GMRT 2020 and lots of stories

First of all, congratulations to all those who got us 2022 Debconf, so we will finally have a debconf in India. There is of course, lot of work to be done between now and then. For those who would be looking forward to visit India and especially Kochi I would suggest you to hear this enriching tale –

I am sorry I used youtube link but it is too good a podcast not to be shared. Those who don’t want youtube can use the invidio.us link for the same as shared below.

https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=BvjgKuKmnQ4

I am sure there are lot more details, questions, answers etc. but would direct them gently to Praveen, Shruti, Balasankar and the rest who are from Kochi to answer if you have any questions about that history.

National Science Day, GMRT 2020

First, as always, we are and were grateful to both NCRA as well as GMRT for taking such good care of us. Even though Akshat was not around, probably getting engaged, a few of us were there. About 6-7 from the Mozilla Nasik while the rest representing the foss community. Here is a small picture which commentrates the event –

National Science Day, GMRT 2020

While there is and was a lot to share about the event. For e.g. Akshay had bought RPI- Zero as well as RPI-2 (Raspberry Pi’s ) and showed some things. He had also bought up a Debian stable live drive with persistence although the glare from the sun was too much that we couldn’t show it to clearly to students. This was also the case with RPI but still we shared what and how much we could. Maybe next year, we either ask them to have double screens or give us dark room so we can showcase things much better. We did try playing with contrast and all but it didn’t have much of an effect 😦 . Of course in another stall few students had used RPI’s as part of their projects so at times we did tell some of the newbies to go to those stalls and see and ask about those projects so they would have a much wider experience of things. The Mozilla people were pushing VR as well as Mozilla lite the browser for the mobile.

We also gossiped quite a bit. I shared about indicatelts , a third-party certificate extension although I dunno if I should file a wnpp about it or not. We didn’t have a good experience of when I had put an RFP (Request for Package) which was accepted for an extension which had similar functionality which we later come to know was sharing the sites people were using the extension to call home and share both the URL and the IP Address they were using it from. Sadly, didn’t leave a good taste in mouth 😦

Delhi Riots

One thing I have been disappointed with is the lack of general awareness about things especially in the youth. We have people who didn’t know that for e.g. in the Delhi riots which happened recently the law and order (Police) lies with Home Minister of India, Amit Shah. This is perhaps the only capital in the world which has its own Chief Minister but doesn’t have any say on its law and order. And this has been the case for last 70 years i.e. since independance. The closest I know so far is the UK but they too changed their tune in 2012. India and especially Delhi seems to be in a time-capsule which while being dysfunctional somehow is made to work. In many ways, it’s three body or a body split into three personalities which often makes governance a messy issue but that probably is a topic for another day. In fact, scroll had written a beautiful editorial that full statehood for Delhi was not only Arvind Kejriwal’s call (AAP) but also something that both BJP as well as Congress had asked in the past. In fact, nothing about the policing is in AAP’s power. All salaries, postings, transfers of police personnel everything is done by the Home Ministry, so if any blame has to be given it has to be given to the Home Ministry for the same.

American Capitalism and Ventilators

America had been having a history of high cost healthcare as can be seen in this edition of USA today from 2017 . The Affordable Care Act was signed as a law by President Obama in 2010 which Mr. Trump curtailed when he came into power couple of years back. An estimated 80,000 people died due to seasonal flu in 2018-19 . Similarly, anywhere between 24-63,000 have supposed to have died from Last October to February-March this year. Now if the richest country can’t take care of their population which is 1/3rd of the population of this country while at the same time United States has thrice the area that India has. This I am sharing as seasonal flu also strikes the elderly as well as young children more than adults. So in one senses, the vulnerable groups overlap although from some of the recent stats, for Covid-19 even those who are 20+ are also vulnerable but that’s another story altogether.

If you see the CDC graph of the seasonal flu it is clear that American health experts knew about it. One another common factor which joins both the seasonal flu and covid is both need ventilators for the most serious cases. So, in 2007 it was decided that the number of ventilators needed to be ramped up, they had approximately 62k ventilators at that point in time all over U.S. The U.S. in 2010, asked for bids and got bid from a small californian company called Newport Medic Instruments. The price of the ventilators was approximately INR 700000 at 2010 prices, while Newport said they would be able to mass-produce at INR 200000 at 2010 prices. The company got the order and they started designing the model which needed to be certified by FDA. By 2011, they got the product ready when a big company called Covidgen bought Newport Medic and shutdown the project. This was shared in a press release in 2012. The whole story was broken by New York Times again, just a few days ago which highlighted how America’s capitalism rough shod over public health and put people’s life unnecessarily in jeopardy. If those new-age ventilators would have been a reality then not just U.S. but India and many other countries would have bought the ventilators as every county has same/similar needs but are unable to pay the high cost which in many cases would be passed on to their citizens either as price of service, or by raising taxes or a mixture of both with public being none the wiser. Due to dearth of ventilators and specialized people to operate it and space, there is possibility that many countries including India may have to make tough choices like Italian doctors had to make as to who to give ventilator to and have the mental and emotional guilt which would be associated with the choices made.

Some science coverage about diseases in wire and other publications

Since Covid coverage broke out, the wire has been bringing various reports of India’s handling of various epidemics, mysteries, some solved, some still remaining unsolved due to lack of interest or funding or both. The Nipah virus has been amply discussed in the movie Virus (2019) which I shared in the last blog post and how easily it could have been similar to Italy in Kerala. Thankfully, only 24 people including a nurse succumbed to that outbreak as shared in the movie. I had shared about Kerala nurses professionalism when I was in hospital couple of years back. It’s no wonder that their understanding of hygeine and nursing procedures are a cut above the rest hence they are sought after not just in India but world-over including US and UK and the middle-east. Another study on respitory illness was bought to my attention by my friend Pavithran.

Possibility of extended lockdown in India

There was talk in the media of extended lockdown or better put an environment is being created so that an extended lockdown can be done. This is probably in part due to a mathematical model and its derivatives shared by two Indian-origin Cambridge scholars who predict that a minimum 49 days lockdown may be necessary to flatten the covid curve about a week back.

Predictions of the outcome of the current 21-day lockdown (Source: Rajesh Singh, R. Adhikari, Cambridge University)

Alternative lockdown strategies suggested by the Cambridge model (Source: Rajesh Singh, R. Adhikari, Cambridge University)

India caving to US pressure on Hydroxychloroquine

While there has been lot of speculation in U.S. about Hydroxychloroquine as the wonder cure, last night Mr. Trump threatened India in a response to a reporter that Mr. Modi has to say no for Hydroxychloroquine and there may be retaliations.

As shared before if youtube is not your cup you can see the same on invidio.us

https://www.invidio.us/watch?v=YP-ewgoJPLw

Now while there have been several instances in the past of U.S. trying to bully India, going all the way back to 1954. In fact, in recent memory, there were sanctions on India by US under Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government (BJP) 1998 but he didn’t buckle under the pressure and now we see our current PM taking down our own notification from a day ago and not just sharing Hydroxychloroquine but also Paracetemol to other countries so it would look as if India is sharing with other countries. Keep in mind, that India, Brazil haven’t seen eye to eye on trade agreements of late and Paracetemol prices have risen in India. The price rise has been because the API (Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients) for the same come from China where the supply chain will take time to be fixed and we would also have to open up, although should we, should we not is another question altogether. I talk about supply chains as lean supply chains were the talk since late 90’s when the Japanese introduced Just-in-time manufacturing which lead to lean supply chains as well as lot of outsourcing as consequence. Of course, the companies saved money but at the cost of flexibility and how this model was perhaps flawed was shared by a series of articles in Economist as early as 2004 when there were lot of shocks to that model and would be exaberated since then. There have been frequent shocks to these fragile ecosystem more since 2008 after the financial meltdown and this would put more companies out of business than ever before.

The MSME sector in India had already been severely impacted first by demonetization and then by the horrendous implementation of GST whose cries can be heard from all sectors. Also the frequent changing of GST taxes has made markets jumpy and investors unsure. With judgements such as retrospective taxes, AGR (Adjusted Gross Revenue) etc. it made not only the international investors scared, but also domestic investors. The flight of the capital has been noticeable. This I had shared before when Indian Government shared about LRS report which it hasn’t since then. In fact Outlook Business had an interesting article about it where incidentally it talked about localcircles, a community networking platform where you get to know of lot of things and whom I am also a member of.

At the very end I apologize for not sharing the blog post before but then I was feeling down but then I’m not the only one.

India doesn’t need women or doctors

This is again going to be a long one hence I want to start by sharing some positive news first. Few days back, a vlogger Dhruv Rathee made a vlog review about Jatayu nature and park open in Kerala.

Now, why is it important and good. While it is a profitable initiative, it has been made by private money at the cost of INR 100 crores. It has been built which was a degraded barren land surrounded by forest. While one could argue that even such lands should not be disturbed and one perhaps might be right about that, the research I found seem to be inconclusive. I was looking at one study sometime back in which two adjacent plots of land were taken, both degraded, barren patches of land . One land was left alone while the other had some sort of stable, with animals in it, horses, pigs, donkey etc. and they left the land pretty much besides coming at intervals to see if the animal feed was good enough of them, veteniary medical checkups etc. At the end of couple of years, they checked the micro-nutrients of the soil to see which had more mico-nutrients. It was found out that the ones which had the animals was more fertile and had slightlly more/better ecosystem than the one which was left. IIRC, they published the result in some magazine like ‘Nature’ or some such peer-reviewed publication and other scientists were apply to replicate the results with varying degrees of success. While I remember the simplified version I am sure it is far more complex than I have described. One of the best things they have shared in the review, that the land has been leased from the State Govt. for a period of 30 years after which it will given back to the State of Kerala.

FWIW, Jatayu is the name of a mythological bird taken from Ramayana. Instead of wasting 3000 crores of taxpayer’s money for one single statue and instead invested in in health, education, safe drinking water, employment generation etc. it would have enriched not just the people benefiting from it, but also made x times productivity growth as it has been proved time and again that any improvement in people’s lives not just makes them better, but also enhances countries growth as well. I have given the number X as right now India has 0 people in its Statistical Commisson as the last two full-time membes resigned couple of years back. The only somewhat factual numbers that are in India are provided by CMIE which is a private institution and obviously doesn’t have neither the funds nor the reach that a Government body can. CMIE does share some interesting facts and figures but that probably is a story for another day. For those who might want to visit Jatayu can visit Jayatu Center website for the same. The image shared above is taken from keralatourism.org website and is copyrighted to them.

No Country for Women

While I have written on this topic a few times before, each time an incident happens and I feel do we really deserve women ? Many a times when a woman (young or old) goes to the police she is asked to present evidence. Now a young woman who was persistently blackmailed, raped by a person of the ruling party, a ‘Swami’ , a nomenclature reserved for a seer who is supposed to be beyond temptation presented 45 videos of the gentleman to the police. She also leaked couple in social media so that the videos don’t disappear into thin air and she and her family doesn’t get killed as was attempted in Unnao rape case. It is only because the facts came in public that the MLA accused in the Unnao rape case got expelled from the ruling partt, In fact, even the killers in Nirbhaya Rape case , even they haven’t been hanged.

Paper Clipping of Chinmayanand Rape Case

The sad part part is that in this case, even after evidence she has been asked to produce two witnesses who would say that she has been raped. I haven’t ever heard a more bizarre story while siding with the seer who has claimed that she was extorting money from him. The list goes just goes on and on, there were 6 women journalists who claimed sexual harassment against MJ Akbar. The case is on-going in the Supreme High Court where it will be heard now after Dusshera holidays. The last hearing was done on 9th September and will start anytime after 20th October when the Supreme Court starts. And there are several more cases, like the Kathua case rape, the Muzaffarpur Shelter home case, the case goes on and on. Sadly, we don’t even have latest stats as there are no statisticians in Indian Govt. and the only report we have is the 2016 NCRB report which does show the trend that there is rising crime in India. It is party to joblessness which is rampant, and partly perhaps of our conservative mindset towards sex, sex-education .

There were two good movies made in India on the subject, one which sank in Bollywood without a trace called Khandaani Shafakhana which more or less only talked about erectile dysfunction and tried to make few jokes about it. There was Vicky Donor which talked about sperm donation which did good business a while back. The movie which touched my heart recently was though was the malyalam movie called Peranmbu starring ever-green star Mammooty. While I don’t speak Malyalam, you may get the movie on netflix or Amazon prime with english subs. While I don’t want to give the whole story of the movie, there is one scene in which Mammooty visits a woman so he can hire a male escort for his daughter and gets slapped. Many people, especially boys didn’t like that scene and said why he had to go there, but as a viewer if you see the movie from a father’s eyes he did what any sane father who loves his child will do. While at the end, they didn’t give any solution to the issue or it got censored, when you see the movie you can imagine the plight of such children’s fathers, relatives etc. It is sad when such movies which make you think aren’t even part of the national discourse then how are people to grow their consciousness, their humanity. When I hear of such incidents as above, I genuinely, does India really need women ? Shouldn’t women coming from other countries to India be given travel advisories stating that they should either have black belt in Karate or some defence techniques and carry a deadly weapon with them all times to defend themselves from us. It seems we, Indian men have no control 😦

No Country for Doctors

India doesn’t seem to be a country for doctors as well. In 2017, in BRD Hospital at Gorakpur 63 children died due to oxygen supply issues. For this, four doctors and couple of staff were held responsible for their deaths. Dr. Kafeel Khan, Dr. RK Misra, Dr. Purnima Misra, Dr. Satish, Gajanand Jaiwal (pharmacist), Uday Pratap Sharma (Junior Clerk). All of them were put into jail. Few days back, only the three doctors have been put out on bail, all the others are still in jail. Now one of the local newspapers, Janata Ka reporter had done detailed investigative story which shows that the problems or issues were at top. In fact when they were appraised of the facts, Dr. Khan and all the accused together actually somehow scrapped together 500 oxygen cylinders out of their own money. This is when it was found out that the doctors were not paid salaries of 2-3 months. In fact, it has been a perennial issue and because of that more than 50-60% of the hospital staff posts were vacant, due to lack of money. When you see such news and reports, you feel that why doctors should study medicine after paying such high fees and practise in India. They should migrate to US and UK as many of their brethren do. They get better wages, better social security. Neither IMA came to their rescue nor anybody else. It was only local people, the patients, people who knew them and struggled for it. IMA has its own share of issues and politiking but that is perhaps best suited for another date. No wonder that the number of doctors emigrating overseas has risen and people do not want to go to remote posts. When motivated cases like these can happen in cities, then what hope the doctor has of justice or anything in villages. In fact, most doctors nowadays in India have multiple heatlh conditions due to work-related stresses and other things. It is by no perchance that we are most depressed country on earth. Not really the validation we are looking for, right.

Life, Liberty and Kashmir

I was going to write about history of banking today but because the blockade is still continuing in Kashmir, I am forced to write my opinions on it and clear at least some ideas and myths various people have about Kashmir. Before I start though, I hope the Goa Debian Utsav was good. While I haven’t seen any reports, I hope it went well. Frankly, I was in two minds whether I should apply for the Debutsav in Goa or not. While there is a possibility that I could have applied and perhaps even got the traveling sponsorship, I was unsure as to what to tell the students. With recovery of the economy in India at least 6 quarters away if not more, it would have been difficult for me to justify to the students as to how to look for careers in I.T. when salaries of most professionals have been stagnant, lowered and even retention happening in Pune, Bangalore and other places it would have been difficult to say that.

Anyways, this would be a long one. I would like to start with a lawsuit filed in Kerala which was shared and the judgement which was given which at least in my view was a progressive decision. The case I am reciting is ”Right To Access Internet Is Part Of Right To Privacy And Right To Education‘ which was given by Kerala HC recently. The judgement of the case is at https://www.livelaw.in/pdf_upload/pdf_upload-364655.pdf which I reproduce below as well.

Right-to-access-internet-is-right-to-privacy-judgement
Download

So let us try to figure out what the suit/case was all about and how it involves the larger question of communication blockades and other things in Kashmir. The case involves a woman student of 18 years of age, a Faheema shirin (Petitioner) who came to Kerala for higher studies (B.Ed) at an institute called Narayanguru College located in Kozhikhode District. Incidentally, I have been fortunate to visit Kerala and Khozikhode District and they are beautiful places but we can have that conversation some other day. Now apparently, she was expelled from the college hostel for using the mobile phone during study time. The College is affiliated to University of Calicut. Now according to statements from the hostel matron, the petitioner and others, it became clear that inmates of the hostel were not allowed to use mobile phones from 10 p.m. to 6.a.m. -i.e. 22:00 hrs. to 0600 hrs. Apparently, this rule was changed to 1800 hrs – 2000 hrs. arbitrarily. The petitioner’s house is 150 kms. from the place. When she said it is not possible to follow the rules because of the subjects she was studying as well as she needed to connect to home anytime she wanted or her father or relatives may feel to call her or in case of any help. She alleged discrimination as these rules were only made for the girl’s hostel and not for the boy’s hostel. I had also seen and felt the same but as shared that’s for another day altogether.

The petitioner invoked the Conventions on Eliminations of all forms of Discrimination against Women, 1979, the Beijing Declaration and Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which GOI is a signatory and hence had to abide by its rules. She further contended that her education depended on her using digital technology with access to web as given in her textbook. She needed to scan the QR codes in various places in her textbooks and use the link given therein to see videos, animations etc. on a digital platform called swayam. Incidentally, it seems swayam runs on closed source software as shared by SFLC.in on their website. Now if it is closed, commercial software than most probably the only the content can be viewed is via streaming rather than downloading, going offline and seeing it as that would attract provisions of the IT ACT and perhaps would constitute piracy. While this point was not argued, it seemed pertinent for me to point out as few people on social media have asked about. In several such cases it is either impossible or you have to be an expert in order to manipulate and download such data (like Snowdem did) but then that’s again a story for another day. Interestingly, the father in the case above was also in the favor of the girl using mobile phone for whatever purpose as he trusts her implicitly and she is adult enough to make her own life choices.

Thankfully, the petitioner had presence of mine throughout the journey that she did all her correspondence through letters instead of orally and had documentary evidence to back up all her claims. The State Govt. of Kerala has been on the forefront of digital technology for a long while and me and many of my friends have been both witness and played our small parts in whichever way to see Kerala become an IT hub. While they still do need to do a lot more but that again is a story for another day. While there was lot of back and forth between her, the hostel authorities, the father and the hostel authorities, she, her father, the hostel authorities and the college but they were unable to resolve the issues amicably. Her grounds for the fight were –

a. She is an adult and of rational mind so she can make decisions on her own.
b. She has right of privacy ( as shared by the Honorable Supreme Court in its 2017 landmark judgement)
c. She needs the mobile and the laptop for studying as her studies demand her using Internet.
d. She also relied and used the budget speech made by Minister of Finance and State Government for making internet accessible to all citizens and recognizing the right to Internet as a human right.
e. Her violation to right of property under Article 300 A.

In order to further bolster her case, through her lawyers she cited further judgements and studies which show how women are disadvantaged to Internet access, in particular she cited a UNESCO study which tells the same.

The judge, Honorable Jutice P.V. Asha guided herself with the arguments and counter-arguments by both parties, she also delved into Calicut University First Ordinances under which the University, the college and the hostel come in to see how thngs fare there. She had also asked the respondent that by using Internet has she or any other student in the hostel ever caused disturbance to any of the other inmates to which the reply was negative. The Judge also determined that if a miuse of a mobile phone or laptop has to happen, it can happen any time, anywhere and you cannot and should not control adult behavior especially when it collides with dignity and freedom of an adult. The learned counsel for the petitioner also shared resolution 23/2 in the UN General Assembly held on 24th June 2013 which talks of freedom of expression and opinion for women’s empowerment to which India is a signatory. There is also resolution 20/8 of 5th July 2012 which also underscores the point. Both the portions of the resolution can be found on page 18 of the judgement. The judge also cited few other judgements which were pointed out by the learned counsel for the petitioner, the Vishaka Judgement (1997) , the Beijing Statement and several other cases and judgement which showed how women are discriminated against under society. In the end she set aside the expulsion citing various judgements and her rationale for the same and asked the matron to take the student back and also asked the student to not humiliate the teacher or warden and she be allowed to use phone in any way she feels fit as far as she doesn’t create any disturbance to other students.

Observations – It opens up several questions which are part of society’s issues even today and probably for sometime.

a. I have been part of quite a few workshops where while I was supposed to share about GNU/Linux, more often than not I ended up sharing about how to use web access rather than advanced technologies. In this I found women to be more backward and take more time to understand and use the concepts than men. Whether it is due to just access issues or larger societal reasons ( the hidden alleged misuse of web) I just don’t know. While I do wish we could do more I don’t have any solutions.

b. As correctly pointed by Honorable Justice Asha, if a women who is pursuing B.Ed. it would harm the career of the young woman. I would opine and put one step more, wouldn’t it also be endangering her proteges, her students from getting a better teacher who is able to guide her students to the best of her ability. As we all know, rightly or wrongly almost all information is available on the net. The role of the teacher or guide is not to show information but probably more as to how to inquire and interpret information in different ways.

Kashmir

In light of the above judgement would not the same principles apply to Kashmir. There are two points shared by various people who are in favor of the lockdown. The first is National Security, National Interest and the second is Kashmiri Pandits. Let us take them one by one –

a. National Interest or/and National Security – I find this reason porous on many grounds. This Govt. is ruled by one of the richest political parties that India ever has. Without divulging further, there is such a huge range of hardware and software for the Government to surveil. With AFSA in-place and all sorts of technologies available off-the-shelf to surveil on residents that argument looks weak. Further, the Minister’s statement tells that the issue is not security of the state but something else. Of course the majoratian view is that they deserve it because they are muslims. If this is not hate, I dunno what is. A person on twitter did a social experiment where a daughter and a mother had the same conflict. The daughter’s view is that it is not right, the mother’s view being the opposite. The daughter disallowed the mother any contact with her, her husband and her daughter for 2 weeks, the mother was in tears. Then how can you think of people being blocked for 2 months.

Another variation of the argument is that militants will come and kill. Now I find it hard to believe that even after having half a million soldiers in the valley they still feel miitants can do something and they cannot. I find it a little hard to digest. There has been news now that the Taliban are involved. If this is true then they have troubled U.S. also, so if one of the most powerful armies on the earth can be stale-mated for what 19 years, are we going to put Kashmiris in lockdown for 19 years ? In fact the prejudcial face can be seen even more at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXWZnnD6JFY-

Kashmiri Pandits – There is no doubt that there was a mass exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the valley. Nobody disputes that. But just like the process followed in NRC, whether rightly or wrongly couldn’t the Kashmiri Pandits be sent back home. I would argue this is the best time. You have a huge contigent of forces in the valley, you can start the process, get the documents, get them back into the valley, otherwise this will continue to be something like Palestine is in Israel which has continued to an issue for both Israelis and Palestinians with no end in sight. The idea that Pakistan will not harass or do something in Kashmir in fool’s paradise. They have been doing it since 90’s, for that to have a huge population blocked from communicating is nothing but harassment. And hate will never get you anywhere. While this is more greyer than I am making it out, feel free to read this interview as well as the series called The Family Man which I found to be pretty truthful as to the greyishness of the situation out there. While most of the mainstream media gave it an average score, I found it thought-provoking. The fact is mainstream media in India no longer questions the Government excesses. Some people do and they are often targeted. I do hope to share the banking scenario and a sort of mini-banking crisis soon. Till later.

Agencies able to monitor conversations without judicial oversight.

It seems that the BJP has finally lost what little moral compass it held. Today, in a stunning order we lost all the ground that all our civil activist friends had hard-fought in the last few years making Right to Privacy a fundamental right . At least a decade worth of effort has been put down the drain. While the reasons are not hard to fathom, they just lost 5 state elections and instead of introspecting the reasons of why they lost, they have chosen to act in this brazen manner.

The most worrying and interesting part at the same time is that the powers that have been given to the Central Agencies is without any judicial oversight so it’s pretty much given that they will use it more for their personal gains and enmity rather than any real or perceived threat to Indian sovereignty. They might be perceiving that losing in elections is tantamount to threat to Indian sovereignty. They forget that BJP!=India which means BJP is not equal to India, no political party is. In putting this order they are also putting precedents of fascist and dictatorial orders in a democratic, peace-loving country like India. The picture that emerges is a simple one, if they are going to lose, they might attempt these sort of orders in the hopes they can eavesdrop on the opposition, business leaders, threaten them etc. and by hook or crook win National elections which is supposed to be held in middle of next year nobody would be the wiser. They have made many changes in the highest court expecting that the judges that have been appointed would rule in their favor. And anyways, any filing of suit today would have a first hearing at least 3-4 months down the line or even later depending on dates of judges, court-room access etc. If nothing, the General Attorney from Government of India can always ask for more time.

The most worrying aspect of this is they have given even the Police Commissoner the said powers. While we hope that the higher bodies like ED and Intelligence Bureau would use the powers responsibly, the police sadly has been known to overreach its authority against civilians even without the additional powers given to them. Also this is setting precedents that State Police of different States could also ask for the same powers citing law and order. It is a bit ironic if you ask me that if you a law enforcement official serving say in the United States, you would have to get judicial consent before tapping a suspect’s phone even though they have right to bear arms (it is one of the fundamental rights), while here, i.e. in India posessing arms is more or less illegal but still police will get such powers citing law and order.

I wanted to share that the diversity and values that Indian people have and this seems to be the most opportune time to share it as had bunch of experiences in Kerala. There were couple of interesting experiences and observations that I made on my short visit to Kerala, Kochi. After being for the whole of Debutsav I decided to take a mini-holiday of 2-3 days to just look around Kochi. While I had been to Kerala before but each time it had been either a beach, a temple and not really seeing Kerala. This time around, I was able to see how due to Kochi being a sea port had lot of influences on Christian and Muslim minorities and how they are able to have a sort of jovial relationship. I did see Christian schools on roads named after Muslim saints and vice-versa although due to Dutch East India Company, most of the places and even roads had english names. Being alone, I was able to talk to some of the fishermen and they shared both their helplessness with the State’s response to the floods and the uncertainty of the catch. Because Fort Kochi is still a functioning port, I did see couple of huge cargo or freight ships as well as was able to use the ferry which the local people used for point to point travel. I would probably upload pictures of both in couple of days here itself. While I was fascinated by these huge container ships, the fishermen shared with me how it has polluted the inland and how fishing is not good as it once was. The only way is to go to open sea and with the recent floods it is not inspiring.

One of the more interesting experiences was meeting a Mr. Singh. I will not share the gentleman’s details as all the sharing were done off the record. I am sharing here just as an example of a reality which is not exposed often. Mr. Singh is the eldest of the three brothers. While he was born in Punjab but due to reasons unknown (I didn’t ask him) his father settled in Kerala. Just like rest of Keralities of his time there wasn’t much for young men like him to do. So instead of sitting idle like his 2 brothers he decided to risk and go to Middle East. This was in the 70’s. He worked in UAE, Dubai, Qatar and other places. He found many Indians, Punjabis included and none gave a fag about what religion they were. They made many watering holes where Indians used to meet every Friday, socialize and share news of whatever currently was happening there or whatever news they could get of home, India.

When he came back in the 90’s many people including him started either some small shops or restaurant business to cater to people. Unlike Pune though, Kochi doesn’t have seem to have many restaurants but anyways that’s a different story.

Around 1991/92 unrelated to the Bombay riots 1992 there were communal riots even there where his shop was burned down. But due to relationships he had built up in Middle East, many Muslims and even some Parsis came to help him and get back on his feet. So while his children are well-placed, he did feel that the community relationships which have helped and guided him hoped didn’t get trampled by BJP which is trying to upset the easy relationships most communities have built over decades. I did hear some similar stories from other people as well. There are even lot of Assamese people who have emigrated to Kerala and they speak Malayalam better than the natives. In fact, Balasankar confided that the domestic helper who comes to their place to help out his mother and family, her son got 100/100 in Malayalam . This says something about the spirit of the place and the people therein.

Economic Migration, Unemployment, Retirement benefits in advanced countries etc.

After my South African Debconf experience and especially the Doha, Qatar layover experience soon after my return back, a friend from Kerala had sent me a link of a movie called Pathemari . For various reasons I could not see the movie till I had come from the Hospital few months back. I would recommend everybody to see that movie if they want to see issues from a blue-collar migrant worker’s views.

Before I venture further, I think a lot of people confuse between economic migration and immigration. As can be seen in the movie, the idea of economic migrants is to do work and come back to his/her own country while immigration is more about political asylum, freedom of expression those kind of ideas. The difference between the two can be starkly seen in one of my favorite movies of all times ‘Moscow on Hudson’.

I have had quite a few discussions with some friends from Kerala last year and years before seeing this movie and had been sort of flabbergasted with the answers shared by them with me at the time. Most of them were on the lines of ‘we don’t want/need any development. I/We would go to X (Any Oil producing country) or west to make money and then come back home. Then why should we have industry ? While this is from personal anecdotal experiences while I was in the hospital, I also saw similar observations online as well. For e.g. Northwestern did an article which explains some of the complexity years ago . More recently has been an IIM, Bangalore Working Paper which corroborates the importance of Nursing to Kerala, the state as well as to the Indian economy as a whole. It’s a pretty interesting paper specifically for those wishing to understand aspects of Indian migration outward (nursing) and some info. about expectations from such migrants who want to join in the labor markets in Netherlands and Denmark (local language, culture, adaptions etc. all of which is good.).

In hindsight, I now agree with parts of the reasons shared by my colleagues and peers from Kerala in context to what has occurred in Goa in recent past and how that affected tourism of the state. While it has been few years since I last stayed in Goa for 2 weeks or more, I have always found it to be a little piece of Paradise tucked in the corner.

Also similarly in the context of median age of Americans rising which was shared in the previous article, I don’t see them replenishing their own ranks with young blood. The baby boom years for America seem to be over (for now and bit into the future). On the medicine side, since we have been talking about nursing. another observation is it seems that the American Government will cut off whole lot of Americans from medical care which Mr. Trump did few days back. The statements shared therein seems much a spin story as no numbers were shared or anything. There was this report I read last year which tells how an urban middle-class American family might suffer depending on how much medicare is cut.

I have seen something very similar happening in Pune, India, with quite a few insurance companies, medical practitioners, staff etc. giving needless medicines or tests where they aren’t needed, more so if you have insurance. Of course after you have availed it, your individual premium will rise as the ‘risk’ has increased but this is veering off the main story. There were quite a few patients who shared their horror stories and lessons with me during my stay in the hospital.

On the labor front I don’t see a way out for Americans to work. For e.g. Patels (a caste and a community) went to States and found that most Americans do not or did not like maintaining motels and they provided/took over the that service, partly as it’s a risky business and partly most motels are run-down etc. Apart from the spin being put in the context of both legal and illegal immigration in States, it seems, at least to me there would be more undocumented illegal Americans living then those coming legally and America would suffer economically due to that.

You can see Qatar doing it already as well as Saudi Arabia trying to be more open, while States seems to be dancing on another beat altogether.

Coming to the India perspective –

Note – Mrs. Sushma Swaraj, Ministry of External Affairs, India has been particularly active and robust in seeking welfare for Indian brethren trying to find work abroad.

One of the few good things that the present Government has done is have a pro-active foreign policy minister and being given a free hand to operate, she also seems to trust herself and others to do the right thing. Although she hasn’t done much apart from taking the lowest apples which were ripe for taking for years, it also tells/reminds that what apathy most Governments had towards foreign policy partly due to the socialist structure and culture in education, culture and even affairs of the State.

While I was reading on the subject I came across I,Daniel Blake . I saw the movie and shared with my mother. We were both shocked as we saw the trials that the gentleman had to go through and eventually his passing away. We thought that only bureaucracy in India was bad, now we come to know its the same at least as UK is concerned.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/jan/19/esther-mcvey-makes-disability-benefits-u-turn-over-payments

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/17/benefit-claimants-underpaid-employment-support-allowance

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/mar/29/employment-and-support-allowance-the-disability-benefit-cuts-you-have-not-heard-about

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/16/government-policy-poor-people-debt-benefits-universal-credit

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3138853/Britain-s-mid-life-crisis-UK-average-age-hits-40-time-population-jumps-500-000-64-6-million.html

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/28/freedom-great-deal-of-that-inside-the-eu-brexit

After seeing the movie saw the. The above does give some of the understanding why UK opted for Brexit and the expected fallout that probably will be.

Before I end I want to give a shout out, kudos to Daniel Echeverry for putting guake ported to gtk3 with dark theme. I really like the theme and do hope more themes follow in upcoming days, weeks and months.

Also another shoutout to Timo Aaltonen for getting a newer snapshot of xserver-xorg-video-intel for testing .

I do hope to explore a bit more of the new system, see what the new CPU, GPU can do in the coming days and weeks. I did some explorations about libsdl1.2 recently http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-sdl-maintainers/2018-January/002711.html and do hope to at least get some know-how where the newer integrated graphics and power options would become more useful in short and medium-term.

I also was thinking about the impending python3 transition and it seems that 90% of the big libraries are ready to make the transition. The biggest laggards seem to be mozilla, which I guess is still trying to deal with the fallout from firefox 57.0, the whole web-extensions bit etc.

Atm it seems a huge setback for mozilla, whether they will be able to survive is entirely on the third-party add-on developers. If that ecosystem doesn’t get enriched to the status they were before the transition, we could see firefox losing lot of users, at least in the short and medium-term.

Lastly, I did try to add a new usb device in the usb-database at https://usb-ids.gowdy.us/read/UD/1ecb/02e2 but there doesn’t seem to be a way to know whether that entry got accepted or not 😦

Debutsav 2014 Experiences – Day 0.

Hi all,
This would be not so brief notes on organizing #Debutsav 2014 this time around.

Debutsav at Amritapuri, Kollam, Kerala

This will be a short note about a mixed free software and debian related event called Debutsav being celebrated in Amritapuri, Kollam, Kerala on 17th and 18th of October, 2014