Tell Me Who I Am

Restless I rise, formless I fall
I am ugly and I make you cry
Your dams I break, your floods I stall
I am faceless... I'm the morning sky

Your friend in the dark, your foe before
I am a cherub you fail to hate
Your fire on the rocks, your moon on the shore
I am a nimbus... forever pregnant in state

Your canvas to colour, your tumbler to fill
I am a riddle you live and breathe
Your Sirius, your sun, your distant hill
I am vapor... and I never cease to seethe

Formless I fall, restless I rise
I am a djinn who drags you by
Your slave and your master, your constant guise
Wonder, say, whoever am I?

???? to life......

Another Bomb Blast

Another bomb, 30 killed,
100s injured, it happens almost every day,
scarcely makes the headlines,
so we shrug and say
“how terrible” and go our way.
But stop. Think. Imagine it,
for it is real —
flesh splattered on walls, guts spilling,
pavements slippery with gore,
stench of blood, still warm,
flowing red in gutters,
children, limbs torn, heads severed,
dead and dying everywhere,
screams and groans. That is the reality —
lives lost or wrecked,
loved ones gone, for ever and ever,
unending loss and pain
for those who mourn
sons, daughters, sisters,
husbands, brothers, wives — who cares?

Not those who carried out this sin
against humanity, this monstrous
obscene act, so far removed
from all that’s human,
warm and good,
from laughter, light and love;
they are not human so we cannot know
what’s in their minds —
it must be hate, for it is not love,
and hate it seems whose twisted skeins
are wrapped in strands of poisoned ideology
for men are most dangerous when
obsessed by ideas, simple
and extreme. Mix in religion, then
you’ll find they’ll kill, and all in the name of God.

Pete Crowther

I broke into silence...........

When I was hurt,

By this world cruel,

I broke into silence........

When I noticed,

But got ignored,

I broke into silence........

When I demanded,

And got no response,

I broke into silence........

When I loved,

But received denial,it pained,

I broke into silence........

When I agnized,

To bear the pain,

I broke into silence........

To the Top of the Ladder

I was a scared little mouse

Hiding in the little hole.

Sometimes I would peak

And step out a bit.

But the Big cat would scare me

So I ran right back in

My lonely but safe home.

One day the cat got in

My little hole.

I still don’t know how, But boy!

Did I ever ran out!

You took me in your hands

To a strange place.

You showed me the ladder

To enter the big World

Oh! Did it seem so high

For a little mouse like me

But you promised to hold

My hand

I first hesitated

And didn’t cooperate.

But you never left me

I slowly climbed up.

Sometimes I’d trip

But I got right back up

So now I’m less scared

And almost at the top.

I could climb to the clouds,

I might trip and fall down

But I’d get right back up

Thanks to your hand.

Soon I’ll let go of your hand

And meet my fellows

In the big and noisy place

Called Society.

I’ll be with my fellows,

But I’ll never forget you.

Someday I’ll be the one to hold

Their hands

To lead them the way to the

Big place called Society

It’s been a long but worthy time

I’m almost to the last step.

You’re slowly letting go of my hand…

Oh! It’s getting scary!

But I will make you proud

Because I’ll make the Society

A safe and warm place.

Thanks to your caring

And warm hand.

I’ll be the One

To change the world

A Dream...............

Its still night
And I am lurking around,
Searching for a dream
To leave me astound.

A dream of a lifetime
A dream to chase,
A grip of it
Shall bring me praise.

There I saw
An aurora it appeared,
I ran like hell
But in dark i was steered.

The demon flared up
Casting fire all over,
As it looked at me
I ran for a cover.

It was late...........
I felt as if dead,
But soon i woke up
Still on my bed.

And still the same........
(This poem deals with the story of a person fighting with this world to achieve something and due to his needs drifted into criminal activities for monetory gains but gets late in realising that .............but all's well as he realises he just saw a dream and he is yet the same old person. Hope you enjoy this metaphor........)

Burgers to blame for most of the global warming

WASHINGTON: A report by the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has stated that 18 per cent of greenhouse gases are coming from animal agriculture - meat and dairy, used in making burgers.

According to Environmental News Network , the 408-page report states that what many people are eating is contributing more to global warming than the entire transportation sector of the United States.

The report said that the Earth, and all who reside here, are in grave peril like never before. It added that everybody has a moral, ethical responsibility and imperative to face up to the truth, even if it means changing their daily habits.

There has never been a time in man's existence when it is so critical to move away from the Standard American Diet (SAD) and embrace an Earth-friendly and sustainable plant-based diet - a vegan diet, the report said. By switching to a plant based diet, mankind will instantly eradicate nearly 20 per cent of the global warming problem. If that isn't amazing enough, this simple yet profound change would greatly curtail further deforestation, top soil erosion and even the ever-worsening tainting of the world's waters.

Also, high cholesterol and heart disease, hypertension, obesity, adult-onset diabetes, kidney disease and many cancers would virtually disappear. But, the great news is that people don't have to give up on eating burgers, they just have to make them from plant-based ingredients. Veggie burgers have the taste, smell and texture of the traditional burger, but without the harmful ramifications.

Want to lose weight? Have chocolates!

Here’s some good news for all those chocolate lovers trying to lose weight – instead of shunning your favourite sweet, dig into it for breakfast.

Wondering how this is going to help you shed those extra pounds? Well, eating chocolates is part of the new ‘Big Breakfast’ weight-loss plan that requires you to take 700-calories of carbohydrates when you wake up.

Along with 30g of chocolate, you will also have to dig into a glass of milk, two slices of cheese, 85g of lean meat and two slices of buttered whole-grain toast every morning.

Doctor Daniela Jakubowicz, who has used the diet on her patients for 15 years, told the Daily Express that the breakfast works because it helps curb hunger cravings later in the day. "Very low carbohydrate diets are not a good method to reduce weight. They exacerbate the craving for carbohydrates," she said.

NEW LIGHT IN COUNTRY DOOM

Reported by Waste from Planet IITD, in customary disarray

Sassi ka Dhaba, 8.30 PM, 20^th January, 2008

Hi. I write this on my laptop as I wait for my plate of Maggi at Sassi, and everyone around is staring at me as if I am some peculiar specimen of alien life. Presently I light myself a smoke, and suddenly there is a collective sigh of recognition. Oh, all right, he’s one of us, they say. Us, dear reader, refers to the inhabitants of Planet IITD, and if you aren’t a member, you probably have no business reading this. (But you might as well go on and get some of your theories verified. Trust me, if you manage to reach the end of this article, you’ll be clapping yourself on the shoulder and shouting, “Hey, I was always right! IITians really are geeks from outer space!”)

Smoking kills, I know. But anyone who’s more than “just tried it out” knows that not smoking can kill just as effectively. So it’s a Catch-22 situation and so I am caught up on one side of it, so what? Well, let me tell you what. I had seven hours at college today, four of them in a workshop jammed with metal, grease and sweat, and the rest in impossibly packed antiquated classrooms. This is my third cigarette since then, and guess what, I’ve already wiped myself of half of those hours. Plus I feel curiously free, stupid as that sounds. So, Momma Mia, could I care less?

Okay, I guess that’s enough, you know I am a smoker, and you know I am an IITian (not necessarily in that order, but they sound about the same, anyway) and I know this is not really going anywhere. But then, what is? So tough luck; I’ll stay.

I am facing the main thoroughfare, and the crawl of the vehicles is slow enough for me to glimpse a face inside, every now and then. In the ghostly half-light inside their cars, some faces are happy, some are frowning, some bilious about the obvious mismanagement of road traffic (courtesy our very own PWD), some in outright rage about it, but most are just weary. Yeah, just weary. And suddenly the same ghost light switches on inside my head, as if some dormant circuit has just been joggled and juiced up. It stays for just a moment, but quite enough for me to register what it showed: I can be anyone of those faces; maybe am, already. I can’t really tell. I can’t really tell a lot of things, and that doesn’t only mean the stuff about three-phase autotransformers I was forced to swallow on this, the zillionth day I attempted to attend class. Sure, I can’t even begin on that, but who gives a flying fuck when you can pass with no mean measure of respectability with no more than getting hold of the professor’s bag of tricks? Try dangling the world’s juiciest carrot before me (like a promise of a night with Jolie, maybe) and my answer would still be “not me”.

Here’s my range of can’t-really-tells. I can’t really tell professors from Mr. Bean, and sometimes from Old Heckles who could have had birds. I can’t really tell laboratories from hockey fields, and I can’t really tell IITD from Pornographer’s Paradise. I can’t really tell lilac from lavender, I am that canned. I also can’t really tell how I ended up here, in this giant dungeon of the country’s most… ahem… brilliant dragons. I know I took an absurdly hyped examination roughly one year ago, the same day I took a crap. As to which served me better, I can’t really tell.

Hold up ahead, my Maggi’s arrived. I puff one last time on stick no.2 of this sojourn, and snuff it out under my sneakers, mentally admonishing the fat guy with the ear-stud who’s brought me my dinner. All for wasting a good smoke. Yeah, I am into it, neck and all, I know. I know I’ll die someday soon. I also know I am an IITian. Someone told me that kind of makes up for everything else.

More claptrap later. I have so much to say.

The Temple of Technology, 10.15 AM, 27^th February, 2008

Okay, this is it. I felt I’d been too harsh on my alma-mater writing all kinds of shit about it at Sassi, but it turns out I was woefully wrong. I tried not to continue, I swear. But just as the pump turns on in ecstasy, so it sometimes does in frustrated ennui.

I am in class for a course that claims to cater to my core requirements. Sounds rich, but I tend to disagree. My girlfriend’s seated next to me, you see, and talking of core requirements, I feel positive she can take much better care.

Moments back the technological genius (who also happens to be the worst teacher on earth) uttered “squirrel cage” and I almost looked up from my reverie. Next breath he came up with “transformer”, and my head plopped back down. Now he’s going on again with something that seems to be meant exclusively for the first two rows of the lecture theater, and I feel bullwhipped into writing shit again.

A cartoon drawn on my desk catches my eye. It has a gravestone with the following epitaph: “In loving memory of the child who died waiting for this class to end”. I’ve seen that one before, but never appreciated it as much as now. It’s been done very expertly; I can tell by the strokes. I think I know who drew it, and if I am right, dear God, this piece is the righteous mother of destiny.

The guy who I figure is the artist is dead. He hung himself from the ceiling fan in his room a week back. He left a suicide note saying: “I have failed for the first time.” I wager he was being figurative, but I’d say he had solid facts to back him. He had had a remarkable first semester, and he’d been well on his way to making this semester nearly as remarkably disastrous. Until, finally, he decided to wave his final goodbye; all of which is quite reasonable, I am sure. I guess if you got an avalanche when all you asked for was a castle in the clouds, it does a number on your head.

I know I sound like a sick, twisted bastard saying it, but if this piece of art was his last work, I’d say bravo!, he made much neater use of his talent than this castle could ever have.

Look, don’t get me wrong. It’s not as if I hate being at this place; far from it, actually. I never saw no dreams about green green grass, never came expecting no palace on the plains, let alone a castle in the clouds. So no issues there. Not sure if you’ll actually believe what I am about to say after all I seem to think, but you know what? I love it here. Its one hell of a ride, maybe not one of those classic college merry-go-rounds your life is supposed to get on, but one rollercoaster of its own cast nonetheless. So baleful brickbats are not my point, provided one exists.

So why not let the spades be the spades and the king be the king? Is fun not the king, is it not the real thing? Hell, yes, it is. But hey, wait a waver, I have some more on that. What fun is a place haunted by ghosts of kids dead on account of things not excluding the place itself? You can say the kids were weak. You can say they caved in when the heat was on. You can say all that, sure, but listen up when I say they were kids nonetheless. College doesn’t suddenly turn everyone into a robust ranger or a double humped camel right out of some Persian fable you heard as a kid. Some people are still kids, some people still yearn for those fables, and when you load them with all kinds of gibberish in the name of God and technology, and maybe ride them (and whip them while at it), sometimes the knees give up and the load slips off the camel’s back. Sometimes the camel escapes, but if it’s still a kid, you manage to hold on, and whip it some more. You know what happens then? Then you have a kid one moment, and next moment you have a dead kid. That’s not fun, no sir, that’s manslaughter.

I don’t really give that much of a damn about the kid. He was a nutcase, as far as I am concerned, but maybe I am not the only one concerned. And maybe that’s the whole point.

Coming back to this lecture, I feel almost as one with him. I know what you are thinking. No, I won’t hang myself tonight. I have a pot session with some seniors, and then maybe a drinking binge. And later, if things are sober enough, some wild oats to sow. Too much to let go of, if you ask me. And too little time to live.

I know I give the impression of a confused mind, and deep inside I know it’s not just an impression. The professor’s livid with all the distracted actions around the class, and he’s singled me out a couple of times. For all my inner rebellion, I don’t like to be thrown out in front of a hundred other kids my age. So I’ll stop, and seeing how very pointless all of this seems, I don’t know if I’ll bother finishing what I wanted to say in the beginning. I’ll need some help remembering too, I will.

The Reading Room, 12.30 AM, 30^th April, 2008

I guess it’s been a million years or so since I last modified this file. And one hell of a million it’s been too. Ups in drips and downs in deluges. That hardly belongs here, though. What does belong here is an end, a tail to the monster’s head I birthed one smoky, dreamy evening a long, long time ago. Seeing I am far more proficient eschatologically than academically (as it seems), I decided to deliver the knockout blow on a fitting note. I have a Major on Applied Mechanics seven and a half hours from now. I figure I could have seven and a half light years and a pumpkin pie for good measure, and I would flunk all the same. Down Glory Road to Pussy Palace, it’s the same ol’ story. Might as well furnish an end meanwhile.

Okay, so I left off in a haughty huff, or so it seemed. I am not really good at conveying the subtleties of my emotions, but you were right if you thought I was thinking I had my institute by the balls with that dead kid theory of mine. How time can make even the most stolid of statements seem gauche and sheepish. I went overboard with some things, I did. And worse I painted an utterly befuddled picture of my thoughts. Let’s do some summing up then.

I am currently seated in a corner of the legendary room of retards, also known as R2. Around me is my group of cronies, some sleeping, some chatting, some trying to come to terms with the mysteries of gravitation and rotational mechanics, a la IIT Delhi. I am writing, of course, and listening to some soul-searching death metal on my plastic monster of a cellphone. All of us buddies have one thing in common: we have given up. We might be trying, yes, for human nature fails to recognize failure until, well, until you’ve actually flunked. But deep within, naked in a vaunted realm of utter honesty, we have all accepted defeat. All done, dusted and doomed. Hail King Mechanics!

On the table next to ours, lost in the world of dysfunctionally smooth pulleys and harmlessly academic collisions, are two people who, taken in one gilded frame of common purpose, officially epitomize success in IIT Delhi. They are the king and the queen, stamped forever with the blood-red ink of genius. Ask them about the peak of the world, and they’ll say Mount Ten-Point-Zero faster than you can spell humbug. They’ll rock tomorrow, just as they’ve been rocking all year.

So much for rhetoric. You might think I am green with loserly envy, but this time you’d be wrong. I actually appreciate these kids’ single-minded pursuit of whatever they think is the most important. They are the best of their lot, and that, at this place, is one lot indeed. So far, so good. I’ll bet my battered bottom they’ll set these Majors on fire, but go and ask them, pray, to tell you of their impression of a world without grades, and you’ll probably come back branded a zany jerk.

Their bad? I don’t think so. I’ll risk the cliché. I’ll risk being baked on a spit over a thousand years in fact, but I wouldn’t fall back on blaming the system for it. Yes, that’s it, that’s the alpha and the omega of it, that’s the one word that gets thrown around like rat-fink in a hurricane, and yet that’s the only word that can, though only just, bring all my babble to rhyme and meter.

Maybe I am blind, or maybe those kids’ are stupid. I do admit there is something to the “work hard” theory. But here’s another notion I borrowed with my precious ass for collateral (seem to be making a habit of it, don’t I?): if you roast your butt on a barbecue, you better do it right. Work hard, true, but work the right way.

The right way. The right way. Man, I could say that a hundred times and still not make it mine. Yes, I am blind. I was born blind. I guess everyone is. You come out crying, thrashing mad, and you come out seeing black. And then, somewhere along the way, the black turns off and you find a color for yourself. Thing is, but for the luckiest ones, you need a tuner to go. Some people never find that tuner, and they die seeing black. Some do, and they party. Sounds like cheese with a bit of salt and a bit of pepper, doesn’t it? But not to be, Buddy-O, for some people find a bad tuner, and that, for all I know and all I don’t, is the worst.

If you’ve ever been at the receiving end of a broken promise, you know what I mean. That’s exactly how the bad tuner operates. All black. And then, POOF! You suddenly see purple, and what’s more, it comes with a mouthwatering free gift of tinsel and glaze. And then, just as you begin to smile… POOF! Back to black, Jack, just kidding.

I would never admit in public, but I do hope those two darlings of our famed academia don’t turn out, in a couple of years’ time, as babes lost in woods of their own making. I think I can safely say that for all of us who share this common fate of being an IITian in Delhi, no comments, came expecting to find our tuners, subconsciously or otherwise. Some of us have succeeded, and a vast majority of these are people in the same exalted league as the crown and his lady in waiting. Tuned to waste no time, tuned to keep their heads buried in text or work for as long as they can, tuned to procure the creamiest of garlands for their non-stop academic ass-busting. Tuned good, you say? Bah!

There are some others who know more of their colors now, and I risk saying they belong to the “luckiest” category I mentioned in passing. They didn’t need a tuner, and in fact, (and I say this strictly off the record) they rejected the offer from our beloved institute to be theirs. In my still blind eyes, these are the people who make a difference, the ones whose brilliance of skill and strength of character is claimed by brand IIT as its own. I state unabashedly that I have failed in my quest to be one of them, at least so far. And I know, in spite of my current state of total and absolute hopelessness, that it’s a dream I’d love to live.

And so the cat is belled. So I sign off, listening to Ozzy Osborne’s Suicide Solution on my headphones, vaguely recollective of the point where I began this ill-fated tale of a hundred hairpins and volte-faces. Around me my gang of hara-kiri hustlers from Country Doom are all snoring now, my girlfriend among them. I take her hand and stroke her hair for a bit, drawing comfort from all the affection I feel for her.

People around are staring at me as if I am an alien, again. Déjà vu? Hah, you bet! I quit smoking some time back, after I realized it’s the worst habit. It’s much like the bad tuner, showing you dreams that would most likely never be. But that’s not the only reason I keep my extraterrestrial act up. More than anything, I don’t feel the need to be one of them anymore. All that I feel about this place holds true, but I don’t really need those feelings anymore. What I need is freedom, and a little bit of peace. What I need is change. It’s time, it seems, to abandon idle prattle and step up from denouncing geeks to announcing myself in the league of extraordinary gentlemen. In other words, to be a true IITian, lost as the term sounds.

I don’t quite know whether this is still more hollow trope, only time can tell. No saving me from tomorrow’s thrashing, however. You might as well expect Atlantis to rise from the ocean, palm trees waving.

Kiran Bedi.....inspiration for all...........

Kiran Bedi is an Indian social activist and a retired Indian Police Service(IPS) officer. She became the first woman to join the Indian Police Service(IPS) in 1972, and was last posted as Director General , BPR&D (Bureau of Police Research and Development, Ministry of Home Affairs). She retired from IPS in December, 2007, after taking voluntary retirement.
During her service, she was also remained the Inspector General Prisons of Tihar Jail, - one of world's largest prison complexes, with over 10,000 inmates , from 1993 to 1995 , and her prison reforms policies lead to her winning, the 1994 Ramon Magsaysay Award.
Subsequently, she has founded two NGOs in India: Navjyoti for welfare and preventive policing in 1987 and India Vision Foundation for prison reforms, drug abuse prevention, child welfare in 1994.
In 2007, she applied for seeking voluntary retirement from service, and the application was accepted by the government.

Navajyoti (which literally means New Enlightenment), set up in 1987, and India Vision Foundation, set up in 1994, are the two major voluntary organizations established by her with the objectives of improving the condition of the drug addicts and the poor people. Her efforts have won national and international recognition, and her organizations was awarded the Serge Soitiroff Memorial Award for drug abuse prevention by the United Nations.
She also started one site named http://www.saferindia.com to log complaint regarding any crime if the police at the concerned area denies to accept complaint. Then the NGO behind this site mails complaint to the DGP of concerned area.This mail can also be used as the legal document in case of filing a case in the court of judgement.
She has written her autobiography, 'I Dare. It's Always Possible', which was released in 1998 .


Kiran Bedi has received a number of Awards, including the following:

President’s Gallantry Award (1979)
Women of the Year Award (1980)
Asia Region Award for Drug Prevention and Control (1991)
Magsaysay Award (1994) for Government Service
Mahila Shiromani Award (1995)
Father Machismo Humanitarian Award (1995)
Lion of the Year (1995)
Joseph Beuys Award (1997)
Pride of India (1999)
Mother Teresa Memorial National Award for Social Justice (2005)

THOUGHTS bring INNOVATIONS.................

"Those who know how to think needs no teachers."
-Mahatma Gandhi

THINKING...........I have always stressed upon this key word, the word which gave us the power to develop, to understand the earth and the universe and to understand GOD. We all know it but with a different name, 'DHYAAN'(Meditation), which this world has considered to be a property belonging only to those who have commited their lives to God. It is not true, we all should meditate, we all should think. Thinking gives one the power to reach the top, the chance to find the ultimate truth of life.It's thinking that created science because without thinking one cannot start doing something.

Let me share with you all a experience from my life itself............I am currently studying at IIT Delhi and live in a hostel. People are always asking me that 'What difference I find between IIT and any other college which makes IIT...IIT?' I always tell the same thing..............'IITs are IITs mostly due to the students. IIT can be thought of as a place where highly intellectual people, people who dare to think beyond today, gather, live together, study together and THINK together. Its the thinking power that seperates an IITian from the masses and that is why everybodies expectations from these students are high.'


Thousands come and go, spending their lives just in gossiping the life. You become the one who could bring a significant change. Become the one to lead the world to a better future.'Thoughts' give birth to 'Innovations'. So keep thinking...............and


BE THE CHANGE....................

Creativity - The power of thinking

I'm always thinking about creating.

My future starts when I wake up every morning.

Every day I find something creative to do with my life.
-Miles Davis

Innovation and creativity play a critical role in an organization's success. While many organizations continue to focus on downsizing, rightsizing, reengineering, streamlining, cost-cutting to achieve short-term results, the smart managers are always searching for new ways to create value for their organizations and increasing customer service. In the new land that you need the right culture and mindset for success. So what do you do?

When was the last time, your managers discussed an innovation strategy? What could an innovation strategy look like in your organization? This is a fundamental component of any innovation initiative. So what is stopping you? Times may be tough in the Forest Service, but when the going gets tough…the tough get going!

All of us have days when things just don't seem to go our way, when we face more challenges than usual. An innovation strategy is tough. You can help foster a culture that embraces innovation. So how exactly can you get going when the going is tough? Consider these ideas:

v Think of problems as possibilities for improvement…Since problems are inevitable, you might as well make the most of them. Think of them as opportunities to learn new things and improve. It's often by working through difficult situations that people discover strengths they didn't know they had.

v Remind yourself of recent successes…There is nothing wrong with giving yourself a pat on the back now and then. Don't underestimate the power of what seems like small accomplishments…they are part of your success. Remembering how you solved a problem in the past can help you feel confident, motivated and more creative.

v Remember you are not alone…Talk to your peers and colleagues…you know those trusted friends in your life. Chances are, they have experienced similar problems and can offer a new perspective, idea, useful advice, or even a helping hand.

Isn't it time to bring innovation to life in your organization? Have you planted the seeds of innovation? Have you institutionalised innovation?

Space and Time

Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity had set the speed of light as the universal speed limit of sorts, and showed that time and distance are not faithfully absolute but are affected by one’s rate of motion. A clock which is in motion always appears to run slower when compared to one at rest. This is because time is always relative to the speed at which a body is moving. This means that you could actually do a bit of time travel, but of course you need to have a really fast spaceship. Consider an astronaut traveling into space for six months at a speed that is close to speed of light, and then taking another six months to return to Earth. He would land in the future! While it would be only a year that has elapsed on the astronaut’s clock, back on Earth, tens of thousands of years would have passed, depending on how close to the speed of light the austronaught was traveling.

In a nutshell, the laws of physics allow for time travel, but the law which relates to time and space as proposed by Einstein, may have to be revised a bit by incorporating the unusual rules of quantum theory. Quantum theory illustrates the microscopic randomness which fills the universe, at the subatomic level. At these nano scales, gravity tends to go a little bit haywire, and physicists have a tough time predicting gravitational. It is theorized that space and time could eventually collapse, but the conventional notion that time will run in reverse when the universe collapses has run into somewhat of a roadblock. New researches suggest that the universe doesn’t necessarily go though a sequence of expansions and contractions and then ending up in a uniform state.

It is speculated that the universe started out in a disorderly state, then expand and finally collapse into the same very randomness that it started with. Physicists have been long puzzled about the two “arrows of time” which point in identical directions. In our everyday life, entities wear out over the course of time, for example, cups fall and shatter, but they never reassemble impulsively. In the expanding universe, the future is actually the direction of time when the directions of time of the galaxies are further part. Years ago, it was suggested that the arrows might be linked; this would mean that if the expansion of the universe is reversed, then the daily arrow would also reverse, which means broken cups would reassemble themselves, which might seem absurd to laymen, but is faintly possible in the eyes of a quantum physicist. Recently, the concept of arrow reversals has been incorporated into quantum physics. The arrow of time was associated with the so-called “collapse of the wave function”.

Some physicists have tried making this quantum description of reality and symmetry in time; they did it by coupling the original and closing states into one single mathematical equation. Of course this all sounds like science fiction, but relativists have taken the possibility of time travel very seriously, even to the point that they have proposed that there must be a law which prevents time travelers from creating paradoxes. However, nobody has the faintest idea how such a law would operate. The classic paradox is that of going back in time to alter things in such a way as to prevent one’s own birth, for instance killing one’s ancestors, or making sure that their parents never meet each other. These things simply go against common sense, argue the skeptics, so there must be a theoretical law that prevents these types of things from happening.
So what happens when Einstein’s laws are pushed to the limits? As one would expect, the possibility of time travel involves black holes. Since Einstein’s theory is a theory that deals with space and time, it shouldn’t comes as a surprise that black holes may offer a way to travel thorough time, as well as space. However, any black hole won’t do. A black hole formed out of a non-rotating lump of material would simply be devouring anything that comes near it. At its heart is a dot referred to as a singularity. This is where time and space supposedly cease to exist and matter is crushed to infinite density. In a rotating black hole things are a bit different, a singularity still forms, but it’s shaped like a ring, an ideal analogous to this would be mints which sport a hole in the middle.

At least in theory, one would be able to dive into the ring and emerge at another place at another time. In the 1980’s, Kip Thorne of CalTech and his colleagues, exasperated with trying to tackle time travel realities, set out to prove once and for all that Einstein’s equation doesn’t actually allow for time travel. They did some intense studying of the situation from a variety of perspectives; they were surprised to find that nothing in the equation actually barred time travel. They found that what would be needed is the technology to manipulate black holes. Then there are the geographically setup black hole time machines described as “wormholes”, these connect black holes at one place and time with another which is at another place and time via a “throat”.

Michio Kaku, a professor of physics in New York, has set forth an interesting depiction of a time machine. It comprises of two chambers, each with two parallel metal plates. An intense electric field created between the two pairs of plates (the intensity created would have to be larger than anything possible with today’s technology) it literally rips apart the space-time fabric, thus creating a hole in space which connects the two chambers. According to Einstein’s equation, time runs slower for a moving object. Taking advantage of this fact, one of the chambers is taken on a long, rapid journey and then brought back. Time would vary at different rates at the two ends, and anyone falling into the wormhole at one end would be instantly hurled into the past or the future. However, creating a wormhole the size of a spacecraft, and keeping it stable long enough to move one end of it into place, would require the energy equivalent of many times that which can be produced in a lifetime. Construction of wormholes would also require a rare substance known as “negative matter”, which though is not known to be totally impossible, is yet to be found to exist in a state useful for wormhole construction. Therefore it’s highly unlikely that such a device would ever be created, even with some of the most extreme technologies man can dream of, or will develop in the future.

Time travel is possible

Today, we know that time travel need not be confined to myths, science fiction, Hollywood movies, or even speculation by theoretical physicists. Time travel is possible. For example, an object traveling at high speeds ages more slowly than a stationary object. This means that if you were to travel into outer space and return, moving close to light speed, you could travel thousands of years into the Earth's future.Newton's most important contribution to science was his mathematical definition of how motion changes with time. He showed that the force causing apples to fall is the same force that drives planetary motions and produces tides. However, Newton was puzzled by the fact that gravity seemed to operate instantaneously at a distance. He admitted he could only describe it without understanding how it worked. Not until Einstein's general theory of relativity was gravity changed from a "force" to the movement of matter along the shortest space in a curved spacetime. The Sun bends spacetime, and spacetime tells planets how to move. For Newton, both space and time were absolute. Space was a fixed, infinite, unmoving metric against which absolute motions could be measured. Newton also believed the universe was pervaded by a single absolute time that could be symbolized by an imaginary clock off somewhere in space. Einstein changed all this with his relativity theories, and once wrote, "Newton, forgive me."

Einstein's first major contribution to the study of time occurred when he revolutionized physics with his "special theory of relativity" by showing how time changes with motion. Today, scientists do not see problems of time or motion as "absolute" with a single correct answer. Because time is relative to the speed one is traveling at, there can never be a clock at the center of the universe to which everyone can set their watches. Your entire life is the blink of an eye to an alien traveling close to the speed of light. Today, Newtonian mechanics have become a special case within Einstein's theory of relativity. Einstein's relativity will eventually become a subset of a new science more comprehensive in its description of the fabric of our universe. (The word "relativity" derives from the fact that the appearance of the world depends on our state of motion; it is "relative.")

We are a moment in astronomic time, a transient guest of the Earth. Our wet, wrinkled brains do not allow us to comprehend many mysteries of time and space. Our brains evolved to make us run from saber-toothed cats on the American savanna, to hunt deer, and to efficiently scavenge from the kills of large carnivores. Despite our mental limitations, we have come remarkably far. We have managed to pull back the cosmic curtains a crack to let in the light. Questions raised by physicists, from Newton to Kurt Gödel to Einstein to Stephen Hawking, are among the most profound we can ask.

Is time real? Does it flow in one direction only? Does it have a beginning or an end? What is eternity? None of these questions can be answered to scientists' satisfaction. Yet the mere asking of these questions stretches our minds, and the continual search for answers provides useful insights along the way.

Everything Happens For Good............

There was once a King who had a wise advisor. The advisor followed the King everywhere, and his favorite advice was, “Everything happens for the good”. One day the King went hunting and had a little accident. He shot an arrow at his own foot and was injured. He asked the advisor what he thought about the accident, to which the advisor replied, “Everything happens for the good”. This time the King was really upset and ordered for his advisor to be put in prison. The King asked his advisor, “Now, what do you think?” The advisor again replied, “Everything happens for the good”. So the advisor remained in prison. The King later went on a hunting trip, this time without the advisor. The King was then captured by some cannibals. He was taken to the cannibals' camp where he was to be the evening meal for the cannibals. Before putting him into the cooking pot he was thoroughly inspected. The cannibals saw the wound on the King’s foot and decided to throw him back into the jungle. According to the cannibals' tradition, they would not eat anything that was imperfect. As a result the King was spared. The King suddenly realized what his advisor said was true. The advisor also escaped death because had he not been in prison, he would have followed the King on the hunting trip, and would have ended up in the cooking pot. It is true that everything in life happens for a purpose, and always for our own good. If you think about it, all our past experiences actually happened to bring us to where we are today, and it is always for the good. All the past experiences makes us a better person. So, whatever challenges that we may face today, consider it happening to bring us to the next level.

Humanism

Humanism is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities — particularly rationality.It is a component of a variety of more specific philosophical systems and is incorporated into several religious schools of thought. Humanism can be considered the process by which truth and morality is sought through human investigation. In focusing on the capacity for self-determination, humanism rejects the validity of transcendental justifications, such as a dependence on belief without reason, the supernatural, or texts of allegedly divine origin. Humanists endorse universal morality based on the commonality of the human condition, suggesting that solutions to human social and cultural problems cannot be parochial.

Aspects

Religion
Humanism clearly rejects deference to supernatural beliefs in resolving human affairs but not necessarily the beliefs themselves; indeed some strains of Humanism are compatible with some religions. It is generally compatible with atheism and agnosticism but doesn't require either of these. The word "ignostic" (American) or "indifferentist" (British, including OED) are sometimes applied to Humanism, on the grounds that Humanism is an ethical process, not a dogma about the existence or otherwise of gods; Humanists simply have no need to be concerned with such questions. Agnosticism or atheism on their own do not necessarily entail Humanism; many different and sometimes incompatible philosophies happen to be atheistic in nature. There is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere, and not all are humanistic.
As Humanism encompasses intellectual currents running through a wide variety of philosophical and religious thought, several strains of Humanism allow it to fulfill, supplement or supplant the role of religions, and in particular, to be embraced as a complete life stance. For more on this, see Humanism (life stance). In a number of countries, for the purpose of laws that give rights to "religions", the secular life stance has become legally recognized as equivalent to a "religion" for this purpose.In the United States, the Supreme Court recognized that Humanism is equivalent to a religion in the limited sense of authorizing Humanists to conduct ceremonies commonly carried out by officers of religious bodies. The relevant passage is in a footnote to Torcaso v. Watkins (1961). It is often alleged by fundamentalist critics of Humanism that the Supreme Court "declared Humanism to be a religion," however the Court's statement, a mere footnote at most, clearly does not in fact do so; it simply asserts an equivalency of Humanists' right to act in ways usual to a religion, such as ceremonial recognition of life's landmarks.
Renaissance humanism, and its emphasis on returning to the sources, contributed to the Protestant reformation by helping to gain what Protestants believe was a more accurate translation of Biblical texts.

Knowledge

According to Humanism, it is up to humans to find the truth, as opposed to seeking it through revelation, mysticism, tradition, or anything else that is incompatible with the application of logic to the observable evidence. In demanding that humans avoid blindly accepting unsupported beliefs, it supports scientific skepticism and the scientific method, rejecting authoritarianism and extreme skepticism, and rendering faith an unacceptable basis for action. Likewise, Humanism asserts that knowledge of right and wrong is based on the best understanding of one's individual and joint interests, rather than stemming from a transcendental truth or an arbitrarily local source.

Speciesism

Some have interpreted Humanism to be a form of speciesism, regarding humans as being more important than other species. The philosopher Peter Singer, himself a Humanist, stated that "despite many individual exceptions, Humanists have, on the whole, been unable to free themselves from one of the most central... Christian dogmas: the prejudice of speciesism". He called on Humanists to "take a stand against... ruthless exploitation of other sentient beings", and took issue with statements in the Humanist Manifesto II, which he felt gave "precedence to the interests of members of our own species."He also noted, however, that the same Manifesto stated that humans have "no God-given or inherent right to subdue other animals", and acknowledged that "the organizations that have done the most for animals have been independent of religion."

Optimism

Humanism features an optimistic attitude about the capacity of people, but it does not involve believing that human nature is purely good or that each and every person is capable of living up to the Humanist ideals of rationality and morality. If anything, there is the recognition that living up to one's potential is hard work and requires the help of others. The ultimate goal is human flourishing; making life better for all humans, and as the most conscious species, also promoting concern for the welfare of other sentient beings. The focus is on doing good and living well in the here and now, and leaving the world better for those who come after.

Now another SETBACK to Indian education : Resevation for professors at IIT

“This way lies not only folly but disaster.”

— Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru

on communal reservations

It has just become a joke or what for this Government of India, led by Dr.Manmohan Singh,who himself was a professor and a great scholar, to break down this growing education system of our country.The row on the reservation for students in the premier institutes haven't settled, our chosen cabinet is out again with yet another big blast "Reservation for PROFESSORS at IIT". Now even the highly respected people are under the threat of the devil called "reservation", what a pity. This step has just reified the vote policy followed by the so called democratic political parties.

Practically speaking, these people have gone nuts. How can they think of developing the undeveloped(as per them) by keeping the undeveloped as their guides? and, How can they think of further developing the already developed(also as per them) by keeping the undeveloped as their mentors and teachers? , isn't it crazy? These people , theSC,ST,OBC,Gujjars(joined recently), are really fool enough too think it as a way to develop themselves taking under consideration the question I raised at the starting of this paragraph. I believe thet either they are too innocent or they too are like these Netajan who can't see this nation developing.

In this stage I find that the "Vision of India" and "Vision 2020" seen by our very respected "Father of the Nation" and the "Missile Man of India" have been outfocused and this land has become a battle ground for the "Comrades" fighting for "reservation" as if they are fighting for the Indpendence. God please forgive these people for they don't know what they are doing.

I appeal to the 'People of India' to please spread this word and raise the awareness level of all the citizens of this country to work for the development of India and not against it. Please understand that Reservation is not the solution.

India's tsunami diplomacy:We can help ourselves,you care yourself

India's aggressive tsunami diplomacy has puzzled major world capitals. Even as the United States is trying to acclimatise to the "stunning" realisation that India is capable of handling its own disasters, and competently so, the international media is a picture of absolute disbelief.
It is all very well to refuse foreign (read American) aid.

Stung by such patronising editorial comments in the international media, India has shot back, asserting it was perfectly capable not only of addressing the crisis on its own shores but also of lending a helping hand to its tsunami-ravaged neighbours.

"India had refused aid but was unable to take care of the consequences, are "completely misplaced."
Wondering how many actually knew that India has a full-fledged National Institute of Disaster Management, India's that time foreign secretary , Saran said, "Right from the beginning we had the capability and the resources to successfully deal with this disaster."
In what was obviously intended for an incredulous world media, the Foreign Secretary spoke at length about the well-oiled disaster management machinery India has in place and which has been put to effective use during the current crisis.
As for the foreign aid issue which has clearly rattled Western capitals, Saran said, "We do not have a dogmatic position on this. As of now we have the capability and the resources."
He, however, mentioned that at any time India feels it requires assistance from "friendly" countries "we would not hesitate to review our approach."
Saran said the rationale behind India's refusal to accept aid was that whatever international effort was being launched, of which India itself is a part, should be directed towards those affected countries unable to manage the crisis.
"Not only have we had the confidence that we can take care of the disaster that struck our own shores, we have also been confident of assisting others affected," Saran said.
Admittedly, the United States goofed up its tsunami diplomacy even as India registered a major plus. US President George Bush's early pledge of a meagre $15 million did little to flatter America's image in Asia post-Iraq.

In fact, the US raised its contribution to $350 million only after accusations of being stingy were thrown at its face.

Consequently, it committed its armed forces for relief work and initiated a charity drive to assist what clearly is one of the biggest aid efforts in history.
In contrast, India rose above the occasion, rushing aid to Sri Lanka as early as the evening of December 26 even as it was coping with the crisis on its own territory.
Determined not to stand around as a hapless victim, India swiftly became part of the core group of four countries along side big powers like the US, Japan and Australia to coordinate aid efforts in the Sri Lanka, Thailand, Maldives and Indonesia.
India's inclusion in this group, Saran said, "was a recognition that India had the capability and the resources."

Although the core group stands disbanded now that the United Nations is coordinating the crisis management, India has registered its presence in the tsunami-affected region as a compassionate power capable of helping its neighbours even when its own shores are troubled.
Saran said, "Once the UN and its disaster relief organisation, the European Union and Canada came into the picture, the focus shifted to the operational side at the ground level. There was a consensus among the four members of the core group that the UN and its organisations were well-placed to carry out relief operations at the ground level."
In the strategic context, not many missed the implication of India first rushing aid to Sri Lanka where the US had decided to send 1500 marines and an assault ship.
India's move signalled the fact that New Delhi is fully capable of maintaining its arc of influence in the subcontinent.

At a time when the United Nations is debating the expansion of the Security Council in which India envisions a permanent seat for itself, the signal New Delhi has sent the international community's way through its tsunami relief operations is unmistakable.

Taslima Nasreen:What made her what she is

Taslima Nasreen is Bengali Bangladeshi ex-physician turned author, feminist, and journalist.

Taslima Nasreen, the controversial Bangladeshi writer, left India last Wednesday for an undisclosed destination in Europe. At London's Heathrow airport, where she was waiting for a connecting flight on Wednesday, she accused the Indian Government of forcing her out. "They are no better than religious fundamentalists," she said. Four months ago, she was hounded out of Kolkata (Calcutta) and put in a safe house in New Delhi that she described as "torture chamber." There she was not allowed to meet anybody, even specialist doctors, despite her serious cardiac condition and retinopathy. Though her visa was extended in February, she had to leave India. A piece on her website blamed India's Foreign Minister and fellow Bengali, Pranab Mukherjee, who "exerted great mental pressure," for her to exit.

Taslima's beginnings in Bangladesh were modest and held little clue to her literary talent. Sexually abused in her adolescence, she became a gynaecologist routinely examining girls who had been raped. This influenced her later writings, and calling herself a "secular humanist," she lashed out against the treatment of women in Islam. Her work, both prose and poetry, that began in the late 1980s became globally renowned in the next decade.

Her fiesty newspaper columns culminated in a book, "Nirbachito Kolam" (Selected Columns), which won her a prestigious award in India in 1992. She then penned about 30 books of novels, short stories, essays and poems, but her fiction, "Lajja" (Shame), in 1995 invited the anger of Muslim fanatics. The book was banned and she had to flee Bangladesh after Islamic groups passed a death sentence on her.

She has been living in various places since then, including Sweden and France. She returned to her country in 1998, but her books, "My Childhood" and "Wild Wind," were not only banned by Bangladesh, but also led to fresh rage and threats against her.

When she eventually sought refugee in Kolkata, saying that the city felt more like home to her, she fell foul of the West Bengal Government, which could not displease a quarter of its population, Muslims. New Delhi proved as terrible.

India's Biotech: Baby Elephant

Low costs and growing expertise have led to a biotechnology explosion in India, but that very success could hurt the developing world as companies look toward the lucrative global drug market, experts said Monday.

"Now that (Indian) companies are growing and becoming more successful, we run the risk they will turn their focus on the developed-country market and lose their sense of social responsibility," Sarah Frew, a researcher at the Center for Global Health at the University of Toronto, told United Press International.

Developing-world biotechnology researchers and drug manufacturers have become the pharmacy for other low-income countries, especially when it comes to vaccines. But some industry observers worry that as those companies become more sophisticated, that will stop. Yet others say growth in developing world biotechnology sectors will only help the world's poor.

Biotechnology in India largely got its start focusing on homegrown solutions for Indian health problems, according to the report in the journal Nature Biotechnology, which studied 21 Indian biotechnology firms.

In the vaccine market, where Indian firms faced little competition, they were able to develop products that targeted diseases of the developing world, like hepatitis B and polio. Because of lower costs and process-side innovations, they have been able to sell those products at dramatically lower costs both in India and in other low-income countries.

Shantha Biotechnics, operating out of the Indian city of Hyperabad, launched a hepatitis B vaccine in 1997 that cost only $.50, compared to the import price of $15.

The reduced price, the result of a more efficient manufacturing process, enabled a much higher rate of vaccination in India. Through partnerships with UNICEF and other aid agencies, the company now also supplies 40 percent of the world's hepatitis B vaccine.

That example, and countless other success stories, have made the Indian biotechnology sector a global player, and more growth is predicted in the future, said study co-author Peter Singer, also of the University of Toronto.

"India's biotech sector is like a baby elephant," Singer told UPI. "When it grows up it will take up a lot of space."

But the outside world has begun courting Indian companies, according to the report. Partnerships between companies in India, the United States and Europe are proliferating. Some Indian firms do research on behalf of pharmaceutical giants like Merck, Pfizer and AstraZeneca, while other partnerships involve Indian firms snapping up the intellectual property of small American companies.

This increasingly global focus means that as the international market for biotechnology continues to expand exponentially, Indian firms will be poised to compete for a share with research firms and manufacturers in other countries, Singer said. But that could be to the detriment of Indians if the firms focus their research on obesity and erectile dysfunction drugs instead of rotavirus and malaria treatments.

"In a country like India, the biotech sector is an engine for health and economic development," he said. "India is researching its way out of ill health."

To make sure that remains the case, government regulation will probably be needed, the report concluded.

But other observers say the explosive growth predicted for the industry will help and not hurt health in developing countries.

The less restrictive government regulations in India, combined with the soaring number of scientists graduating each year, means that incentives to move research overseas are powerful, said Fariborz Ghadar, director of the Center for Global Business Studies at Penn State University.

Meanwhile, the changing economic landscape for drug development means that U.S. and European companies are more likely to outsource research, and research firms need more help marketing the products they develop, he told UPI. "Those kinds of alliances are basically everywhere."

Given that growth, the Indian biotechnology sector will not need to choose between domestic health needs and the global marketplace, Ghadar said. "I think the market's going to grow so rapidly in India that you're going to see all of the above."

And if the country continues to graduate researchers at the same high rate, he said, "if anything, they're going to be hard-pressed to find jobs."

Indian firms have also excelled at turning developing-country markets into sound business propositions, Michael Free at PATH, a global health organization, told UPI.

In the case of rapid diagnostic tests, he said, "Indian companies saw the markets around them. It was an opportunity to them."

Either through international aid organizations or direct marketing, India, China and Brazil -- with their understanding of developing world needs and lower costs -- almost exclusively supply vaccines and other treatments, Free said.

Indian biotechnology sector growth is "an enormous opportunity for replication of essential technology that will serve the country of origin and other parts of the developing world."

The study was partially funded by BIO Ventures for Public Health, the public health arm of the Biotechnology Industry Organization

How Indian bloggers change the way world thinks about India

India, for long was relegated to the status of a third world nation. Try as you might, year after year it was the same perception. Poverty, pity, snakes, jungles, curry and what not.

Somewhere along the way, the IT revolution, outsourcing, offshoring, IT service providers, Y2K happened and India and Indians slowly moved from the "Wheres India..." to "India has good programmers...".

BRIC, (Brazil, Russia, India, China), the ultimate acronym has lifted India beyond the orbit of India being constantly being referred to as a suffix or prefix with its friendly neighbour. With the growth in outsourcing and its economy, India is touted as a growth engine, emerging economy and a must have in any companys strategy. From good programmers, India now has a "growth economy" as well.

Because of these two factors India is slowly moving up in the eyes of the India watcher and slowly showing up in the radars of businessmen, industry, researchers and universities for whom it was hitherto invisible (or with low visibility).

There is a third level which is contributing significantly to India moving up the proverbial value chain. This, imho, is thanks to the blogging space. Blogging and bloggers are the creators, if you will, of the zeitgeist of the web today which in turn shape the perceptions and world of tomorrow. Most serious bloggers are usually economists, professors,journalists, students, venture capitalists (who I call the "idea drivers of tomorrow") with opinions, insights, contributions, research all or some of which flow into shaping up tomorrow.

Indian bloggers today contribute significantly in determining the way India is perceived tomorrow. Indian bloggers are slowly reinforcing through the blogging community about the depth of India and how it is much more than an army of coders. Indian bloggers contribute and host many a carnival(bhartiya blog mela), many a collobrative blog and write on subjects ranging from education to science to brands to technology to management to analysis to writing and youth.

If Brand India emerges more as an intellectual superpower tomorrow, we Bloggers can claim our two cents of contribution to it.

The Elephant vs The Dragon

The United States attended the Aero India defence show, hoping to profit from India's hunger for military equipment; it wants to make India a counterweight to China. The relationship between China, India and the US is ill-defined; in a region that bristles with weapons, India also will have to contend with Japan and Russia.

An elephant can run very fast.India would sooner or later resume its place in the world. They were more divided over whether the Indian elephant could overtake the Chinese dragon, yet all dreamed of power.

Indian civilisation once rivalled China and was pre-eminent in Asia; in 1700 it led the world financially (1). Yet by 1820 its share of global income had fallen from 22.6% to 15.7%, half that of China (which then followed it into decline). By 1980 India, with 3.4% of global income, and China, with 5%, had been marginalised. China has now shown that a country can bounce back and India wants to catch up as fast as it can.

India has decided to throw in its lot with the United States in a spirit of pragmatism rather than any ideological conviction (2). Navtej Singh Sarna, foreign ministry spokesman, in his 1960s Soviet-style office in New Delhi, said carefully: "The US is the dominant superpower, so it is logical that we should seek to develop good relations with it." This normalisation follows decades of non-alignment spent in the diplomatic shadow of the Soviet Union and resented by the US.

India's trade with the US rose to almost 11% of the Indian total in 2005-6; trade with Russia, which was formerly its main partner, was only just over 1%.

India wants a lot more. Stunned by the speed with which the economy of China has taken off (3), India makes no secret of its desire to utilise its new relationship with the US to attract the investment that it lacks. In 2005 foreign direct investment (FDI) into China rose to $72.4bn; India's FDI was only $6.6bn, although this may be an underestimate, since not all capital movements are recorded. The Indian government did proudly point out that it received 40% of FDI in information technology in developing countries, while China had only 11%. Even so, an abyss separates them.

Copying China

The government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has copied China's example: among other measures it has set up special, near tax-free economic zones, waived social protection and lowered customs duties. These measures have yielded results. There has been investment in IT services and in cars; in November 2006 Renault announced the construction of an assembly plant. The major supermarkets -- Wal-Mart, Tesco, Carrefour -- are planning to move in: who cares if the arrival of their vast stores kills local businesses and overwhelms landscapes that have so far been spared the monotonous urbanisation of the West?

"Modernisation" is under way. The US leads the investors, followed by the island tax haven of Mauritius, Britain, Japan and South Korea.

However, political preoccupations rather than economic ambitions drive the Indian government: it wants recognition as an Asian and global superpower. Hence the importance of the deal over civilian nuclear technologies which, following ratification by both sides of the US Congress in 2006, will come into effect early this year, in time for President George Bush's visit to New Delhi in March.

The embargo introduced in response to India's widely condemned nuclear tests in 1998 will be lifted, although India still refuses to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty on the grounds that it is "discriminatory"; in an assertion of its independence, it denies international inspectors access to more than 33% of its installations. The US and its allies continue to apply this demand to Pakistan, North Korea and Iran.

India will now be able to import sensitive materials and use nuclear power to generate electricity to meet its rapidly expanding energy needs. The prominent diplomat, Shashi Tharoor, the United Nations under-secretary general who campaigned unsuccessfully to succeed Kofi Annan, explained: "There is a more important issue than energy supply: the agreement recognises India as a significant nuclear power in its own right. It marks the recognition of the Indian exception by the US and the official nuclear powers."

It is self-evident that "India is not a country like any other"; this saying has become a mantra.

After independence in 1947 India's unique status, epitomised by its policy of non-alignment, made it a moral force that stood out from other third world countries in the process of decolonisation. Now India is beginning to look like a US-approved military power. Some Indians fear that it may be falling into the alignment trap. The prime minister responded by saying: "I am often disappointed by the lack of adequate appreciation in our country, including among our political leaders, of the changing nature of our relationship with the world. Very often we adopt political postures that are based in the past" (4).

Although some US senators have deplored the nuclear deal and there has been concern that it "may enhance India's ability to produce fissile material for weapons" (5), it has its supporters in Washington. The Bush administration has already expressed its disapproval of a gas pipeline project with Iran, although this would supply a significant proportion of India's energy needs and have the enormous diplomatic benefit of forcing India to negotiate with its main enemy, Pakistan, through which the pipeline would pass.

In the words of Edward Luce, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, writing in the Financial Times : "The pipeline would give Islamabad a strong incentive to maintain stability with New Delhi" (6). For now, Manmohan Singh is using Iran's excessive price demands as an excuse to leave the issue unresolved, but this can only be a short-term solution.

Nothing is settled

India must also come to an understanding with China. Either the two giants build a regional understanding that will influence Asian and international politics, or they fight it out, which seems the more likely possibility. Nothing is settled; there are really three parties in the ring, including the US, or four including Japan.

The US was prepared to risk undermining the nuclear non-proliferation treaty in order to encourage India to become a counterweight to China, whose economic, military and diplomatic rise threatens the long-term hegemony of the US in the region. The US also has a problem with some traditional allies -- such as South Korea, which has refused to adopt a sufficiently aggressive stance against North Korea. India, wary of its vast neighbour, is happy to cooperate with the Bush administration for now.

China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, visited New Delhi in April 2005. Showing an impressive sense of history, he pointed out that for 99.9% of the past 2,200 years the countries had lived in harmony (7). The discordant 0.1% was the war of 1962 (8), an unexpected defeat that heralded the end of the Nehru era and still rankles in India.

The economist Amartya Sen has suggested that the earliest Sino-Indian relations were initiated by trade rather than Buddhism; after the 1962 war, economic and trading links restored good relations (9). Trade remained marginal, at $3bn a year, until 2000; it was expected to reach $22bn in 2006. China sells more than it buys and wants to exploit synergies between the economies to make good its technological deficit. It is pushing for a free-trade agreement that India, which has only 33% of Chinese GDP and is fearful of being flooded by Chinese imports, rejects.

India's priority is to consolidate its ageing and relatively weak industrial sector. It recognises that it cannot guarantee national development if it continues to rely financially upon the contribution of outsourced call centres, sub-contracted services for English-speaking businesses around the world and IT. Nevertheless, during the visit of the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, in November 2006, it signed 13 agreements to cooperate in finance, agriculture, IT and energy.

Another potential area for detente is energy, with its rapidly increasing demands. The two countries are in competition for energy resources with China well ahead, especially in Africa. At the end of 2005 the China National Petroleum Corporation and India's Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) reached an agreement to invest in the exploitation of Syrian oil reserves. Also in 2006 the Chinese and Indian oil ministers discussed creating a buyers' cartel to influence prices, a fresh idea that was thwarted when the Indian minister, Mani Shankar Aiyar, was sacked.

The joint declaration that accompanied Hu Jintao's visit emphasised the need to "encourage collaboration between their enterprises, including through joint exploration and development of hydrocarbon resources in third countries" (10). The full significance of the declaration emerged in the context of US protests to the Indian government about its investment in Syria. The declaration also announced that "the two sides agree to promote cooperation in the field of nuclear energy, consistent with their respective international commitments". The terms of the agreement were left vague, unlike the agreement Hu Jintao signed with Pakistan a few days later, yet this was the first official reference to nuclear cooperation (11). China, while acknowledging India's agreement with the US, was trying to prevent it from establishing itself as the US's privileged partner.

An anti-China axis?

Despite these developments, border issues remain unresolved. China continues to claim part of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India, while India claims Aksai Chin on its northwest frontier: the commission established to settle these disputes has made little progress. China accepted the incorporation of the former Buddhist kingdom of Sikkim into India in 1975. More importantly, India has recognised Chinese sovereignty over Tibet since 2003, although India continues to play host to the Dalai Lama and more than 100,000 Tibetan refugees.

In July 2006 the Nathu La pass in the Himalayas reopened after more than 40 years of closure, restoring a section of the old Silk Road. Traffic still falls far short of the early 20th century, when more than 75% of trade between India and China used the pass, but there are grounds for hope that merchants will slowly displace soldiers.

Even so, India remains suspicious and fearful of encirclement. To the north, China has long offered unconditional support to Pakistan in its conflict with India over Kashmir (12), and it is now investing in the construction of a deep sea port at Gwadar, on Pakistan's coast, close to the entrance to the Persian Gulf. To India's southeast, China is funding Burma's navy. China claims that it is merely trying to secure sea access in order to guarantee the security of its imports.

India remains unconvinced and has conducted several military exercises with US forces, including some on the Chinese border and in the Indian Ocean, as far east as the vital oil-tanker route through the Strait of Malacca. It is also conducting joint operations with Japan, which has been adopting a more aggressive military posture (13).

India wants to show off its muscles. The Bush administration wants India to be a rampart against China, a job that most of India's openly pro-US political elite are happy to take on. Some members of the business community are less enthusiastic. As Shyamal Gupta, a senior executive with the leading Indian manufacturer Tata Sons, insisted: "What we will see is not India against China but India plus China" (14). Some politicians share this reticence, including Jairam Ramesh, a member of the governing Congress party and a former minister, who has published a sensational book, Making Sense of Chindia.

Nobody, of course, is proposing the construction of a Sino-Indian alliance against the US. Everybody is mindful that Chinese leaders are banking on a close relationship with the US, upon which China is economically dependent. Asia is nevertheless a region where military expenditure has recently soared: China is the world's second-biggest military spender, Japan the fourth, and India the eighth. So giving real substance to the declared Sino-Indian intention to "explore a new architecture for closer regional cooperation in Asia" has become a priority.

As The Hindu's famous columnist Siddarth Varadarajan said: "Asia is too big to be dominated by a single power. China, India and Japan should not even think of controlling the region, whether on their own or with the support of an external power." Like many progressive intellectuals, Varadarajan advocates more active Indian participation in regional organisations.

Russia sidelined?

Russia, previously a cornerstone of Indian diplomacy, seems to have been sidelined. Joint declarations have been guarded and bilateral relations tepid. Despite the collapse of the early 1990s, trade has resumed, especially in the military sector where it reached $6.5bn in 2005. Professor Anuradha M Chenoy of the School of International Studies at JNU told me: "India is the only country that has a programme of technical and military cooperation with Russia." Russia sells the most weapons to India, ahead of Israel, with which the previous Hindu nationalist government established close diplomatic relations (15).

The quest for oil and gas supplies also encourages cooperation with Russia. In 2004 the oil minister, Aiyar, announced: "In the half-century of Indian independence, Russia has guaranteed our territorial integrity, and in the second half-century it may be able to guarantee our energy security. I am talking about the strategic alliance with Russia in energy security, which is becoming for India at least as important as national security" (16).

This may not be the official position, but the ONGC is involved in the Sakhalin I and II oil and gas fields. For Russia, which has agreed to supply India with 60 tonnes of uranium, energy has become a weapon in its attempt to reassert itself as a leading global player.

As Yu Bin of the International Relations Centre explained it: "The once super military power has now become the super petro-power under Putin, whose mission is to remake Russia as a world power to be respected, if not feared" (17).

So is the "CIA triangle", as its detractors call it, of China, India and the US, about to be supplanted by an alliance between China, India and Russia? Not yet. India has decided to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) as an observer, along with Pakistan and Iran. This body includes four central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), plus China and Russia, which are trying to build up its diplomatic muscle in the face of increasing US influence in the region.

India does not yet seem capable of any spectacular strategic initiative. The writer Sunil Khilnani said shrewdly: "We have become enamoured of the idea that we are soon to become a permanent invitee to the perpetual soiree of great powers, and so must dust ourselves off and dress for the part . . . But we need to deliberate over what the role should be, and how we can most effectively achieve it" (18).

Border issues

India is at present expending much energy in resolving border issues. Although it feels no great pressure to engage in equal relations with smaller neighbours, it did at least join Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka in setting up the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) in 1985. Economic cooperation remains marginal (less than 10% of trade) and the struggling organisation is unable to transcend its own conflicts.

The strained relations between India and Pakistan contribute to this. The talks that began over Kashmir in 2004 have made little headway, but some trade has resumed. Discussions were suspended after the July 2006 train bombings in Bombay, which killed 200; India blamed them on Pakistan's secret services. The talks resumed in October and in December Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf announced that, for the first time, Pakistan was ready to abandon its claim to Kashmir if India would do the same. The proposal was welcomed "with interest" by Manmohan Singh. People on both sides of the control line in Kashmir are not holding their breath.

India's relations with other immediate neighbours are less conflictual, but by no means unproblematic, although an agreement in Nepal in November between government forces and the Maoists could improve the situation. The uncertainties in Bangladesh and continued fighting in Sri Lanka are a problem for India: there are thought to be 20,000 Bangladeshi refugees in India, and 10,000 Sri Lankan Tamils crammed into camps in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Many are destitute; they fuel the activities of violent groups and serve to justify police abuses.

Poverty feeds the Naxalite (Maoist) movement, particularly in West Bengal, Orissa, Telangana (Andhra Pradesh) and, further north, in the state of Bihar on the frontier with Nepal, where calls for independence are getting louder. According to Singh, this is India's most serious security problem. Indian borders are porous, but Singh forgets to mention the social causes of friction, especially the disastrous effects of "modernisation" upon rural areas. More than 10,000 farmers killed themselves in 2005, most often by swallowing pesticides, because they could not meet their debts. India exports cereals, yet more than 50% of its children are malnourished; 40% of Indians can neither read nor write (only 10% of Chinese are illiterate). India ranks 126th on the UN Human Development Index, well below China in 81st place.

The few measures that the government has attempted have often been undermined by widescale corruption; neither the government nor the upper classes seem concerned about the divide that separates the majority of Indians from the 60-70 million people (5-6% of the population) who have achieved a standard of living comparable to that in Europe.

Shashi Tharoor is one of the few who acknowledge this situation: "We must do something for the other India . . . We must invest in hardware [roads, ports and airports, all in a pitiful state], but also in software, the human beings to whom we must give what they need. It is a question of civilisation." Wholesale exclusion is the vulnerable point of India, which seeks to present itself as the largest democracy in the world.