THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

On Sunday, January 21, 2014, the letter section of the Kantipur newspaper carried this small comment from one Taranath Gautam of Kalanki: “Prithivi Narayan Shah, who did not let firangis come near him, has been portrayed in history by foreign writers like Angelo, Guiseppe, Kirkpatrick, Hamilton, Wright, Oldfield, Vensitart and others.” Then he went on to say (I am paraphrasing here, since I can’t remember his exact words): These writers have come to portray as fact that “all males lost their noses in Kirtipur”, and this has been passed down as history. But we should examine more critically how Prithivi Narayan Shah, who wouldn’t let a firangi come near him, may have been viewed by these writers. Now this little letter, written in Nepali, was a shock of cold air. Reading the line again in Nepali, I realized that “all males lost their noses” is a colloquial way of saying “all men were humiliated.” But like all the other Western educated people like me, I’d assumed that it was a...

Check out my op-ed "The Speedy Salmon" in Republica. ______________________________________________ THE SPEEDY SALMON AND THE VIRTUES OF SPEED Sushma Joshi             About a year ago, I read about GM salmon. It greatest virtue, it appeared, was that it could grow at twice the speed of its natural cousins. Instead of the 30 months it takes to fatten a salmon, scientists had bred one to be ready in just 18 months. This project, reported the Guardian USA, was taking place at some undisclosed location in the Panama highlands in secrecy. Next to it, oddly, was a fishery that grew organic fish for Whole Foods. The two centers, the article said, was separated only by a stream. Yesterday, I read the USA’s FDA had approved this salmon for human consumption. They had also approved it without requiring the makers of this salmon to label it as genetically modified.          ...

I read an article by a nuclear scientist which said that nuclear  energy was unsafe for South Asia, primarily because extremists had  always managed to attack even the most highly guarded military areas, and that the chances of an attack by a religious extremist group was a  high probability. I think he could also have added that nuclear waste was going to be a  big problem. So far, India hasn't even figured out how to dispose of  human waste of 1.3 billion people--let alone nuclear waste generated by  large number of generators. I've always been against nuclear energy--Fukushima also brought home  what could happen to the soil, agriculture, and life of communities in  the event of a disaster. But taking part at the Watson International Center's Advanced Research Institute at Brown University last summer, what came out through our  discussions is that nuclear power was an easy option for many  countries trying to fulfill energy ne...

The ancients had codes of conduct in war. In ancient India, the Law of Manu stated that one should not attack a sleeping enemy—even a child can understand that attacking someone who’s sleeping brings no glory because no courage is required. No doubt the ancients Romans, Greeks and others had their own codes of war. Fighting sneakily and without showing your hand was in general considered cowardly—you had to fight with a sword in your hand, clearly visible by the enemy. The two World Wars remain prominently in people’s memories because they were, besides the epochs of human bestiality, also the epochs of human bravery and courage. The millions of stories of people who behaved humanely during these moments, with the correct code of conduct, is what makes people turn back, time and again, to the memories of those brutal years. Sadly those times seemed to have passed. Now technological war in which healthy, beefy young men sit in computer cubicles from thousands of miles ...

In case you missed it, the American banking system has been giving out massive amounts of loans to foreign companies. This has good, and bad, consequences. Because the American banking system had a limitless amount of cash and credit (so it appeared), it was willing to loan out these quick and easy loans to businesses in China and India, amongst other emerging economies. But now, with the American dollar going up, the exchange rates have become sharply assymetrical. Any emerging economy business trying to pay its loans is going to find that the amount they need to pay has sharply increased in local currency. With the Federal Reserve raising interest rates, these companies may find it difficult, or impossible, to pay the loans back. There’s always Chapter 11, leading to a massive wave of defaults across the world. Apparently around a trillion dollars may be at stake here. The Federal Reserve cannot keep interest rates artificially low for ever. Then there’s also their m...

The Gates Foundation has been out and about, promoting vaccination. With a backlash from parents cautious about the increasing amount of vaccines being given to children, they have also seemingly started to put advertorial pieces in magazines like the New Yorker. Rather than persuade people, however, I’d argue that these kinds of advertorial journalism, funded by big foundations, actually work to alienate people from the causes they are advocating. The piece about vaccines that ran in the New Yorker is a mixture between the fine, old fashioned public service announcements crossed with a bit of authoritarianism: “Vaccinate your kids immediately, (stupid) parents.” Before this, the New Yorker also ran a piece about the Bill Gates and his new interest in recycled water. The piece then cleverly mixes up Monsanto’s bio-engineering, implying that both water recycled from sewage, and genetically modified seeds, inspire unreasonable disgust in people even when they are both perfectly safe. ...

A few months ago, my boss, a young Australian woman with a very cool approach towards life, showed up at work and said: “I hope none of you are pregnant.” We all looked at her enquiringly. “If so, you should know that my two year old daughter has just been diagnosed with chicken-pox.” Apparently pregnant women should stay away from chicken-pox patients. Later, when she was dropping me off in her car, I asked her why she hadn’t vaccinated the child. She said she’d been about to, but the child got the disease before she could get her shots. Then she said: “You know, I was talking to a friend of mine, and she said: getting this disease is like getting rid of bad karma. Its not a bad thing—it cleanses the body of bad toxins.” I nodded. It appeared, on a metaphysical level, to make sense. I have a document of my immunization record. In it, I see my parents gave me my shots: the MMR, the DPT, and the BCG shots. I also got the polio vaccine. Despite this, however, I came down with mea...