Rocket's Red Glare

This story is appears in this month's issue of WIRED magazine. Check it out on news stands all over the world.

"After liftoff there is no room for adjustment," says the middle-aged Indian gentleman with the prodigious handlebar mustache. "A fraction of a second and everything is lost." My companion, an engineer with the Indian Space Research Organisation, checks his watch compulsively as we wait for the agency's latest rocket, bearing an INSAT-4C communications satellite, to rise from its gantry and streak across the cloudy sky over the Bay of Bengal.

Operating on a fraction of NASA's budget, the ISRO has turned itself into the Energizer Bunny of space programs – it just keeps launching and launching and launching. Since 1975, the agency has lofted 43 satellites into orbit, 20 of them from Indian soil. An extraordinary string of successes – 12 consecutive launches without a failure – has attracted European and Asian investors looking to capitalize on the growing demand for satellite communication and reconnaissance. A few big deals could turn the ISRO into a moneymaker, boosting India's prestige and helping deflect criticism that the space agency's rupees would be better spent alleviating the misery of roughly 300 million Indians who live below the poverty line.

The launch site, situated on the island of Sriharikota off the east coast of India and surrounded by natural barriers of water and sand, could be the lair of a James Bond villain. Security is obsessively tight at the complex, which is about 50 miles from Chennai, the closest major city. For the mid-July launch, some 900 armed guards surrounded the site to secure the area for convoys of officials, scientists, and entrepreneurs. Over the course of two months, I applied formally to watch the launch but was rebuffed, so I decided to show up unannounced. No luck. With a broad smile, the dapper press officer informed me that foreign journalists were strictly prohibited. In case I had a problem with that, a guard holding an assault rifle stood nearby.

Denied access to the inner sanctum, I take an 8-mile detour to the nearest village, Ataganathippa, and claim a spot along the road with a clear view of the launchpad, amid an audience of ordinary people – farmers, fishermen, day laborers, and my rocket-engineer acquaintance, who has brought along his family. Jeans-clad engineering students from the local community college chat excitedly about how the new satellite could reduce the price of cable television. Suddenly a bright flash erupts in the distance. Huge plumes of smoke boil up from the ground, and a loud rumble rolls across the water. In a matter of seconds the rocket rises above the horizon and a group of young boys shouts, "Jai Hind! Jai Hind!" (Victory to India!) Climbing steadily, the rocket disappears behind a bank of clouds. The crowd is motionless, anticipating the engine's fading rumble.

But it doesn't fade. There's a thunderlike crack. Then chunks of flaming debris begin a slow, tumbling descent, tracing red trails back to Earth.

"That's not supposed to happen," says the engineer, his voice tense with disbelief. Fifteen minutes later, a nearby car radio crackles: "The launch has failed." Ground control issued a self-destruct order when the rocket veered off course and threatened to crash. "It's not over," declares my companion. "God willing, we'll have another crack at the next launch." The crowd, now silent, slowly drifts away. A hard wind blows, scouring the sky clean.

– Scott Carney

The Business is in the Cards

We are all proud of the things we make. When I put together my first website I sat and looked at it for hours congratulating myself on my skill with hyperlinks. Today my wife is proud of her business cards. Ten minutes after she came home she hijacked me and demanded that I immediately snap a dozen photos of her demonstrating how in the coming days she will pass along her contact information to the rich and powerful.

The business cards are the first official document of The Shakthi Center, a Chennai-based organization that seeks to promote women's reproductive health and spread awareness of progressive sexuality along the highways and byways of this land. In the next few months the organization will begin to get off the ground with the help of her partner Priya Iyer. If anyone is interesting in volunteering just send me a message and Padma will be sure you get a business card.

The Curse of Toothless Men

For three generations Hari Prasad, his sons, and grandson have been born without teeth. Their near-empty mouthes have never nibbled the flesh of a guava nor have they masticated a on a piece of bread.

"Our forefathers never suffered as much as we are suffering now because of this deformity. We have become the laughing stock of the entire village and no one is willing to accept out daughters in marriage because they fear the curse will begin to work on them," said Prasad who lives in a village in Uttar Pradesh, India.

The Deccan Chronicle reports "The family has preformed several pujas and consulted witch doctors, but nothing seems to have worked and Hari Prasad and his sons now blame the government for their deformity."

Medical experts who have been called in to consult the family say that it is a rare disorder probably caused by a lack of calcium. Though to me, it sounds like they have met with the business end of natural selection.

via Deccan Chronicle (print edition)

Happy Diwali, Do You Need a Boob Job?

Diwali, the Indian holiday most analogous to Christmas, is famous for its firecrackers and elaborate temple ceremonies. But for the country's battalions of nip and tuck plastic surgeons the festival also means a boon for business. Reuters reports that in the run up to the holiday there is between a 20 and 40 percent rise in tummy tucks, nose jobs and breast enhancements.

The most popular surgery among Indians are nose jobs with some clients asking for noses like famous Bollywood actors.

Cosmetic surgeons say Bollywood heartthrob, Shah Rukh Khan's nose is popular amongst male clients, while many women ask for a nose like actress and former Miss World beauty Aishwarya Rai.

Surgeons say there is generally a rise of about five to 10 percent in the number of procedures ahead of the festive season, but this year has been unprecedented.

via The Washington Post

The Wine Underground

There are wine shops on just about every street corner in Chennai, and yet it is still nearly impossible to buy wine. The word "wine" in India is a stand in any liquor except actual wine distilled from actual grapes. There are a couple vineyards in India, but they still haven't perfected the process and most of it tastes like bitter mouthwash. The only way to get imported wine is through the embassy commissaries (that I don't have access to) or through the black market--which I desperately am trying to contact. I had my first bit of success last night.

The story begins three weeks ago when I was browsing the isles of an upscale food emporium in Kilpauk. As I perused jars of olives and an assortment of pastas, I saw a row of wine bottles tucked away on a top shelf. I pulled one down and examined the label. I frowned when I discovered that it was non-alcoholic. Who would want boozeless wine, anyway?

"It's illegal for me to sell real wine," said the bored looking clerk when he saw me fingering his stash. Then he made sure the store was empty and beckoning me to the counter. "But I might know of a single bottle on the other side of town that I could arrange for you," he said conspiratorially.

"Really?" I asked, "What is it?"

"It's wine. If you want it it's 750 a bottle." 750 rupees comes out to about $17, so it isn't an entirely unreasonable price for good wine. The only problem was that I didn't know anything about the brand, and the clerk certainly wasn't a sommelier.

He told me he would order the bottle and save it for me until the next time I came back. I nodded and promptly forgot about the exchange.

Three weeks later I made my next grocery run.

When I walked in the door there was a flurry of excitement as the staff was busily cleaning the store for Diwali. The clerk spotted me and jumped to his feet. "It's you! We finally got that shipment of Schweppes tonic water you were looking for," He shouted while winking at me.

I had forgotten about my previous order and looked at him blankly. "Thanks," I said non-comprehendingly as I went to the back of the store in search of their fantastic new spritzer. I didn't find any and instead picked up a jar of sun-dried tomatoes.

At the counter the clerk smiled at me and asked if I wanted to see his new seltzer. When I nodded he riffled through a pile of papers under the counter and emerged with a small wine-bottle shaped parcel wrapped in a plastic bag.

"Here it is," he said proudly. And I opened the package and found a stately bottle of Albert Bichot table wine. I'd never heard of it, but figured it was my only chance for wine. I plunked down my VISA card and it appeared on my bill as a baby carriage.

So now I have a bottle of French wine sitting on my desk. The only problem now is that I don't have a corkscrew. I wonder where I can find one in Chennai. The question remains whether or not I can go back to the same shop and pull off a similar feat.

I have to say I sort of enjoyed the process. It felt like I was the last member of the French resistance during the second world war with a single source for black market goods.

God's Own Pin Cushion Heals All

A young man was admitted to a hospital in Lucknow, India with hundreds of pins and sewing needles pierced into his body. Anil Kumar Jha's lungs had been pierced by eight different needles and had begun to fill with pus. Doctors at George's Medical University removed them and reported being shocked that a man could survive with so many foreign bodies in his organs. Jha began inserting the needles into his body as a faith based treatment ten years ago after doctors told him that his daughter would never be able to walk.

"I began praying for my daughter's recovery, and one day a sadhu [saint] appeared in my dreams and asked me to pierce needles into my body and my daughter would recover. Since I had lost all hope, I began piercing needles into my skin and suddenly my daughter's condition began improving."

It has been ten years since he has embarked on his human to pincushion transformation. He inserts 2 to 3 needles into hands, feet, abdomen and chest every day. He says he prefers sewing needles as they hurt less than thicker objects.

[via Deccan Chronicle, print version]

The Writing on the Wall

Over the weekend I went down to Parrys with three friends on an unoffical photo-safari. I only took about a hundred photos, but I think this one is my favorite.But I like the follow up, too.

Take a Picture, Catch a Quack

Quack doctors come in all shapes and sizes, but one thing that they all seem to have in common is their penchant advertising. As part of my ongoing open source investigation I have begun to photograph different posters, billboards, and office spaces that seem like they might be offering medical services that just don't pass muster. In the case of the cyclopian child, the hospital report I saw stated that the mother sought treatment at a fertility clinic which prescribed her an unknown drug (which may have been cyclopamine). Whatever the case, an expert on medical ethics and editor of the Monthly Index of Medical Specilaties (MIMS), Dr. Gulhati told me several months that these roadside clinics are likely to be gateways for questionable clinical research. I would like to collect and publish as many photos as possible of quack advertising of improbable medical procedures, back alley sex change operations, miracle cures and all other sorts of medical promises that sane people shouldn't touch with a ten foot poll. Please send photos of posters, clinic fronts, or any other questionable medical establishment from anywhere in the world and in any language to sgcarney@gmail.com. Include a translation if you can. So get out your mobile phones and digital cameras and start snapping pictures to end quackery.

For those of you in Chennai, one poster that I was looking for, but couldn't find today, Vadapalani (sp) that I saw two months back. It said "Got HIV, No problem" that I think would be great to photograph.

The three photos here, one of a "modern clinical lab and ECG" is little more than a garrage with someone dispensing medical advice. The other two posters, one looks like a poster for viagra, and the other is for a fertility clinic that offers a dozen different services.

(I am not sure what the poster on the bottom left says, I would appreciate a translation from anyone who can read tamil)

Stem Cells Treat Indian Heart Attack Patients

The prognosis is good for two patients in Gujarat, India who are among the first to receive stem cell therapy after suffering heart attacks. Thirty-five-year-old Lakshmanbhai Bharwad and Ratanbhai Prajapati (58) underwent angioplasty after reporting to the Krishna Heart and Super Specialty Institute in Ahmedabad, but their hearts were still only pumping 30 percent of what healthy hearts do.

Doctors at the institute then harvested stem cells from the patients bone marrow and injected them back into the damaged heart tissue with a drug solution. Within two months their hearts were pumping back up to 55 percent and they felt well enough to go back to work.

“Stem cells can grow into any organ. So the therapy helps to rebuild damaged cells. This means that the heart can rejuvenate itself, something that is otherwise not possible,” said Dr Shalin Thakore who preformed the operation.

The treatment costs about $2000.

So Many People, So Few Autopsies

Staff shortages and lack of equipment in India's government hospitals mean quick and dirty autopsies for the dead. According to one doctor I had the chance to speak with there are only two forensics departments worth their salt in the city--and none of them are fully functional. The building is run down by American standards--there are blood and betel stains on the walls and mason jars full of viscera in the corners of the doctor's office--but the hospital has one of the few working cold storage units in town--making it a popular destination for bodies that have uncertain causes of death. While I had come to follow up a lead on the death certificate for the one eyed child, we had little time to discuss details of the case as the doctor was headed out to conduct his second post-mortem of the morning. I did, however, have the chance to see lockers jam packed with the recently deceased, and a gurney carrying someone's unidentified remains to their final resting place.

According to The Hindu, the four government hospitals in the city responsible for 7,300 autopsies a year only have 8 board certified doctors. And while doctors can be obliged with conducting several in a day, the pay is poor, coming to just 75 rupees per procedure, or about $2.

"We do not have the tools, nor are we given enough time to do a good job. What we do is just butchery," says an anonymous expert cited in the article in the Hindu. And this is true. Several months ago when I was present at one such procedure the doctor used little more than a hammer, a knife and a saw.

4 Israeli Doctors Arrested Over Trials

Four senior doctors in Israel were arrested for illegally conducting medical experiments on elderly patients last week. The doctors had conducted experiments on patients at hospitals in Rehovot and Gedera without obtaining proper consent and causing a long list of fatalities. After one particularly disturbing trial twelve patients died shortly after being administered the drug, but the incident was not reported to the Israeli Health Ministry.

The doctors "conducted illegal and unethical testing on thousands of elderly patients for years," said a report issued by the ministry.

The doctors have been charged abuse, aggravated assault, causing death through negligence, fraud, forgery, breach of statutory duty, and disruption of legal proceedings.

As is often the case, it was the media, and not medical authorities who uncovered evidence of the trials. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran a series of investigative articles that appeared in 2005 which spurred health officials into action.

"If "expertise" rests on illegal / unethical research such expertise rests on fraud. The question the public might ask is: What, if any, ethical standards can we legitimately insist that medical researchers follow?" said Vera Hassner Sharav of the Alliance for Human Research Protection.

UK Drug Trial Gone Horribly Wrong

While the drug trial on TGN1412 that caused catastrophic systemic failure in six subjects earlier this year has been painted in broad strokes in the UK media, most American news sources have brushed it aside as unimportant. For those of you still catching up, TGN1412 is an anti-cancer drug produced by the now bankrupt TeGenero Immuno Therapeutics and went through phase I testing by the US company Parexel in a trial that took place in the UK.

Animal testing on TGN1412 suggested that the drug would react differently in humans that it did in chimpanzees, and as a result essential information was absent in the report when researched decided to move ahead with a human trial.

Of the six volunteers, Ryan Wilson affected the worst and had to have several fingers and tows amputated, and his future prognosis is still uncertain. He received £2000 for participating in the study.

Most information on the government investigation into TGN1412 is still unavailable to the public. One thing that the trial does demonstrate, however, is the need for better information management in clinical trials. Pharmaceutical companies keep most of their data under wraps until seeking approval from the government so as not to tip off the competition on what they are working on, and to keep negative results under wraps; this information management scheme can have lethal effects when the results of previous investigations are unavailable to current researchers.

Clinical Trial Knowedge Gap

The government of India and major pharmaceutical companies have a strangle hold on information about medical research that presents a stumbling block for investigations on medical ethics. The most obvious problem is that there is no national directory of clinical trials in India. While pharmaceutical companies have to seek approval from the Indian Center for Medical Research (ICMR) to run a trial, the center keeps the applications under lock and key. Even if researchers did have access to the data, the information is scattered amongst a hundred thousand color-coded folders in central offices and nearly impossible to reference. For the government, such a directory would be useless, anyway. Vasantha Muthuswami, the head of the ICMR, she told me several months ago that while the in center has the duty to authorize clinical trials, it has no power punish companies who skirt the process or conduct an unethical study.

Even more troubling, is a new trend by major pharmaceutical companies to outsource clinical trials to local Contract Research Organizations, who often sign strict confidentiality agreements that keep the identity of their partner companies and details of ongoing trials secret.

So, while we know that Johnson & Johnson, Wyeth, Astra-Zeneca, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline have corporate offices in India, most of their research is conducted by proxy organizations. With confidentiality agreements in place the organizations then have the ability to deny any knowledge or relationship to a CRO that gets caught doing something naughty.

The knowledge gap created by these two things means that the only way to investigate clinical trials is to locate whistle blowers in the organizations themselves or find patients who are willing to talk about the experiments. Finding those people is a challenge in itself. (Bodyhack)

47 Eyes Lost in Hospital Snafus

At least 47 people lost their eyes in massive failures of medical protocol during cataract surgery in India last month. Two government run hospitals one in Guwhati, Assam and the other in Deogarh, Orissa had failures in their sterilization processes and spread infection among the patients. While errors of this magnitude would mean hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements in the United States, the Indian government is allocating only $1000 to affected persons. (Bodyhackolicious)

Calling all Umbilical Cords

The pregnant yogini next to the bus isn't contemplating nirvana, she's debating whether or not to contribute the umbilical cord to stave off hidden genetic time bombs that have been passed down in her family for generations. As I posted earlier, this advertisement for LifeCell on the side of the road in Chennai is part of a massive umbilical cord harvesting push by biotech companies across India. The text of the ad reads:

"Celebrate peace of mind. For your baby, your family and you. Bank your new born's Umbilical Cord Stem Cells at Birth. Secure the future of your child and your family."

(A Bodyhack original)

Pharma's Big Indian Land Deal

The Indian government has just opened the doors to a new slew of biotech and pharmaceutical companies with a program that offers them discounted land and limited taxation. The deal is just one in a slew of land offerings to biotech companies which are now growing so quickly that government agencies have yet to catch up and regulate their way through the biotech jungles that now ring major Indian cities. The Special Ecomomic Zones (SEZ) have become an engine for development in India and offer a "hassel free environment" for investement into high-tech and export industries. The land deal will account for hundreds of hectares of land allocated to seven different companies in Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka. The deal could bring as many as 5000 jobs and funnel millions of dollars into the local economy.

(First published on Bodyhack)

India Stem Cell "Therapy" Raises Questions

Biotech companies have been keen to capitalize on India's burgeoning birthrate and make it a factory for world stem cell research and therapy. In Chennai, the American company Life Cell has opened a branch and advertises with billboards across the city for women to cryogenically preserve their umbilical cords in case the child needs future treatment.

But the centers serve a dual purpose. Besides possibly benefiting the child, the blood enters into an international registry to match stem cells to patients all over the world and provide a resource for experimentation. Private clinics have begun to offer stem cell therapies that blur the line between treatment and clinical trials.

The national umbilical cord bank in Mumbai is reputed to be one of the largest in the world and is able to hold over 400,000 units of stem cell rich umbilical cord blood. It was created with a $20 million investment from the South Korean firm Histostem. The center has been in operation for almost a year and the government is only beginning to take steps to regulate the nascent industry.

(Originally posted by me on BodyHack)

Wired News Dubs me New BodyHacker

To aid the open source investigation on the one-eyed baby, Wired News has signed me on as a contributor to the popular blog BodyHack and has asked me to post new information on clinical trials, cancer treatments, medical ethics, and pharmaceutical activity in India every day. We hope that by casting a wide net and encouraging individuals around the world to contribute information that we will be able to break difficult stories on pharmaceutical trials in the coming years. This could result in a change of focus for Trailing Technology where I look more in depth at ethical issues. It will also mean that I spend less time posting here.

Police don't register knife-point rape case

After months of stalking a 17-year old woman, and bragging to his friends that one day he would kill her if she didn't sleep with him, a knife-wielding angry youth dragged her by the hair into a local park and assaulted her. The Deccan Chronicle reports that a crowd of his friends sat passively by in the park and watched the whole thing happen before she eventually escaped and attempted to notify the police.

When she arrived at the station the police refused to file a report and stated that "the young man must have been in love with the girl and reacted badly when she rejected him." The paper also states that the attacker was the son of a local DMK activist and the police were reluctant to file a case.

Since when do the police have the right to reject people's statements and avoid registering criminal cases against assaulters? Isn't there a basic system of protocol and evidence collection that all crimes deserve at least some level of investigation?

A similar event happened to me several months ago when I was unable to obtain a police report for a stolen passport (which I needed in order to apply for a new one), and I wondered how they would react if something more serious had happened.

It is one thing to casually say that police are corrupt in Chennai--a million bribes can attest to that--but something else entirely that they would so flagrantly ignore their duty to protect the community against obvious aggression. This assault happened in full view of the public and involved a dangerous weapon and yet the police sit idly by.

It is also interesting that Chief Minister Karunanidhi who was so ardent about defending Tamil women's honor when he erected a statue to Kanagi on Marina beach allows these same Tamil women to be raped in broad daylight and for his police force to sit and do nothing.

Arranged Marriage without Consent

Within two minutes of meeting her you already know that Priya is desperate to escape the marriage tradition that threatens to dash he future on the rocks. From the moment she reached marriageable age her parents have been on the look out or a prospective groom, and after a flurry of horoscopes and photographs exchanges, they have at last whittled down a list of over a hundred eligible bachelors to one. In under a year she will be forced to walk around a sacred fire with a man she has never met and has no desire to marry. And until then her family is keeping a close eye on her movements through the city, monitors her e-mail correspondence and demands she come home by 9:00 to be sure that she doesn't do anything that could sully her reputation.

"This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me," she says, adding, "they are forcing me to do this, it's like I'm under house arrest."

Before her family set the marriage mechanism into motion, she had an active social life, male and female friends and a short string of boyfriends. By day she works for an NGO raising awareness of AIDS in public schools and spends what little free time she has she spends applying for admission to clinical psychology Ph.D. programs in the United States. If the marriage moves forward she will have to drop her plans.

Over the weekend she was ordered to dress in a sari, wait alone in a sealed off room and prepare tea for her future in-laws. No one seemed to notice that she was crying when she came out to serve the tea.

While arranged marriages can work quite well (my own in-laws are a shining example) there is a problem when people are forced into it against their will. It seems to me that in the wake of the E-revolution in urban India, arranged marriages are increasingly contentious. As young people are nurtured on free trade of ideas and independent work ethics, being pressured into an arranged marriage is not only a shock to "western" sensibilities, but shows that the shackles of tradition can trump everything else.

For now Priya is doing everything she can to break the arrangement, but her parents turn a deaf ear to her requests.

Gay India: The Elephant in the Room

Several years ago I was walking though Dharmsala, the Tibetan hill station that is home to the Dalai Lama and about a hundred thousand skuzzy spiritual seeking tourists, when I ran into a stately older woman who asked me to sit down for a cup of tea. She had been living in India for several years and wanted to talk to someone about a shocking discovery she had just made.

"When I walk down the street I see a lot of men holding hands. In the west homosexuality is so taboo, but it is refreshing to see it out in the open here," she said in obvious awe.

Obviously this woman had never read the hundreds of news stories of gay people being exiled form their communities, doused with kerosene, or beaten within an inch of their lives when discovered. She hadn't even seen Deepa Mehta's Fire (1996) which was causing a stir at the time.

After setting her right about hand holding as a sign of friendship, I went about my day only remembered that exchange this morning when I read a blurb in the Deccan Chronicle about STDs on the rise in central jail. According to a four-year study it turns out that 30% of inmates have some sort of STD and that many are infected with HIV. The article states they had multiple sex partners, and may have shared needles. The article ignored the elephant in the room.

To quote the eminent anthropologist Bruce Jackson "The only condition [prisons] cures is heterosexuality."

The newspaper wouldn't even mention that the STDs were being spread through gay sex. In fact, most media outlets in India completely ignore the gay culture in major metros across this country. It is as if the media has the exact opposite problem as the woman I met in Dharmsala: where she sees homosexuality everywhere, the media pretends it doesn't exist.

Which, of course, is rather rich since they are confronted by it every day in Bollywood. The country's best-known director Karan Johar is widely rumored to have ongoing relationships with lead actors Sharukh Khan and John Abraham. Johar has made some small attempts to put some positive references to homosexuality in his movies and featured a short kiss between two men on the streets of New York in his film Kul Ho Na Ho (2004).

Otherwise the media sticks to demonizing homosexuality. Newspapers are happy to print stories of gay people being punished by the local community. And the majority of films that have gay characters--like Girlfriend (2004)--cast them as villains and see that they die painful deaths.

India has a problem addressing all forms of sexuality. Extramarital affairs are commonplace, and though no one wants to say that sex happens before marriage, droves of teenage girls come home pregnant every day because they never received sex education. Homosexuality is demonized in the media and everyday discourse, and millions of people are forced into arranged heterosexual marriages while they clearly lust after something else.

Come to think of it, the woman in Dharmsala may have been onto something. While holding hands is a way to express friendship here, it is the one avenue for gays to come out into the open without feeling attacked by the world around them.

(Photo: publicity still from the film "Girlfriend" that caused a ruckus around India and demonized--and hypersexualized--lesbians)

Teacher Cuts of Student's Hair; School Pillaged

Corporal punishment remains a key educational technique in India's massively overburdened school system. Every year millions of school children line up for their daily whack with a switch to their hands, or smack to the side of their heads for misbehaving in class, coming late, or getting a low score on a test. Most teachers don't even need a good excuse to hit their students into line.

However this week in Kanpur a teacher may have gone a little too far when she took a pair of scissors and sliced off a child's hair. The Deccan Chronicle reports that Rinki Yadav, a child in class 3, showed up to class without having first put her hair into a braid. Furious at the ill-kept student the teacher called the principle, slapped the child several times and together they held her down and began to snip away her long locks.

Yadav then ran home in tears and told her parents before passing out from humiliation. After taking the child to the hospital to treat her panic attack the parents gathered a mob from around the town and ransacked the school. They broke windows, chairs and gutted the entire building.

"She always came to school shabbily dressed and her refusal to listen to us was affecting the discipline of the school. We even sent warning letters to her parents but the girl simply refused to tie her hair. On Thursday we cut her hair as punishment, but had no intention of humiliating the girl," said Principle Saloni Khanna in defense of her actions.

I am not sure which is worse, the actions of the teacher who would attack a student for such a small infraction (I would have been bald several times over if I had been in that class) or the parents who destroyed their children's only lifeline to an education when they destroyed the school.

(Etching: Sylvia Gosse, The Long Plait, 1915)

Bringing Iraq Violence to Your Doorstep

The New York Times reports today that videos taken by Iraqi enemy combatants are surfacing on Google Video and YouTube. The videos range from sniper attacks against US troops to improvised explosive devices going off under military vehicles. They appear to be part of a major propaganda push to help recruit people to the resistance.

In the age of embedded reporters and green zone analysis the videos offer a rare glimpse at the everyday violence on the streets of Iraq. While the video hosting websites are quick to take down clips that they deem offensive--as any video with a soldier bleeding to death generally is--they are also the only real footage of the consequences of combat available to most US citizens. In Vietnam reporters roamed the countryside and captured images of people being burned to death by napalm, soldiers missing limbs being ferried to helicopters and armed assaults against entrenched enemies. The footage played a significant part in mobilizing the anti-war movement and helped bring the conflict to an end.

While the videos were taken with the intent to bolster anti-US opinion (and DVDs of them are widely traded in Baghdad bazaars), they could also help bring the terrors of war to the doorsteps of the American taxpayers and voters who allow the war to continue.

Since the first war in Iraq the American military has successfully managed to portray warfare as a violenceless pursuit. While we are aware of body counts and know that bombs go off around the country, we very rarely glimpse the bloody results of a bullet or explosion. This so-called "clean violence" takes the blood out of death and makes it much more easy for people to continue to support the war. While we often see a camera mounted in the nose of a plane, or missile that tracks the progress of the weapon through the air to the target, the explosion is either a simple black screen or just the smoke you would see from a distance. It has all the salience of a video game and gives the feeling that the mission was accomplished. We don't see the aftermath where people actually suffer in war.

Two years ago I wrote a paper on this subject titled "The Politics of Invulnerability" and presented it at a lecture at the University of Madison-Wisconsin. And what I wrote then is just as valid as it is today.

And while I cannot bring myself to whole-heartedly support the videos that have appeared on YouTube, I think they add a necessary perspective to the conflict that has been silent for too long.

The Indian Art of Bribery

I have a thing for silly business ventures. Over the years I've tried to make my millions exporting all sorts of odds and ends from India to the United States, and have filled dozens of packages with saffron, journals, and most recently Royal Enfield motorcycles and Vespa scooters. The businesses all failed for two reasons. 1) I am not a good salesman; and, 2) I can't stand paying bribes.

When my last shipment of motorcycles made it to the port in New York I had to pay the local union $300 to move the crate ten feet from the warehouse floor onto a truck. Another couple hundred got tacked on in Bombay when the local dock don asked for his cut. For me, the added costs made the difference between making a profit and breaking even.

Bribery in New York is more or less confined to the transportation and housing industries, yet in India, it is impossible to get anything done at all without a little cash to ease the way. According to a report issued by Transparency International, a Swiss based NGO that rates these sorts of things, India demands more bribes than any other country in the world. It came in dead last in the index of 30 countries--beating even notoriously corrupt states Russia and China.

In order to get a government employee to switch on my power after it had been shut off (a free service) I had to slip the worker a hundred-rupee note--otherwise it would have taken two weeks for him "to get around to it". When I had a package delivered to a local post office I had to slip the postman an extra 30 rupees to pick it up. When I was getting my visa from the Indian High Commission in Malaysia touts outside offered to get the whole thing processed in a single day for me if I just coughed up $70 extra. And, I imagine, when I go to pay my electricity bill this afternoon I am going to have to pay someone even more to fix my broken meter.

It is no surprise to me that India has been rated the most bribery-friendly location on the planet. Between its ridiculously overbearing bureaucracy and corruption of public officials, I am glad that my own dealings with the government are minimal.

Rekindling the Korean War

Yesterday North Korea announced that it would test a nuclear weapon in the coming days in order to bolster its defense against what it sees as a potential threat from the United States. The tests will likely destabilize the region and risk an arms race with Japan or a military strike by the US forces stationed in South Korea. With well over a million soldiers stationed on the line of control between the two Koreas an escalation in the conflict could lead to catastrophe.

In the last decade even China, it closest ally, has distanced itself from the tiny rogue nuclear sate and it sees threats from all sides. Its recent move is a gamble that neighboring countries will see the nuclear weapon as a deterrent that might allow it to lower its guard a little. Since two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki no country has launched an attack against a country who has nuclear weapons, and North Korea sees possession of the weapons as a way to ensure security.

Sadly, North Korea is wrong. If it moves forward with the tests it is likely that in the coming weeks we will see a series of targeted attacks by US bombers on specific military instillations throughout the country. The US and Japan have said as much. This in turn will likely provoke North Korea to break the 53-year-old cease-fire and a conventional weapons campaign that will have America fighting a war on three fronts.

Still in its nascent phases it is unlikely that North Korea will have a delivery system powerful enough to target US soil with a nuclear weapon, and it is also unlikely that they have a sizable nuclear arsenal. But after testing an ICBM this summer, US authorities are most likely pondering a future where North Korea can directly threaten Los Angeles. From the US standpoint it makes more sense launch an attack now that will cripple North Korea's weapons program rather than wait until it becomes a larger problem to deal with.

This dance of death could be avoided if North Korea refrains from its tests.

Fewer Posts Means More Time for Writing

If you are one of my 50-odd regular readers you have probably noticed that I have been posting quite a bit less since I came back from Malaysia a few weeks ago. It is difficult for me to point to an exact reason for stepping back from daily updates on my life/opinions here in Chennai, but a lot of it comes down to the fact that putting together a post can tak anywhere from one to two hours (including internet browsing, procrastination and general mucking about) and I haven't always had that time available in my schedule. In the past couple weeks my editorial schedule really started heating up. I put the story about the rickshaw race to bed (due out in the January issue of Wired, I think), picked up another assignment about satellite tracking murderous elephants in bengal and finished off a feature for .Net about censorship in the Malaysian blogosphere.

As I look forward to the coming weeks I can see that my schedule is going to lighten up considerably and I have two choices before me. I can either start pitching new ideas to magazines and websites and continue on with my normal daily blogging, or I can begin writing the book I have been avoiding for the last couple years. Today I am beginning to map out chapters and, I hope, start getting serious about this larger project. If it works out, I will most likely do a lot less posting so that I can keep my focus on this project.

But then again, I have ditched book writing attempts before, so lets just wait and see what happens.