December 4, 2007
Observatory
Chimps Exhibit Superior Memory, Outshining Humans
By HENRY FOUNTAIN

Spend even a little time around chimpanzees, and you begin to realize how intelligent they are. But can they outshine humans in brain power? Most humans would scoff at that.

But researchers have shown that young chimps outperform adult humans in a memory test, a Concentration-like game using numerals on a computer screen.

“We were very surprised to find this,” Tetsuro Matsuzawa of the Primate Research Institute at Kyoto University said. “But it’s a very concrete, simple fact. Young chimps are superior to human adults in a memory task.”

Dr. Matsuzawa and a colleague, Sana Inoue, first trained chimps to recognize the numerals 1 through 9 in sequence. Ai, the first chimp trained, an adult female was found with a memory capability equal to that of adult humans.

When the researchers went to see if there was a difference with chimps younger than 6, the animals had a touch screen where scattered numerals appeared for up to two-thirds of a second and were then masked by white squares. With the shortest exposure time, about a fifth of a second, the chimps had an 80 percent accuracy rate, compared with adult humans’ 40 percent. The findings are described in Current Biology.

Dr. Matsuzawa said the ability reminded him of the phenomenon called eidetic imagery, in which a person memorizes details of a complex scene at a glance. This so-called photographic memory is present in a very small number of children, and is often associated with autism.

Dr. Matsuzawa speculated that perhaps somewhere back in common evolution, humans and chimps had this ability. But humans lost it because they gained something else, communicating through a complex language.

As Ai demonstrates, adult chimps lose the ability, too. Dr. Matsuzawa suggested that as the chimps age, their memory capability is otherwise occupied.

November 5, 2007
U.S. Is Likely to Continue Aid to Pakistan
By DAVID E. SANGER and DAVID ROHDE

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 — The Bush administration signaled Sunday that it would probably keep billions of dollars flowing to Pakistan’s military, despite the detention of human rights advocates and leaders of the political opposition by Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the country’s president.

In carefully calibrated public statements and blunter private acknowledgments about the limits of American leverage over General Musharraf, the man President Bush has called one of his most critical allies, the officials argued that it would be counterproductive to let Pakistan’s political turmoil interfere with their best hope of ousting Al Qaeda’s central leadership and the Taliban from the country’s mountainous tribal areas.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that while the United States would “have to review the situation with aid,” she said three times that President Bush’s first concern was “to protect America and protect American citizens by continuing to fight against terrorists.”

“That means we have to be very cognizant of the counterterrorism operations that we are involved in,” she said. “We have to be very cognizant of the fact that some of the assistance that has been going to Pakistan is directly related to the counterterrorism mission.”

In Islamabad, aides to General Musharraf — who had dismissed pleas on Friday from Ms. Rice and Adm. William J. Fallon, the senior military commander in the Middle East, to avoid the state-of-emergency declaration — said they had anticipated that there would be few real consequences.

They called the American reaction “muted,” saying General Musharraf had not received phone calls of protest from Mr. Bush or other senior American officials. In unusually candid terms, they said American officials supported stability over democracy.

“They would rather have a stable Pakistan — albeit with some restrictive norms — than have more democracy prone to fall in the hands of extremists,” said Tariq Azim Khan, the minister of state for information. “Given the choice, I know what our friends would choose.”

It was a sign of their confidence that Pakistani officials announced that parliamentary elections set for January might be delayed for as long as a year. Just before she learned of that announcement, Ms. Rice said, “We have a very clear view that the elections need to take place on time, which would mean the beginning of the year.”

Visiting Beijing today, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the United States was reviewing its programs for military assistance to Pakistan, although he noted that the Bush administration also would take into serious consideration the need to continue counter-terrorism efforts in the region.

“Pakistan is a country of great strategic importance to the United States and a key partner in the war on terror,” Mr. Gates said during a news conference at the Chinese Ministry of Defense. “However, the actions of the past 72 hours have been disturbing. We urge President Musharraf to return his country to law-based, constitutional and democratic rule as soon as possible.”

Mr. Gates said the United States had begun “reviewing all of our assistance programs” to Pakistan. But, he noted, “We are mindful not to do anything that would undermine ongoing counter-terrorism efforts.”

In a further sign of American concern over the situation in Pakistan, the United States postponed annual security consultations between the two nations that were to have been held for two days this week in Islamabad. The chief of the American delegation, Eric Edelman, the under secretary of defense for policy, already was on his way to the meeting when the Bush administration decided it would not allow its representatives to attend the bilateral session.

“We have taken the initiative to postpone it,” said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, who accompanied Mr. Gates to Beijing. Mr. Morrell said the American decision illustrated “a degree of disappointment” with Mr. Musharraf’s declaration of a state of emergency on Saturday. The bilateral security talks could be rescheduled, Mr. Morrell said, “as soon as conditions are more conducive.”

In Washington, officials acknowledged that they were trying to balance the American insistence that Pakistan remain on the path to democracy and General Musharraf’s unwillingness to risk chaos that would allow Al Qaeda and the Taliban to operate more freely.

“The equities in Pakistan are huge,” said a senior official deeply involved in trying to persuade General Musharraf to fulfill his promise to hold elections and run the country as a civilian leader. “We’ve got U.S. and NATO troops dying in Afghanistan, and a war on terrorism” that cannot be halted while General Musharraf tries to shore up his powers, he said.

It was unclear to what extent General Musharraf perceived an urgent threat to the country in deciding to declare an emergency that suspended civil liberties.

But several administration officials said they were struck by the heavy-handed nature of the crackdown announced Saturday. Until a few days ago, they said, General Musharraf had been offering private assurances that any emergency declaration would be short-lived. “They have made this crisis more acute by the way they’ve done this,” the official concluded.

President Bush has made spreading democracy a major foreign policy theme and his administration has quietly pushed General Musharraf for months to be more open to sharing power, going so far as to help broker talks between him and Benazir Bhutto, the leader of Pakistan’s largest opposition party.

But Mr. Bush has said nothing in public about General Musharraf’s latest action. His silence contrasts sharply to his reaction to the crackdown on dissidents in Myanmar last month. In that case, Mr. Bush announced specific steps against Myanmar rulers. But Pakistan, officials argued, is a different case: it is a nuclear-armed nation that Mr. Bush had designated a “major non-NATO ally,” even though its enthusiasm for counterterrorism has been episodic.

In Islamabad, Western officials said Mr. Bush’s limited choices could worsen if protests erupted, and they complained that in the past few months General Musharraf had focused more on weakening his rivals than fighting Islamic extremists.

For more than a year before Saturday’s declaration, American officials have seethed over Pakistan’s poor performance against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. General Musharraf’s effort to strike a deal with Islamic militant groups in the tribal areas failed. When he ordered troops back into the tribal areas in recent months, many were killed or kidnapped.

In interviews before and after the emergency declaration, Western diplomats and former Pakistani military officials said General Musharraf had done a poor job countering growing militancy, particularly this year. The military-led government has moved too slowly, prepared poorly for operations and often appeased militant groups.

“Initially, this was not complicated,” said Mahmood Shah, a retired brigadier who was the senior Pakistani government official in charge of security in the tribal areas until last year. “Now, this is a very complicated situation.”

Through it all, the United States has continued pumping money to the country. While the total dollar amount of American aid to Pakistan is unclear, a study published in August by the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated it to be “at least $10 billion in Pakistan since 9/11, excluding covert funds.” Sixty percent of that has gone to “Coalition Support Funds,” essentially direct payments to the Pakistani military, and 15 percent to purchase major weapons systems. Another 15 percent has been for general budget support for the Pakistani government; only 10 percent for development or humanitarian assistance.

General Musharraf’s supporters argued Sunday that his government — now unencumbered by legal constraints and political concerns by the emergency decree — will be in a better position to eradicate extremists and that if the United States wants that security, it must back him.

“If your agenda is to save attacks in the U.S. and eliminate Al Qaeda, only the Pakistani Army can do that,” said the close aide to General Musharraf. “For that, you will have to forget about elections in Pakistan for maybe two to three years.”

Pakistani opposition groups argue that General Musharraf has failed and that his emergency declaration will increase instability and militancy in the country. They say nationwide elections would produce a moderate government with popular support to crack down on militancy.

There is little question that General Musharraf has failed to develop broad domestic support for battling terrorists. His political party is divided, has not carried out promised reforms and would likely lose an election.

A poll in September by Terror Free Tomorrow, a Washington-based nonprofit group, showed that Osama bin Laden was more popular in Pakistan than General Musharraf, with 46 percent of respondents giving him a “favorable” rating against 38 percent for the president. Ms. Bhutto got a “favorable” rating from 63 percent. The nationwide poll surveyed 1,044 adults and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

David E. Sanger reported from Washington, David Rohde from Islamabad, Pakistan, and Thom Shanker from Beijing.

India's Nuclear Deal Has Growth at its Core

Bronwen Maddox: World Briefing

The storm over India’s new nuclear pact with the US, which now threatens to bring down the Indian Government, illustrates the only good thing about the deal – it is an antidote to anti-Western reflexes in the country that still run deep.

Other than that, the deal is a worry, for all the reasons that the US Congress has asserted: it is an extravagant breach of the spirit of non-proliferation treaties, showering the benefits of US nuclear help on India even though it acquired nuclear weapons.

But the row is a reminder that Indian stability and prosperity are surprisingly fragile, given the country’s remarkable growth. If the resolution manages to silence the intense nationalist voices, who put a fantasy of independence ahead of the pursuit of growth, then a bad deal will have had one good result.

Who would have thought, in a deal that gives India too much while asking for too few safeguards in return, that the greatest opposition would come from within India itself? Communist allies of the ruling coalition, led by the Congress Party, have threatened to withdraw their support over the civil nuclear cooperation deal with the US.

The Communists say that the deal hurts Indian sovereignty and could make it beholden to the US. But Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, argues that the deal ends three decades of isolation for India, because of its acquisition of nuclear weapons, which prevented it gaining help for the nuclear power stations that it needs to support its growth. The trigger for this week’s uproar has been a comment from Ronen Sen, the Indian Ambassador to the US, in which he appeared to call communists in parliament “headless chickens”; he said later that they should not be offended as the remark referred only to journalists.

The row is important, not only because it jeopardises the deal (and it probably does not do so fatally). If it pulled down the Government, it would choke off reforms needed to maintain growth at the current rate of more than 7 per cent a year. Singh, widely described as one of the architects of India’s economic modernisation, is a champion of those reforms, intended to curb the budget deficit and spread access to good jobs beyond the English-speaking middle class.

Neither Congress nor communists want an election this year, but the turmoil may still force one before the Government’s term ends in May 2009. It was never a strong coalition, born out of the mutual desire to keep the Hindu-nationalist BJP out of power. But both would be foolish to campaign on the nuclear issue, which has not touched a national chord. It arouses none of the passions of parallel nuclear questions in Pakistan or Iran, for example.

It does in the US, however, where Congress, even before it fell under Democratic control, was quick to accuse the Bush Administration of striking a deal that subverted efforts to curb proliferation in order to cement an alliance. It is some small compensation that the deal strengthens the hand of Singh and other reformers, at the expense of those who would rather India stayed shut off from the world.

Without ‘foreign’ masters

The Plight Of Indian Comrades

By Amulya Ganguli

There may be a simple explanation for the Left’s ideological rigidity on the nuclear deal which is taking the country towards a mid-term poll. The comrades are not getting good advice about the pros and cons of their stance. In the past, they had the advantage of turning to their friends, philosophers and guides in Moscow or Beijing to show them the way out of any difficulty which was beyond their ken. For instance, when the yeh azadi jhooti hai movement centred mainly in Telengana began to fade out, the undivided Communist party dispatched four of its stalwarts ~ Ajoy Ghosh, SA Dange, Rajeshwara Rao and M Basavapunniah ~ to Moscow in 1950-51 to seek guidance.
There is a delightful passage in Mohit Sen’s autobiography, A Traveller and the Road: The Journey of an Indian Communist, which recounts how Stalin paced up and down smoking a pipe as the four Indians interacted with Suslov, Malenkov and Molotov. It was as if the principal of a school was silently watching how the teachers were instructing their students.

Stalin’s suggestion

When the principal finally gave his opinion, it was a sensible one: call off the armed struggle. Not only that, Stalin said that although India was still under British colonial influence (yeh azadi jhooti hai), the Jawaharlal Nehru government was not a puppet, for it had a social base and mass support. The Indian communists should concentrate, therefore, on fighting elections.
It is this kind of practical guidance which Prakash Karat and Co. are unable to secure today. There is no principal or teachers to show them the right path even it means abandoning an armed uprising, which the ‘students’ evidently thought was the only course before a revolutionary, and participating instead in the bourgeois exercise of holding elections, which carries the danger of developing “an outlook which evades militant forms of mass action”, as a CPI resolution warned in 1971.
Although the Soviet advice meant a deviation from the prescribed text, the Indian communists had little hesitation in accepting it because their dogma also prescribed unquestioning obedience to their ideological lord and master. But now, in the absence of such a centre of gravity, the Indian communists are not only adrift in their ideological sea, but also lack the intellectual calibre to break out of their dogmatic straitjacket or even modify a doctrine in accordance with the existing situation. The revolutionary text, therefore, is now set in stone for them and the comrades have no option but to abide by it even if such blind adherence leads them into stormy waters.
It is obvious, for instance, that if Karat and Co were to be transported back to the fifties and left to their own devices without the benefit of Moscow’s advice, they wouldn’t have had the intellectual daring to admit that their path of armed struggle in Telengana was wrong and that they must switch to parliamentary politics. They would have marched on blindly towards disaster. Not surprisingly, they are now following a course which can have portentous consequences for them and the party ~ and not all of them beneficial.
Before examining such a scenario, it may be worthwhile to examine another instance of perceptive of lords and masters abroad steering the Indian communists along the right channels. This was when Kanu Sanyal, Jangal Santhal, Sourin Bose and several other Naxalites ~ 12 in all ~ went to Beijing in 1967 to find out about the ways to conduct a revolution. Then, as noted by Sumanta Banerjee in his book, In the Wake of Naxalbari, Sourin Bose went to Beijing again in 1970 when the Naxalites in India found that Radio Peking was no longer extolling them and not even mentioning their “achievements” in Srikakulam.
What he was told, however, by Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng must have been hugely disheartening, for the Chinese leaders asked the Naxalites to stop raising the slogan, “China’s chairman is our chairman”, since they said, to quote Banerjee, “to regard the leader of one country as the leader of another party is against the sentiment of the nation; it is difficult for the working class to accept it”. Moreover, Zhou and Kang Sheng were against the gunning down of individual policemen, which was one of the favourite tactics of the Naxalties. The two Chinese leaders said that “secret assassination of police is anarchist, is isolated from the masses, is short-lived”. As is obvious, all this was good advice, just as what Stalin told the Indian communists made eminent sense.
Evidently, Indian communists need close supervision. Otherwise, they are liable to commit major mistakes. Their history confirms this flaw in their character. Whether opposing the Quit India movement in 1942 when the anti-imperialist World War II became a people’s war following Hitler’s invasion of the Soviet Union, or calling Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose a quisling and Rabindranath Tagore a bourgeois poet, the Left always seemed to be running against the national current.
But the Left’s biggest blunder was its curiously ambiguous response to the Chinese invasion in 1962. To quote Mohit Sen again, many in the CPI(M) “believed that the Chinese communists had done nothing wrong in attacking India. They thought that this was not an attack but a defensive action and that in the not so long run, the Chinese action would help the advance of the revolution by weakening the power of the ruling alliance, especially by pulling down the prestige of the Congress and its leader Pandit Nehru.”

The split

As is known, the undivided Communist party split within two years of the Chinese invasion as a result of the differences in the party on the issue. After the rupture, the CPI came to be known as a pro-Moscow organization and the CPI(M) as pro-Beijing, although the Marxists lost the label to the Naxalites five years later when the first of the many CPI(M-L)s were set up. However, the identification of the communists with foreign powers ~ either a friendly one like the Soviet Union or a hostile one like China ~ has remained a part of public consciousness.
Now, the Left’s attempt to scuttle the nuclear deal is likely to strengthen this unflattering impression because of the evident uneasiness in China and Pakistan about New Delhi’s growing ties with Washington. Such a perception will be all the more damaging to the communists because of the evident rise in Chinese bellicosity over Arunachal Pradesh. And Pakistan, of course, has long been a bugbear despite the recent marginal improvement in mutual relations.
Arguably, the current misgivings about the Left can be no less damaging than what happened in 1942 and 1962. Perhaps even more so because unlike in the earlier periods, India is seemingly poised today to become a major economic and political power. If the communists are seen, therefore, to be setting up roadblocks and that, too, at the behest of foreign powers, their electoral prospects cannot but be dim.

The writer is a former Assistant Editor, The Statesman

Editorial

Immigration Malpractice

Published: July 7, 2007, nytimes.com

The prickliness and glacial ineptitude of the immigration system is old news to millions of would-be Americans. Immigrants who play by the rules know that the rules are stringent, arbitrary, expensive and very time-consuming. But even the most seasoned citizens-in-waiting were stunned by the nasty bait-and-switch the federal bureaucracy pulled on them this month. After encouraging thousands of highly skilled workers to apply for green cards, the government snatched the opportunity away.

The tease came in a bulletin issued by the State Department in June announcing that green cards for a wide range of skilled workers would be available to those who filed by July 2. That prompted untold numbers of doctors, medical technicians and other professionals, many of whom have lived here with their families for years, to assemble little mountains of paper. They got certified records and sponsorship documents, paid for medical exams and lawyers and sent their applications in. Many canceled vacations to be in the United States when their applications arrived, as the law requires.

Then they learned that the hope was effectively a hoax. The State Department had issued the bulletin to prod Citizenship and Immigration Services, the bureaucracy that handles immigration applications, to get cracking on processing them. The agency is notorious for fainting over paperwork — 182,694 green cards have been squandered since 2000 because it did not process them in time. That bureaucratic travesty is a tragedy, since the annual supply of green cards is capped by law, and the demand chronically outstrips supply. The State Department said it put out the bulletin to ensure that every available green card would be used this time.

After working through the weekend, the citizenship agency processed tens of thousands of applications. On Monday, the State Department announced that all 140,000 employment-based green cards had been used and no applications would be accepted.

Citizenship and Immigration Services, the definition of a hangdog bureaucracy, says the law forbids it to accept the applications. The American Immigration Lawyers Association says this interpretation is rubbish. It is preparing a class-action lawsuit to compel the bureaucracy to accept the application wave that it provoked.

The good news is that immigrants’ hope is pretty much unquenchable. Think of the hundreds of people standing in the rain in ponchos at Walt Disney World on Independence Day, joining the flood of new citizens now cresting across the country. They celebrated on July Fourth, but for many of them the magic date is July 30, when a new fee schedule for immigrants takes effect, drastically jacking up the cost of the American dream.

The collapse of immigration reform in the Senate showed the world what America thinks of illegal immigrants — it wants them all to go away. But the federal government, through bureaucratic malpractice, is sending the same message to millions of legal immigrants, too.

Caste Aside

By ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN

Only in India are people clamoring to be called socially inferior. Last week, over 20 people died in protests in the state of Rajasthan when a group called the Gujjars demanded to be legally downgraded so they could benefit from job guarantees and handouts that flow from "reservation," India's form of "affirmative action" for its lower castes. Last month, citizens in Uttar Pradesh, the country's largest state, went to the polls and delivered an overwhelming mandate to a party committed to expanding reservations for the Dalits -- the caste formerly known as the "untouchables." Both events bring into sharp focus a larger question: Is it guarantees or opportunities that offer the best way out of social and economic backwardness?

Historically, the government's answer to this question was clear, if somewhat schizophrenic: Elites were given opportunities, while the poorer classes were given guarantees. The Constitution itself envisaged free universal and compulsory education for children up to 14 years. But in practice, policy makers since the 1950s emphasized higher education, which largely benefited urban elites who had excellent primary and secondary education. The relative neglect of basic education for the masses, meanwhile, deprived historically disadvantaged classes of similar opportunities for upward mobility. Instead, they were given guaranteed seats in colleges and public sector jobs. While these did have some benefits, by definition, only a small fraction benefited from the guarantees. This temporary, targeted fix, however, came to be regarded as a permanent solution. Guarantees have now become, insidiously, a substitute for creating opportunities.

Unlike the United States, where affirmative action came many decades after the nation's creation, reservation was an integral part of India's founding. And unlike in America, it is a large and blunt instrument of social engineering, taking the form of quotas. Thus, India's founding fathers mandated that 22.5% of all public sector employment and enrollment in government-financed higher education institutions should be reserved for "lower" groups called the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SC/STs).

Instead of shrinking with time, these quotas have vastly increased. Today, at least 50% of all public sector jobs and educational seats are reserved for SC/STs, along with another category called "Other Backward Classes," who were traditionally also discriminated against but occupied a slightly higher rung than the SC/STs in the old Indian caste hierarchy. In some states, like Tamil Nadu, the quota can approach 80%.

In politics, reservation used to be a dividing axis pitting the Congress Party, which broadly supported reservations, against its main national rival, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which historically opposed the policy. Over the last few years, however, in a remarkable shift, reservation has become a bipartisan issue, with politicians of all stripes embracing it as an imperative of electoral success. In this environment, reservation's reach is being extended to elite educational bastions of merit such as the Indian Institutes of Management -- which populates India's most visible companies, such as Infosys and Wipro, as well as many prominent multinational firms. More strikingly, for the first time, there is talk of extending it to private sector employment, an objective that was articulated in the electoral manifesto of the current government.

Is India fated to affirmative action in perpetuity? Interestingly, the public and private realms are moving in opposite directions: While federal and state political actors are reinforcing guarantees over opportunities, consumer choices are clearly reflecting a preference for the latter. The trigger has been provided by the turnaround in India's economic growth, which is now running around 9% annually.

Economic growth has increased the returns to education dramatically enough to set off a mad scramble to acquire education. Even the poorest rural households have internalized the imperative of acquiring education to survive in the new knowledge-based economy. But getting this education is, unfortunately, not always easy. In rural India, free public education is supposedly universally available but it is largely dysfunctional -- teachers often don't turn up to class, and when they do, they impart little of value to students. In a surprising new trend, even the poorest are willing to forego such free public education for costly but (slightly) better private education.

Yet it is a bitter choice when they must forego necessities to access a right accorded to them in the nation's constitution. India is therefore ripe for a voucher system that would combine public financing with the private provision of basic education. Such a scheme could be tailored to individual state needs: One possible twist could be to graduate the value of the voucher, increasing it for the backward classes. The benefits of this would be twofold: It would appease the populist clamor for equal opportunities and it might even be necessary to overcome any discrimination by private providers against enrolling children from backward castes.

Unlike many economic policies that involve trade-offs between equity and efficiency, vouchers can satisfy both objectives. Voucher programs, especially in their graduated variant, are particularly beneficial for the poor. And, by improving incentives and spreading opportunities, a voucher scheme would simply accelerate an ongoing market-driven trend toward the spread of basic education, helping to ease the supply constraints of the Indian educational system and adding to the pool of labor that is at the heart of the country's growth turnaround.

Voucher schemes could also be politically appealing. Studies show that bad policy choices often stem from an attribution problem: Voters can more easily credit politicians for targeted favors such as reservations than for diffuse benefits, such as better economic policies. Ironically, with vouchers, like for other handouts, identifying the benefactor would be easy. The first voucher scheme, instituted in New Delhi for the academic year 2007-08, attracted 100,000 applicants for 400 vouchers.

A general concern with voucher schemes -- their potentially negative impact on public education, as students flock to better, often private, competitors -- would be less relevant than usual in India because public education, particularly in the poorest states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, is considered very difficult, if not impossible, to repair. That makes private provision a viable, even unavoidable, long-term alternative. For this reason, public teachers, with their close links with local politicians, will oppose vouchers, but the large and widespread benefits could help overcome this opposition.

Reservation may have been necessary to redress India's historical inequities. But even its intended beneficiaries -- the poorest -- are becoming wise to its limitations. Voucher-based education cannot take reservation out of the popular political debate but, over time, it can be made less important, as the real opportunities created by better education reduce the illusory appeal of guarantees. A sign of that successful transition would be street protests aimed not at rejigging social classifications, but demanding that teachers actually show up in the classroom.

Mr. Subramanian is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.

Delhi Metro helped save 33,000 tonnes of fuel

New Delhi, June 04: The Delhi Metro helped save 33,000 tonnes of fuel and prevented the creation of over 2,275 tonnes of poisonous gases in the national capital, a new report has said. The completion of Phase I of Delhi Metro, covering 65 km, resulted in a reduction in road accidents, helped improve road traffic and travel conditions and made a substantial impact on the environmental well-being of the capital, the report by the Central Road Research Institute (CRRI) said. "As a result of less use of road vehicles with the coming of the metro, 57,858 tonnes of petrol, diesel and CNG would be saved by the end of year 2007. Over 33,000 tonnes of this have already been saved between 2002 and 2006," it said. "Since the metro began operations in December 2002, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) has already taken 22,697 vehicles load onto its system which is likely to increase to about 40,000 by the end of year 2007." As a result, 16.6 lakh vehicle kilometres would be saved and Rs 218 cr would be saved on maintenance of vehicles by the end of 2007, apart from fuel savings of Rs 172 cr, it said. The report, commissioned by DMRC as part of the first ever study of the impact of its operations, also stated that "Delhites would have a saving of Rs 129 cr by the end of 2007 owing to the Metro". Apart from monetary and environmental benefits, the report suggests the metro has made a substantial improvement in travel conditions and earning capacity per person in the capital. "A person saves around 66 minutes every day by traveling in the Metro, which translates to the additional earning capacity of Rs 725 cr by 2007-end," it said. In addition, passengers traveling on the Delhi Metro save on human energy consumed due to the smooth and comfortable journey, and this has resulted in saving of 40.19 tera joules of energy by 2007. In terms of the human lives saved in road accidents, the report said, "Delhi Metro has helped in already saving 280 lives upto 2006 which would have lost if they had travelled on other modes of transport." The report also concluded that the metro would lead to total savings of around Rs 2,072 cr for the people of Delhi by the end of 2007. "These benefits are a result of passenger time saved, fuel cost saved, reduction in capital and operating cost of vehicles, reduction in environmental damage, accidents and time saved etc," DMRC spokesperson Anuj Dayal told agencies. "In fact, in terms of the total saving for Delhites, the CRRI report says that the total capital investment on phase i of Delhi Metro will be recovered by 2013," he added.

A little India, here in Raleigh
Students carve out a cultural niche

Josh Shaffer, Staff Writer

RALEIGH - Last fall, Kunal Shah flew 8,000 miles from Mumbai to Raleigh with his life in a suitcase, his heart still in India and his mind on an American master's degree.

(photo: Shrikrishna Khare, left, Neil D'Souza and Rishi Mehta walk home from class along Avent Ferry Road, an Indian enclave. )

Today, he walks out of his Southwest Raleigh apartment and feels his homesickness fade. Cricket matches spring up in parking lots and tennis courts. Cars pass by with pictures of Hindu gods dangling from the rearview mirrors. If he needs curry or roti bread, some neighbor will drive him to the Indian market in Cary -- six miles away.

Shah has melded into a growing cultural niche on Avent Ferry Road, a place where Indian graduate students at N.C. State University fill entire apartment complexes.

Indian students know about Avent Ferry even before they leave India, and they rank apartment complexes in order of preference: Champion Court, Avery Close, Colonial Arms.

Students here represent a migration of budding engineers seeking fruitful jobs at home in India, where high-tech jobs are blooming, but the master's degrees they require are scarce and competitive. They list as a top choice N.C. State University, one of a handful of American schools that offer graduate degrees in computer networking.

Shah and his peers also add flavor in North Carolina's Capital City, where more and more residents hail from somewhere else.

"People tend to joke it's 'Indian Ferry Road,' " said Shah, 22. "You are still in that mood. It's not as difficult coming to the U.S."

N.C. State lists roughly 2,000 people here on student visas, about 450 from India -- more than from any other country. Nationwide, Indian students add up to more than 75,000 -- again, the largest influx coming from any country. Next year, Shah expects perhaps another 300 students to arrive in Raleigh.

They cluster as close as possible to the engineering classes on Centennial Campus, sharing rides to Cary for Bollywood movies at Galaxy Cinema or Triangle Indian Market, which caters to their vegetarian diets.

"In the engineering classes, I think many Americans will tell you they feel out of place," said Ajit Gopalakrishnan, 23, who is studying electrical engineering.

On Avent Ferry, Shah points out low-slung brick complexes occupied almost entirely by Indians. Most show up for multiyear stays without a car, a credit card, a cell phone or much money. Furniture comes from garbage bins or garage sales.

Most require jobs to help them through school. Shah worked at Taco Bell despite being a strict religious vegetarian. "I had to touch meat," he said.

Raleigh's Indian pocket is discreet enough to escape most notice -- no saris hanging in the window, incense burning or curry scent wafting down the street. In Shah's apartment recently, the only activity amounted to four students crowded on living room couches, noses in their laptops, tennis shoes piled by the door.

N.C. State, abroad

Last month, N.C. State Chancellor James Oblinger took a weeklong trip to India to promote international education. He traveled with President Bush's ally, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, and several other university heads. Before he left, Shah assured him the United States was still a destination for Indians post-9/11.

"I had a young lady come up to me and say, 'I'm so excited to meet you. I'll be on your campus next year studying electrical engineering.' " Oblinger told N.C. State's board of trustees on Friday. "I was the only one that had that happen."

Tech jobs are exploding in India. Cisco Systems will build a second headquarters in Bangalore, spending $150 million and hiring 1,000 people. IBM plans to double its Indian work force by 2010, counting on skilled but lower-cost labor. Indians here plan to spend a few years working for American companies -- Shah has an internship in San Jose this summer -- then return to India for promising work.

Back in Mumbai (formerly Bombay), Shah followed an online community on Yahoo.com that offers advice to N.C. State's incoming Indian students. Dozens check in each day. Skip clothes hangers, which are cheap, they learn. Bring garam masala and other spices, which are expensive and hard to find.

All Shah and his peers knew on arrival was that someone from Maitri -- the campus's Indian support group -- would be waiting at the airport.

Maitri met Shah's group with three cars and a van, arranged squatter's housing with other seniors and pointed them in the direction of housing and jobs.

The call of higher ed

Hardik Thakker, 23, never imagined coming to America. He grew up in Mumbai in a household with 12 others including extended family, and he never got the urge to leave until he watched his Indian classmates migrate to American colleges seeking a professional edge.

At N.C. State, he felt horribly lost.

Avent Ferry Road offers a Food Lion, a Mediterranean grocery, an Ethiopian restaurant, a pool room and a few banks. Two-story brick apartments line the west side, and the sight of an Indian face is common.

But little is walkable, leaving a newcomer to navigate the Wolfline bus system.

Thakker and Shah found an apartment at Kensington Park --fourth on their list of preferences because Centennial Campus is a Wolfline ride away rather than a few minutes' walk.

Thakker spent months knocking on doors in search of work, reminding himself to be patient and persistent. Finally, in October, he found a job.

"I issue tickets for parking violations," he said with a smile. "People come and abuse me when they see me writing tickets."

Soon, Shah and Thakker joined Maitri, which offers a chance to share Indian food and company. The Food Lion suffices for milk and other staples.

Thakker has started a blog. In a recent entry, he wrote about earning his driver's license after two failed tries and a botched U-turn:

"It might seem pretty easy to get a license, but for me, it was no less than a war."

No cultural vacuum

Still, "Indian" Ferry Road is not an isolated Indian island, said Jay Narayan, an N.C. State distinguished professor in material science engineering and a Maitri adviser.

"They integrate quite well," Narayan said. "The English language is not a problem. They speak well. They write well. It's just that they like to live together, especially when they come in. It's not a ghetto."

N.C. State works to integrate students into the community, and Indian students often visit Wake County schools to give cultural lectures, said Michael Bustle, director of N.C. State's Office of International Services.

Still, he added, "If you went to India and there were a few Americans who lived there, you'd most likely live with them because they know what a Big Mac tastes like and who the sports teams are."

Shah and Thakker celebrated Lord Krishna's birthday in Raleigh last year -- a festival they tended to skip back home.

Tradition and change

Now Shah and Thakker share an apartment with three other students in Champion Court, their first preference just outside Centennial Campus.

The cricket club meets near Carmichael gym each Friday when the weather gets warm.

Shah and Thakker organized a screening of the Cricket World Cup games -- the Indian equivalent of the Super Bowl -- on campus. But time to relax is scarce.

American classes are more rigorous than those in India, Shah said. Class is awkward for Indian students, too, because N.C. State professors are so much more approachable and friendly. They are used to formality on campus back home.

But they adjust. On a warm Saturday, Shah and Thakker sit at Cup A Joe on Avent Ferry, both wearing Wolfpack shirts.

Shah was elected president of Maitri in February. Thakker took vice president. They call their apartment "Maitri Headquarters."

"It feels like giving back what you have got," Shah said.

"We feel honored," Thakker echoed.

In July, they will organize a caravan to the airport, shuttling hundreds of newcomers to their temporary digs -- confident after a year's experience on Indian Ferry Road.

Staff writer Josh Shaffer can be reached at 829-4818 or josh.shaffer@newsobserver.com.