Culture

Art

Artist Sunder Ramu held a preview on Saturday of his work in photography inspired by the beauty of dying autumn leaves.

“I’ve never seen anything die as beautifully as a leaf in autumn. I wanted to explore human relationships through leaves, and the life of a leaf through the human form,” says photographer Sunder Ramu, whose fine art photography exhibit, ‘The Last Dance of the Leaves’, is coming to Bengaluru on April 28 and 29. Sunder held a preview of the series at The Hatworks Boulevard on April 21, where artists like Rukmini Vijayakumar, Manjunath Wali, and Trina and Gautam collaborated with Sunder to render their own interpretation of his art. Having worked in advertising and fashion photography for over 25 years, Sunder says his move to fine art photography was a conscious choice. “I was tired of shooting celebrities to sell fairness creams and soft drinks. I felt that I wasn’t telling the right stories through my art. So, I wrote to all the 22 magazines I had been working with and told them I was done,” says Sunder. Apart from being a fashion photographer, Sunder has also been a dancer and a theatre actor. He has also acted in about eight Tamil films. The inspiration Sunder says the inspiration for the series came from a difficult phase in his life. “Fifteen years ago, I was going through a really dark period in my life and had nearly given up. I then decided to take a break and go backpacking across Europe, but I was still miserable. One day, as I sat on a bench in Montmartre looking at a windmill on a distant hill, I felt a cool breeze blowing. Suddenly, there was a splash of colour as leaves in yellow, orange, red and brown started to fall to the ground. When I saw their last dance before they fell to the ground, I felt that I was also in that place between the branch and the ground. And I realised that this experience could be beautiful too,” says Sunder. He adds that he has been a ‘closet leaf photographer’ ever since. “I’ve been shooting leaves for nearly 15 years now. I was doing it for myself. I didn’t think of sharing it with others until recently,” he says. The exhibit The collection of photographs, which Sunder plans to showcase in more than 20 cities around the world, is titled ‘The Last Dance of the Leaves.’ “I want my art to be a celebration of love, life and death. I don’t want to simply put my pain on other people’s walls”, says Sunder. The collection includes about 100 photographs of leaves, interspersed with about 20 nude photographs of women. “These days we are all bombarded by digital images through Instagram, Facebook and all kinds of social media. I feel like we need to pause and appreciate the beauty of the art of photography. Even in this digital age, I have chosen to use prints on canvas for my show,” says Sunder. Sunder also claims that each exhibit will be uniquely tailored according to the space where the works are being displayed. Sunder adds that he wants his exhibits to be open, democratic spaces. He has also been collaborating with many artists to create work connected to the theme of his collection but in very different forms. At the Bengaluru preview, Rukmini Vijayakumar and her Raadha Kalpa dance company improvised a performance in reaction to Sunder’s works. Artist Manjunath Wali live painted on one of Sunder’s prints throughout the performances at the preview. “This is a movement to create art that tells beautiful stories. I want to collaborate with different artists who tell these stories in their own unique way,” says Sunder. Sunder’s works will be displayed at Sublime Galleria, UB City on April 28 and 29.

Tribes

The documentary 'Name/Place/Animal/Thing' by Nitin R on the Hakki Pikki tribe won a National Award this year.

Rishika Pardikar

The Hakki Pikki are a semi-nomadic tribe who have travelled and lived in various parts of the country over the past few decades. As part of a ‘rehabilitation drive’ by the Government of Karnataka in the 1950s and '60s, they were forced out of their forest dwellings and brought into the edges of cities like Bengaluru, Mysuru, Hassan etc. The actual rehabilitation though, remained on paper only. The stories of the tribe have been captured on camera by various filmmakers - My Bangalore: Portraits from Hakki Pikki Colony by Pankaj Gupta and Sikkidre Shikari Illdidre Bhikari by Madhu Bhushan and Vinod Raja. The latter was recently screened at Shoonya - Centre for Art and Somatic Practices and continues to be screened at various locations in Bengaluru as does Name/Place/Animal/Thing by Nitin R, which won this year’s National Award for Best Anthropological/Ethnographic film. “I came across a newspaper article about the unique naming traditions of the Hakki Pikki tribals. Among the names of the tribal folk are Congress, Compound, Viman, Deluxe, Japan, Service, Cycle, Cycle Rani, English, Mysore Pak, Military and so on. That caught my attention and I decided that someday I would make a film on them,” Nitin said in an interview with The Hindu. On his travels to the Hakki Pikki villages about 50 odd kilometres from Bengaluru, Nitin realised that as in the popular memory game ‘Name, Place, Animal, Thing’ where you write down the first word that comes to your mind, the tribals of this community name their newborns after the first thought that comes to them when they see the child – a name, a place, an animal, or a random thing. However, after conversing with the community, Nitin realised that their stories pointed to larger questions about civilisation. “…for whom and why do we destroy traditions and age old ways of life?” Nitin said in the interview. The documentary My Bangalore: Portraits from Hakki Pikki Colony narrates the life stories and struggles of the Hakki Pikki who now live in makeshift dwellings on the outskirts of Bengaluru. It opens with a message about how indigenous tribes were evicted from forests in the 1970s following the large scale creations of wildlife reserves and the Hakki Pikki were one such tribe. In the documentary, a member of the Hakki Pikki tribe says, “The forest was better. It was always cool there, amongst trees. There were no problems concerning food and water. There were no illnesses there...Then the government resettled us, told us to send our kids to schools. We were told that we should also change with the changing world.” “Water is a problem here,” another member reiterates, making an audience wonder if any of this makes sense. When a nomadic community which used to move from forest to forest says there’s a shortage of water in the city, you begin to question rudiments of urban settlements. “Living like beggars, 30 years went by,” an older member of the community says. “The local government noticed our existence here and said they’d help us. We had about 15 acres of land but they took all of it away and left just a small strip for us. They promised to build houses for us… until now only a crater has been dug out.” “Even after more than fifty years, none of them had received the title deeds for the land,” Vinod Raja, one of the producers of Sikkidre Shikari Illdidre Bhikari said in the context of the community’s struggle to retain lands which were granted to them by the government in 1962. “The local land mafia started gunning for their lands and many feuds erupted in the colony as some outsiders managed to break in and settle there. A well known industrialist too had attempted to negotiate with the community and acquire their lands” Vinod added. At an event at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Madhu Bhushan, who has been working with the Hakki Pikki community for the past few decades said that it was only later that she realised the absurdity in trying to get title deeds for ownership of land to a semi-nomadic community. And both of the above point at denials - the community was denied permits which would let them stay in the forests and sustain themselves on natural resources as well as meaningful rehabilitation programmes which teach them how to carve out a living in the city. The documentary aptly addresses the concerns of the Hakki Pikki community whose state can best be described by the idiom ‘dhobi ka kutta na ghar ka, na ghaat ka’ (a person who is split between two groups and belongs to neither). Such documentaries bring to prominence real life struggles which deserve attention from the government and media. The ball is now in the government's court to act. Watch:

Interview

Sathiyan grabbed a team gold, men's doubles silver (with Achanta Sharath Kamal) and mixed doubles bronze (Manika Batra) at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

IANS

PTI

Debayan Mukherjee On cloud nine after bagging medals of every hue at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games, India's highest-ranked table tennis star Sathiyan Gnanasekaran now eyes podium finishes at the upcoming Jakarta Asian Games and the 2020 Olympics. Starting the year as the 46th ranked player, India's highest, Sathiyan grabbed a team gold, men's doubles silver (with Achanta Sharath Kamal) and mixed doubles bronze (Manika Batra) at the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games. India finished the discipline collecting eight medals, including three gold, two silver and three bronze pieces in Gold Coast."With this confidence I think we can win a medal in the Asian Games. That would be fantastic. Winning a medal in Asian Games is as good as winning a medal in the Olympic Games," Sathiyan told IANS in a telephonic interview. The Asian Games will be held from August 18 to September 2 in Jakarta, Indonesia. Tokyo is the host city of the Olympics two years from now."If we win a medal in Asian Games, we have a really good chance of winning a medal in the Olympic Games as well," he said. India had picked up five medals at the Delhi CWG in 2010. The 2014 Glasgow Games was a poor outing with only Sharath managing a silver in the company of A. Amalraj in men's doubles. At the Gold Coast, the Indian squad surpassed our expectations, according to Sathiyan."We did a great job. We were actually expecting a good performance. We surpassed our expectations. I should accept that," said Sathiyan, 25."We have done really, really well. We wanted to equal our performance of 2010. We were looking forward for that and had our goals set," the Chennai youth added."But I think we went beyond expectations, winning medals in all the events. This is phenomenal. We did better than what we thought we could." Sathiyan said their show at such a big stage as the CWG made people sit up and take notice of table tennis in India. But in the last few years, they have been taking giant strides in the right direction."The Games is something big. So it (our achievement) is being seen on a bigger scale now. But the sport itself, the players have grown a lot in the last few years," said Sathiyan, who won gold in the Spanish Open last year."We won medals in pro tours and our rankings have also improved. These are all signs that something big is waiting to happen. It's been a process. Me, Harmeet (Desai) and (Soumyajit) Ghosh started playing abroad very early in our careers. Sharath (Kamal) has set the benchmark for what a player can achieve with hard work." Sathiyan also put it down to team bonding and the fact that the core group of Sharath, Harmeet, Mouma Das and Manika Batra have been playing together for some time now."The team has become formidable now. The bonding was very high as we came up the ranks together from junior to senior. The bigger goal is an Olympic medal now. That is the team vision," he said. Heaping praise on Manika, who won four medals including two gold, one silver and a bronze to become the Games' most successful Indian athlete, Sathiyan said she has done women's table tennis a world of good."There was so much quality and that kind of stamina...she had matches on the same day. After losing a very close mixed doubles semi-final, it's hard to come back and perform the way she did. She has set an example for women's table tennis which has been in the shadows I would say," he felt. Sathiyan signed off by crediting his personal coach and former national champion S. Raman for transforming him as a player."He has been phenomenal as he helped me become more aggressive and I improved a lot tactially and technically under him. He has been a big influence in my career," Sathiyan concluded. (Debayan Mukherjee can be contacted at dbyn.mukherjee@gmail.com)

Feature

In India, up to 14 and 6% yield losses in wheat and rice, respectively, are estimated to have been caused by ozone.

Pixabay

Divya Pandey, AXA Research Fund; Lisa Emberson, University of York, and Sofie Mortensen, Stockholm Environment Institute Ozone is a well-known and interesting gas. It is thought of as a “good” gas when present in the stratosphere, where it forms the ozone layer sitting 15 to 30 kilometres above Earth that protect life from detrimental ultraviolet radiation. But when present in the lowest atmospheric layer – the troposphere, which extends 8 to 14 kilometres above Earth – ozone becomes a concern for human and plant health. It is also the third most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane. There’s substantial evidence that ozone is one of the most phytotoxic (toxic to plants) air pollutants, causing significant damage to agricultural crops worldwide. A combination of pollutants This is partly because ozone is a secondary air pollutant: it is not emitted directly, but is formed when other primary pollutants – mainly oxides of nitrogen (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds (VOC), which are emitted mainly from the burning of fossil fuels in transport, industry and power generation – undergo photochemical reactions under sunny conditions. Several hours are required for these photochemical reactions to occur, meaning that ozone concentrations are often higher downwind of urban and industrial centres. Some important agricultural regions located close to urban and industrial centres experience elevated ozone concentrations, these include the Midwestern USA, much of mainland Europe, the South Asia’s Indo-Gangetic plains, and the coast of China. In these regions, ozone concentrations frequently become high enough to affect crop physiology, growth and yield. Hemispheric transport of ozone and its precursors can also occur so that emissions in one continent influence concentrations in another, for example, North American emissions can affect ozone-induced yield losses in Europe. Ozone enters plant leaves through stomata – pores that facilitate gas exchange – where it reacts with cellular components, producing a series of chemical reactions that create strong oxidative stress. Damage ranges from visible leaf injuries such as yellowing (chlorosis) and stippling and localised cell deaths (necrosis), to subtle physiological changes such as reduced photosynthesis and premature senescence. These effects ultimately reduce crop yields. A growing concern Ozone levels have doubled since pre-industrial times due to anthropogenic emissions. Because of stringent air-quality controls, peak ozone levels have declined over the last few decades in Europe and North America. However, the “background ozone”, which is the ozone concentration in absence of local anthropogenic sources, has been increasing over the past few years globally. In developing countries, especially South and East Asia, ozone levels are rising and this trend will continue at least until 2030 unless emissions of ozone precursors (NOx and VOCs) are reduced significantly. Milkweed can be used to monitor for ozone as the leaves are sensitive to the pollutant. Ozone damage is seen on the upper leaf surface (black in colour). Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources/Flickr, CC BY-SA It is important to note that regions experiencing high current and future ozone levels also hold a prominent position in global agriculture and food production and are vulnerable to food insecurity. China and India are important examples of countries where ozone pollution already threatens crop production. In India, up to 14 and 6% yield losses in wheat and rice, respectively, are estimated to have been caused by ozone. Far-reaching socioeconomic implications Ozone thus adds yet another factor to the existing nexus of poverty, malnourishment and climate-change effects that challenge food and nutrition security in some of these regions. It is also important to consider that instability of these food systems will have far-reaching socioeconomic implications via changes in food prices, farm incomes, consumer behaviours and nutritional access for different groups of society, including women. Studies indicate that crop losses due to environmental factors often hit farmers by increasing debts and intensifying workloads as well as altering gender relations. At the same time, closing the yield gaps in existing and future agricultural regions is essential for global food security. Farmers and policymakers often fail to identify air pollution as a contributor to lower crop yields and air quality concerns remain focussed on cities and urban centres where elevated pollution impacts human health. Therefore, it is important that media, scientists and environmental activists take a lead to reach out to farmers, public and policymakers, and provide them with evidence of risk and damage and cooperate in understanding where solutions are required to abate ozone pollution and its consequences. Integrating ozone pollution Recognising these challenges, scientists should consider integrating ozone pollution in seasonal crop-yield forecasts. Researchers at Stockholm Environment Institute are developing ozone risk and damage assessment tools for crops. A recent report highlights the importance of ozone-monitoring networks in rural areas for assessing background ozone concentrations and the frequency of high ozone episodes. This is particularly important because air-quality monitoring is generally focused on urban and semi-urban areas. This report synthesised information from 15 ozone-monitoring networks over the world, including the European Monitoring and Evaluation Programme, along with data collected by individual researchers or smaller regional to national networks. Such networks will allow integration of information on ozone pollution with the potential to provide early warnings of ozone episodes (which can often last for days to weeks) helping farmers to minimize crop loss through suitable management practices. Research to develop resilient agricultural systems would ideally integrate adaptation to avoid the worst effects from ozone pollution alongside climate change through improved crop breeding and agronomic practices. However, it is an absolute necessity to understand the linkages and interactions between air quality, climate change, agriculture, food supply, and associated socio-economic implications at the local, regional and global scale to generate a complete picture of the problem and thereby offer effective solutions. Divya Pandey, Research Associate, Stockholm Environment Institute, York, AXA Research Fund; Lisa Emberson, SEI York Centre Director, University of York, and Sofie Mortensen, Research Associate, Stockholm Environment Institute This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Bookstores

This stretch has as many as 300 booksellers — many of whom have been in the business for over three decades.

Nizam Haris Who doesn’t love secondhand bookstores? The scent of old books and the chance of stumbling on to a treasure along with the throwaway prices they are sold at, makes it a steal. Bengaluru’s Avenue Road is one of the few places where one can still buy second-hand books and sell the ones they own. This stretch has as many as 300 booksellers — many of whom have been in the business for over three decades. The category of books varies from fairy tales, novels, textbooks and coaching books for many competitive exams. Ankor Book Store, B S Gowda Book House, Golden Book Store and many others have proudly among the many bookstores on this road. “The place has around 70 bookshops and over 250 street booksellers who have been here for at least last 30 years,” says Mohith, the proprietor of Universal Book Store. “The shop has only a history of 30 years, and that is less when compared to other shops around here. Most people have been around for 50 years” he says. Though these stores have lost their clientele to online marketplaces, booksellers say that the variety of textbooks and the lack of a fixed price tag still draws customers. “When other second-hand bookshops in Bangalore carry a price tag, the ones on Avenue road don’t have one. The price of the book solely depends on your bargaining skills,” says Srishti, a Bangalore resident. “The street is a hub for students and bibliophiles. It has a collection that ranges from second-hand textbooks to novels and fairy tales. The place has been my go-to place since I was in school,” says Gauri, a student at CHRIST. If you look hard enough, you may also stumble on to a rare edition of a book that you may not be able to procure elsewhere. Stores on the street also give you a place to sell your used books or exchange them for new ones. N Kiran, who recently opened his second store on Avenue Road, says, “People from all over Bengaluru visit the place after hearing about the extraordinary collection the place has.”

Feature

Research suggests that around the world, over 84 per cent of people belong to or are connected to a religious group.

Pixabay

Kayonda Hubert Ngamaba, University of York What makes people happy? This question can be difficult to answer. Happiness has been discussed throughout history. Philosophers, thinkers and activists, such as Aristippus, Aristotle, Zhuangzi, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Jeremy Benthan and Bertrand Russell, have considered happiness and life satisfaction to be one of the highest goals of human motivation. But happiness and life satisfaction can be tricky to define. While both make up part of a person’s well-being, happiness refers to an individual’s emotions, feelings or moods. Life satisfaction, on the other hand, is more to do with the way people might think about their life as a whole – including their relationships. Previous research suggests the “happy person” is young, healthy, well-educated, well-paid, optimistic and extroverted. The same research found the happiest people tend to be religious, married, with high self-esteem and job morale and modest aspirations. It seems your gender and level of intelligence don’t necessarily come into it. Research suggests that around the world, over 84% of people belong to or are connected to a religious group. And our recent research looks at whether different religions experience different levels of happiness and life satisfaction. The findings show that individual religiosity and their country’s level of development both affect people’s happiness and life satisfaction. Happiness research Our study looks at a large number of different religious groups across 100 countries – from 1981 to 2014 – using data from the World Value Survey. Our findings suggest that Protestants, Buddhists and Roman Catholics are happier and more satisfied with their lives, compared with other groups. Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and the non-religious were in between, while Orthodox Christians were found to have the lowest happiness and life satisfaction rates. The Buddha taught that happiness is one of the seven factors of Enlightenment. Pexels In our research, we found that many factors were positively associated with happiness and life satisfaction. These included being Protestant, female, married and younger (16 to 24 years old). The household’s financial situation also came into it, as did a person’s state of health and freedom of choice. We discovered that national pride and trust were important in terms of happiness rankings, as was having friends, family and leisure time. Attending weekly religious practice was also discovered to be an important factor. On the other hand, being unemployed and on a low income was negatively associated with happiness and life satisfaction. A closer look at the magnitude of the association between these factors and happiness and life satisfaction revealed that health, financial stability and freedom of choice, or control over one’s life were the most important factors. But more research needs to be done to understand why some religious groups are happier and more satisfied than others. A global objective In recent years, interest in well-being research has surged – with economists such as Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz agreeing it is time to shift the emphasis from measuring economic production, to measuring people’s happiness and life satisfaction. But to make human happiness the overall guide to human progress requires good data on the quality of human lives – and this is something that is sadly still lagging in most countries. Having friends and family and a sense of community can help to boost happiness levels. Pexels In the meantime, it might be worth both individuals and governments engaging with positive psychology. New research shows that schools teaching positive psychology radically improves the happiness of pupils in countries as varied as Peru, China, Bhutan and Australia. It’s clear then that while happiness can mean different things to different people, there are some fundamental uniting principles that make us more likely to feel happy or unhappy. And as our findings suggest, by improving access to healthcare and supporting their basic financial needs, governments can do much to help boost people’s well-being and life satisfaction. Kayonda Hubert Ngamaba, Research Associate, Social Policy and Social Work Department, University of York This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Sports

Dhoni's ability to stay calm, when everybody else is feeling the pressure, makes him the best finisher in the game.

Fahir Maithutty

PTI

It was the Chennai Super Kings versus Kings XI Punjab match in the 2010 IPL season. CSK had never won an IPL title before. This was a must-win match for them if they had to qualify for the semi-finals. Chasing a total of 193, they needed 29 runs off the last 12 balls. When the match ended, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, by himself, had scored 30 runs in these two overs to see CSK through. In Irfan Pathan’s last over, Dhoni smacked the third and fourth balls over to long on for sixes, an area where he would keep hitting in years to come, whenever he was required to “finish it off in style”. CSK not only reached the semi-final in 2010, they also became the IPL champions. They went on to win the Champions League trophy in the same year. They retained the IPL title again in 2011. They were also the runners-up in 2012 and 2013 IPL seasons. CSK became a brand, a hot favourite across the nation, and one of the most successful IPL teams ever. It goes without saying that playing an important role in all that was their skipper’s amazing skill to hold his nerves in tense situations. Fast forward to IPL 2018. A lot has changed in these eight years. CSK was suspended for two years, 2016 and 2017, and they made a return this year. Many legends of the game had retired. Players like Virat Kohli, who were finding their foot back in 2010, had become superstars now. T20 greats like Yuvraj Singh were off-colour. But Dhoni, who turns 37 this July, is still finishing nail-biting thrillers as we saw in the match against RCB on Wednesday. To understand Dhoni's method of operation during such highly tense chases, one should look at his arguably finest finish ever in the 2013 Tri-nation ODI series final against Sri Lanka. Chasing only 202 from 50 overs, the equation was 27 runs from 42 balls at one stage. But when he constantly lost his partners and was left only with the last man Ishant Sharma, Dhoni took the game to the last over with 15 runs still needed. Before the fourth ball, Ishant Sharma walked towards him and spoke a few words. It's difficult to speculate what they were but Dhoni's assured nod hinted at what was to come. Dhoni's success mantra is to convert a match involving 22 players into a one-on-one battle between the bowler bowling the last over and himself, a battle he's confident about winning on most days. In this match, too, Dhoni did not give in to the pressue. And finally, when he smashed the last six over extra cover, Ian Bishop in the commentary box went – “Magnificent Mahendra, he is unbelievable in so many ways”. The dugout and Indian crowd celebrated. Sri Lankan players and viewers were heartbroken. There was perhaps only one man in that stadium who still had his composure- the one who finished that match. Dhoni’s tendency to take a match down to the wire has found him critics, too. In the 2012 Commonwealth Bank series match against Australia, Dhoni was struggling at two runs from 16 balls during a chase, putting pressure on other batsmen. But his amazing self-belief meant that he could turn things around and score the 13 runs that were required off the last six balls. Gautam Gambhir then famously said- “It shouldn't have gone into the 50th over”. Dhoni’s biggest strength, though, has been that he understands the game more than most who have ever played the sport. That Dhoni finished the 2011 ODI World Cup final with 10 balls to spare tells us that he knows in which games the stakes are high and in which games he can afford to take the risk of a last minute finish. And oh boy, didn’t he still finish it off with a six to give us a frame that we would cherish forever? There is further variance in his approach while chasing, according to the match situation. The wicket-keeper batsman, who made his international debut in December 2004, showcased his skills as a finisher from the next year itself. As an exciting youngster with long hair, when Dhoni finished the chase against Sri Lanka in 2005, scoring his career best 183, he struck 15 fours and 10 sixes. In 2008, after he had evolved into a mature captain, he won another close match against the same team in the last over, with only 2 wickets remaining. But this time, his 50 runs did not feature a single four or six! Dhoni’s ability to absorb pressure comes to the fore even as a captain and a keeper when his team defends scores. Who can forget his gamble to give Joginder Sharma the last over in the 2007 T20 World Cup final? Or his lightning wicket-keeping skills which made him find the split second when the batsman’s foot was off the ground to dismiss Ian Bell in the 2013 Champions Trophy final and Sabbir Rahman in the 2016 T20 World Cup match? Or his street-smart thinking evident in removing his gloves and running to get Mustafizur Rahman run-out in the last ball of the same T20 match? Even when Dhoni's power hitting declined during 2016-2017, his resolve that it's not over until it is, never took a hit. In 2017, when India was chasing 231 in an ODI against Sri Lanka and was stumbling at 131/7, he made sure he kept his new partner Bhuvneshwar Kumar calm and focused, played second fiddle to him, and took his team past the line. It is ten days ago, in the IPL match against KXIP, that Dhoni started showing signs of regaining his hitting prowess. This is good news if the selectors want to retain him for the 2019 ODI World Cup. Needing 67 off 24 balls, no one would have expected CSK to get so agonizingly close and fall short by only four runs. Dhoni, who made his highest IPL individual score of 79 runs from 44 balls, would have even won the match if not for his back pain, which limited his ability to stretch to the wide yorkers that Mohit Sharma kept bowling at him in the last over. In Wednesday's match against RCB though, Dhoni was fit and daring from the word go. When he arrived at the crease, CSK was 74/4 in nine overs with 132 runs needed from the next 11 overs. He found an able partner in Ambati Rayudu to script the chase. Both complemented each other, selecting wisely which bowler to knock singles against and off which bowler to score a blitzkrieg. After Rayudu departed, the ask was still steep. But the fact that Mohammed Siraj bowled three consecutive wides against Dhoni in the penultimate over reminds you once again of Ian Bishop’s famous line –"If 15 runs are needed off the last 6 balls, pressure is on the bowler and not on MS Dhoni”. That sounded true in the past. That sounds true even today. Finally, in the last over when Dhoni clobbered the six over his favourite spot in the stadium to finish at 70 off 34 balls, you saw celebrations from the spectators and his team-mates. One man alone was again calm. In the '90s, we used to switch off the television when Sachin Tendulkar got out. However, with Dhoni at the crease, we want to switch on the television when the asking rate is climbing in a chase. When you sense the pressure on the bowlers, the fielding captain, the dugout, the spectators in the crowd and the batsman at the opposite end, one man will be seen calmly adjusting his gloves in his trademark style. He will take the stance to face the bowler, as if to say – “Ladies and Gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts. The show is about to begin”.

Global Perspective

With the global population rising at 45m per year, comes the inevitable rise in demand for food, water and materials, but perhaps most essentially, housing.

Pixabay

Sean Smith, Edinburgh Napier University By the end of this century, the world’s population will have increased by half – that’s another 3.6 billion people. According to the UN, the global population is set to reach over 11.2 billion by the year 2100, up from the current population which was estimated at the end of 2017 to be 7.6 billion. And that is considered to be “medium growth”. The upscaling required in terms of infrastructure and development, not to mention the pressure on material resources, is equivalent to supplying seven times the population of the (pre-Brexit) European Union countries, currently 511m. With the global population rising at 45m per year, comes the inevitable rise in demand for food, water and materials, but perhaps most essentially, housing. Housing needs are changing Average household sizes vary significantly between different continents and also by country. According to the UN, recent trends over the last 50 years have also shown declines in household sizes. For example, in France, the average household size fell from 3.1 persons in 1968 to 2.3 in 2011, the same time the country’s fertility rate fell from 2.6 to 2.0 live births per woman. In Kenya, the average household size fell from 5.3 persons per household in 1969 to 4.0 in 2014, in line with a fertility decline from 8.1 to 4.4 live births per woman. Increasingly ageing populations, particularly in developed countries, are causing a demographic shift in future care needs, but it also means that people are staying in their own homes for longer, which affects the cycle of existing housing becoming available each year. One of the most marked changes has been the rise in one and two-person households in the UK and other developed countries. Statistics published by the National Records for Scotland, for example, reveal the influence of these changing demographics, with future household demand rising faster than population growth. By 2037, Scotland’s population growth is forecast to be 9%, with growth in the number of households forecast to be 17%. This 8% difference is in effect the household growth demand from the existing population. In England, between now and 2041, the population is expected to increase by 16%, with projected household growth at 23%, resulting in a 7% difference in demand. As people live longer and one and two-person households increase, the number of future households required rises faster than the population. In 2014, urban issues website CityLab dubbed the situation the “world’s ticking household bomb”. As more developing countries deliver infrastructure and progress similar to developed countries – improving the standard of living and extending life expectancy – household sizes will decrease, placing greater demand on supply of new housing. So if this difference between household demand and population growth occurs globally at around 7-8% over the next 80 years, this will require an additional 800m homes. Taking an average global three-person household (1.2 billion homes) coupled with that 8% demographic factor of total global population over the period results in a need for more than two billion new homes by the end of the 21st century. Meeting the demand The current and future demand for new housing is compelling governments to push for further innovations in “offsite” – prefabricated – construction to speed up the supply of new housing. The UK Industrial Strategy published in November 2017 has a strong focus on offsite construction for the future. This sector has grown rapidly over the last decade with new markets in healthcare, education and commercial buildings. But for prefab construction to deliver more houses at a faster rate means looking at alternative solutions to the problem. Things that slow down the rate that prefab houses are built include the lengthy preparation time required for sub-structures and foundations; delays to the installation of utilities and building services; and a lack of well-trained construction-site managers capable of delivering the complex logistics involved. With more than 65m people displaced by man-made and natural disasters globally, this puts further pressures on countries unable to supply enough new housing as it is. The issue of availability of materials to meet the demands of constructing two billion new homes emphasises the need for countries to resource them as efficiently as possible. Government policies which encourage the sustainable design of new buildings to maximise future re-use, reduce carbon emissions and manage resources properly will be essential. Over the next 30 years, the countries which promote policies to help sustain and increase new housing provision will be more likely to avoid problems in sourcing materials and price hikes. For many countries, housing supply is a now a hot topic for national debate and policy strategy. For the rest of the world it will soon become the most pressing issue facing governments this century. Sean Smith, Director of Institute for Sustainable Construction, Edinburgh Napier University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Education

Three students who participated in the workshop even harboured hopes of coming back and working with Infosys one day.

Luke Koshi

Friday marked the culmination of a two-week long workshop titled Spark Catch Them Young (CTY) for high school students, conducted by Infosys at its sprawling campus in Bengaluru. High performing students who have completed class 8 are the target group, and they were selected based on a screening test. Over 220 students participated in the online assessment test this year and 32 students were shortlisted for the programme. On the final day, students working in groups of five had to present a project, which would be evaluated later. At the end of the workshop, students are given a memento and feedback about their performance. CTY is an annual decade-long initiative of Infosys that aims to nurture a sense of passion in young students, with a focus on Information Technology and hands-on lab work from an early stage. The workshop for the students is conducted by Infosys employees and subject matter experts, at their nine development centres across India, including Bengaluru. Speaking to TNM, an Infosys spokesperson said, “Infosys has been in the business of IT for quite some time and we are considered the bellwethers in the industry. But being bellwethers, it is not only about doing what you do as a business, but it is also about how you contribute back to the society. So in that context, what we wanted to do was looking at all the different schools, colleges, we realised that there is a need for doing some focussed programmes to bring up the understanding, awareness of IT and how it is used in the industry.” “We started this programme, Catch Them Young in 1997. The umbrella programme called Spark was started in 2008. Spark is all about igniting the minds of the students in terms of how do we make them realise what are the technology trends that are happening in the market, what does it mean for the industry, and how will it help them to take it forward in their own career planning.” In the two-week workshop, the first week is typically focused on understanding the technology and the concepts as well as communication techniques. It’s a hands-on project that is developed and demonstrated with the concepts of user experience, teamwork. In the second week, the students apply the concepts learnt, to real-life scenarios. The final learning indicator for the students is a project. How the programme has evolved For the first few years, it involved usage of Office products to know how it helps in your day-to-day life. But later, we went into concepts of object-oriented technology, and other technologies such as Java, Cloud Computing, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing. So, the curriculum has undergone a sea change and is even at par with what we teach our employees. “These students are already into mobiles, gaming, internet. So we give them a different perspective and experience when they come to us. It helps them realise the practical scenarios which can impact the lives of people, for e.g. healthcare, banking,” the spokesperson said. Response to the programme The feedback we get from students and parents is that they see it is a great value addition, and the thought process of the children undergoes a visible change. When they come here, it is not just about training and giving hands-on experience. We take care of their travel, food and they almost become like our employees for those two weeks. In the course of training the students, it’s a reverse learning for us also since their thought process is so different. Depending on their understanding of IT, it helps us in refreshing our curriculum and content every year. Going forward, we want to make it a more immersive, practical way of learning and the programme will become more futuristic, the spokesperson added. Students’ views on the workshop Aria Narayan Vikram - National Public School We got to work on many of the scripting languages like PHP, HTML, CSS and it was hands-on work, which couldn’t have been learnt online. I think Infosys is the only company which has such a programme at the grass-roots level to teach the fundamentals of IT. We had a final project and our group created Hangman. I felt like we learnt so much about working with each other and actually communicating on an intellectual scale and at the same time, retaining our innovative ideas and integrating them. The teachers are so accessible and go beyond the book. I find that really nice and they offer to collaborate with you on places like GitHub (the world’s leading software development platform where you can host and review code, and build software alongside millions of other developers). Srishti Kulkarni - Gear International School We learnt a lot about the use cases of IT. Half these applications we didn’t even know about. We thought IT was just used for software engineering but it is used in so many other places. For eg. IRCTC, so it’s all around us and we didn’t realise that. The project work is not like an exam but it’s open book. So you have teachers all around to help you understand everything. Plus, you get inputs from everyone in your team. It was a very fun, interactive programme and the teachers helped us a lot. We know how to face a real-life problem and the different technologies used to solve it. Abel Briosh - Sri Aurobindo School I used to think that all software is developed based on general requirements. But we realised what goes on behind the scenes. How to handle the amount of data that comes in from different fronts, how to distribute the data, all that was taught to us. They also gave us a lot of references and some websites which we didn’t know even existed. For eg, they told us about codeshare. We learnt about creating a better user interface (UI) and about security procedures implemented in the software. All three students unanimously agreed that they want to work in the field of IT and even harboured the ambition of coming back and working with Infosys one day.

Human interest

If you live in a diverse neighbourhood, you're more likely to identify with a whole range of different people – and to lend a helping hand.

Image for representation

Jayanth Narayanan, IMD Business School Whether or not diversity is a good thing is still a topic of much debate. Though many businesses tout the benefits of diversity, American political scientist Robert Putnam holds that diversity causes people to hunker down, creating mistrust in communities. Empirical investigations into how diversity affects communities are too few and far between to provide any definitive answer to the question. So, together with colleagues in Singapore and the US, we set out to examine this very question in a series of studies – the results of which were recently published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. There is indeed evidence that diversity creates mistrust in communities. But diverse communities also provide an opportunity for people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds to come into contact with each other, and we thought that these experiences would create a positive effect on people’s identities: specifically, the extent to which they identify with humanity, as a whole. A human connection This is one of the biggest and broadest forms of identity, which a human being can comprehend. A number of spiritual and philosophical traditions have upheld that believing you share a fundamental connection with other human beings – regardless of race, religion, sexuality or gender – is the sign of a mature mind. My colleagues and I thought that living in diverse neighbourhoods might create opportunities to come into contact with different people again and again, thereby expanding a person’s sense of identity. As a result, people living in diverse neighbourhoods should be more helpful towards others. We examined this possibility in five empirical studies. Lending a hand. Wonderwoman0731/Flickr, CC BY In the first study, we took to Twitter to analyse the sentiments of tweets across the 200 largest metropolitan areas in the US. This was a somewhat basic, exploratory test of our hypothesis, using a large sample of data. In this study, we found that the likelihood that a tweet mentions words which suggest positivity, friendliness, helpfulness, or social acceptance was higher in a more diverse city. Opening up Encouraged by our findings, we then sought to examine how diversity of a zip code where people lived might affect people’s likelihood to offer help in the aftermath of a disaster, such as a terrorist attack. We used data from a website that the Boston Globe set up, where people could offer help to those stranded after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings. After accounting for factors such as distance from the bombings, political diversity, religious diversity and the mean household income of these zip codes, we found that people who lived in more racially diverse zip codes were more likely to offer help to those in need after the bombings. To take our investigation even further, we examined whether people living in more diverse countries would report that they had helped someone in the recent past. We used data from the Gallup World Poll in 2012, which asked more than 155,000 individuals in 146 countries to report whether they had helped a stranger in the recent past. Again, we found that people in more diverse countries were more likely to report that they had helped a stranger in the past month. Expanding identities These three studies seemed to provide converging evidence for our ideas, but we needed to understand whether this was because diversity expands people’s identities. From a scientific standpoint, this presented a big challenge. It would almost be impossible to conduct a real experiment where we allocate people to live in different neighbourhoods and then check whether this had an effect on their level of helpfulness. A friendly face. blue.bone/Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND So instead we borrowed a technique routinely used by social psychologist, called priming. Priming is a psychological method, used to activate a state of mind for people in an experiment. We primed people to think about neighbourhoods that were either diverse, or not. We made this allocation randomly, then examined how this affected their willingness to help. We also measured whether this simple procedure of priming also altered their identities. We used a survey measure developed by other psychologists, which measures how much someone identifies with all of humanity. In two studies, we found that imagining living in a diverse neighbourhood expanded people’s identities, which in turn made them more willing to help a stranger. These results don’t prove definitively that diversity is always a good thing. But they do offer an encouraging view of some of the benefits which diversity might bring to communities, given the way that people’s identities shift when they often encounter those who are different to them. Some governments are already putting policies in place to make the most of these potential benefits. For example, in Singapore, each public housing apartment block maintains the same ratio of Chinese, Malay and Indian residents as exists in the wider population. This has prevented segregation and created diversity in neighbourhoods, which has led to a better society for everyone. In ancient Indian texts, sages exhort people to view the whole world as one family. Our studies show that this isn’t a pipe dream – it’s a real possibility. Jayanth Narayanan, Professor of Organisational Behaviour & Leadership, IMD Business School This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Culture

The two cultural norms, which may on the surface seem completely different, are starting to converge.

Image for representation

Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, Rochester Institute of Technology Most Americans who get married today believe they are choosing their own partners after falling in love with them. Arranged marriages, which remain common in some parts of the world, are a rarity here. But while doing research about arranged marriages, I’ve made a surprising observation: These seemingly different kinds of matrimony may be beginning to converge. Couples who ostensibly marry after spontaneously falling in love increasingly do that with some help from online dating services or after meeting through hookup apps. And modern arranged marriages – including my own – are becoming more like love marriages. Going strong in India According to some estimates, more than half of the marriages taking place around the world each year are arranged. They are the norm in India, comprising at least 90 percent of all marriages. The practice also remains relatively common elsewhere in South Asia, parts of Africa, the Middle East and East Asian countries like Japan and China. I believe that most people in communities where arranged marriages predominate still feel that parents and other close relatives are qualified to select marriage partners. Some young Indians consider their parents as more objective than they are about this big decision and more adept at spotting compatibility. In addition, arranged marriages help couples uphold cultural and religious traditions that have stood the test of time. Perhaps this explains why people in arranged marriages tend to get divorced less frequently. Data comparing divorce rates within countries for arranged and love marriage are hard to come by. But in the U.S., between 40 and 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. In India, the divorce rate for all marriages is about 1 percent and it’s higher for love marriages than arranged ones there. To be sure, divorce is often frowned upon in nations and cultures where arranged marriages are common – making that metric a potentially unreliable way to assess marital bliss or the lack thereof. In addition, the U.S., Indian and other governments generally don’t collect arranged marriage data. Mira Nair’s movie ‘Monsoon Wedding’ colorfully depicted the arranged marriage of a modern upper middle-class Indian family’s only daughter. Not your grandma’s arranged marriage As a result of India’s rising incomes, higher education levels and technological advances that ease communications, arranged marriage is changing there and among people of Indian heritage who live elsewhere. Young people who tie the knot that way have more power to choose their spouses and can even initiate the process instead of their parents. In addition, the prevalence of matrimonial websites such as Shaadi (which means marriage in Hindi) and Jeevansathi (life partner in Hindi) empower young Indians who reside in India or North America to become more self-reliant. The internet, higher education levels, and cultural and economic globalization are also making single Indians freer to do their own searching for future spouses than their parents were. And some traditions that limit choices for single people, such as parents placing newspaper ads to announce eligibility and interest, are becoming less common. Finally, when Indians reach a marriageable age – usually between 18 and 30 years old for women and between 22 and 40 for men – the ways these aspiring brides and grooms interact are beginning to resemble contemporary dating in the U.S. That’s a big change from the rituals of the past, which typically involved a supervised meeting between the prospective bride and the groom and several meetings between their families. Arranged marriage, American-style Arranged marriage is stigmatized in the U.S., where parents are largely deemed ill-suited for the task of finding marriage partners for their children. But, in my opinion, things are changing here for a reason. Online dating and matrimonial sites, such as eHarmony, OkCupid and The Right Stuff are proliferating and becoming more accepted. While these sites and apps don’t use the word “arranged” in their branding, it’s hard to deny that they do “arrange” for people to meet. In addition, the explicit criteria – online profiles, personality tests, questionnaires – that they use to match individuals resemble the implicit criteria parents and friends use to identify prospective spouses for arranged marriages. An important difference is that third parties – dating websites and other matchmaking services or their staff – handle the “arranging” activities. EHarmony, for example, pre-screens candidates based on personality tests. OkCupid uses questionnaires to match people. Perfectmatch.com uses algorithms to match people, and The Right Stuff pairs people by profile. Psychologist John Cacioppo of the University of Chicago recently did a study with several colleagues about internet dating and modern matrimony. They found that more than one-third of all American couples who got married between 2005 and 2012 met online. Marriages that began when couples met online were a little less likely to break up than those who didn’t and those spouses were somewhat more satisfied with their marriages, the researchers determined. In my view, all parents seeking to arrange a marriage for their sons and daughters do so with the best of intentions. They don’t always get it right, but they frequently do. My own parents certainly did, 23 years ago, when I got married. And whether parents or computer algorithms make this connection, the ultimate goal is the same: to ensure a happy and long-lasting union. Amitrajeet A. Batabyal, Arthur J. Gosnell Professor of Economics, Rochester Institute of Technology This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Feature

Land degradation also has serious knock-on effects for humans, such as malnutrition, disease, forced migration, cultural damage, and even war.

Pixabay

Abbas El-Zein, University of Sydney If any of us still has the slightest doubt that we are facing an ecological crisis on an unprecedented scale, then a new report on land degradation, released this week by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), provides yet another piece of evidence. Land degradation can take many forms, but always entails a serious disruption of a healthy balance between five key ecosystem functions. These are: food production; fibre provision; microclimate regulation; water retention; and carbon storage. Its impacts can be far-reaching, including loss of soil fertility, destruction of species habitat and biodiversity, soil erosion, and excessive nutrient runoff into lakes. Land degradation also has serious knock-on effects for humans, such as malnutrition, disease, forced migration, cultural damage, and even war. At its worst, land degradation can result in the desertification or abandonment of land (or both). Protracted drought and loss of fertile land may have been contributing factors in the wars in Sudan and Syria. According to the new report, 43% of world populations live in regions affected by land degradation. By 2050, the report estimates, 4 billion people will be living in drylands. These are defined by the United Nations as land with an “aridity ratio” of less than 0.65, meaning that the amount of water lost far outweighs the amount received in precipitation. Such areas are highly vulnerable to food and water insecurity, especially in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. A global threat It would be wrong to infer that land degradation is purely a problem for developing countries. Overall, land is generally more degraded in the developed world – as shown, for example, by greater declines in soil organic carbon content, a measure of soil health. However, in richer nations the rate of degradation has slowed, and people in these regions are generally less vulnerable to its effects. It is in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and South and Central America that the problem is growing most rapidly. But climate change, especially where droughts and forest fires are becoming more frequent, can cause land degradation even in affluent places such as California and Australia. What’s more, a decline in the overall availability of agricultural land is bound to affect food prices globally. By 2050, the report states, humans will have transformed almost every part of the planet, apart from uninhabitable stretches such as deserts, mountains, tundra and polar regions. Perhaps most chillingly, the report predicts that the combined effects of land degradation and climate change will have displaced between 50 million and 700 million people by 2050, potentially triggering conflict over disputed land. Some of this migration will inevitably be across international borders – how much is impossible to tell. While the impacts on migrants are almost always devastating, the ripple effects, as we have seen recently with the Syrian war, can spread far and wide, affecting electoral outcomes, border controls and social security systems throughout the world. Globalised causes The two most significant direct causes of land degradation are the conversion of native vegetation into crop and grazing lands, and unsustainable land-management practices. Other factors include the effects of climate change and loss of land to urbanisation, infrastructure and mining. However, the underlying driver of all these changes is rising per-capita demand from growing populations for protein, fibre and bioenergy. This in turn leads to more demand for land and further encroachment into areas with marginal soils. Market deregulation, which has been a global trend since the 1980s, can lead to the destruction of sustainable land management practices in favour of monocultures, and can encourage a race to the bottom as far as environmental protection is concerned. The vast geographical distance between demand for consumer goods and the land needed to produce them – between, in other words, the cause of land degradation and its effect – makes it much harder to address the problem politically. Sadly, the timid history of attempts to create global governance regimes over the past century – from human rights, to conflict prevention, arms control, social protections and environmental treaties – has seen more failures than successes. On the positive side, success stories in land management are well documented: agroforestry, conservation agriculture, soil fertility management, regeneration and water conservation. In fact, the new report states that the economic case for land restoration is strong, with benefits averaging ten times the costs, even when looking at very different types of lands and communities of flora and fauna. A common feature of many of these success stories is major involvement by indigenous populations and local farmers. And yet these achievements remain far short of the scope of the problem. Significant obstacles remain – including, according to the report, increasing demand for land, lack of awareness of the extent of land degradation, fragmented decision-making within and between countries, and increased costs of restoration as time goes by. On the other hand, the report’s authors emphasise that a host of existing multilateral agreements, including conventions on desertification, climate change, biodiversity and wetlands, provide a strong platform for combating land degradation. However, whether these agreements will be successful in overcoming the obstacles mentioned above remains to be seen. What can we do as citizens, especially those of us who live in cities and have little direct interaction with the land? The most obvious action is to eat less meat and, more generally, to inform ourselves about the sources and impacts of the food we buy – including its packaging, fuel and transport. But the problem is not just about individual choices, important as these are. Underlying systemic causes need to be addressed, including deregulated international trading systems, lack of protection for local communities powerless to resist global market forces, ideologies of unfettered growth and perverse incentives for more consumption. Arguably, what is needed is a broadening of the active scope of national politics, from an almost exclusive concern with short-term economic well-being to the making of global futures. Next time you meet your local representative, ask them what they are doing to protect the interests of your children and grandchildren. Or, even better, inform yourself, talk to others about it, form your own opinion about what should be done, then try to make it happen. Abbas El-Zein, Professor of Environmental Engineering, University of Sydney This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

History

In a curated tour, writer and history enthusiast Nivedita Louis mapped some of the oldest buildings and heritage sites in the area.

Anjana Shekar

The history of Poonamallee, a small town located a few kilometres to the west of Chennai, is quite fragrant like its lands. Poonamallee (earliest mention as 'Poo-than-malee', meaning beautiful flower gardens, found in Paranthaka Chola’s inscriptions) gets its name from its flower fields. Poonamallee is the birth place of the Vaishnavaite saint Tirukachi Nambi Alwar, who is believed to have been born in 1009 AD. Hence, the history of the town dates back at least a thousand years. Hindu mythology has it that goddess Lakshmi “emerged from a jasmine” and appeared as a divine vision to Nambi Alwar, thus explaining the town’s ‘floral’ reference. The town was also the centre of action for the East India Company of the Madras region. Rightfully so, the town houses what was once a powerful Mohammaden fort (lies south-east to the centre of the town) built by the Nawab of Carnatic which later housed the Britishers. In a curated heritage tour titled Exploring Poonamallee, Nivedita Louis, a writer and history enthusiast, mapped some of the oldest buildings and sites in the area earlier this month. This heritage tour was more of a ‘ride’ where the participants rode from one point to another, given that it was a comprehensive tour. The heritage tour The ride began early at the Victoria Memorial School for the Blind. In the sun’s muted, early morning rays, the small group of heritage enthusiasts quickly bustle around the campus, taking in its size and understated buildings rich in the Indo-Saracenic style. Victoria Memorial School for the Blind The sprawling campus was once a garrison that had barracks and stables and was also used as a prison and infirmary. At one point, the stables here had close to 400 horses, says Nivedita. The famed Poonamallee Arab horses were bred here, she adds. Nivedita also informs us that this campus was the place where the Madras Regiment was stationed at one point. In a chance encounter, Nivedita stumbled upon a few fragmented inscriptions on stones in the campus that belonged to the Chola period. “I found them when I came here as part of the research for my tour. Two Chola inscription fragments have been discovered – one belonging to Rajendra Chola and another to the Vikrama Chola period. I've now notified the museum regarding this,” she gushes enthusiastically. Chola inscriptions found on the floor of the veranda From here, the tour proceeded to a small temple in which the locals worship an ancient sati stone. “Although, for them, the sati kall (sati stone) is Lord Muneeswarar,” she adds. A little away from the Muneeswarar temple is St John the Baptist Church which was initially a small thatched roof chapel in 1818. Walking across the narrow street, historian Venkatesh Ramakrishnan observes that we could be walking on what was once the fort’s walls. A short drive from the church takes you to what looks like a house right out of Malgudi. This humble, single-storey, tile-roofed house was once called Doris Lodge. The lodge itself was constructed before 1854 on Muslim Inaam lands and was later “mistakenly” leased out to one Mr G Trustwein of British East India Company. In 1908, all leases were cancelled and everyone were asked to reregister their properties. The decrepit looking building was later sold to a local teacher, Prabavathi, whose sons occupy the house today. Doris Lodge From Doris Lodge, we head to Panaiyathamman temple located on the main road (a few sculptures with interesting details lie abandoned here) and later to the Big Mosque that lies a short way ahead. Nivedita observes that the Big Mosque, built in 1653 by Rustam, son of a Golconda courtier named Astirabad Dhulfiqar, was the first Indo-Saracenic style mosque in Tamil Nadu. Big Mosque, Poonamallee Our next stop is the ancient Vaitheeswaran temple with its interesting sculptures of women warriors on the mandapam walls. Close to the temple is the Hindu Primary School that has been functioning since 1895. Mandapam walls of Vaitheeswaran temple, Poonamallee Hindu Primary School Nivedita guides the group to more heritage spots. The birthplace of Tirukachi Nambi Alwar, the Wesley Church built in 1900 where Elijah Hoole preached in Tamil, the Mary Magdalene Church built between 1816-1819, and finally concluding the tour with the cemetery where the oldest grave dates back to 1795! Birth place of Tirukachi Nambi Alwar All through the tour, the layered history of Poonamallee unravels. It has more to offer and it seemed like an entire day could be spent exploring its secrets. 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Art

What started as a quick way to substitute live-sketches, 'Madras In Mini' shaped up to be a whole different project.

Anjana Shekar

Instagram/Hemuvenkat

Madras can be anyone’s muse. The city has inspired art, music, literature and more. Many have found it to be a comforting and warm city. True to this conviction, ‘Madras’ was artist Hemalatha Venkatraman’s muse, inspiring her recent 'Madras In Mini' series. The 26-year-old Chennai based artist is a Graduate Teaching Associate at The Ohio State University. On her recent trip to Chennai after a gap of over two years, she decided to capture the city and all its quirky elements in miniature art. What started as a quick way to substitute live-sketches, 'Madras In Mini' shaped up to be a whole different project that helped put Hemalatha under the spotlight. Her sketches had the ubiquitous tea-kadai, flower-seller and even the drishti bommai you find on lorries. A post shared by Hemu (@hemuvenkat) on Dec 8, 2017 at 8:06pm PST Hemalatha shares that her idea was to revisit places that played an important role in her formative years in Chennai and therefore there are pictures of her school, college, local sandwich joint and even her tailor. The sketches were made on watercolour paper and later cut out. These miniature art pieces are also accompanied by a description of the significance they hold in the city/in her life. In one of her posts she writes, “A ‘thooli’ is a traditional hammock for babies constructed using a (cotton) saree. A regular 6 yards saree is connected to a hook/rope that is hung from the ceiling, and the saree is knotted and attached to it. […] All of us grew up in these hammocks, being rocked to sleep in our mother’s/grandmother’s/great-grandmother’s saree. The kind of connection I have to it is precious because I look at it as a means to connect with the matriarchs of a family, those living and long-gone. Sarees are a sentimental artifact passed down from one generation to another.” A post shared by Hemu (@hemuvenkat) on Dec 30, 2017 at 8:51am PST Hemalatha explains, “I love places and the stories they have to tell. I’m a very spaces and things person.” However, 'Madras In Mini' is not her first ode to the city. Hemalatha has previously worked on a Madras-themed postcard series. “They sold out and I had to reprint twice!” she says. She has currently signed herself up for the '100 Days of Teabag Art' that’s currently doing the rounds on social media. The idea is to repurpose teabags into a work of art, thereby reducing the waste generated. Hemalatha is also toying with the idea of using soldering techniques to create mixed-media art. A post shared by Hemu (@hemuvenkat) on Apr 25, 2018 at 12:07pm PDT A post shared by Hemu (@hemuvenkat) on Apr 6, 2018 at 8:00pm PDT Her idea of mixed media does not stop there. A poet as well, Hamalatha plans on illustrating poems in the near future. “I have not decided if it’s going to be Thirukkural or Bharathiyar poems yet,” she adds. A post shared by Hemu (@hemuvenkat) on Apr 26, 2018 at 11:12am PDT Hemalatha shares that 'Madras In Mini' has helped change the way she looks at her city. “Although the city has not changed much, the way I look at it definitely has. I always keep thinking what makes this place home. There’s definitely something about her. Madras is always very special.” Hemalatha goes on to observe how the recent Metro has changed the city’s landscape. “I’ve seen Madras from local trains, buses, on foot, and also from planes. However, I’ve never been underground or seen parts of the city from that vantage point. I saw a whole different perspective to the city while riding the Metro. The city’s rooftops are a great sight to behold. There are applams being sun-dried on one, cloth-lines with laundry, mini gymnasiums, bamboo sticks… The City from an elevation surely is an interesting sight,” she says. A post shared by Hemu (@hemuvenkat) on Dec 17, 2017 at 6:45pm PST A post shared by Hemu (@hemuvenkat) on Dec 27, 2017 at 6:15am PST A post shared by Hemu (@hemuvenkat) on Dec 28, 2017 at 7:04am PST A post shared by Hemu (@hemuvenkat) on Dec 14, 2017 at 8:22pm PST With her inclination towards urban design and research, Hemalatha adds that although the city has heritage buildings boards to help preserve structures, initiatives will have to come from the citizens for the conservation plans to work better. “Chennai stands second, right after Kolkatta, in the number of heritage structures. The people here will have to stay more conscious of what they possess. We’ll have to explore ways in which such building can be preserved,” she says, adding, “Take a bus and walk around. You’ll see the city for what it is.”

Caste

To be held from May 4-6, the conference will feature discussions on caste and race problems in contemporary society.

Charan Teja

Images: Boston Study Group

The University of Massachusetts Amherst is all set to host more than 100 academics and activists at an international annual conference on “Caste and Race Reconfiguring Solidarities: Unfinished Legacy of Dr B R Ambedkar” from May 4 to 6. The university is partnering with the Boston Study Group (BSG), an organisation based in Boston, Massachusetts. The conference is the fourth in the series, the first of which was launched in 2015 at Brandies University. The event will also witness the unveiling of the third ever bust of Dr Ambedkar in the US, which will take place on May 5. The event will garner a lot of attention as it is taking place amidst widespread violence against Dalits and destruction of Ambedkar’s statues back home in India from where the bust, made of brass, has been shipped. The two-and-a-half day event will feature sessions that will discuss Dalit cultures of resistance, student movements, and caste and race problems in contemporary society. BSG is a collective of first generation Dalit-Bahujan academics and employees that is dedicated to working towards a just and equitable society, a legacy of Dr Ambedkar. Started informally in 2006 as a small group that held critical discussions on caste problems became the BSG in 2014 with more than 20 active participants. “If caste has to be challenged it needs to be discussed across all platforms,” says Venkat Maroju, an alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the founding members of BSG. Venkat is a first generation Kamsali (backward caste) hailing from Telangana’s Janagoan who studied in Telugu medium schools. He went on to do his Bachelor’s in Engineering at Osmania University, Master’s at IISc and PhD from MIT. When asked why BSG was interested in bringing caste into the discourse, Venkat says, “Ambedkar truly said wherever we Indians go we carry our caste with us. Caste has shed its ugly shade on the Indian diaspora as well, so we thought it should be challenged.” He adds, “Most of us have faced caste discrimination at one point of time or the other… may be while competing with poverty or with elite English medium kids in college or university back home but unfortunately the same is being replicated in different forms.” Venkat and his colleagues such as BSG president Sanjay Bhagath, a Dalit software engineer based in MA, held discussions with Omar Khalidi, a Hyderabadi author and historian at MIT, about caste and related problems in India. Following the discussions, the study group decided to make sure that there was a critical engagement on caste - race - gender. As a result, they did book readings, held dialogues and hosted activists and scholars to deliver lectures on caste issues. It was in 2017 that BSG partnered with Brandeis University to carry forward the unfinished legacy of Ambedkar following a similar conference and sponsored a brass bust of the Dalit leader at the university. Talking about the conference, Venkat said, “Caste has been kept off from discussions or deliberately hidden. It is BSG’s mission to carry forward the anti-caste legacy of Ambedkar.” Sanjay Bhagath, who hails from Maharashtra and is a first generation IITian, believes that BSG’s mission will positively impact marginalised communities. He says, “BSG will carry forward the mission to universalise the legacy of Ambedkar to positively impact the world in the context of caste- race – gender.” BSG also leads a campaign called India for Diversity, for inclusion of Dalits and other marginalised sections in academic institutes. The inauguration of Dr Ambedkar’s bust will be graced by the Chancellor of the University of Massachusetts, Kumble Subbaswamy, and academics like Sangeeta Kamat and Amilcar Shabazz from the university. Amilcar Shabazz, co-chair of the conference program committee and chair of the UMass Amherst W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies, in a statement said, “The problem of caste discrimination was not addressed at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, also known as Durban I, but since then has come to be recognised as an issue of serious concern for more than 200 million people that can no longer be ignored.” Venkat and others from the BSG feel that it is high time to address caste in a more eloquent manner, from its structures to similarities with race. The conference, in which renowned Afro-American and Asian scholars are to participate, will see stimulating discussions on caste and race, and explore common ground between the two. Prof Gopal Guru, editor of Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), writer and philosopher Meera Nanda, Sujatha Gidla, author of Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India, Suraj Yengde, Anand Teltumbde along with other distinguished authors such as Isabel Wilkerson, Michaeline A Crichlow and Keisha-Khan Perry are expected to attend the conference.

Feature

I visited Rajneeshpuram 10 times before it closed down completely early in 1986 and talked with almost 100 men and women who lived there.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/Sangeet Duchane

Marion Goldman, University of Oregon Netflix recently launched a six-part docuseries, “Wild Wild Country,” about the controversial Rajneesh Movement that created a spiritual community on 64,000 acres of the former Big Muddy Ranch in Oregon. Back in the 1980s, as now, media focused on the group’s outrageous acts, legal confrontations and alleged crimes. The revelations that the community’s guru, Rajneesh, made in 1985 were shocking. His personal secretary, Ma Anand Sheela, he said, had conspired with a small circle of about 24 people to kill state and federal officials, attempted to control a county election by busing in homeless people to vote and poisoning salad bars in the county seat, and deliberately escalated tensions with outsiders. Sheela and some of her cadre were later charged and sentenced for state and federal crimes. But many devotees told me and other researchers that they were unaware of the extent of her crimes and misdeeds until she left Rajneeshpuram. Neither was I. As a scholar of gender and alternative spiritual movements, I visited Rajneeshpuram 10 times before it closed down completely early in 1986 and talked with almost 100 men and women who lived there. Although I was sometimes monitored, no one interfered with my research. Away from the Netflix series’ dramatic story, what devotees told me and what I observed adds another dimension to popular conceptions of the short-lived communal city. Rajneeshpuram, Oregon In 1981, after running into problems with the Indian government, Rajneesh closed his ashram in the city of Pune in central India and invited devotees from all over the world to join him to create an extraordinary community in central Oregon. Some Rajneeshees bought houses in the closest town, Antelope. Most, however, journeyed for another 19 miles on the winding mountain roads that led to the the plateau where Rajneeshpuram rested. At its peak, the communal city housed about 2,000 devotees. Women and men labored together around the clock, constructing a huge meditation hall and an open-air mall with restaurants, clothing boutiques and a shop that sold hundreds of books and videotapes by and about Rajneesh. They also created a private airport, a hotel, living quarters and a sparkling artificial lake. The devotees belied popular stereotypes of passive, easily manipulated spiritual seekers. Two-thirds of Rajneeshpuram’s residents had four-year college degrees and/or had previously pursued lucrative career paths. These women and men talked with me about their experiences and life histories. Most men, for example, felt that they had personal relationships with their guru, even when they had never met him. They also emphasized how Rajneesh helped them access their hidden intellectual and emotional strengths. This was interesting, but with each visit, my attention increasingly turned to women in their 30’s and 40’s whose incomes and educational attainments far exceeded the national average. Accomplished women Fifty-four percent of Rajneesh’s devotees were women. Many had abandoned relationships, successful careers and occasionally young children in order to create a utopia around their spiritual leader. In our conversations, they disclosed that they followed Rajneesh to Oregon because they felt that he had transformed their lives, and they wanted to continue to experience the love and affirmation that they received from their powerful protector. Every woman that I interviewed at length had been influenced by the feminist movement of the 1970s and hoped for full economic, sexual and social equality. They wanted to live very differently from their housewife mothers. However, they were deeply disappointed when they still felt anxious and lonely despite the money and recognition that they received from their careers. They told me that they had felt forced to choose between successful careers and fulfilling marriages. They lost with either choice. One devotee, who later made a fortune in currency trading, told me that she had to drop out of the university and her premedical studies when she married. She said, “It was sort of a Jewish ethic. Women were wives and mothers, they weren’t doctors.” But Rajneesh asserted that women could succeed in every endeavor as well as or better than men. He applauded high levels of achievement and also emphasized the importance of traditionally feminine traits like intuition and emotional sensitivity for both women and men. He told women that they could and should integrate their personal and professional lives. He said, “It is for the betterment of both man and woman that the woman should be given every freedom and equal opportunity for her individuality.” At Rajneeshpuram, accomplished women were almost always assigned to jobs similar to their old ones. For example, psychologists led personal growth groups, attorneys staffed the legal department, city planners and architects designed roads and buildings, and writers and professors worked at the Rajneeshpuram newspaper, “Rajneesh Times.” Devotees described laboring alongside people who shared their ideals and cared about feelings along with productivity. An attorney with a degree from an elite university discussed the joy of working with supportive friends and playing together at the end of long shifts. She said: “We all say around here that work is our meditation. I feel really good…..We’re sort of in this together.” Why women stayed The guru himself may have retreated into private meditation, delegating all organizational decisions to Sheela, but devotees still believed that he watched over them. Every woman and man wore a locket with Rajneesh’s picture and used the new Indian name that he had bestowed on them. They broke into joyful tears when they lined Rajneeshpuram’s main road to bow and place roses on the guru’s Rolls Royce as he drove by each afternoon. In September of 1985, according to media reports, the guru privately confronted Sheela about some of her crimes. She decamped to Germany, and Rajneesh once again started his lectures. He informed devotees that his physician had told him about her autocratic leadership and the movement’s mounting debts. He publicly condemned Sheela for masterminding scores of crimes and cooperated with state and federal authorities who wanted to apprehend Sheela and her cadre. Devotees seemed to be thrilled to hear him speak once more, although most told me that they wondered about Rajneesh’s claims of total ignorance about Sheela’s activities. I saw people protest against Sheela and cheer when her official robes were tossed into a fire. They celebrated when new movement leaders burned thousands of copies of “The Book of Rajneeshism” that Sheela designed. However, for months after the stunning disclosures, devotees that I interviewed still believed in their guru. For a time, almost all of the women who responded to my mailed questionnaires in 1985 and 1997 or whom I kept in touch with informally tried to sustain their faith. Former fashion model Veena, for example, was victimized by Sheela because of her role as Rajneesh’s personal seamstress and her room in his compound. Nevertheless, Veena continued to trust the guru throughout her ordeals. In 2008, when I talked with her at length in England, she was as enamored with Rajneesh and her old Oregon comrades as she had been in 1981, when she guided well-known journalist Frances FitzGerald around Rajneeshpuram. No matter how shocked or damaged they were, devotees did not quickly abandon the close friends or spiritual practices that had transformed their lives. However, in response to the 1997 follow-up survey, very few said that they still believed in Rajneesh, or Osho, as he later came to be known. Nevertheless, they looked back on their Oregon experience fondly. One woman left the movement after a year because she grew increasingly disgusted by Rajneesh’s revelations, but in 1997, she still remembered central Oregon fondly. She said: “No regrets. Some understanding of the human condition.” Most of the accomplished women returned to their old professions or transitioned to new ones. Their years at Rajneeshpuram had affirmed the importance of both work and love, and they had learned that it was possible to enjoy both. As their survey responses showed, they were certain that they left the communal city with new abilities to function anywhere in the world. Marion Goldman, Professor Emeritus, University of Oregon This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Social Media

The media narrative still assumes that the goal of these platforms is to expose people to information. But it’s less and less about that — the goal is to manage and control people’s behaviour.

Kathryn Jezer-Morton, Concordia University Lately I can’t log onto Facebook without being asked to consider my own motivations for using the site. As a researcher who focuses on online communities, I’m accustomed to this running meta-narrative about what it is I’m actually doing online — but usually, that narrative plays inside my head, not all the way down the feed I’m scrolling through. It’s like my research questions have sprung to life these days: What’s Facebook all about, anyway? Is this even fun? If it’s not fun … what is it, exactly? This is an exciting time in the very short history of social media use. Facebook’s users are becoming critical of the systems into which they’ve been conscripted. This is an important moment: Will public opinion follow the same well-worn cycle of outrage and acceptance, or will it jump the tracks and begin engaging Facebook on new, more challenging terms? Researchers have been asking tough questions about Facebook for the past decade, but even armed with the most prestigious credentials, they pose a much smaller threat than educated consumers. And without consumer outrage, government regulation seems unlikely to move forward. Read more: Why not nationalize Facebook? ‘Sound and fury’ So far, at least in my own feed, the same old script is being followed to the letter. The soul-searching is punctuated by passionate cris-de-coeur from the feed’s more opinionated characters: Wake up, sheeple! If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product — remember? Quit Facebook! Encrypt your data! Smash your phone under the heel of your steel-toed boots! Next, right on cue, the incisive social commentators swoop in to remind us that these calls are coming from inside the house. “Pretty ironic that you’re posting all this stuff on Facebook!” To which everyone silently rolls their eyes in resignation. Cue the gallows humor about how we’re all under constant surveillance, rinse and repeat. The human condition’s same old two-step. Sound and fury, signifying nothing. That this discursive cycle was triggered by the revelations earlier this year that voter profiling company Cambridge Analytica obtained the Facebook data of 50 million American accounts is beside the point. This is only the latest in a long series of such leaks about data mining. In 2017, approximately 200 million registered voters’ personal data stored by voter profiling company Deep Root Analytics was accidentally made public. The previous year, Russian hackers accessed a large cache of voter information owned by the Democratic National Committee. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies on Capitol Hill on April 11, 2018 about the use of Facebook data to target American voters in the 2016 election and data privacy. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) What this latest go-round is revealing is that these are industry practices that will carry on undisturbed, regardless of what Mark Zuckerberg says or does. This is not a Zuckerberg problem anymore; it’s a problem with an advertising model that is the industry standard. Most of us Facebook users have been on the platform for about a decade, and perhaps our outrage is our growing pains. We’ve gained some critical distance through time spent on the platform. We are less easily distracted by the ostensible fun the platform offers. And we appear to be compelled to ask questions about Facebook we’ve never asked before. Read more: It's time we demanded the protection of our personal data Must ask different questions Fenwick McKelvey, co-director of the Media History Research Centre at Concordia University’s Milieux Institute for Art, Culture and Technology, wishes that the media would start asking different questions about how data is being used by platforms like Facebook. “The media narrative still assumes that the goal of these platforms (like Facebook) is to expose people to information,” McKelvey told me. “But it’s less and less about that — the goal is to manage and control people’s behaviour.” Among the urgent questions media commentators should be asking, McKelvey believes, is how online advertisers are deploying user data to subtly nudge people. He provides the illustrative example of SnapChat — a company with relatively strong privacy settings in place — that leaks data to advertisers with dizzying granularity that reflects the industry standard. Through SnapChat’s protocols, your phone informs advertisers how much time passes between the moment you’re served one of their ads and the moment you make a purchase at their business, either online or in person. Every time you walk into a retailer with your phone’s location services on, you are leaking data about your consumption habits. Perhaps we should be burrowing even deeper into Facebook’s business practices. Facebook tends to rely on the fact that most of its data collection practices are laid bare in its terms of service. But according to Martin French, an assistant professor of sociology at Concordia, Facebook’s notion of “consent” is flimsy at best. Most unaware of how their data is being used “Facebook reportedly changed its policies after 2015 to stop app developers accessing information on app users’ network. But for me the question is: Are Facebook users, in the real world, actually aware of the changing ways their data is being used, and the policies that purportedly govern these uses?” wonders French. French posits that based on research that has been done on who reads and understands social media privacy policies, most users are unaware of how their data is actually being used. The “consent” that Facebook is talking about when they refer to an agreement with their users is not really a kind of consent that conforms to any dictionary definition of that term. The consensus among social scientists who study life online is that whatever dynamics play out online have offline analogs. We’ve had a decade to incorporate Facebook into our lives, and like any learning process, our success with it has been uneven. We’re at a critical moment as users of Facebook. It’s our responsibility to educate ourselves about the implications of our participation. Deactivating our accounts won’t change how our personal data is valued to advertisers. But perhaps, as we become mature users of social media, we can begin to demand that limits be set on how and when our data is bought and sold. Kathryn Jezer-Morton, Doctoral student , Concordia University This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Features

The global tourism produces about 8 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, much more than previous estimates.

Pixabay

Dr Arunima Malik, University of Sydney and Dr Ya-Yen Sun, The University of Queensland The carbon footprint of tourism is about four times larger than previously thought, according to a world-first study published today in Nature Climate Change. Researchers from the University of Sydney, University of Queensland and National Cheng Kung University – including ourselves – worked together to assess the entire supply chain of tourism. This includes transportation, accommodation, food and beverages, souvenirs, clothing, cosmetics and other goods. Put together, global tourism produces about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, much more than previous estimates. Adding it all up Tourism is a trillion-dollar industry, and is growing faster than international trade. To determine the true emissions produced by tourism, we scanned over a billion supply chains of a range of commodities consumed by tourists. By combining a detailed international trade database with accounts tracking what goods and services tourists bought, we identified carbon flows between 160 countries from 2009 to 2013. Our results show that tourism-related emissions increased by around 15% over that period, from 3.9 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon-dioxide equivalent (CO₂-e) to 4.5Gt. This rise primarily came from tourist spending on transport, shopping and food. We estimate that our growing appetite for travel and a business-as-usual scenario would increase carbon emissions from global tourism to about 6.5Gt by 2025. This increase is largely driven by rising incomes, making tourism highly income-elastic and carbon-intensive. Whose responsibility is it? In the study, we compared two perspectives for allocating responsibility for these emissions: residence-based accounting and destination-based accounting. The former perspective allocates emissions to the country of residence of tourists, the latter to the country of destination. Put simply, are tourism-related carbon emissions the responsibility of travellers or tourist destinations? If responsibility lies with the travellers, then we should identify the countries that send the most tourists out into the world, and find ways to reduce the carbon footprint of their travel. On the other hand, destination-based accounting can offer insights into tourism spots (like popular islands) that would benefit most from technology improvements and regulations for reducing the carbon footprint of tourism. Tracking emissions under destination-based accounting over a specific period could help researchers and policymakers to answer questions about the success of incentive schemes and regulations, and to assess the speed of decarbonisation of tourism-related sectors. So how do countries rank under the two accounting perspectives? The United States is responsible for the majority of tourism-related emissions under both perspectives – many people travel both from and to the US – followed by China, Germany and India. But on a per-capita basis, the situation looks rather different. Small island destinations have the highest per-capita destination-based footprints. Maldives tops the list – 95% of the island’s tourism-related emissions come from international visitors. Tourists are responsible for 30-80% of the national emissions of island economies. These findings bring up the question of the impact of tourism on small island states. Islands as tourist destinations Small islands depend on income from tourists. At the same time, these very tourists threaten the native biodiversity of the islands. Small island states typically do not have the capacity to embrace technology improvements due to their small economies of scale and isolated locations. Sustainable tourism on islands. Author provided Can we lend a helping hand? Directing financial and technical support to these islands could potentially help with efforts to decarbonise their infrastructure. This support would be a reflection of the share of consumer responsibility, especially from developed nations that are “net travellers”. Maldives, Mauritius and other small islands are actively exploring ways of building their renewable energy capacity to reduce the carbon intensity of local hotels, transport and recreational spots. Creating awareness at multiple levels We hope that our study provides a starting point for conversations between the public, companies and policymakers about sustainable tourism. Ultimately real change will come from implementing regulations and incentives together to encourage low-carbon operations. At a personal level, though, it’s worth looking at the carbon-cost of your flights, choosing to offset your emissions where possible and supporting tourism companies that aim to operate sustainably. Dr Arunima Malik, Lecturer in Sustainability, University of Sydney and Dr Ya-Yen Sun, Senior Lecturer, The University of Queensland This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Features

The possibilities and problems of Big Data mean designers require a new type of intelligence that exists between technology and the humanities.

Anthony Burke, University of Technology Sydney and Prasuna Reddy, University of Technology Sydney To improve cities, governments are increasingly promoting the use of technology and data-driven decision-making. They decide how technologies and Big Data are being used or deployed in creating smart cities, with the help of academics who collect and interpret data, design new city ideas and newer technologies for cities. Data harnessed from networked objects that citizens wear or use daily can ease our lives. But it’s possible that the uses of Big Data jeopardise citizens, such as in the scenarios we present below. 1. Longer commute for low-class workers Imagine this: A traffic system manages a city’s rush hour, handling thousands of traffic lights, public transport commutes and pedestrian signals. Meanwhile, an AI system uses real-time data drawn from hundreds of thousands of sensors on vehicles and buses. With help from infrastructure like light poles, the optimal flow of traffic is calculated based on the number of vehicles and people in the system. Reducing commute times and improving productivity is the stated end goal of city governments. Who could argue with that? But linking traffic data, geographic data and economic performance creates another scenario. If the system increases economic performance, is it any wonder it prioritises higher-paying jobs linked to more expensive suburbs neighbouring the city? Low-paid commuters contribute less financially to a city’s economy, so a highly paid executive getting a quicker ride to work makes brutal sense. But the system introduces a bias: public transport suddenly takes a little longer for a clerical worker. 2. Park bench meter? The humble park bench presents another ethical dilemma for city planners. We’ve been paying for car parking in cities for decades. Now that we can live-track people in fine detail, the possibility of micro-charging for public amenities creates an opportunity for new revenue streams. Think about paying a few cents for time spent resting on a park bench – a parking meter for people. This obviously discourages the positive attributes of city living for avid park users. Yet, as an example of “data-driven” governance, it plausibly shines a light on the already feasible potential for economic disparity. 3. Health and the consent of citizens Big Data can also be used to inform city design and planning to reduce health disparities. Public surveillance systems can connect geo-data with health services data to attend to populations that need urgent help. But there are major ethical challenges that centre on fears about the privacy of information that is provided. The perception that data will be paternally used in targeted community interventions is also an issue. At the Indonesian-Australian Digital Forum in Jakarta in January, participants analysed the sustainability of using citizen reports to collect data on malaria. This information sharing can potentially benefit communities by targeting public health services in areas of need. But it also creates stigma and privacy concerns when individuals are known within their community as disease carriers. Is there any opportunity to consider a person’s consent? Big Data certainly creates opportunities to reduce health disparities. But how many benevolent government interventions engage targeted citizens in the development process? Focusing on the citizen The examples we use above are very near-term realities. The possibilities and problems of Big Data mean designers require a new type of intelligence that exists between technology and the humanities. As technologies become more sophisticated the designer holds a key role in customising such concepts for mass use. Additionally, as the pendulum swings from technological solutions towards the citizen’s experiences, the variations in different countries’ political and cultural systems will become more pronounced. The old adage that “all politics is local” will be reinforced. But in a Big Data environment, the tendency to average out all those local specificities is magnified by generic technology approaches to complex cultural and contextual problems. Governments should think about and resolve ethical questions in the design of smart cities. City planners should ensure that the technologies deployed do not take away citizens’ privacy and that personal data are not used against them. Anthony Burke, Associate Dean International and Engagement, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building, University of Technology Sydney and Prasuna Reddy, Associate Dean (International and Advancement) and Professor of Mental Health and Implementation Science, University of Technology Sydney This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Interview

Born into a family of entrepreneurs, Archana Kalpathi talks about her family’s humble beginnings and her journey so far.

Anjana Shekar

It’s not often that you’d chance upon the CEO of an enterprise standing behind counters, taking down orders and patiently addressing customers’ queries. But Archana Kalpathi of AGS Cinemas is not your regular CEO. She doesn't think twice about taking down orders for popcorn and soda. “I believe it is important for you to learn and experience just about everything that makes your business. It is important to understand the pain of standing for long hours and of handling difficult customers. I always believe this knowledge is invaluable and almost like a rite of passage,” says Archana. Born into a family of entrepreneurs, Archana talks about her family’s humble beginnings. “I was about 8 when my family began its first business, a small computer training centre - SSI. Back then, as a joint family of 10, we lived upstairs and the centre was run downstairs.” The Kalpathi family then sold SSI for a good profit and ventured into the entertainment industry. Archana, who had just completed her masters in New York, always knew she’d assume the mantle of her family’s business. Just before she joined, however, AGS had ventured into producing cinemas. Its maiden venture was Susi Ganesan’s Thiruttu Payale, which turned out to be a commercial success. AGS Entertainment then went on to produce several other successful films like Santosh Subramaniam, Irumbukkottai Murattu Singam, Madrasapattinam, Engeyum Kaadhal, etc. Seven years after they began producing films, in 2013, AGS Entertainment inaugurated its first movie theatre – AGS Villivakkam. The next year came AGS OMR, following which they opened a theatre in T Nagar in 2016. AGS T Nagar AGS Villivakkam Archana gushed that the theatre in T Nagar, the neighbourhood in which her family resides, has been a long-time dream. “My father always wanted a theatre within walking distance. AGS T Nagar took us quite some time to complete since we’ve always built our own theatres,” says Archana, adding, “We’ve always given prime importance to all the building compliances mandated by the government. We’ve got an automated car park in AGS T Nagar, which is probably the only theatre in India to have it. We also give high importance to fire safety. There’s a separate team for every floor in AGS T Nagar.” Archana passion shines through when she talks about the business. Having entered it at a young age of 23, she says her family stood with her through thick and thin. “They’re very forward thinking, which did not prepare me for the prejudices I’d face later on in the business. When my gender was brought into a conversation, it was quite surprising to me.” But having supportive family network has helped Archana power through in business. “My husband, who works out of Singapore, too is very encouraging of what I do and thankfully my son, who’s 9 years old now, is a sweetheart. He does not need me around all the time.” Speaking at a recent speaker-series event called Meraki - an initiative of Glassbox - Archana shares that work-life-balance does not really work for her. “It beats me. I don’t know how that works. Both work and life are the same to me, and I should feel grateful for the kind of people who make my life.” Discussing the kind of prejudices she had to face as a woman, Archana shares that many have asked her about how she manages a long-distance marriage. “I find it bizarre when people comment on my personal life. It is also disappointing when someone asks me ‘Are they (my father and uncles) the decision makers?’ We’ve never so stuck by society’s impressions of a women’s role.” Would that make her a workaholic? “I actually work in breaks. One day I’m working 20 hours and for the next couple of days, I don’t because I’ve taken care of what needs to be done. Most of the festivals I'm not home because it is the most important time of the year for us. I don’t have weekends off, Monday blues … I only have days that I work and days that I don't,” she laughs. The recent turmoil in the industry was a challenging period says Archana. “I had 350 employees and over 50 days of no work. I was especially worried that people would move on to other forms of entertainment. We had to power through the longest strike the industry has had and the worst part was we were on both sides of the strike - as theatre owners and as producers. When the strike concluded, my entire team was so happy to be back at work. I got pictures of filled-up parking lots from my employees and people who were so happy to answer phone bookings,” she laughs. This was not the only period of turmoil Archana had to go through. In 2016, three major theatres in the city - AGS, PVR and SPI Palazzo were caught in a licensing process that was progressing at a snail’s pace. “We had invested greatly in this property and the whole burden of it was on my shoulders. However, we patiently waited for the license to come through and AGS T Nagar finally opened its doors in early 2016,” she says. Talking about the kind of films that AGS produces, Archana admits that she rarely sits on the creative bench. “I’m a science and math person. I do listen to scripts, and pass them on to my father and uncles to make the decision,” she says. While Archana has the opportunity to work with a medium that has a great impact on society, she says the problem lies in not having enough writers writing about women. “Directors themselves writing scripts is no good, their creativity is bound by financial factors. Whereas, a scriptwriter can write better roles for women. We need to make more films like Mozhi and English Vinglish. On the positive side, we have more female actors doing lead roles now,” she says. Not a stickler for stereotypes, Archana has been breaking molds in her own way. The young entrepreneur has a bigger project up her sleeve. “We’ve got a theatre coming up in Maduravoyal. It is the biggest we’ve built so far. It will have 5 screens of the large-screen format.” A movie-buff herself Archana makes it a point to watch as many movies as she can. “Although, I can never watch them in my own theatres. I’m way too critical inside our theatres to enjoy a good movie,” she laughs.

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