Indian Culture and Heritage:Introduction and Pre-historic Rock paintings

"India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only." -Mark Twain

"We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made." -Albert Einstein

"If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India."
-Max Mueller

I could quote a million people, write a thousand blogs and still be scratching at the surface of the grandeur that is India. Where in the History of mankind can I start writing about a culture, which transcended through spatial and temporal boundaries. A culture which went onto become the mother of all modern civilization. To understand the origin of such a phenomenon we need to look back in time,maybe as back as prehistoric time.

Map of prehistoric sites in India

The earliest discovery of prehistoric rock art was made in India, twelve years before the discovery of Alta Mira in Spain. Father of Indian Rock Art’ Dr V S Wakankar and others have done extensive studies on rock art in India, there are over thousand caves in 150 different sites all over India.Central India is the richest zone of prehistoric rock art in India. The highest concentration of rock art sites is situated in the Satpura, Vindhya and Kaimur Hills.

As there is no language or script in prehistoric time, it has to be studied based on tools, pottery, habitats and drawing on cave walls of this time. Prehistoric paintings have been found in many parts of the world, there is very little evidence suggesting any drawings related to lower paleolithic period, but in upper paleolithic period there is a proliferation of artistic activities. The subjects of the drawings are human figures, human activities, geometric designs and symbols.

Remnants of rock paintings have been found in several districts of Madhya Pradesh, Uttar pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka and Uttarakhand.

• Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka: Kupagallu, Pikhlihal and Tekkalkota (Neolithic, three types White, Red ochre over white and Red Ochre) 
• Madhya Pradesh: Karabad in the Raisen district, Shamla Hills next to Bhopal, Numerous painted shelters of Bhimbetka, Magazine Shelter and Chaturbhujnath Nala in Chambal valley and its tributaries.(Richest of all rock paintings in India, Paleolithic and Neolithic) 
• UP: They are Kumerun extensions of Vindhyas, Sohagihat in the Mirzapur district
• Uttarakhand: Kumaon hills on the banks of river Suyal called lakhudiyar(land of lakh caves) (Superimposition of paintings, 3 types, Man, Animals and geometric patterns in White, Black and Red  Ochre) 

Bhimbetka:

It is the richest source of Rock art in India, it is in Madhya Pradesh, 40 km south of Bhopal. Paintings here vary from mundane to ritual as well as royal images. They are categorised into seven historical periods. We are going to look into first three periods. 

• Period I: Upper Paleolithic ( linear, huge animal figures, stick like human. Colour schemes, green as dancers and red as hunters)
• Period II: Mesolithic ( Multiple themes, small paintings, hunting scenes predominate. Animals are naturalistic though people are depicted figuratively. All sections of society like women, man old and young are found. Traces of family life. Hand prints, finger prints and fist prints.)
• Period III: Chalcolithic ( interaction of cave dwellers and agricultural communities of malwa plains, metal tools, pottery etc. Many colours but white and red are main from geru and limestone. There is a distinction in paintings of living and non-living spaces. Paintings are vibrant, might of given them power.  tonal effect is realistically maintained)

There are 20 layers of paintings in some of the areas, it leads to an obvious question of why do some have so many layers at same place again and again? did it have any religious or social importance?

In conclusion, we can learn a great deal about prehistoric man in India, by observing cave art and other archaeological evidence. The themes of art have varied over time, with evolution of new ways of life. Development of different social, religious and other technology enabled them to speak and write languages, which is the beginning of history in modern sense. In next blog we will study about one of the earliest civilizations in the world "Indus valley civilization", why it is considered advanced urban civilization? why its classiified as proto historic period? and many more. 

Book Review: Poor but spirited in Karimnagar; Field notes of a Civil Servant

As a guy who is from Karimnagar, and who witnessed Smt. Sumita Dawra's administration first hand. i wanted to read this book since it was published. There are a few things which persuaded me to read this. As an aspiring civil servant, i wanted to gain experience to become better acquainted with grass root level administrative process, and there is no best way than to learn it from my childhood role model.

I firstly bow down to the commitment of all the sincere civil servants like Smt. Sumita Dawra, who have dedicated their lives to make things better. This book has gained my respect for its pragmatic approach and for the experiences author has shared. Though I do have some ideological differences with some of author's  points, there are a lot of things I would appreciate. I should say that this book is a compelling read for people who want to know real India. All this humdrum about politics has made me think how people are "Educated illiterates", including me! how much of what we discuss and debate is futile and how there are people right now, burning midnight oil for a better India.

Coming to the book, It might not the best book for policy making, but i can assure you that this book has a lot of merit in connecting dots between policy making and reality. A benevolent administrator meets, macro level policy making through her experience as well as case studies, summarizes this book in a single line.

Book has eight chapters, every chapter has three sections - identifying the problem, providing the context and the author's solutions for those problem. The book starts with an introduction of Wicked problems. how the fields of poverty alleviation, education, health care, agriculture, water and sanitation and urban governance, are stuck in wicked issues. How solutions based on greater community involvement, decentralisation  of administration, innovation, feedback mechanisms, proper accountability and an able leader can change the fabric of stagnant country.

The narration of experience of author as an administrator are inspiring and moving simultaneously. Especially in the chapter three, Epidemic and Malnourishment in Karimnagar, author's recollections, reminded me of why I wanted to prepare for civil services. This chapter shows how different sections of society live different realities.

Finally I would definitely recommend this book to people who are preparing for civil services and other people in general. I am giving links to buy the book. If you have any personal thoughts please drop them in comments. I will try to review more books, which I find interesting as well as important.

Thank you,
Shiva


http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/senior-ias-officer-sumitra-dawra-pens-a-collectors-copy/article3732494.ece
Flipkart:
http://www.flipkart.com/poor-spirited-karimnagar-field-notes-civil-servant/p/itmddt4qbperntb7
Amazon:
http://www.amazon.in/Poor-But-Spirited-Karimnagar-Servant/dp/9350291509

Authoritarian party and Democracy: Criticism of party politics in India I

People often think that they only have choice between bad and worse in the elections. Hence in the group of bad, they vote for least bad. hence end up in 5 years of rut!

Our two time Prime Minister came from upper house, Rajya Sabha. Why do you think, he never competed for Lok Sabha seat in last 2 terms? is it because the party as well as he did not have confidence in people's capability to elect a wise man? Do you think the he/party kept him away from elections to protect his  integrity? Do you think the quality of leaders elected through through direct elections  do not meet the requirement of people? Is there a gap between what people choose and what people's requirement is? If there is a gap, who decides what the peoples requirements are and who( Prime minister in this case) should be selected to meet them?  Who gave power to party to do all this?

All the above questions point towards the level of autonomy a party has in our political system. In a vast country like India, perfect democracy is not possible. It needs to provide a considerable amount of autonomy to various institutions. Autonomy means power, as Lord Acton quoted "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." This corruption has directly or indirectly lead Authoritarian Party system. Let us understand its development in historical perspective. 

To understand the development of Authoritarian party system, we need to first understand even basic conflict which persisted since Independence. Should elected government be accountable to people or party? this debate resulted in ambiguity which provided a path to the current form of party system.

Leadership of party versus Government

Pre-independence era

This era was marked with party democracy at all levels of the cadre, critical decisions were taken based on majority consensus, every idea was discussed among the members of the party. This can be examined through examples of Constituent assembly though being a one-party body, took everyone's ideas and criticism into account while making constitution, It even included non party members like B.R.Ambedkar. Similarly, the decision to start Non-Co-operation movement was taken with 1336 votes for and 886 votes against Gandhiji's resolution. During Second World War, Gandhiji's stand on cooperation with the war effort was rejected by Congress. 

Nehru era

As Congress was the only major party which dealt with this problem in the initial years of Independence, lets discuss about it. In November 1946, Jawaharlal Nehru resigned from party presidentship, and joined the interim government on the grounds that the roles of leader of a party and leader of government could not be combined. His successor J.B.Kriplani, however demanded a greater role for Congress Working Committee(CWC) a larger role in the working of the government, and all the government planning should be taken in consultation with them.

Jawaharlal Nehru

Nehru, Sardar Patel and other prominent leaders did not agree to it. They argued that proceedings of Government are secret and cannot be divulged to party. They argued that, party should give ideological direction in long term policies and goals but should not interfere in governance. Eventually J.B.Kriplani resigned from the office. In 1950, another conflict broke out between Right wing conservative Purushottom Das Tandon and Nehru because of difference in ideology and former being elected as Congress president. Nehru, who couldn't imagine right wing outlook prevailing over upcoming government, threatened with his resignation to get Tandon out of presidentship, there was an other conflict between them which remained unresolved until now, that is party's control over elected government. The two conflicts above show how Nehru analysed the varying degree of acceptability of party's intrusion into governments functioning. After demise of Gandhi and Patel, though Nehru was the sole strong leader in congress, he didn't let authoritative tendencies take over him, he respected everyone's opinion.  I believe that Nehru's threatening for tandon's resignation is the first step of party's transition from democratic towards authoritarian structure, even then democratic tendency of party survived  until Nehru's demise in may 1964.

Post Nehru era: Shastri, Indira and Syndicate

Lal Bahadur Shastri

Nehru in his final fearing degeneration of party democracy because all the cabinet ministers were forming aristocracy and loosing roots in public, with K.Kamraj, came up with a plan which came to be known as Kamraj plan. It was supposed to make six cabinet minters and others to resign and join party cadres for its revival. Unfortunately Nehru died before he could come up with new cabinet. Even then Nehru was so confident in party's democracy that he didn't announce a successor. K.Kamraj, became the next part president, he formed the syndicate. Syndicate was a strong sub group inside Congress. They made Lal Bahadur Shastri the new PM of India. Initially, he was completely under control of syndicate but after sometime he asserted his power in Indo-Pak war of 1965.

Article to be continued 

Democratization of internet

The following article is from economic and political weekly,  and has been produced here for non commercial purposes.

Whither Internet Democratisation?
The "NETmundial" conference in Brazil on democratising internet governance was a vacuous exercise.

The internet today is ubiquitous the world over as a mode of communication and diffusion of knowledge, and an arena for commercial business, among other things. Its massive expansion, largely in a free and equitable manner, has much to do with the effort of various communities of people engaged in building a digital commons over and beyond the pioneering efforts of departments of the US government that built the internet in the first place. Issues of governance have inevitably come to the fore, and much was expected from the conference, “NETmundial”, held last month, which sought to build upon prevailing ideas concerning multilateralisation of internet governance.

At present, it is the agencies of the US government that control the nuts and bolts of internet architecture, primarily the domain name system (DNS) and the root zone server which controls the naming and addressing protocols for domains all over the world. The US government has over the previous decade and a half resolved to loosen its hold – through the aegis of US commerce department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) – over the DNS and the root zone server. The work of maintaining the two have been contracted to the not-for-profit Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), headquartered in the US. On 14 March 2014, the US government reiterated its intent to undertake the transition to – what it has called – a “multi-stakeholder model” of internet governance.

Previously, the “multi-stakeholder model” was shorthand for privatisation, basically leading to corporate control over the internet’s key resources, but over time it has intended to include various civil society representatives and organisations. In its present intended configuration the model is now pitted against what others have argued for – a “multilateral model of governance”. The latter has pitched for a UN-like grouping of nation states having a say in internet governance through a multilateral international organisation.

The US, with support from many of its OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) allies, has steadfastly refused to allow a transition of this kind, fearing loss of inherent control of national law and national government agency regulation of the internet. This has led to grievances over the US’s retention of the internet’s major governing resources. Since last year, it has been clear that the US government along with large and predominantly monopolist internet corporations have conducted mass surveillance over the internet of people even beyond the US’s borders. The US government has also declined to curb the anti-competitive practices of the monopolistic corporations command­ing various aspects of the internet. It has pushed the veneer of protection of civil liberties guaranteed in its Constitution and its purported role as the leader of the “free world” in refusing to cede any ground to proposals related to multilateral governance of the internet. A multilateral approach has been deemed necessary by many as it is well understood that sovereign nations have the best wherewithal to address issues such as cyber warfare/cyber-terrorism or to bring into place restrictions on unfair practices that establish monopolistic control over the internet’s resources.

It is in this regard that Brazil among others has initiated a dialogue between those advocating a “multi-stakeholder approach” and those for a “multilateral approach” to internet governance. “NETmundial” was intended as a step in this direction. It sought to build upon the ideas for multilateralisation of internet governance as these have evolved from the Tunis agenda for the Information Society conducted by the World Summit on the Information Society in 2005. The conference was held in the context of Brazil’s move to counteract US domination over internet resources, which had made possible Washington’s “boundless” and intrusive surveillance programmes. It coincided with the signing into law by Brazil’s Parliament of a bill of internet rights that protects the civil liberties of internet users in the country. This law includes the provision of “net neutrality”, a principle that equalises access to any website for the ordinary user. It is noteworthy that a US federal court had in January this year ruled against “net neutrality” in favour of a communication services corporation. In this context, it is worrying that articulation of the need to preserve “net neutrality” was expressly lacking in the outcome document of the conference’s deliberations.

While the outcome of the conference was a “non-binding” set of principles, efforts to reach a workable consensus that protects the “free-ness and openness” of the internet and permits democratic “multi-stakeholder” control over the internet’s governance system were only partially successful. With continued scepticism emanating from the US and its allies over the need for other states to participate in the transition to a multi-stakeholder model, the use of language favouring strict copyright laws and inter­mediary liabilities amounting to decentralised policing by intermediaries over users, the outcome document has belied expectations. The US continues to remain non-committal about how it seeks to implement its intent of bestowing internet governance upon a global community of multiple stakeholders. Without a discriminating and discerning differentiation of roles and responsibilities between stakeholders such as global corporations, civil society organisations and sovereign nation states, and allowing for a more decentralised structure of internet Governance,  the proposed transition accounts to a vacuous exercise.