For the last couple of days, most of us have watched our television screens with horror, sadness and despair. We have felt heartsick hearing the news of people hiding, dying, their families and friends waiting anxiously, valiant security personnel losing their lives in their attempts to bring the carnage in Mumbai to an end.

We have also been stunned by the tactlessness some newspersons across the media have displayed when they ask the family members of those trapped inside the besieged buildings “how do you feel now” that their spouse/parent/child/sibling is inside, or when we hear them saying the terrorists are putting up a “spectacular” terror show. (These are only a couple of examples, this post  is another example of how viewers are reacting.) Granted that live, and unrelenting, television reporting in situations such as this has its constraints, and language skills are not high on the priority list, but what we are communicating needs to reflect the gravity of the situation, and that can only come from choosing the right words.  Here are some links on how to report with sensitivity in the midst of crises:

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=5879

http://www.britishcouncil.org/professionals-specialisms-journalism-2-3.htm

 Posted by Sravanthi Challapalli

There were special celebrations when a baby boy was born at Chennai’s G.G. Hospital yesterday (August 27, 2008). And understandably so… given that it’s the country’s first reported instance of a birth resulting from a frozen egg and also given the minuscule 2% success rate for such deliveries.

In contrast, the success rate for freshly farmed eggs is said to be 43%. So, why would anyone want to freeze the eggs at all. Writing in the Medindia.com, when the ‘country’s first frozen oocyte pregnancy’ was reported from Chennai in February this year, Dr Reeja Tharu explains that it would be a boon for, among others, women who may prefer to delay having a baby. An egg farmed at age, say, 28 would remain that young even when it is used  by the women to enter pregnancy at, say, age 40. The advantage: the younger the egg, the healthier it is.

Women with pelvic diseases, ovarian dysfunction or premature ovarian failure can also opt for frozen eggs.

For a country that gave birth to its first test tube baby about 20 years ago, it has certainly been an eventful score – medically, ethically and financially!

Recently, the Guardian reported on “The fertility tourists” descending on India. These are women who arrive with frozen sperm, scout for an egg donor and, an IVF later, return home with the implanted embroys.

Besides being cheaper, India is also seen to be easy on the legal and ethical issues involved. Compared to the strictly regulated and monitored fertility treatments in a country like the UK, in India IVF is entirely self-regulated. Thus, while the UK may not allow more than three embroys for implantation, citing medical risks to mother and baby, in India doctors are ready to implant as many as five.

And who are the donors? “Healthy young fertile Indian women… who are superovulated exclusively for you”, as the online ads for such services put it. The Guardian contrasted the lives of two such donors — one in a Gujarat village who was paid Rs 5,600 each of the three times she donated so she could “provide more” to her two children; and another, a student, in Mumbai who didn’t inform her family but thought it no big deal to donate, as the Rs 20,000 she received would fund her requirement of new clothes and gadgets.

And the medical implications of “superovulating” the women to produce more eggs? No, we’re too busy with our “growth story” to worry about such side issues.

Meanwhile, in Anand (Gujarat), fabled for its cooperative movement that paid rich socioeconomic dividends, there is another story of cross-country cooperation but which went awry.

Little Manjhi finds herself in no-woman’s land barely a few weeks after her arrival on Planet Earth. Her surrogate Indian mother will have nothing to do with her, as was agreed upon. Her biological Japanese mother divorced before the baby’s birth and she doesn’t want the baby too. Manjhi’s Japanese father and grandmother definitely want her but they are being forced to first battle the laws(!) of our motherland. 

The  recent ruling by a Russian judge that sexual harrassment at the workplace is not only acceptable, but necesssary “for the survival of the human race”, has, predictably, got an explosion of responses from various blogs.

Recently a 22-year-old advertising professional in russia moved a court compalining that her 47-year-old boss had locked her out of office becasue she refused to have sex with him.  She is the reportedly third woman ever to successfully bring a sexual harassment case in Russia, where sexual harassment is rampant.

The boss  claimed that female workers signalled to him all the time “with their eyes that they desperately wanted to be laid on the boardroom table as soon as he gave the word. I didn’t realise at first that he wasn’t speaking metaphorically,” she said.

The judge said he threw out the case not because of lack of evidence but because the employer had acted gallantly rather than criminally. “If we had no sexual harassment we would have no children,” the judge ruled.

Little wonder then that sexual harassment is rampant in Russia; and there are suggestions that female subordiantes forced to have sex with their managers/supervisors is one of the reasons for the high rate of unwanted pregnancies and abortions in the coutnry. According to one report, in 2006, there were as many as 1.6 million abortions in Russia.

Here is an interesting comment on one blog on the high number of abortions: “While getting assaulted by your boss may be the only way to pay the bills, it sure isn’t incentive to give birth to more Russian babies.”

Once again we have proved how fragile religious amity is in our country; Jammu and Kashmir are on loggerheads over the land given to the Sri Amarnath Shrine Yatra Board and then revoked. Undoubtedly Omar Abdullah made a fine and passionate speech in the Lok Sabha on how Kashmiris have looked after the Amrnath yatris for long years and will continue to do so. “But we will not part with our land”, was his refrain.

If Kashmiris have such large hearts as he said - and undoubtedly Kashmiriyat as we know it and as it existed … yes, sadly enough, I feel I have to use the past tense … was a quality that encompassed secular values, a modern outlook not hindered/clogged by the cobwebs of religious dogma, and which essentially encompassed a universal outlook on life and people - then why balk at tranfer of some acres of forest land?

One could understand if he or other Kashmiri leaders had said  they don’t want to hand over the land to this particular Board but  the State government would itself take responsibility for putting up the shelters for yatris.  For how long can any group of pilgrims be expected to make do with makeshift facilities in a region with weather conditions as harsh and unpredictable as Kashmir?

One wonders why our leaders have become so petty… why nobody wants to yield an inch of space… would that be considered a sign of weakness? I dont think so… generosity and compassion do not come from the weak… they never have. As I said in my edit-page column in Business Line last week,  the rage and violence in Jammu, even though fanned by the BJP which is eagerly waiting to gain political mileage from this in the next general election, has to do with a sense of suppression and injustice dating back to the all imortant year of 1989, where trouble began in the Valley.

In 1990, Kashmiri Pandits were virtually chased out of the Valley and many of them have been forced to live in Jammu, which they don’t consider ‘home’ at all. How could they; they are after all Kashmiris. What is most frightening is that one flashpoint like this, and Kashmiri Muslims, egged on by the Hurriyat Conference and the PDP of the Muftis, start waving Pakistani flags and want to take their fruit laded trucks to Muzaffarabad, the capital of PoK. As if Pakistan, in such a horrible state itself,  is the panacea for all its problems.

One last thought… our people are so ready to march, protest, rave and rant when it comes to an issue of religious identity.. or rather divide. Why don’t we Indians get angry and anguished when it comes to issues like corruption in public life, denial of simple and efficient services to us like decent and pothole free roads? Power shortage, clogged and overfowing drains and sewers, lack of piped water supply in so many areas…. food for thought!

If you thought our criminalised politicians of Bihar or Uttar Pradesh were a blot on our nation, you need to read about how the brother of a Pakistani minister in Balochistan buried five women alive. The human remains of the five women who have been desecrated by wild animals and the government has done nothing to provide a decent burial to  these victims of honour killings. trhee of them were first shot and as they were being buried alive, two of their female relatives protested, and were pushed into the grave too.

Honour killings… they exist in India too… are common in Islamic coutnries like Pakistan, particularly in the tribal areas, where women put their families to “shame” by marrying for love, eloping… and listen to this… getting raped, are killed by their reatives, mostly male - fathers and brothers. This, ostensibly, to save the family’s honour!

Thanks to the Asian Human Rights Commission, this latest horrendous episode has come to light. Read all about it at this link: http://www.ahrchk.net/ua/mainfile.php/2008/2969

Three of the girls, all school students, had defied their families by deciding to marry men of their choice and in courts. Where gender issues are concerned, the Indian sub continent is certainly living still in the dark ages.

(Syllogism and journalists)

Food in office canteen comes cheap. Sometimes , bloody cheap, indeed. Cheap food is generally (though not as a rule) said to be of lesser quality. Therefore office canteen food is of lesser quality. Is it some kind of quirky syllogism?  Perhaps. Syllogism – a form of logical argument that derives its conclusion from two propositions, sharing a common term, usually somewhat like this. All poets are alcoholics. Busybee is a poet. Therefore he is an alcoholic. Some deductive logic indeed, but the conclusion can be relied upon only if both premises are true.

   Syllogistic reasoning is said to be of medieval origin, and fiction-writers syllogize at times for that dramatic effect. But the maiden visit to our office canteen the other day woke me up to the time-worn truism, that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. In this case, it also brought about an entirely different persona in me. The reason was the unexpectedly good quality food, at the price at which it came. A sumptuous meal with a south Indian filter coffee thrown in, literally for a penny, as it were. For Rs 1.50, actually. This is stuff made of folklore, especially in these days of high inflation. But the strange thing was that after the meal, when my turn came to hand over the food coupon (of the above stated value), I was in two minds. Should I hand over higher value coupons, or should I give what is being suggested by my colleagues as fair value, or more precisely `unfair value’. A Rupee for a meal, and paise 50 for a cup of coffee?  You must be kidding. Canteenwalas in other  offices would think this is from Ripley’s Believe it or not facts. But having finally handed over the coupon, I was left wondering. Why did I not do my little bit by paying `true value’ rather than (un)fair value?

   I would like to conclude with my own brand of re-defined “syllogism”, borrowing a bit from Oscar Wilde, who said a “pessimist is one who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing”. Not known whether he had a journalist in mind when he said this..

 Quality food for free; Well, almost free. Does this diminish the quality of the food served? Absolutely not. Why then did I not pay more, even when I wanted to? Why did I suddenly become so possessive of the coupons which cost literally next to nothing. Will I be labelled, after this, as one “who knows the price of everything, but the value of nothing.”? Syllogism at work again. All journalists are storytellers. Storytellers are misers. All journalists are misers.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said the wireless Walky and Hello services (from Tata Teleservices and Reliance Communications) were wireless services and ordered them to pay Rs 700 crore to BSNL as access deficit charges.

Here is the report on the judgment by The Hindu Business Line

Here are the judgments:

1. Tata Teleservices vs Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and others

2. Reliance Infocomm vs Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd and others  

Well, we unthinkingly use lifts (or elevators as our American audience would call it), but here’s an article that might might make you think a little more about what you do when you step inside one the next time. If you are the timid kind, you might even try and avoid using the lift whenever you can! Which is not a bad idea, keeps you healthier. Anyway, that’s only the first page. The article is actually a celebration. 

From The New Yorker:

Two things make tall buildings possible: the steel frame and the safety elevator. The elevator, underrated and overlooked, is to the city what paper is to reading and gunpowder is to war. Without the elevator, there would be no verticality, no density, and, without these, none of the urban advantages of energy efficiency, economic productivity, and cultural ferment.

Travel writing: Then and now.

Then [In More Intelligent Life]:

Much of what we know about the ancient world we owe to Herodotus, the only travel writer in print for 2,500 years. A.P. David invites us to renew our acquaintance with the inventor of history …

Now [In The Age, Australia]:

An interesting exchange on the forum concerns “desk updates”, which one writer refers to as Lonely Planet’s “dirty secret”. The fact is, “desk updates” are not just Lonely Planet’s “dirty secret” but the industry’s dirty secret.

I wrote the other day in the eWorld blog (here and here) in another context about how our expectations regarding response has changed along with improved connectivity. Here is a blog post (in ReadWriteWeb) that looks at how faster and more stressful life is becoming.

An excerpt:

We are not going to settle for less than right now. This means that the future holds more and more stress. As we evolve into a society that demands more information and more information processing immediately, we are also evolving into a society of people under constant stress.