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MARCH 2005 |
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
 We begin with a happy announcement. From this month, Siliconeer goes all color. Our graphics department has worked overtime to take full advantage of this to bring to you a magazine that’s a joy to look at. We take this moment to thank our readers, patrons and advertisers. We cannot thank you enough for your continuing and growing support. Thanks to your support, Siliconeer continues to grow and develop as a magazine. This month’s cover story takes a closer look at India’s progress in science. We are deeply indebted to the popular magazine New Scientist, which has sent a veritable army of reporters to do a comprehensive survey about the extraordinary developments in science in India. In the past decade, India has rapidly emerged as a scientific powerhouse, and the future appears to hold even greater promise. Which is not to say that it doesn’t have daunting socio-economic problems. That it certainly does, but having said that, the past few years have been a remarkable story of the nation’s emergence from a byword for poverty, red tape and backwardness, to an IT heavyweight and now a versatile scientific and technological powerhouse. For readers who are interested, the entire contents of the Feb. 19 issue of New Scientist is available on the Web at their Web site at this link: http://www.newscientist.com/special/india Dalip Singh Saund is a much-loved Indian American hero. His inspiring story of overcoming the prejudice of his time and ultimately becoming the first Asian American Congressman is one that the community justly celebrates. This year, the House of Representatives has unanimously decided to pass an act to name a post office building in California after him. On this occasion, we present a life sketch of Saund by Inder Singh, a long-time California activist who has been unceasing in his efforts to bring recognition to Saund. Now to a more global issue. The recent tsunami has provided heartening evidence that we indeed live in a global village. The surge of support for the victims in the wake of the natural disaster has been remarkable. But the tsunami disaster, we feel, is a good time to reflect on the structural flaws of the global economic and political system that continues to give the underprivileged a raw deal. |TOP| MAIN FEATURE: The Next Knowledge Superpower: Where Indian Science is Headed A Siliconeer Report “India is not yet a knowledge superpower. But it stands on the threshold.” That was the verdict of the popular science magazine New Scientist in its Feb. 19 issue. The remarkable issue has a wealth of thoroughly researched articles which provides an in depth look at Indian science and its future. A Siliconeer report.  A profound change is happening in India, and now the world is beginning to sit up and take notice. Some of the attention is not pleasant. In the West, particularly the U.S., there is growing concern about job flight; the dreaded word “Bangalored” is now part of the English language.  There is no question that information technology brought India to the limelight. The economic liberalization of erstwhile Prime Minister Narasimha Rao provided a much needed fillip, and firms like Infosys and Wipro seized the moment with alacrity. Before you knew it, IT had taken off. IT had several advantages. It was particularly free of the baggage that of years of protectionism that had crippled manufacturing industry, so entrepreneurs began with a clean slate, and the raw material was simple brain power, rather than the huge infrastructural backing required by industry. While auto manufacturers were still bringing out outmoded Morris clones of the 1950s, IT companies began to bring in work from abroad and U.S. companies began to take an interested look. U.S. chip giant Texas Instruments came in 20 years ago, and in the beginning it was grunt work. It’s no longer the case. In the last five years, over 100 companies are in India and many are doing cutting-edge research. “Some of the biggest names in IT are heading towards Bangalore once more, and this time round it’s not cheap labor they are looking for,” reports the New Scientist in its Feb. 19 special issue on India . ( For readers who are interested, the entire contents of the Feb. 19 issue of New Scientist is available on the Web at their Web site at this link www.newscientist.com/special/india.) “They are hunting down the brightest, most inventive minds in India to populate a swathe of cutting-edge research facilities.” General Electric’s 2,300-employee $80 million multidisciplinary centre, its first and largest R&D lab outside the U.S., uses numerical analysis and computational fluid dynamics to improve the efficiency of the company’s wind turbines and its engine for Boeing’s planned 7E7 airliner. Its materials science division invented a resin co-polymer that has made possible self-destructing CDs and DVDs. California-based search engine company Google is looking for top PhD graduates from Indian universities to add to its researchers working in Google’s Bangalore office, Cisco, Intel, Motorola and Sun Microsystems have opened research labs. After India’s nuclear blast in 1974, the West clamped down on space technology. The Indian Space Research Organization had to reinvent technologies it could no longer buy. Today its space program is already largely self-sufficient and aims to soon be completely independent of foreign support. However remarkable India’s scientific progress is, this happens in an oasis that is surrounded an ocean of backwardness and poverty. One out of four people in the world living in poverty call India their home. Free market ayatollahs have been quick to laud the jettisoning of the license raj of the Nehru era, but India’s scientific talent has been nurtured and developed by the Nehruvian commitment to publicly supported high-class education as manifested in the creation of the IITs and government support. Likewise, what the f “India is not yet a knowledge superpower,” the New Scientist reports. “But it stands on the threshold.”
INFOTECH INDIA  Solar Police Stations ... Ringing Honor ... Notice to VSNL ... Digital Theater ... CBI Probe into Reliance ... Cognizant to Invest $76 m in India ... GSI Tsunami Survey ... ISRO Mulls Linking Plan ... Science Boost — Here is the latest on information technology from India Solar Police Stations Solar power systems have been commissioned in 300 police stations located in various rural areas of Karnataka by the Electronics Division of engineering major Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited. The solar modules installed atop the police stations will directly convert sunlight into electricity and store it in a battery bank through which lighting, computer and wireless systems were operated, a BHEL statement said Feb. 25. “The successful commissioning of solar power systems will go a long way in improving the working conditions of police stations in rural areas of the state,” it said. NYSE-listed Wipro, with over $1.7 billion in revenues, is one of India’s leading IT services companies and the fourth largest worldwide, based on market capitalization. Wipro’s major lines of business include product development, IT services, consulting and business process outsourcing, which together for the core of its integrated portfolio of services that it provides to Fortune 1000 clients. Its 39,000 employees are located in 35 countries. TRAI has sought explanation from Tatas-owned VSNL on various issues, including technical details on routing of calls with diagrams and inter-carrier billing for such calls, Caller Line Identification as received by called party, numbering plan and issues relating to ADC settlement. When contacted, VSNL officials declined to comment, saying the company would furnish the details before the closing hours of the date set by the TRAI soon. Mani Ratnam said it is a win-win situation for the entire film industry as it provides not merely benefits to the filmmaker and filmgoer but also to the producers, distributors and exhibitors. The digital format can greatly reduce the cost of prints and thus the cost of production and distribution but more than anything else can enhance the quality of films, he added. He recalled how as a boy he watched films in “touring talkies” where often there would be a gap of several minutes when reels were changed. Also, the quality of prints would be bad. Today, the digital format assures a viewer the same quality even on the last day of screening. Ramanathan, owner of Abirami group of theatres, said the complex took pride in bringing several new concepts, right from DTS sound. Although an investment of Rs .6 million has been made though no digital films are available now, he said he was sure that digital films would soon be made in India. Also, digital films would also come into the country from abroad if such theatres were available. The probe by the CBI comes amid a major crackdown by the Department of Telecom and its PSUs, which have imposed stiff penalties that have been challenged by Reliance Infocomm. The CBI, which has initiated the probe suo motu, has asked concerned authorities to furnish relevant details of international telecom traffic which is alleged to have been rerouted as local calls to avoid payment to levy to telecom PSUs, officials said. The investigating agency stumbled upon the case during its investigations in the illegal telephone exchanges busted in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh recently during the agency’s special drive Feb. 2. CBI officials said during its investigations into the functioning of illegal exchanges in the southern states, it had found involvement of certain private telecom companies and some officials of the Department of Telecommunications. The company will also build new centers in Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai and Kolkata that would totally house over 9,000 professionals, Cognizant president and CEO Lakshmi Narayanan told reporters here. The U.S.-headquartered Cognizant has nearly 90 percent of its 15,300 employees in India and plans to hire 7,200 people in 2005, of which 60 percent will be from college campuses. It aims to touch a total strength of 22,500 by December 2005, he said. Salaries for programmers in India were rising at double digit percentage while in its Europe and U.S. centers, it was less than five percent, Narayanan said, adding that there was a demand for people with four to five years experience, who commanded a higher premium. Cognizant’s revenue in 2004 was $586.7 million and it expected to increase to $845 million in 2005. He said the firm was eyeing acquisitions of firms in the open source, high-end BPO, banking and finance and insurance areas. The survey comprises of deep study, which would be recorded for future use, Dr. M.M. Nair, deputy director general, GSI, Chennai, told reporters here. The survey would be completed well before the onset of the monsoon, as further delay would lead to losing of vital information, Nair said. The delicate traces of deposits and sediments of very fine nature could reveal newer scientific truths. The entire machinery and human resources of GSI offices at Chennai would be deployed for the project, he said. The GSI had adequate manpower and skills, and there was no need for involving other agencies in the project. Detailed action plans had been already chalked out and GSI team would be divided into three teams. Stating that the GSI was in the process of preparing geo-chemical mapping, he said in one year each regional directorate would cover 750 square km using sophisticated equipment with the help of remote sensing and satellite readings. Every single square meter area would be studied physically on the parameters of 63 specified elements. Sample analysis of the specified 63 elements would be undertaken before plotting the area-wise maps. The university has approached and discussed the possibility of linking nearly 200 colleges in the state and the issue was under consideration, Nair said in an informal chat with reporters. Under a pilot project, 100 engineering colleges in Karnataka were linked under Edusat, he said, adding that out of this 50 colleges had the provision of interacting through video and the remaining linked through audio. A pilot project, linking all medical colleges in Kerala, would become operational in June, by which normal education and continuing medical education would be beamed, Nair said. ISRO will review the progress of three village resource centers — Rameswaram, Dindigul and Thiruvaiyaru — connected through remote sensing satellite in three months, and depending on the success, extend the facility to other selected villages in Tamil Nadu, he said. Another major announcement this year was a government decision to develop the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science into a world-class university and allocating Rs 100 crore for it. The budget for the Department of Ocean Development has increased by 64 percent over last year’s Rs. 230 crore to about Rs. 377 crore. About Rs. 20 crore has been kept for tsunami and storm surges warning system while another Rs. 25 crore will be given to ocean data buoy program, an important part of ocean monitoring. Overall, the budget for various science activities has gone up to Rs. 16,361 crore over the pervious year’s Rs. 13,147 crore.
HERITAGE
Congressional Honor: Dalip Singh Saund  Inset: Dalip Singh Saund The U.S. House of Representatives, in an unanimous vote, has designated a post office building in Temecula, Calif., to be named the Dalip Singh Saund Post Office Building. This honor is long overdue, writes Inder Singh. In order to bring about awareness about the first Asian/Indian in the U.S. Congress, I organized a whole day seminar and banquet in 2002, to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the first victory of late Dalip S. Saund in the election to the U.S. Congress. In 2003, I also sent a request to the U.S. Stamp Advisory Committee to issue a commemorative stamp at the 50th anniversary of the first victory of an Asian/Indian to the U.S. Congress. The Dalip Singh Saund Post Office Building Designation Act is an honor that is long overdue. Congressman Dalip Singh Saund was the first Indian American and also the first among Asian Americans to be elected to the U.S. Congress. He was first elected in 1956 from 29th congressional district comprising of Riverside and Imperial Counties of California. He was re-elected twice, in 1958 and 1960. While contesting election for his fourth term in 1962, he suffered a debilitating stroke and became incapacitated. Although he did not win his fourth term, he did set a precedent for many Asians to follow him in the U.S. Congress. Saund was born Sept. 20, 1899 in village Chhajalwadi, Amritsar, Punjab. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Punjab University in 1919. In the U.S., he enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley in 1920 to study food preservation. Later, he switched to the mathematics department and received a master’s degree in 1922 and Ph.D. in 1924. By the time Saund finished his education at Berkeley, he decided to make America his home. Saund started his first job as a foreman of a cotton-picking gang, a job that hardly required any schooling. His job required him to weigh sacks of cotton that the pickers had picked by hand and make up their payroll at the end of the week. In between weighing, he would read books, borrowed from the library. In 1928, Saund married Marian Kosa, who was born of immigrant Czech parents. They had three children, a son and two daughters. Since his university days in India, Saund had been taking a keen interest in the political system of the country. He formed the India Association of America in 1942, of which he was elected its first president. The main objective of the new organization was to mobilize the Indian community and get citizenship rights. He mobilized the Indian community, mailed out thousands of letters, mostly in Punjabi, raised funds, and furnished financial assistance to Indian groups in New York to lobby at Capitol Hill. They were able to convince Congresswoman Clare Booth Luce from Connecticut and Congressman Emanuel Cellar from New York who jointly introduced a bill in Congress. In 1946, after four years of continuous struggle, the Luce-Cellar bill was finally passed by both houses of Congress and signed by President Harry S. Truman on July 3, 1946. Saund became a naturalized citizen on December 16, 1949, and was ready to take more active part in the political process of his adopted homeland. Saund was persuaded to become a candidate for judge in the general election in November, 1950. He was elected judge solely due to his exemplary grassroots campaign. No other foreigner had by then been elected to any high office in Imperial County. But the judgeship was denied to him, as he had not been a citizen for one full year by Election Day. In 1952 he ran again and won the election and served as judge for four years until his election to the U.S. Congress in 1956. In October, 1955, he decided to be a candidate from the 29th Congressional district. Saund won the primary with a tremendous majority. In the general election, Saund faced Jacqueline Odlum, recipient of many prizes in the field of aviation, leader of women fliers during World War II and wife of a multimillionaire financier. Judge Saund faced formidable handicaps but his friends and neighbors with the help of Democratic groups in Riverside County, began to sponsor a series of free barbecues. His wife and daughter organized and carried out an intensive campaign of registration of voters and “passed out 11,000 Saund circulars” before the election. His hard work did bring him enough votes so that in the general election, in November 1956, “the first native of Asia” was elected to the United States Congress with a 3 percent vote margin. There were very few Indian Americans registered to vote in the 29th congressional district. He did not adopt a new religion in his new country nor did he Americanize his name to sound less ethnic. His opponents repeatedly tried to exploit his being an Indian. But he had completely assimilated with mainstream America while maintaining his heritage. -Inder Singh is president of the Global Organization of People of Indian Origin |TOP| OUTSOURCING DIGEST:  Outsourcing Digest: Siliconeer presents of the latest news from the world of outsourcing. Xansa Eyes 10,000 ... Pfizer BPO Deal ... Tesco Opens Center ... Orange to Outsource ... Gulf Air Outsources Xansa Eyes 10,000 U.K.-based IT services company Xansa recently inaugurated a Rs. 60 crore facility here that can accommodate 1,000 people. The company already has two facilities in Noida, which have close to 1,600 workers, apart from a campus in Chennai and a center in Pune. “We currently have little less than 3,000 people and in next three to four years our headcount is expected to grow to 10,000,” executive chairman of Xansa India Saurabh Srivastava said. Xansa is also expanding its 28 acre Chennai campus in phases. “The first phase of campus is already functional with 800 people,” he said. It has the land to ramp up capacity to 10,000. The company’s Pune facility has over 200 employees. The company’s latest 90,000 sq ft facility in Noida was inaugurated by senior Samajwadi Party leader and chairman of U.P. Development Council Amar Singh. For PGRD, this relationship with Cognizant is part of an overall plan to strengthen relationships with contract research organizations through its affiliate in India. The move allows Pfizer to leverage a rich talent pool while capturing the unique cost productivity advantage India offers. The work for Pfizer will be done out of a new Cognizant facility in Mumbai (sixth location for Cognizant in India). Initially, it will be done out of Pfizer premises and subsequently (in about six months’ time) moved to the vendor’s place. The relationship has an initial commitment of 90 people, a bulk of them with bachelors and masters in pharmacy, statistics and analytics. “Cognizant has extensive experience in life sciences including clinical trial study setup and validation and data management that are compliant with international standards of good clinical practices as defined by FDA,” said Hocine Sidi Said, country manager, Pfizer India. HSC CEO Meena Ganesh said, “We are already attracting some of the best talent in the industry and plan to increase our headcount to 770 by the end of 2005.” Tesco has long been a major investor in India. Its nonfood sourcing office, now based at HSC, buys more than $70 million worth of products from the Indian sub-continent each year. Tesco sells around one million pairs of shorts bought from Bangalore itself, and over four million vests and t-shirts sold in Tesco stores across the world come from Tirupur.” “A final figure on the numbers we intend to outsource will not be decided until these trials are complete. The steps we are taking will not lead to site closures and redundancies,” said an Orange spokesman. “This outsourcing is intended to help Orange customer services cope with high demand and ensure the company continues to offer customers the high level of service they have come to expect over the last 10 years.” Call center staff make up half of Orange U.K.’s 12,000-strong workforce, with the lion’s share working in the North-East in Darlington, Peterlee and North Tyneside. The group is also making 200 staff redundant from the technical department at its Bristol headquarters, where it has offered some information technology staff one-year salary deals. According to the Communication Worker’s Union including Barclays, British Airways, LloydsTSB, Prudential and Reuters have collectively outsourced 52,000 jobs serving British customers. The Confederation of British Industry recently warned there would be no jobs for unskilled workers in Britain in 10 years because of outsourcing, while Amicus has predicted that 200,000 jobs could be lost to offshore outsourcing by 2010. According to the company, using its exhaustive audit tools, Kale MPS will provide Gulf Air with end-to-end revenue recovery services — from identifying revenue leakages arising out of errors in ticketing and incorrect application of fares and rules to generation of debit notes on the agents. Kale president Ashish Malhotra commented, “We are happy to partner with Gulf Air and look forward to a mutually rewarding relationship. Kale MPS will help Gulf Air to not only recover lost revenue and ensure accurate revenues from sales but will also offer outsourced revenue recovery and protection services.” GLOBAL OUTLOOK: The Tsunami's Wake: Lessons of the Brandt Report By Mohammed Mesbahi and Angela Paine  Willy Brandt (inset) once warned that emphasis on profit at all costs would lead to worsening poverty in the Third World. After the December tsunami, it’s a good time to revisit the Brandt report, write Mohammed Mesbahi and Angela Paine. The response of the world public to the tsunami disaster on Dec. 26 last year was (and continues to be) one of heartfelt empathy and an instinctive desire to help fellow human beings in trouble. Never before have so many people, from so many countries given so much to the victims of a disaster. World governments have been shamed into promising far greater sums of aid than they originally wanted to offer by the sheer magnitude of the public’s generosity. The U.S. initially pledged $15 million but in the end promised $350 million while the U.K. government felt obliged to raise their pledge to $96 million, still a tiny fraction of the money these governments have so far spent ($148 billion — the U.S. and $11.5 billion - the U.K.) on the war in Iraq. How many people realize, however, that many of the deaths caused by the tsunami could have been prevented? The area affected has been hit by tsunamis in the past, with far fewer deaths resulting, because the coastlines of South East Asia were protected by a natural defense system composed of coral reefs and mangrove forests. Many of the previous tsunamis were tamed by the coral reefs before hitting the coast, where they were absorbed by a dense layer of red mangrove trees. These flexible trees, with long branches growing right down into the sand below the surface of the sea, absorb the shock of tsunamis. Behind the red mangrove trees there is a second layer of black mangrove trees, which are taller and slow down the waves. Thousands of miles of coastline in South East Asia were densely covered in mangrove forests, protecting the coastline from erosion, absorbing carbon dioxide and providing a breeding ground for crustaceans and fish, on which the local population depended for their livelihood. This was a fragile environment, which ecologists have long recommended should enjoy special protection. In India a Coastal Regulation Zone was created to protect a 500-meter buffer zone along the coast. While the belt of mangrove forest still existed, the people of the area lived inland, behind it. In 1960 a tsunami hit the coast of Bangladesh in an area where the mangroves were intact. No one died. These mangroves were subsequently cut down by the shrimp (prawn) farming industry and in 1991 thousands of people were killed when a tsunami of the same magnitude hit the same region. On Dec 26th 2004, Pichavaram and Muthupet, in South India, which still have their mangrove forests, suffered fewer casualties than the surrounding mangrove-less areas of coast. Mangroves also acted as a barrier, helping people to survive on Nias Island, Indonesia, close to the epicenter of the Dec. 26 tsunami. Since the 1960s, the mangrove forests of South East Asia have been systematically destroyed to make way for commercial shrimp farming and a massive increase in the tourism industry. The aquaculture and tourism industries succeeded in diluting any protective regulations that were in place, until they were able to take over most of the buffer zone. Almost 70 percent of the region’s mangrove forests have now disappeared. Since three quarters of South East Asian commercial fish species spend part of their life cycle in the mangrove swamps the loss of these swamps has resulted in declining fish harvests. To compound this situation, the commercial feeds, pesticides, antibiotics and non-organic fertilizers used in intensive shrimp farms have generated huge amounts of pollution, destroying the remaining fish and harming the coral reefs. According to University of California professor Susan Stonich, international corporations, based in the first world but operating in the Third World, produce 99 percent of farmed shrimp. Almost all of it is eaten in the U.S., Western Europe and Japan, where consumption has increased by 300 percent in the last ten years. Today world shrimp production, in an industry worth $9 billion, is almost 800,000 metric tons and 72 percent of farmed shrimp comes from Asia. Hundreds of nongovernmental organizations have sprung up at local, national and international levels to oppose this destructive aquaculture industry. In 1997 the Industrial Shrimp Action Network was formed, a global alliance opposed to unsustainable shrimp farming. Aquaculture corporations responded by forming the Global Aquaculture Alliance to counter the claims of the ISA Network. Commercial shrimp farming has displaced local communities, exacerbated conflicts, decreased the quality and quantity of drinking water and decimated the natural fish species on which the local population rely. The reason why the aquaculture and tourism corporations have been allowed to destroy the coastal environment of South East Asia is because the current neoliberal trade system favors corporations over and above all concerns for the environment and the people living in it. Trade liberalization, through the World Trade Organization, has enabled corporations to challenge the legislation of the countries they wanted to operate in, legislation that was designed to protect the local environment. Ecological and human disasters such as the 2004 tsunami will continue to occur as long as the current Global Economic system is allowed to exist in its present form. Way back in the 1980s one-time German chancellor and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Willy Brandt warned that the current global economic system, with its emphasis on profit at all costs, would lead to environmental degradation and worsening poverty in the Third World. He said: “Important harm to the environment and depletion of scarce resources is occurring in every region of the world, damaging soil, sea and air. The biosphere is our common heritage and must be preserved by cooperation – otherwise life itself could be threatened.” How prophetic these words sound today. He set up the Independent Commission on International Development Issues to make an in-depth study of the global economy. His team of advisers included many experts in the field of international policy and economics. Their detailed report came to the conclusion that the developed nations dominated international trade and that this was unbalanced and biased in favor of large corporations based in the West. The Brandt Commission was the first major independent global panel to examine connections between the environment, international trade, international economics and the third world. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development took Brandt’s proposals regarding the environment seriously enough to hold international conferences in Rio in 1992 and in Kyoto in 1997. However, America refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol and corporate power prevented any of the Brandt Report recommendations being put into practice. The Brandt Reports called for a complete restructuring of the global economy, in order to protect the environment and meet the needs of the world population. Willy Brandt said: “We see a world in which poverty and hunger still prevail in many huge regions; in which resources are squandered without consideration of their renewal; in which more armaments are made and sold than ever before; and where a destructive capacity has been accumulated to blow up our planet several times over.” He proposed a Summit of World Leaders, with the backing of a global citizens’ movement, to discuss how to meet the needs of the majority of the world’s people. This would, he recognized, mean reforming the international economy. Brandt also recognized that poverty contributes to high birth rates and that overpopulation puts pressure on the environment. This has indeed happened all over the world, including South East Asia. Two decades later, world leaders had not responded to any of Brandt’s proposals. They continued to allow an ever increasing export of arms to some of the most repressive regimes, and public apathy towards the plight of the world’s hungry billions continued. In the 1980s Brandt was calling for preventive action and his proposals were falling on deaf ears. Only now is preventive action beginning to be taken seriously. The World Bank estimates that losses caused by disasters in the 1990s could have been cut by $280 billion if $40 billion had been spent on preventive measures. Only one organization has the staff and the close relationships with governments to make coordinated disaster aid work, the UN’s Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Yet immediately after the tsunami world leaders were in disagreement over coordination of the relief operation. Bush refused to cooperate with the UN because of his long-running differences with the UN leadership. World opinion eventually forced him to recognize the need for cooperation with the OCHA for the smooth running of the disaster relief. He recommended that instead of fighting wars, armies and navies from the developed world could be deployed to bring in the food, resources and technology needed to help poor nations reverse hunger and poverty. This has indeed been happening since the tsunami. Since the tsunami world opinion has shifted. People have been so moved by the plight of the people in the devastated areas that they have begun to talk about poverty and injustice in other parts of the world, such as Africa. Some of the poorest people in the world are concentrated in Sub-Saharan Africa, where “we have the resources to save millions of lives and raise the basic infrastructure” (Harvard-trained economist Jeffrey Sachs, Kofi Annan’s special adviser). Over the past few decades official development assistance to Third World countries has been declining. Sachs would like to see donor countries increase their aid budget. But in the end it will be popular opinion which pushes governments into rethinking their aid policies. Brandt and his team of experts spent years researching world poverty and the best way to alleviate it. Brandt’s far-reaching vision predicted many of the human and ecological disasters that have (and continue to) occurred since the 1980s, as a result of neoliberal economic policies. His reports laid out an alternative system of global governance, based on the principle of sharing: sharing the world’s resources and sharing responsibility for the environment. He proposed that every member of the human race had a right to food, water, shelter, clothing, education and healthcare. Only when every human being’s basic needs have been fulfilled will the world’s population stabilize. Perhaps world leaders could be persuaded to re-examine both the original reports and their updated version and to come together to discuss how to implement some of the recommendations. World opinion is calling for a more equitable and just world in which everyone has the right to food, water, shelter, clothing, education and healthcare; where the power of corporations is curbed in favor of human rights and the environment; where governments are shamed into putting a stop to arms exports and where the money currently squandered in wars is spent on raising the standard of living of the world’s poor. Without sharing the world’s resources there can be no justice and without justice there can be no peace. The Brandt Reports have been updated by James Quilligan. Readers can find more about them at this Web site: www.brandt21forum.info - Mohammed Mesbahi is chair and founder of the London-based nonprofit |TOP| REPORT: Honored Scientists: AAAS Fellows - A Siliconeer Report Ten South Asian scientists were recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science held in February in Washington, D.C. A Siliconeer report.  One of America’s most respected scientific organizations honored 10 South Asian scientists at its Fellows’ Forum Feb. 19. The 10 scientists were among 308 members in 23 disciplines who were elected AAAS fellows. The new Fellows received a certificate and a blue and gold rosette pin as a symbol of their distinguished accomplishments. The South Asian scientists came from a variety of fields. The discipline where South Asians shone most, unsurprisingly engineering: four were elected fellows; next was the field of biological sciences, with two elected fellows. Amit Goyal, Oak Ridge National Laboratories; Ravi K. Jain, University of the Pacific; Pradeep K. Khosla, Carnegie Mellon University and Noor Mohammad of Howard University were the four engineers who were elected fellows. Sankar L. Adhya, National Cancer Institute and Altaf A. Wani, Ohio State University, were recognized as fellows in the biological sciences. In addition, Ajay K. Bose of Stevens Institute of Technology was recognized for his contribution in chemistry. Asish R. Basu of the University of Rochester was recognized for his contribution to geology and geography. Ravi V. Iyengar of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City, was recognized for his contribution to medical sciences. Ravindra N. Bhatt of Princeton University was recognized for his contribution to physics. The American Association for the Advancement of Science, is an international non-profit organization dedicated to advancing science around the world by serving as an educator, leader, spokesperson and professional association. In addition to organizing membership activities, AAAS publishes the journal Science, as well as many scientific newsletters, books and reports, and spearheads programs that raise the bar of understanding for science worldwide. Founded in 1848, AAAS serves some 262 affiliated societies and academies of science, serving 10 million individuals. Science has the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general science journal in the world, with an estimated total readership of one million. The non-profit AAAS is open to all and fulfills its mission to “advance science and serve society” through initiatives in science policy; international programs; science education; and much else. AAAS seeks to “advance science and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people.” To fulfill this mission, the AAAS Board has set the following broad goals:
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Although critics questioned public spending of huge sums of money on research institutes, when the state of primary education is so appalling, Indian policy makers defend their decision. “You cannot be industrially and economically advanced unless you are technologically advanced, and you cannot be technologically advanced unless you are scientifically advanced,” says C.N.R. Rao, the prime minister’s science adviser.
uture holds depends on broader policy decisions and their execution. No nation has become a sustainable scientific superpower without figuring out how to bring its masses out of poverty. For that, the market will be a valuable tool, but significant and accountable public assistance will be pivotal in key areas like education, health and economic sustenance.
Chairman of Wipro Limited, Azim Premji, rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange Feb. 25. 
Telecom regulator TRAI has served a show-cause notice to Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd for violating license conditions by selling international calling cards — Tata Indicom Outbound Prepaid Calling Card — stating that VSNL cannot sell these cards directly to consumers. 
Concerned over the alleged scam involving hundreds of millions of rupees in the rerouting of international calls, the country’s premier investigation agency Central Bureau of Investigation has launched a probe into the working of Reliance Infocomm and some other top private telecom operators. 
IT services giant Cognizant Technology Solutions Feb. 24 said it will invest $76 million in building new development centers in India in 2005 and 2006, which includes $28.7 million for a centre in Bangalore to house 2,250 software professionals. 
