by governments, taxpayers, and think-tanks to change how they conduct themselves. In the U.S., for example, the Spellings Commission made ‘threatening noises’ about increased scrutiny and transparency requirements for post-secondary. In this climate, it’s not wise to appear to be sitting on your hands. Just like the politicians Rafael Heller cites in his article, higher education’s rhetoric of change may be more tactical than visionary.
Keith Hampson, Director, at 10:45 am EDT on September 25, 2008
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sept. 25
Don’t Go Changing
By Rafael Heller
Barack Obama’s campaign slogan, “Change we can believe in,” will never be mistaken for a classic of the genre. It has none of the poetry of “morning again in America,” the precision of “a chicken in every pot,” or the back-slapping bonhomie of “I like Ike.”
Nevertheless, Obama has succeeded in placing “change” at the rhetorical center of this year’s presidential contest. In just the last few weeks alone, he introduced his new and improved tagline, “the change you need,” John McCain countered with “change you can trust,” Joe Biden scoffed, “That’s not change, that’s more of the same,” and Sarah Palin hit back at “candidates who use change to promote their careers,” as opposed to “those, like John McCain, who use their careers to promote change.”
Of course, sophisticated pundits and politicos would never let themselves be snookered by this sort of rhetorical gamesmanship. They’ve called out Obama on his messaging numerous times, dating to the Iowa caucuses when, for example, the editors at USA Today asked, “As the candidate of ‘change,’ what changes does he want? Could he deliver them?” Obama “seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public” with nothing more than the “vague promise of ‘change,’” complained the Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson. And even John McCain — who was against such tactics before he was for them — rebuked Obama for making “an eloquent but empty call for change.”
Higher education, on the other hand, seems very much to enjoy snookering itself. Academic reformers have been making lofty appeals to change (and its souped-up partner, “transformation”) for years now, rarely stopping to ask what, if anything, such terms mean or whether anybody could deliver on them.
A quick search of scholarly publications turns up literally hundreds of titles such as “10 bellwether principles for transforming American higher education,” “Organizing adjuncts to change higher education,” “Transformation of the community colleges for the 21st century,” “Virtual transformation: Web-based technology and pedagogical change,” “Transformation of higher education: The transdisciplinary approach in engineering,” and “Transforming library and higher education support services.”
Appearing in the pages of the Journal of Transformative Education are pieces such as “Mentoring for transformative learning” and “Transformative higher education: A meaningful degree of understanding.” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning chimes in with “Teaching and learning in the service of transformation” and “Creating change in engineering education.” Fordham University Press just released Class Degrees: Smart Work, Managed Identities, and the Transformation of Higher Education, Routledge offers Strategic Leadership of Change in Higher Education, Jossey-Bass presents Latino Change Agents in Higher Education and even TIAA/CREF, the retirement planning giant, has gotten into the act, with Transformational Change in Higher Education.
Recent events have included the National Conference on Civic Engagement: Creating Agents for Change, the Annual Conference on Teaching for Transformation, Vision 2020: Digital Ubiquity & University Transformation and the 18th annual Teaching for a Change conference. The state of New Mexico hosted Changing for Learning’s Sake: A Focus on Assessment and Retention, Wisconsin Women in Higher Education Leadership sponsored Women Moving Forward: Navigating Change, the Council on Independent Colleges offered workshops on the Transformation of the College Library and the U.S. Department of Education held an event that it billed as a “National Higher Education Transformation Summit.”
Meanwhile, it’s business as usual at the University of Michigan’s Work Group on Organizational Change and Transformation in Higher Education, the University of Maryland’s project on Change and Sustainability in Higher Education and the independent National Center for Academic Transformation. The American Council of Education’s Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation finished up its work a few years ago, taking with it ACE’s series of occasional papers titled On Change. However, for academics still needing a fix, the Canadian Commission for UNESCO continues to host discussions of “Working Together to Transform Higher Education,” the report of the 2003 World Conference on Higher Education.
So what’s wrong with all of this change-mongering?
To be fair, much of it perfectly harmless. People have to find something to name their articles, conferences, and institutes, and if nothing clever comes to mind, then “transformation” makes for a convenient rallying cry. As Barack Obama knows (and let’s not forget Walter Mondale, who went with “America needs a change” for his 1984 campaign slogan, and Jimmy Carter, who had a somewhat more successful 1976 run with “A leader, for a change”), change sounds like a pretty good thing to pursue. It captures people’s attention, makes them feel hopeful, and probably helps draw them to workshops and conferences.
The problem isn’t that academic reformers try to put a positive spin on their work. Rather, the problem is that they’re not very good at it, whether as producers or consumers of rhetoric.
As producers, they’re simply unimaginative. Again and again, they dip into the very same rhetorical well, as if there were no means by which to inspire audiences but to speak of transformation, and no way to stir people to action but to warn them that they live in a time of great change (as though that couldn’t be said of every decade since the Mesozoic era), one that compels a response.
And as consumers of this sort of rhetoric, academics are far too easy to please. Journalists and politicians pride themselves on their ability to dissect the candidates’ slogans and bumper stickers. But college professors and provosts seem all too happy to take such language at face value, smiling sweetly at the latest call for transformation.
Perhaps the appeal of such promises stands in inverse relationship to their likelihood of being fulfilled. As numerous historians of higher education have documented, for all the bold words and big plans of academic reformers, the “basic grammar” of higher education — the familiar ways in which faculty teach, students learn, departments function, administrators govern, and so on — has proven to be extremely durable, evolving little over the past century. It could be that reformers go easy on the vaguest of slogans precisely because they know how difficult it is to achieve the concrete goals toward which they work so hard, such as to get students to drink less and study more, to create tenure systems that reward excellent teaching, to graduate much larger numbers of low-income students, to devise a truly coherent undergraduate curriculum, and so on. Maybe academic reformers talk so often about transformation precisely because they see so little of it and they need the occasional dose of hopefulness.
Some such hopeful “audacity,” as Obama would put it, may be necessary, inspiring faculty and administrators to press on with the painfully slow and necessarily incremental march of academic reform. But too much of it can ruin their sense of direction, leading them to believe that “change” is actually a meaningful objective, and leading them to mistake every new curricular policy or departmental initiative for a dramatic transformation.
Those of us who care about higher education certainly wouldn’t want to forego the audacious optimism that sustains us, but it may be time to ditch, or at least tone down, the empty calls for change.
Rafael Heller is an independent consultant and education writer in Washington.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Tata Nano & Ethical Democracy: How The Consuming Classes Impede Equitable Development
Chithra KarunaKaran
http://myfinancetimes.com/2008/09/13/tata-nano-singur-story-revisited/
September 19th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Isn’t this Singur Tata Nano discussion ass backwards? Most of the readers appear to have unexamined bourgeois positions on this issue.
Yeah, the neoliberal Indian middle class in which they have membership is the worst enemy of equitable democratic development.
Let me suggest some
Alternative Questions:
Q. Why are farmers being displaced? Isn’t agriculture of PRIMARY importance in a developing country? Should manufacture be undertaken at the expense of agriculture? What about dispossessed farmers, especially when they fall prey to unscrupulous politicians, whether Left, Trinamool or Congress? What about FARMERS RIGHTS and FOOD SECURITY for our people? Does India have one of the world's highest rates of malnutrition among young children and women? Are India's farmers being pampered with fancy subsidies like the one Tata was offered in Uttarkhand and Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal or are they committing suicide because they cannot pay back usurious bank loans and lack a safety net?
Q. Why is Tata manufacturing a CAR when the urgent national priority is PUBLIC MASS TRANSIT — buses, trains etc. ? Do we really need yet another private vehicle on already crowded city streets? Since Tata already has manufacturing expertise in buses etc, that is what it should be manufacturing in the first place.
Shouldn’t the Left Govt. insist that Tata manufacture MASS PUBLIC TRANSIT vehicles at Singur or elsewhere to promote the Greater Collective Good?
Q. Why should national priorities be secondary to the consuming needs of the urban middle class? Why should national development priorities be secondary to the GREED of multinational capitalists?
Think about it.
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
See The Rise of the Car Nazis: Ratan and the Tata Wannabes
See reader comments at:
http://myfinancetimes.com/2008/09/13/tata-nano-singur-story-revisited/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article from "The Hindu"
How Tatas chose Singur as base for Nano plans
Our Bureau
Chennai, Sept. 12 A comprehensive package of incentives — subsidy on land, concessional power, a soft loan and tax paybacks — to match the benefits that Tata Motors would have got in Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh, was what got it to choose Singur in West Bengal for making its low-cost car Nano.
The agreement between Tata Motors, West Bengal Government and the State industrial promotion agency — West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation — available on the corporation’s Web site, provides details of the incentives offered.
The Government has said that it approached Tata Motors to persuade it to locate an automobile project in the State, including the project to make the small car. Tata Motors showed interest in locating the plant in West Bengal, provided the State offered fiscal incentives equivalent to the value of total incentives it would have received by locating the plant in Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh.
According to the agreement, the West Bengal Government will provide Tata Motors a loan of Rs 200 crore at 1 per cent interest, repayable in five equal annual instalments starting from the 21st year from the date of disbursement of the loan. This loan will be disbursed within 60 days of signing this agreement (The company signed an agreement with the Government on March 9, 2007 for the land at Singur).
Electricity clause
The Government will provide electricity for the project at Rs 3 a kWh. In case the tariff is increased by more than 25 paise a unit in every block of five years, the Government will provide relief through additional compensation to neutralise the increase.
The West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) will provide 645.67 acres of land to Tata Motors on a 90-year lease, on an annual lease rental of Rs 1 crore a year for the first five years, with a 25 per cent increase after every five years till 30 years.
After 30 years, the lease rental will be fixed at Rs 5 crore a year, with a 30 per cent increase after every 10 years till the 60th year. After this, the lease rental will be fixed at Rs 20 crore a year, which will remain unchanged till the 90th year. After the 90-year lease period, the lease terms will be fixed on mutually-agreed terms.
The agreement says that WBIDC will provide an industrial promotion assistance in the form of a loan at 0.1 per cent per annum for amounts equal to gross value-added tax and Central Sales Tax received by the State Government in each of the previous years ended March 31, on the sale of the small car from the date the sales begin.
This benefit, says the agreement, will continue till the balance amount of the Uttarakhand benefit (after deducting the amount from the land lease rental and the soft loan) is reached on net present value basis, after which it will be discontinued.
Loan repayment
The loan with interest will be repayable in annual instalments starting from the 31st year of commencement of sale from the plant. The loan availed of in the first year will be repaid in the 31st year and so on.
WBIDC will ensure that this loan is paid within 60 days of the close of the previous year, failing which the corporation will be liable to compensate Tata Motors for the financial inconvenience caused at the rate of 1.5 times the bank rate prevailing at the time on the amount due for the period of delay.
Tata Motors and the West Bengal Government will make best efforts to maximise sale of products from the small car plant, the agreement says.
As far as the land for the vendors is concerned, about 290 acres will be leased to the vendors on payment of premium equal to the actual cost of acquisition plus incidentals, to be calculated on the basis of the total acquisition cost and other incidental expenses incurred by WBIDC or any of its subsidiaries, averaged over the total land acquired.
Lease rental
The vendors will have to pay a lease rental of Rs 8,000 an acre for the first 45 years and Rs 16,000 an acre for the next 45 years. The initial lease tenure will be 90 years, after which it will be fixed on mutually agreed upon terms.
Tata Motors will invest about Rs 1,500 crore at Singur with the vendors bringing in another Rs 500 crore. The plant was to have a capacity of 2.5 lakh units a year on a two-shift basis, going up to 3.5 lakh units on three shifts. In addition, it would have vendors and act as a mother plant for many aggregates to the tune of five lakh cars a year.
Tata Motors, which unveiled the Nano at the auto expo in New Delhi in January 2008, suspended work at Singur on September citing the hostile environment at the site and said it was drawing up detailed plans to relocate the plant and machinery. The company was to roll out the Nano in the quarter beginning October.
Related Stories:
Singur: Differences over amount of land to be returned to ‘unwilling’ farmers
Tata Motors gearing up to pull out from Singur
http://myfinancetimes.com/2008/09/13/tata-nano-singur-story-revisited/
September 19th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Isn’t this Singur Tata Nano discussion ass backwards? Most of the readers appear to have unexamined bourgeois positions on this issue.
Yeah, the neoliberal Indian middle class in which they have membership is the worst enemy of equitable democratic development.
Let me suggest some
Alternative Questions:
Q. Why are farmers being displaced? Isn’t agriculture of PRIMARY importance in a developing country? Should manufacture be undertaken at the expense of agriculture? What about dispossessed farmers, especially when they fall prey to unscrupulous politicians, whether Left, Trinamool or Congress? What about FARMERS RIGHTS and FOOD SECURITY for our people? Does India have one of the world's highest rates of malnutrition among young children and women? Are India's farmers being pampered with fancy subsidies like the one Tata was offered in Uttarkhand and Himachal Pradesh and West Bengal or are they committing suicide because they cannot pay back usurious bank loans and lack a safety net?
Q. Why is Tata manufacturing a CAR when the urgent national priority is PUBLIC MASS TRANSIT — buses, trains etc. ? Do we really need yet another private vehicle on already crowded city streets? Since Tata already has manufacturing expertise in buses etc, that is what it should be manufacturing in the first place.
Shouldn’t the Left Govt. insist that Tata manufacture MASS PUBLIC TRANSIT vehicles at Singur or elsewhere to promote the Greater Collective Good?
Q. Why should national priorities be secondary to the consuming needs of the urban middle class? Why should national development priorities be secondary to the GREED of multinational capitalists?
Think about it.
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
See The Rise of the Car Nazis: Ratan and the Tata Wannabes
See reader comments at:
http://myfinancetimes.com/2008/09/13/tata-nano-singur-story-revisited/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Article from "The Hindu"
How Tatas chose Singur as base for Nano plans
Our Bureau
Chennai, Sept. 12 A comprehensive package of incentives — subsidy on land, concessional power, a soft loan and tax paybacks — to match the benefits that Tata Motors would have got in Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh, was what got it to choose Singur in West Bengal for making its low-cost car Nano.
The agreement between Tata Motors, West Bengal Government and the State industrial promotion agency — West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation — available on the corporation’s Web site, provides details of the incentives offered.
The Government has said that it approached Tata Motors to persuade it to locate an automobile project in the State, including the project to make the small car. Tata Motors showed interest in locating the plant in West Bengal, provided the State offered fiscal incentives equivalent to the value of total incentives it would have received by locating the plant in Uttarakhand or Himachal Pradesh.
According to the agreement, the West Bengal Government will provide Tata Motors a loan of Rs 200 crore at 1 per cent interest, repayable in five equal annual instalments starting from the 21st year from the date of disbursement of the loan. This loan will be disbursed within 60 days of signing this agreement (The company signed an agreement with the Government on March 9, 2007 for the land at Singur).
Electricity clause
The Government will provide electricity for the project at Rs 3 a kWh. In case the tariff is increased by more than 25 paise a unit in every block of five years, the Government will provide relief through additional compensation to neutralise the increase.
The West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC) will provide 645.67 acres of land to Tata Motors on a 90-year lease, on an annual lease rental of Rs 1 crore a year for the first five years, with a 25 per cent increase after every five years till 30 years.
After 30 years, the lease rental will be fixed at Rs 5 crore a year, with a 30 per cent increase after every 10 years till the 60th year. After this, the lease rental will be fixed at Rs 20 crore a year, which will remain unchanged till the 90th year. After the 90-year lease period, the lease terms will be fixed on mutually-agreed terms.
The agreement says that WBIDC will provide an industrial promotion assistance in the form of a loan at 0.1 per cent per annum for amounts equal to gross value-added tax and Central Sales Tax received by the State Government in each of the previous years ended March 31, on the sale of the small car from the date the sales begin.
This benefit, says the agreement, will continue till the balance amount of the Uttarakhand benefit (after deducting the amount from the land lease rental and the soft loan) is reached on net present value basis, after which it will be discontinued.
Loan repayment
The loan with interest will be repayable in annual instalments starting from the 31st year of commencement of sale from the plant. The loan availed of in the first year will be repaid in the 31st year and so on.
WBIDC will ensure that this loan is paid within 60 days of the close of the previous year, failing which the corporation will be liable to compensate Tata Motors for the financial inconvenience caused at the rate of 1.5 times the bank rate prevailing at the time on the amount due for the period of delay.
Tata Motors and the West Bengal Government will make best efforts to maximise sale of products from the small car plant, the agreement says.
As far as the land for the vendors is concerned, about 290 acres will be leased to the vendors on payment of premium equal to the actual cost of acquisition plus incidentals, to be calculated on the basis of the total acquisition cost and other incidental expenses incurred by WBIDC or any of its subsidiaries, averaged over the total land acquired.
Lease rental
The vendors will have to pay a lease rental of Rs 8,000 an acre for the first 45 years and Rs 16,000 an acre for the next 45 years. The initial lease tenure will be 90 years, after which it will be fixed on mutually agreed upon terms.
Tata Motors will invest about Rs 1,500 crore at Singur with the vendors bringing in another Rs 500 crore. The plant was to have a capacity of 2.5 lakh units a year on a two-shift basis, going up to 3.5 lakh units on three shifts. In addition, it would have vendors and act as a mother plant for many aggregates to the tune of five lakh cars a year.
Tata Motors, which unveiled the Nano at the auto expo in New Delhi in January 2008, suspended work at Singur on September citing the hostile environment at the site and said it was drawing up detailed plans to relocate the plant and machinery. The company was to roll out the Nano in the quarter beginning October.
Related Stories:
Singur: Differences over amount of land to be returned to ‘unwilling’ farmers
Tata Motors gearing up to pull out from Singur
Thursday, September 11, 2008
U.S. Raids inside Pakistan an Affront to Sovereignty of Nation-States
U.S. Raids inside Pakistan an Affront to Sovereignty of Nation-States
September 11th, 2008 9:21 am
Raids (actually acts of terror by the U.S.) inside sovereign states is abysmally shortsighted U.S. foreign policy. This horrific search and destroy non-strategy is supported by a majority of the American electorate, as numerous polls have shown. The American PUBLIC is largely accountable.
In their we-are-the-greatest-nation-on-earth, shop-until-we-drop stupor, despite record high joblessness, homelessness,lack of universal healthcare and a plummeting economy, the majority of American voters apparently thinks that a 'strong' America means a threatening America, a 'strong' America means an invading, occupying America.
The U.S. PUBLIC which historically has favored short-sighted military adventurism by their government, whether Republican (the Bushes) or Democrat (Kennedy, Johnson), got the government they deserve when they elected George Bush twice. The U.S. public, AND a poll-driven Congress, supported Bush's invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation state, Iraq.
This is the same U.S. public and their leaders, McCain/Palin, as well as Obama/Biden, that now predictably supports raids against so-called "terrorists", inside a sovereign nation-state, Pakistan, and kills large numbers of women, men and children, all innocent civilians, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When will they ever learn? Is it possible that a public with various civic freedoms can undermine their own democracy and endanger the prospect of democracy in other sovereign nation-states? The frightening spectacle of U.S. democracy offers sobering lessons for other nation-states and their publics as they chart a democratic course.
The US has absolutely NO business being inside Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.
The mere fact of U.S. military presence within these sovereign states, nation states in which the U.S. has dangerously meddled for decades, triggers adverse and sometimes violent reaction. The US has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no respect for the sovereignty of nation-states. The chest-thumping of American triumphalism and exceptionalism is continuing to challenge an emerging and fragile multipolarity in much of the rest of the world.
What the US govt. can continue to do is use its own intelligence and international intelligence resources to strengthen its OWN borders against incursions. This it has done admirably since 9/11. This is the way to go. This is the way to keep going.
Raids inside sovereign states produce more and more "terrorists", as the evidence already shows.
Chithra KarunaKaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
September 11th, 2008 9:21 am
Raids (actually acts of terror by the U.S.) inside sovereign states is abysmally shortsighted U.S. foreign policy. This horrific search and destroy non-strategy is supported by a majority of the American electorate, as numerous polls have shown. The American PUBLIC is largely accountable.
In their we-are-the-greatest-nation-on-earth, shop-until-we-drop stupor, despite record high joblessness, homelessness,lack of universal healthcare and a plummeting economy, the majority of American voters apparently thinks that a 'strong' America means a threatening America, a 'strong' America means an invading, occupying America.
The U.S. PUBLIC which historically has favored short-sighted military adventurism by their government, whether Republican (the Bushes) or Democrat (Kennedy, Johnson), got the government they deserve when they elected George Bush twice. The U.S. public, AND a poll-driven Congress, supported Bush's invasion and occupation of a sovereign nation state, Iraq.
This is the same U.S. public and their leaders, McCain/Palin, as well as Obama/Biden, that now predictably supports raids against so-called "terrorists", inside a sovereign nation-state, Pakistan, and kills large numbers of women, men and children, all innocent civilians, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When will they ever learn? Is it possible that a public with various civic freedoms can undermine their own democracy and endanger the prospect of democracy in other sovereign nation-states? The frightening spectacle of U.S. democracy offers sobering lessons for other nation-states and their publics as they chart a democratic course.
The US has absolutely NO business being inside Iraq, Afghanistan or Pakistan.
The mere fact of U.S. military presence within these sovereign states, nation states in which the U.S. has dangerously meddled for decades, triggers adverse and sometimes violent reaction. The US has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no respect for the sovereignty of nation-states. The chest-thumping of American triumphalism and exceptionalism is continuing to challenge an emerging and fragile multipolarity in much of the rest of the world.
What the US govt. can continue to do is use its own intelligence and international intelligence resources to strengthen its OWN borders against incursions. This it has done admirably since 9/11. This is the way to go. This is the way to keep going.
Raids inside sovereign states produce more and more "terrorists", as the evidence already shows.
Chithra KarunaKaran
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
Sunday, September 7, 2008
"Cheap" car is cheap for the environment? The case of the Tata NanC
Shame on Ratan Tata for focusing on his company's profits in Singur, instead of focusing on urgent environmental justice priorities for our nation.
What India needs is more investment in BOTH agriculture and in public mass transit. Not private car ownership and manufacture.
Tata, the West Bengal Left Govt, the neo-liberal Central Govt and the opportunist Trinamool have collectively managed to defeat both of the abovementioned urgent national priorities for a so-called "cheap" car.
Cheap for the Environment? Cheap for Farmers? Yeah right.
http://www.Ethicaldemocracy.blogspot.com
See:
The Rise of the Car Nazis: Ratan and the Tata Wannabes
September 7, 2008 1:07 PM
What India needs is more investment in BOTH agriculture and in public mass transit. Not private car ownership and manufacture.
Tata, the West Bengal Left Govt, the neo-liberal Central Govt and the opportunist Trinamool have collectively managed to defeat both of the abovementioned urgent national priorities for a so-called "cheap" car.
Cheap for the Environment? Cheap for Farmers? Yeah right.
http://www.Ethicaldemocracy.blogspot.com
See:
The Rise of the Car Nazis: Ratan and the Tata Wannabes
September 7, 2008 1:07 PM
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Kai Koolie Culture Imperils Civic Society Engagement
“Kai Koolie” Culture Imperils Civic Engagement
Everyone in India, Chennaiites included, knows, usually from direct, first-hand personal experience, that political, municipal and administrative corruption continues and is on the rise at every level of civil society. In this article I focus on what I am calling Kai Coolie Culture in the City of Chennai.
Although born in Chennai and increasingly appreciative of my birthplace, I had never spent time there until I began visiting regularly from my home and family in New York City and residing for a few months every year, in this booming, bustling, diverse metropolis. I have become impressed with Tamil culture and struggled to learn to speak street Tamil, which I find more vibrant and interesting than the more formal Tamil prose affected by news broadcasters and politicians with captive vote-banks. While In Chennai, I ride the public buses every day (I don’t own a car either in India or the U.S. and don’t plan to) during every extended visit, to every corner of the city. I continue to be particularly impressed with the civility and courtesy of ordinary people in Chennai, during my everyday activities here. I attribute this courtesy and civility, partly to the centuries-long civilizational discourse among Tamils, embodied in the Thirukkural and other works with which I am endeavoring to become familiar.
Thirukkural Culture or Kai Koolie Culture? So at this particular juncture in my continuing love affair with Chennai, my question is What do Chennaiites want -- Thirukural culture or Kai Koolie culture? This is a choice that is necessary to make, now, if we are to resume the Thirukural style of civilizational discourse, or if we choose to succumb to a thoroughly contemporary and noxious form of civic engagement - - Kai Koolie culture -- that imperils the development of healthy civic institutions in our unprecedented democracy. What civic path will Chennaiites choose?
The Personal is Political: The personal is political and vice versa, in my book. I grew up listening to stories about a Tahsildar great grandfather who became legendary under British rule for rejecting bribes and still accomplishing civic progress and prosperity within his jurisdiction in an area of Malabar. I grew up with an example of a father who became Director General of the Geological Survey of India and Founder Director of the Centre for Earth Science Studies (an Annual Lecture memorializes his professionalism and commitment), who led an inter-departmental scientific expedition to the Great Nicobar Islands, under Indira Gandhi’s Prime Ministership, and whose abiding passion for Earth System sciences had made him a visionary administrator of impeccable integrity.
Therefore, following my great grandfather’s and father’s example literally, during my recent visits to Chennai in the past eight years, I have stoutly resisted every attempt by Chennai municipal officials to extract payments for services which the government already pays them to do. During my recent visits to a sub-Registrar’s office and a Tahsildar’s office I openly declared “ I am not going to give Kai Koolie to anyone here, so I better get my forms and papers approved, pronto!” Perhaps there was a touch of New York chutzpah in these declarations. I sat in those offices for several days with no appreciable result. On one occasion a Revenue Officer and an Assistant Revenue officer attached to a local Tahsildar’s office visited me at my home, ostensibly to verify my documentation for a legal heirship certificate. I offered them a choice of mango juice or water, both of which the Revenue Officer refused. When I returned to the Tahsildar’s Office, the following week for yet another exasperating visit to ascertain the status of my heirship certificate request, I was asked by an official in that office “When the Revenue officer came to your home, you gave him juice?” Apparently, something more than a fruit beverage was expected.
On that same visit, when the sentry outside the Tahsildar’s office stepped away briefly, I strode into the Tahsildar’s office and explained my predicament. I finally obtained the certificate. While sitting in the Tahsildar’s office I timed the number of minutes (I am after all a postcolonial sociologist by profession), that the Tahsildar, an otherwise charming man, spent during a 45 minute segment on phone calls related to his job description (if it exists) responsibilities and the number of minutes spent off-task. Out of a 45 minute segment, this Tahsildar used his personal cellphone ( not his official phone) to make calls totaling 35 minutes, not counting conversations with functionaries he summoned into his office, in order to set up “a function for the CM.” If a local municipal official is engaged in personally lucrative political pandering instead of attending daily to the civic needs of residents in his taluk, how can s/he be efficient in redressing their grievances and furthering their civic participation? How can ordinary persons develop confidence that their requests for services and need of facilities and amenities will be respectfully considered and fairly implemented?
Kai Coolie Culture Negatively Impacts the Poor: The poor, the dispossessed and the disempowered are particularly vulnerable to Kai Koolie inducements, as I observed in my numerous visits to such offices. In any municipal office one can observe long straggly lines of poor people who are seek redressal of some grievance in regard to food, shelter, education or employment. Of course, the absolute poor, the disabled, the diseased cannot even recourse to such offices or hope to be helped by them.
Middle Class Collusion in Kai Coolie Culture: Members of the middle class often complain about having to give bribes to municipal officials and the police to “get something done.” They take the moral high ground against bribery but in practice, participate and in fact drive the culture of bribery. Kai Koolie culture, in which the middle class plays an increasingly collusional, cynical and apathetic role based entirely on short-term self-interest grounded in heavily subsidized privileges and entitlements, is a danger to the development of our civil society. Bribegivers are no less culpable than bribetakers.
A rejection of Kai Koolie norms and practices is desperately needed. A revitalization of Thirukkural culture and its practical application in civic life is imperative.
Everyone in India, Chennaiites included, knows, usually from direct, first-hand personal experience, that political, municipal and administrative corruption continues and is on the rise at every level of civil society. In this article I focus on what I am calling Kai Coolie Culture in the City of Chennai.
Although born in Chennai and increasingly appreciative of my birthplace, I had never spent time there until I began visiting regularly from my home and family in New York City and residing for a few months every year, in this booming, bustling, diverse metropolis. I have become impressed with Tamil culture and struggled to learn to speak street Tamil, which I find more vibrant and interesting than the more formal Tamil prose affected by news broadcasters and politicians with captive vote-banks. While In Chennai, I ride the public buses every day (I don’t own a car either in India or the U.S. and don’t plan to) during every extended visit, to every corner of the city. I continue to be particularly impressed with the civility and courtesy of ordinary people in Chennai, during my everyday activities here. I attribute this courtesy and civility, partly to the centuries-long civilizational discourse among Tamils, embodied in the Thirukkural and other works with which I am endeavoring to become familiar.
Thirukkural Culture or Kai Koolie Culture? So at this particular juncture in my continuing love affair with Chennai, my question is What do Chennaiites want -- Thirukural culture or Kai Koolie culture? This is a choice that is necessary to make, now, if we are to resume the Thirukural style of civilizational discourse, or if we choose to succumb to a thoroughly contemporary and noxious form of civic engagement - - Kai Koolie culture -- that imperils the development of healthy civic institutions in our unprecedented democracy. What civic path will Chennaiites choose?
The Personal is Political: The personal is political and vice versa, in my book. I grew up listening to stories about a Tahsildar great grandfather who became legendary under British rule for rejecting bribes and still accomplishing civic progress and prosperity within his jurisdiction in an area of Malabar. I grew up with an example of a father who became Director General of the Geological Survey of India and Founder Director of the Centre for Earth Science Studies (an Annual Lecture memorializes his professionalism and commitment), who led an inter-departmental scientific expedition to the Great Nicobar Islands, under Indira Gandhi’s Prime Ministership, and whose abiding passion for Earth System sciences had made him a visionary administrator of impeccable integrity.
Therefore, following my great grandfather’s and father’s example literally, during my recent visits to Chennai in the past eight years, I have stoutly resisted every attempt by Chennai municipal officials to extract payments for services which the government already pays them to do. During my recent visits to a sub-Registrar’s office and a Tahsildar’s office I openly declared “ I am not going to give Kai Koolie to anyone here, so I better get my forms and papers approved, pronto!” Perhaps there was a touch of New York chutzpah in these declarations. I sat in those offices for several days with no appreciable result. On one occasion a Revenue Officer and an Assistant Revenue officer attached to a local Tahsildar’s office visited me at my home, ostensibly to verify my documentation for a legal heirship certificate. I offered them a choice of mango juice or water, both of which the Revenue Officer refused. When I returned to the Tahsildar’s Office, the following week for yet another exasperating visit to ascertain the status of my heirship certificate request, I was asked by an official in that office “When the Revenue officer came to your home, you gave him juice?” Apparently, something more than a fruit beverage was expected.
On that same visit, when the sentry outside the Tahsildar’s office stepped away briefly, I strode into the Tahsildar’s office and explained my predicament. I finally obtained the certificate. While sitting in the Tahsildar’s office I timed the number of minutes (I am after all a postcolonial sociologist by profession), that the Tahsildar, an otherwise charming man, spent during a 45 minute segment on phone calls related to his job description (if it exists) responsibilities and the number of minutes spent off-task. Out of a 45 minute segment, this Tahsildar used his personal cellphone ( not his official phone) to make calls totaling 35 minutes, not counting conversations with functionaries he summoned into his office, in order to set up “a function for the CM.” If a local municipal official is engaged in personally lucrative political pandering instead of attending daily to the civic needs of residents in his taluk, how can s/he be efficient in redressing their grievances and furthering their civic participation? How can ordinary persons develop confidence that their requests for services and need of facilities and amenities will be respectfully considered and fairly implemented?
Kai Coolie Culture Negatively Impacts the Poor: The poor, the dispossessed and the disempowered are particularly vulnerable to Kai Koolie inducements, as I observed in my numerous visits to such offices. In any municipal office one can observe long straggly lines of poor people who are seek redressal of some grievance in regard to food, shelter, education or employment. Of course, the absolute poor, the disabled, the diseased cannot even recourse to such offices or hope to be helped by them.
Middle Class Collusion in Kai Coolie Culture: Members of the middle class often complain about having to give bribes to municipal officials and the police to “get something done.” They take the moral high ground against bribery but in practice, participate and in fact drive the culture of bribery. Kai Koolie culture, in which the middle class plays an increasingly collusional, cynical and apathetic role based entirely on short-term self-interest grounded in heavily subsidized privileges and entitlements, is a danger to the development of our civil society. Bribegivers are no less culpable than bribetakers.
A rejection of Kai Koolie norms and practices is desperately needed. A revitalization of Thirukkural culture and its practical application in civic life is imperative.
Friday, May 9, 2008
Signed Editorials -- Hillary's Race
May 9th, 2008 10:44 am
ALL NYTimes editorials should be signed.
When a Times editorial anonymously advises Clinton to drop out of the race, because of her alleged use of racial code words we should know who on the Times is advocating this position. Since the topic is Race why should the racial membership of this particular Times editorial writer be concealed?
Or is this Times writer claiming to be immune to racial signifiers? I know I'm not immune and I know from experience that I am usually at the receiving end of racial signifiers in my everyday personal and professional life in racialized US society.
See, my name and affiliation(s) are clearly indicated in my post.
Transparency and the free flow of information are vital ingredients of media and civil society discourses in democracy.
The world knows that U.S. democracy has taken a severe beating in the Bush years. The Times is not immune from such pressures because it is a part of US society. So be open and transparent when you advocate any position. WE know what Hillary said. But we don't know who on the Times said what they said in this column.
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
— EthicalDemocracy, http://www.EthicalDemocracy.blogspot.com
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
see NYTimes Editorial below on Clinton and Race
Sen. Clinton and the Campaign
There is a lot of talk that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now fated to lose the Democratic nomination and should pull out of the race. We believe it is her right to stay in the fight and challenge Senator Barack Obama as long as she has the desire and the means to do so. That is the essence of the democratic process.
But we believe just as strongly that Mrs. Clinton will be making a terrible mistake — for herself, her party and for the nation — if she continues to press her candidacy through negative campaigning with disturbing racial undertones. We believe it would also be a terrible mistake if she launches a fight over the disqualified delegations from Florida and Michigan.
The United States needs a clean break from eight catastrophic years of George W. Bush. And so far, Senator John McCain is shaping up as Bush the Sequel — neverending war in Iraq, tax cuts for the rich while the middle class struggles, courts packed with right-wing activists intent on undoing decades of progress in civil rights, civil liberties and other vital areas.
The Democratic Party must field the most effective and vibrant candidate it possibly can. More attack ads and squabbling will not help achieve that goal. If Mr. Obama wins, he will be that much more battered and the party will be harder to unite. Win or lose, Mrs. Clinton’s reputation will suffer more harm than it already has.
She owes more to millions of Americans who have voted for her (and particularly to New Yorkers, who are entitled to expect that if she loses, she will return to the Senate with her influence and integrity intact).
In addition to abandoning the attack ads, Mrs. Clinton must drop her plans to fight to seat the delegations from Florida and Michigan, which defied the Democratic Party and moved up the dates of their primaries. A lot of people voted in Florida anyway, but Mrs. Clinton should not pursue this nuclear option. It would make the Democrats look unable to control their own, just when they want to make a case that they can lead the entire nation.
Both candidates have been vowing in the last two days to unite the party, and Mr. Obama could do more to rein in his anonymous campaign aides and other supporters who spend their days trashing Mrs. Clinton.
The undeclared superdelegates should stop their coy posing. With few exceptions, there is no reason left (other than the hope of making back-room deals) for those whose states have voted to keep their positions private. The rest should state their allegiance as soon as their primaries are held in the next few weeks.
There is a lot that Senators Clinton and Obama need to be talking about in coming weeks, starting with how they will extract the country from President Bush’s disastrous Iraq war. A robust debate about health care and the mortgage crisis would remind all American voters of what is at stake in this year’s election. It would also prepare whoever wins the nomination to be a better debater and campaigner in the fall.
We endorsed Mrs. Clinton, and we know that she has a major contribution to make. But instead of discussing her strong ideas, Mrs. Clinton claimed in an interview with USA Today that she would be the better nominee because a recent poll showed that “Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again.” She added: “There’s a pattern emerging here.”
Yes, there is a pattern — a familiar and unpleasant one. It is up to Mrs. Clinton to change it if she hopes to have any shot at winning the nomination or preserving her integrity and her influence if she loses.
===================================================================
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The Pursuit of Inequity & the Rhetoric of Liberty
See Inside Higher Ed article The Pursuit of Efficiency and The Pursuit of Folly
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/04/29/gilbertson
See my comment:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/04/29/gilbertson
See my comment:
The Pursuit of Inequity and the Rhetoric of Liberty
The U.S. dual public and private university systems must be contextualized and located within the US nation-state and its central ideological precept of "free" market fundamentalism, which thrives on inequality and inequity.
How else can we explain the structural and systemic inequity between private university endowments and public university financing?
There’s something deeply unethical about a nation-state narrative in which Harvard’s private endowment is greater than the total operating budget to educate and provide services for 1 million children in more than 1100 schools in New York City.
We reside in a nation-state where many states and cities spend more on incarceration than on education; universities BOTH public and private are spaces that do NOT challenge in the public sphere a historically racialized inequity, most aptly described as Systemic Whiteness, within its own academic ranks and student enrollment; the practice of ‘legacy’ by the most prestigious private universities is de facto dynastic privilege.
The article sets up a safe, status-quo- preserving discourse about public university funding as being a problem of funding v. academic pursuits. I think that is a dismally distinctive ivory tower approach to a deeply structural problem that is starkly ideological and political.
Q. Why should there be a two-tier higher ed system in the first place?
Q. Why should the budget of the public higher ed system be smaller than that of the Pentagon?
The public university is uniquely a (potential) site of deliberative, contestational democracy.
Let’s ask the tough questions and help shape the answers to those very questions in the public sphere, not only in safe classrooms behind ivied walls which replicate the power structure and worldview of the predatory, expansionist, inequitable U.S. nation-state.
Let’s ask the tough questions and help shape the answers to those very questions in the public sphere, not only in safe classrooms behind ivied walls which replicate the power structure and worldview of the predatory, expansionist, inequitable U.S. nation-state.
Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York
City University of New York
Inside Higher Ed online article
The Pursuit of Efficiency and the Pursuit of Folly
Surveys have found that Americans hold great confidence in the nation’s public colleges and universities; a level shown to surpass even that held for churches, hospitals, the media and all levels of government. That’s good news. But beyond this general high level of confidence, the public seems, at times, deeply ambivalent about universities.
On one hand, there is a cherished and sentimental view of universities as academic places where caring teachers mold young minds through unhurried and probing conversations about poems and politics, the human condition and the forces of nature. In this utopia, a university’s classes are small, tutored by sage and patient scholars; juvenile errors and excesses are gently but firmly corrected; and, of course, football games are always won. And in this romanticized view, lush and leafy campuses are sanctuaries for eccentric intellectuals to think deep thoughts, develop whimsical theories, and indulge in the time-consuming trials and errors of research.
On the other hand, when talk turns to matters of state funding or, even worse, tuition, sweet sentimentalities are replaced by a fulminating call for universities to become ruthlessly efficient – no time or treasure squandered on small classes or idle contemplation or tending to pretty flowers on campus. Things must be run as “lean” as business would have us believe it has become. Fat must be excised, indolence must be punished mercilessly, unnecessary processes must be re-engineered and unnecessary people banished. Over-extended and under-funded state budgets have only served to increase the clamor for universities to become more frugal than friendly. And tax-phobic critics of state government spending, in particular, have elevated the no holds barred efficiency-as-a-mandate rhetoric.
The truth is, of course, that public universities are hardly strangers to frugality and regularly adopt efficiencies in countless ways. A recent study conducted by the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and SunGard Higher Education affirms that cost containment is a high priority and that institutions are turning to myriad sources and strategies to restrain spending.
As stewards of the public trust, university leaders and governing board members rightfully should be held accountable for maximizing the purchasing power of public monies. But focusing on efficiency as a prime goal and virtue can divert attention and effort from a university’s essential purpose — to protect and elevate its primary missions of teaching, learning, research and service.
Can a university be both academic and efficient, both humane and businesslike? The answer is a tentative “yes.” But this is a tricky business, for the very things that produce a university’s greatest value — intellectual freedom, personal attention to students, time for contemplation and the cultivation of imagination, conservation of our past and insight into our future, and the mistakes and missteps that necessarily precede achievements in research and learning — do not always conform to the imperatives of tidy management and steely cost-cutting techniques.
Universities are not manufacturing plants. While the raw material of business and industry often have predictable destinations, the raw material of universities — namely young or young-at-heart men and women — are subject to the great forces of human nature: ego and altruism, impulse and emotion, to name but a few. A piece of metal stamping on an assembly line cannot change its intentions to become a car door, a filing cabinet or a piece of art. A college sophomore, however, may very well alter his or her intended destination from being an accountant, to that of an English teacher, scientist, nurse, poet, parent or politician. What about the student who enrolls in a couple of extra courses that personally interest her, who therefore passes up the more direct route for her chosen degree and in the process delays graduation by a year? Higher education’s productivity auditors likely equate such dalliance with inefficiency. But what if in so doing, the student gained a clearer perspective of her life’s direction?
The cries for increased accountability and the reporting of metrics aimed at neatly calculating the return on public investment made to universities continue to increase. However, the output generated by universities is often difficult to quantify; not all efforts are calculable on a dollar-for-dollar return on investment basis.
Granting too much focus on the economic returns of higher education misses the point, for any attempt to quantify the contributions the collegiate experience makes in the everyday lives of citizens is much more of a qualitative than a quantitative endeavor. What about those programs and “products” that do not lend themselves to the orderly application of valued-added calculations? Few would question the value of university efforts in the info-bio-nano technologies, which invoke visions of cutting-edge products and services and spin-off commercial ventures. But what about programs in Middle Eastern studies? What’s the financial bottom line on a greater understanding of cultures in the Middle East? Programs of study on topics such as this surely do not serve as university profit centers. And what’s the value of a thoughtful term paper, or a stunning insight into the meaning of a historic event, or the value of a poem?
There is another, perhaps even greater, irony in all this. The evidence is not at all clear that “efficiency,” as commonly understood in business jargon, is in any way rewarded by the higher education “marketplace.” Imagine, for example, the least efficient institution of higher education in your state. Chances are that the teaching loads of its high-paid faculty are largely discretionary and barely measurable, with faculty efforts focused instead on the publication of esoteric thoughts in widely-unread journals; its library contains hundreds of thousands of volumes that haven’t been opened in decades; it has well manicured lawns and, probably, a facility that seats tens of thousands of people but is only used five or six Saturdays each year (hint–think football stadium). Imagine then, the most “efficient” higher education institution in your state. It likely has under-paid faculty with teaching loads that approach sweat-shop labor conditions; it may well be housed in a store-front; its library might be little more than a set of encyclopedias; and it is marketing hard for a student body that will keep it marginally solvent.
Now ... which one has accomplished students waiting with baited breath for word of a favorable admissions decision? Which one receives tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars in largesse from loyal alumni or proud donors each year? Which one commands the almost slavish allegiance of those very state legislators who cheer loudly from prime seats at athletic pageants but publicly threaten to discipline their spendthrift habits? Is “efficiency” — in a business definition — really recognized or rewarded in the higher education marketplace?
The fact is that not all efforts borne out of universities can be precisely summed up on some auditor’s balance sheet. Universities offer a different and much more complicated value proposition. Their “core business” is the development of human potential, their “products” are ideas and discoveries and the professionals who teach our children and treat our sicknesses and manage our businesses and create wealth and create art. Human beings are, alas, sometimes untidy, vexatious, troublesome; and humane values sometimes require more patience than might best serve some bottom line.
This is not a justification of waste or an excuse for wastrels. Universities should be expected to spend money sensibly. But in the rush to economize, even during hard times, we ought not lose sight of the primary value the public seeks and expects from our universities.
The reason universities have earned the public’s confidence, the reason hundreds and hundreds of thousands of alumni of our nation’s public universities are proud of their alma maters, the reason families sacrifice to send their sons and daughters to our campuses is not because universities function as well-oiled machines, not because they trim every expense and fill every idle minute during the academic day and year. It is because these unique and special and fragile institutions are there at the very instant when people, at their most promising and vulnerable moments, come seeking their futures, come ready to become something more, something better.
And as they become more, and better, so do we all.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Get the UN out of the US
Should the United Nations HQ be in New York City? Why?
Why not in one or more of the world's poorest nations?
The fatcat bureaucrats might possibly leave the U.N.in droves if they find they have to work in conditions where there is a lack of basic amenities. Only the most dedicated civil servants will be left, minus the bureaucratic bloat that the UN is encumbered with.
These poorest member-nations may lack infrastructure and facilities and services, but isn't it part of the UN's responsibility to develop these with funds from its member nations, World Bank, IMF etc?
So let the UN locate itself where it is most needed, not the US where it not needed at all, except to be manipulated by the US for its own self-serving, predatory, expansionist interests.
The US exercises undue influence upon the UN because it is located in this country. In addition many UN civil servants apply to live in the US after their period of service, so they are careful not to say or do anything that might upset the self-described superpower and jeopardize their chances of residency in the US.
Get the UN out of the US. The LDCs may well fare a whole lot better if the UN is moved out of here and into DRC, Sierra Leone or Chad.
Chithra KarunaKaran
http://www.ethicaldemocracy.blogspot.com
see NYTimes
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/developer-wants-un-for-his-proposed-tower/
#comment-239669
==========================
see earlier article May 12, 2003, picked up by Media Monitors Network
The In-Security Council: Dump it or Grow it? By Chithra KarunaKaran
May 12, 2003
More Articles on Membership, Expansion, Veto and Voting More Information on Security Council Reform More Information on Security Council Membership
=============================================================
Why not in one or more of the world's poorest nations?
The fatcat bureaucrats might possibly leave the U.N.in droves if they find they have to work in conditions where there is a lack of basic amenities. Only the most dedicated civil servants will be left, minus the bureaucratic bloat that the UN is encumbered with.
These poorest member-nations may lack infrastructure and facilities and services, but isn't it part of the UN's responsibility to develop these with funds from its member nations, World Bank, IMF etc?
So let the UN locate itself where it is most needed, not the US where it not needed at all, except to be manipulated by the US for its own self-serving, predatory, expansionist interests.
The US exercises undue influence upon the UN because it is located in this country. In addition many UN civil servants apply to live in the US after their period of service, so they are careful not to say or do anything that might upset the self-described superpower and jeopardize their chances of residency in the US.
Get the UN out of the US. The LDCs may well fare a whole lot better if the UN is moved out of here and into DRC, Sierra Leone or Chad.
Chithra KarunaKaran
http://www.ethicaldemocracy.blogspot.com
see NYTimes
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/developer-wants-un-for-his-proposed-tower/
#comment-239669
==========================
see earlier article May 12, 2003, picked up by Media Monitors Network
The In-Security Council: Dump it or Grow it? By Chithra KarunaKaran
The In-Security Council - Dump It or Grow It?
By Chithra KarunaKaran
Media Monitors NetworkMay 12, 2003
A core principle of the United Nations Charter is One Member One Vote. This is not an explicit statement within the Charter. Significantly, the Charter goes even further. The Charter states that the UN was established to secure "the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small." It places the rights of men and women before the rights of states. That’s you and me and six billion-plus others. The rights of individuals are co-equal with and precede the rights of states. What a glorious (and yet to be realized) ideal. But it will not happen unless We the People do something about the UN Security Council. The question is -- What? Dump it, scrap it, change it or grow it?
As events have shown, the Security Council has become dangerously obsolete, representing the whim, greed and political fundamentalism of one hyper-power.
On March 10, at a press conference at UN headquarters, a million-plus petitions signed by people from all over the world were presented to the Security Council. The petitions had been generated through a massive online campaign by anti-war groups, protesting the US govt.’s decision to go to war against the people of Iraq. What did the UN do? Not a peep about it from Kofi Annan, not even in his generally timid "off the cuff" statements featured daily on the UN website. No prior announcement about the event was made by the UN Secretariat, though they were aware that the petitions would be delivered in 12 boxes to Security Council members. It was as if the event never occurred. So, is the UN Charter just a piece of paper to be stored on a musty shelf, or is it supposed to safeguard the "rights of men and women and of nations, large and small" to discursive, negotiated settlement of disputes? Talk is cheap, cheaper than war.
Unequal Membership
All member states of the 191-member body are stated to be equal. Each member state supposedly has one vote and one vote only. The Security operates on the non-principle of One Member Two Votes. The stated principle of equality of membership is breached and flouted by the structure, processes and exclusive (not to mention, exclusionary) membership of the United Nations Security Council. The UN Security Council is the only UN body that has permanent members (Article 23). All other UN bodies have general or rotating memberships.
The Security Council is the only body that can "adopt its own rules of procedure," (Article 30) unfettered by The UN General Assembly. Under the United Nations Charter, therefore, inequality of membership is guaranteed, implemented and enforced by the Security Council. In Orwellian terms, all member states are equal but some member states are more equal than others. But, hey, it’s not 1984 anymore, it’s 2003. Time for a change? Time for a change that will guarantee the equality of all member states. While the media and the policy wonks in the dominant states are concerned about the lack of unity at this time in the Security Council, others are questioning whether the Security Council should be taken apart and retired. Are We the People more secure because of the Security Council? Or have we become more insecure, because of the Security Council?
Postcolonial Membership Structure
So the question du jour that subservient member-states (and that includes every member who is not permanently on the Security Council) should be asking is Should the United Nations Security Council be dismantled and repaired? Or scrapped and dumped? Subservient member states include large global players like India; small island states and previous colonial dependencies such as Mauritius; AIDS-ravaged new democracies like South Africa; poor landlocked states dependent on the goodwill of their neighbors like Nepal; or dominated regions with little hope of religious freedom, right of return of its tens of thousands of refugees and sovereignty, like Tibet.
India is the world’s largest democracy. It is a democracy that has struggled out of colonialism and painful subservience to colonial interests. Therefore it has a perspective that is diametrically opposite to that of the colonizing and neo-imperial powers. Perhaps India should not be seeking expansion of the Security Council, as it is doing now, so that it too can become a member. India’s membership, if it happens, will make Pakistan and other South Asian nations feel more insecure. That will not be a good thing. Building bonds between blood-related neighbors and historically enmeshed partners is more important than Security Council membership. Dismantling the Security Council is certain to strengthen the General Assembly. Maybe India, in the spirit of 21st century understanding of the paramount importance of human rights, post-capitalist democracy, freedom and equality of participation should not be seeking expansion of the Security Council but dissolution of the Security Council. Maybe it is almost time to dismantle the Security Council as a dangerously obsolete, ineffectual, humiliating emblem of nineteenth and twentieth century dominant power relations. Maybe India, Norway, Pakistan, Mauritius, Sweden, Iran, Brazil, Sri Lanka and historically diverse others can help move the UN into the 21st century with political equality of all member states, at every level of operation of the UN. Article 109 can be invoked to amend the UN Charter. However, all five permanent members of the Security Council would have to agree. Talk about double jeopardy "for the equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small."
Members of the Security Council, (the only ones that really matter are the five permanent members), the Big Five, exercise more political and economic power than any other body within the United Nations. This cannot be claimed to be a natural outcome of the historical development of the Security Council, but the explicit intent of the original superpowers. Inequality of membership was the demand of the original framers of the United Nations Charter, all of them colonial powers and one emerging power of that time, the US. However, the US was a worthy candidate for dominant and exclusionary membership. The US had already practiced slavery for 100-plus years and was therefore well equipped to develop its capability to become a neo-imperial power, exerting dominance over new member states which included those from which it had previously drawn free labor. It is comfortable with sharing power with the colonizing powers, all white and all European. China’s later inclusion in 1949, (with India deferring its claim of membership to China), merely underlines the importance of size and potential economic power as a basis for strengthening the inequality of membership. Again, the fragmenting of the USSR and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in 1989, has not knocked Russia out of contention for continued membership. The politics of dominance is therefore key to membership in the Security Council. Not equality of membership but dominance in membership.
Acquiescence to the non-principle of inequality of membership was demonstrated by those colonized member states including India who were founding co-signers of the United Nations Charter. The postcolonial states, recently independent in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, accepted the non-principle of inequality of membership, carrying on the colonial tradition of political subservience to their previous masters, now sitting as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
To borrow from sociologists Max Weber and C. Wright Mills, the collusion of elites characterizes many bureaucratic institutions. In the case of the UN we have a collusion of male-dominant, wealthy national elites. A phallocracy, a bureaucracy and now increasingly a corporatocracy. And the UN Security Council represents the crème de la crème of the elites of each of the five permanent member states, joining in mutual recognition of their shared elite power, status and privilege.
The United Nations is of course a global, inter-govermental bureaucracy, with salient and classic features of hierarchical, top-down authority, bottom-up accountability, written rules, written communications and written records (most recently, Resolution 1441), continual expansion, division and departmentalization of tasks within agencies and committee structures. But the power equation is its most salient feature. The Security Council is in fact explicitly constituted to exercise unequal global power, status and privilege, through its Charter-guaranteed position at the apex of the UN bureaucracy. The Security Council is the elite of global elites. It is the problem not the solution. It compromises the UN General Assembly.
Are We Secure With The Security Council?
What has the Security Council accomplished? Has the Security Council accomplished security for the world at large? The Security Council has a sorry record of lack of accomplishment. It established the State of Israel in 1948, in violation of its own Preamble and unleashed seventy-five years of disenfranchisement of the indigenous Palestinian people. It presided over and literally authorized Palestinian disenfranchisement. The US continues to arm Israel and the Security Council can’t do a thing about it. The Security Council proved unable to overturn apartheid in South Africa. It failed to prevent the expulsion of Indians from Uganda by Idi Amin. It was unwilling to prevent Britain from going to war to claim the Falklands Islands. The UN Security Council was unable (unwilling?) to anticipate, prevent or intercede in the bloody ethnic strife between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, and in the continuing genocide in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia was emptied of its indigenous population, the Ilios, who were shunted off to neighboring Mauritius, so that the island could serve as a military base for joint use by the Britain and the US. Diego Garcia is currently serving the strategic interests of the US and the UK as a naval base for operations against states in the Middle East, Afghanistan and South Asia. And now the UN has failed to avert war by a hyper-dominant member state against the people of Iraq. In each of these instances, the individual and combined interests of the five member states outweighed the interests of the 191-strong UN community of member states. The universal and greater common good is not, and cannot be expected to be the prime consideration of a small elite of states holding dominant power in the Security Council. That power has become even more concentrated with the US becoming the dominant member of the UN Security Council, supported by the post-imperial politics of the erstwhile dominant world power, the UK. This blatant concentration of power to the exclusion of all others, makes the active pursuit of a universal and greater common good by the UN, and particularly the Security Council virtually impossible.
Apparently WE the People must change the UN and particularly its Security Council.
When will the Security Council act to guarantee the guarantee the "equal rights of men and men and of nations, large and small.?" Never? The UN appears too cumbersome, too compromised and too preoccupied with its own survival as a burgeoning bureaucracy to undertake its own reform on behalf of We the People. It will again be up to those million-plus petitioners, who swamped the UN with signatures asking the Security Council to act on behalf of a negotiated peace. Their request was futile this time. Better luck next time.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C ß 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
=============================================================
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)