China - Vilagum Thirai - A Book Review

Recently I read this book – “China – Vilagum Thirai”. This is the translation of the much acclaimed book 'Smoke and Mirrors' by Pallavi Aiyar. This is translated (in Tamil) by Raman Raja and Kizhakku Pathippagam has published this book (Price Rs 200; pages 350).

Pallavi – a journalist, has stayed in China for 5 years and travelled the length and breadth of the country, met different set of people from businessmen to saints, lived in one of the old type settlements (Hudong) in Beijing and mingled with the local people as one among them. This experience gives her the insights normally missed by the standard travellers and their travellogues. This book is more about China in the eyes of an Indian, so it is easy for us to understand about this Marxist Country.

Here are the salient points from this book.

• Though you can see poor people in rural China – they lead a better life compared to similar economically challanged people in India; It is not an exaggeration to say that the Govt of China has made them live a gracious life.
• Govt’s iron hand is visible in all places – people think what Govt wants them to think.
• Apparently Chinese people have a confused sense of patriotism and dissent – they consider dissent is not good – whatsoever and they toe the govt drawn line.
• People cannot settle from villages to cities – they have to obtain inland permit (something like passport called as “Hukou System”) and then move. Else, they will be sent back to their village if caught by the police; this is the reason why they do not have slums in Beijing and in other large cities.
• When a journalist meets a religious head/businessman/professor – a Chinese govt appointed person will follow the journalist. The guest cannot say anything that they think in their mind.
• Any dissent will be viewed seriously by the Govt – they will be arrested and put behind bars
• Ordinary Chinese people are not bothered about the type of work they perform – that is just an avenue to earn a living; they are proud of doing any work.
• Related to this is; there is no caste system in the country – Marxists act tough on religious activities – so no question of caste. This means – a person who is cleaning road/toilet, will not be identified and picked by birth. He may work today cleaning toilets, tomorrow he may be a businessman or something like that. He is not identified by the work he is doing.
• Tibetans resent Chinese interference – but cannot help it – when China sets its eye on Tibet.
• Religious freedom is allowed as long as it does not question/comment/feedback anything the govt does.
• If Govt wants a piece of land – buildings, farm lands will be demolished after issuing notice. Owners will be given a pittance and they cannot go to court.
• Personal productivity of a Chinese labourer is better than Indian labourer.
• Coruption is rampant – but not the type of corruption you see in India but the types you see in the US and other developed countries. If they have to build a bridge – they will build and take some money from that; not like do crappy stuff and swindle all the money.
• Govt encourages businesses big time and people have sort of given up worrying about the govt – they are busy making money. This generation in China is apathetic to politics (like any other country’s younger generation) and they are only bothered about their own growth.
• Lots of foreigners including people from India move there to China and start Yoga schools, work in hotels, buying products wholesale, etc.

The book is an interesting read for anyone who wants to know about China. The book maintains the interest in the reader throughout. One thing is certain – Raman Raja has done a wonderful work translating this book – you do not get a feeling that you are reading a translated book at all.

I recommend this book for anyone who wants to know about China.

Master of the Universe – Carl Sagan

Nov 9, 1934 - Dec 20, 1996

I don’t remember when exactly I got hooked on to Carl Sagan; it was probably in the eighties when I watched his Cosmos for the first time in Doordarshan or probably when I read his book Contact a bit later, I don’t know, but it was an association for life and an association that introduced Science to me (okay, whatever little science I know) and it also introduced skepticism.

Carl Sagan, in many ways is similar to my favorite writer Sujatha, similar in the way they spent a lifetime popularizing science, similar in the way they sowed the seeds of knowledge in a young mind. The difference could be that Sujatha was a writer who was also a man of science; Sagan was a man of science who was also an author. The other difference is, probably Sagan was a skeptic and I guess Sujatha never wavered from his Srirangam upbringing!

Beauty of Sagan’s writings lies not only in the way he simplifies complex theories (which he does very well) but also in the way he inspires and creates a sense of awe in the readers mind, especially the young readers.

I wish we have more science teachers like him (or like Sujatha) in our schools.

Contact is a science fiction by Carl Sagan this was published in 1985 and later made into a movie starring Judy foster and directed by Robert Zemeckis. Given his background as a renowned scientist (astrophysicist), it is not surprising that the book is written with real science as the foundation of the book, unlike many other science fiction books that are full of ‘made up’ science and harbor a gloomy/doomsday outlook.

The protagonist Ellie Arroway (named after Eleanor Roosevelt and Voltaire Arouet) is an Astronomer (the character is very similar to Sagan himself). Ellie is convinced of intelligent life out there in the universe (…I'd say if it is just us... seems like an awful waste of space) and pursues her belief and becomes the director of ‘Project Argus’ that scans (with the help of many Radio Telescopes) the sky for intelligent signals from the cosmos as part of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). She does hit the jackpot when the telescopes start picking up a sequence of coded messages coming in from the Vega star system – the first contact from an extraterrestrial intelligence. The message once decoded contains, among other things, a blueprint for building a machine (vehicle). The struggles to building the machine (a multibillion venture) and undertaking the space travel by Ellie are the meat of the book (Ellie travels thru a wormhole to the Vega star some 26 light-years from Earth!).

The culmination of the book indicates a creator of the universe and an intelligent design, which is very surprising (and a bit disappointing) given that Sagan is a confirmed atheist (or at least a skeptic), or is there a different message – honestly I am not so sure. But, I would like to believe that the Creator, Sagan hints at is the collection of many physics and mathematical laws that govern and that are interwoven into the universe and not the Creator as propagated by the many religions. Nevertheless the book is a wonderful read for its scientific accurateness and the awe it can inspire.

The movie by Zemeckis is equally powerful and worth a watch, I will leave the review of the movie to my good friend Toto. Meanwhile you can enjoy the opening sequence of the movie here.

Sagan can make us feel very special (‘we are made of star stuff’')and at the same time make us feel very humble (A vision... of the universe, that tells us, undeniably, how tiny, and insignificant and how... rare, and precious we all are!) But, my all time favorite (and a longish) quote is from

Pale Blue Dot: Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

The other book I would recommend is The Demon-Haunted World. This is a great book that advocates Science and fights against the practice of Pseudoscience, right from UFO sightings to religious superstitions. Sagan speaks about the power of reasoning and importance of questioning the many beliefs without bias. The Baloney detection tool kit introduced in this book is a great tool thru which such beliefs are to be passed before accepted. The book does not spare scientist and sets high ethical standards for them. It’s a vast canvas that Sagan paints in this book and what a beauty it turns out to be.

Food Inc - A Review

Though this documentary is more related to the scenario in the US now, since we are opening up to MNCs everywhere, this could be our situation in no time.

Last week I had a chance to watch a documentary titled - Food Inc. The movie is co-produced by Eric Schlosser – author of the book "Fast Food Nation". In many sense, this is a video version of that book.

The documentary’s primary aim is to create awareness among the public and they have traced the food from their plate to its source. The documentary is a journey of the director and the travails he faces in this journey. Today, a curtain is in place between consumers and the “manufactured food”. And certainly, it is not in the interest of the general public.

Never before in the history of mankind, have we had 3 square meals everyday with certainty. Ever since WWII, the administration wanted to keep the food prices down and ensure that food is available in abundance. Favorable government policies on grain farming thru heavy subsidies, technological improvement and questionable practices have ensured year round availability of cheap food. Factory farming concentrates on making every product – faster, fattier and cheaper. Just a handful of companies are controlling our food today – right from seed to supermarket.

There are some unintended consequences of these actions –
1. Healthy calories have become expensive whereas unhealthy calories have become cheaper
2. Manufactured food – “sometimes” have E Coli or Salmonella infection – infecting people.
3. People do not know what they are eating - Genetically modified food does not need labeling
4. Obesity, Type II diabetes have skyrocketed – consume cheap food and pay for the consequences- in effect, the total cost of such food gets higher.

For example – the movie talks of Tomatoes – “plucked when they were green and made to ripen using ethylene gas. So what you see in the supermarket is not a real tomato – it is a notional tomato, an idea of a tomato”.

Since companies do factory farming – problems are being addressed at a micro level without caring about its impact on the health or seeing a big picture. In essence they are not manufacturing a product, they are making food.

For example – Farm subsidies have made grains like wheat, corn, etc very cheap and as a consequence companies that raise (and butcher) hens, cows and pigs, now only feed them corn – only corn. Evolutionarily these animals do not support ONLY grain based diet and hence they become fatter quicker, get infected with bacteria etc. When cows are infected, just feeding grass will make them shed 80% of such bacteria. Instead they are given anti-biotics.

Conventionally, it takes 90 days for a chicken to grow fully, now it takes just 47 days. They have also redesigned the chicken breast and made it larger so that those chickens are not able to withstand their own weight so much so that they do not walk inside the giant smelly barn.

The message is – people should go for organic produce, go buy from regular farmer’s markets and be involved on food access issues etc. Getting people involved can make the food industry change its ways. The tobacco industry was booted decades back like this. What is needed today is awareness about the issues in the food industry and a sentiment among public that is similar to the sentiment towards the tobacco industry.