Ram Setu: the importance of religious symbols

It is a “chain of limestone shoals” between India and Sri Lanka, variously called Adam’s Bridge, Ram Bridge, and Ram Setu. To the Hindus it is the bridge built by Lord Ram’s supporters in the Ramayana.

It is currently agitating Indians to extreme lengths, that some are questioning whether the epic Ramayana was actually a record of historic events. Even TV channels in India are plunging into what should have been, if at all, a debate by religious scholars and historians.

The immediate cause of this crisis is that the Indian government has has approved a multi-million dollar Sethusamudram Shipping Canal Project that aims to create a ship channel across the Palk Strait between India and Sri Lanka.

The debate about the historical accuracy of the Ramayana and Ram Setu, I think misses the point. Any religion has its sacred spots that come from a set of beliefs. These spots provide the points of reference to that religion, and are a part of the iconography of a religion. For centuries the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, which stands on the spot where Christian believe Jesus was born in a manger, has been a source of inspiration and piety for millions of Christians worldwide.

So why not the Ram Setu ?

The separation of state from religion requires that religion should not interfere with the way a country is run, but does not require you to deny religion. For many communities, including communities in India, their religion describes their worldview, prescribes certain behavior, and proscribes others. So religion is about building communities, about promoting social stability through a set of rules of conduct.

The dangers come when a religion assumes a certain exclusivity that is believed to be derived from God, and gets intolerant of other religions. Every religion has gone through these phases in India and abroad. The Spanish Inquisition from 1478 was born out of this intolerance, and so is a lot of Islamic fundamentalism.

The demand that Ram Setu be protected is not a reflection of intolerance. It is a demand from a religious community that the government preserve a place that it considers sacred. That parties like the Bhartiya Janata Party (known to have some intolerant people in their ranks), have espoused this cause, does not make the demand per se intolerant.

To be sure, there are development objectives to be met. The channel will cut down shipping time, as many ships will no longer have to go around Sri Lanka, to traverse between the east and west of India. Sure, there may be room for compromise, but whatever scope was there may have already been snuffed by intemperate comments about the Ramayana.

If Net Neutrality goes, the world may no longer be flat

Network neutrality has ensured so far that we are able to access any web site we want, at the same speed, whether it is a corporate web-site in the US, the site of an out-of-garage operation, or the web site of a vendor in India, Ghana, or anywhere in the world.

This neutrality ensured that the Internet was a great leveller. Besides giving a fillip to businesses selling into the US and other developed economies, including small operations like garment and handicraft makers, it also gave a fillip to blogging, because now we were communicating with anybody, anywhere in the world at little or no cost.

The world may however no longer be flat if new rules come into force in the US aiming to create a two-tier Internet. The Internet service providers (ISPs), who have invested in the big pipes that transfer Internet packets, plan to speed up or slow down Web content based on its source, ownership or destination.

If you want traffic to your site to be faster, you will have to pay the owners of the pipes for premium, high speed movement of data to and from your site. It also means that video and audio content providers that pay for this premium service, or services operated by the owners of the pipes, would have access to the faster lane, while merchants, bloggers, and various content providers who can’t afford the fast lane, will just have to putter along the slow lane.

Once again an opportunity to create an equal opportunity society may be missed. Not only will the digital divide in the US get excarcebated, but it will have global ramifications, between the “haves” and “have nots” among countries.

Economies like India, China, which tend to be US-centric in their markets, may find themselves perhaps slipping into the slow-lanes of network traffic, and consequently the slow-lane of business.

The removal of net neutrality will also make cable and telephone companies like AT&T and Time Warner the filters, the gatekeepers in the two-tier Internet economy, deciding which traffic will flow faster, and which won’t, based purely on considerations of profit. Free access and disemmination of information could be in jeopardy, as also probably consumer choice and the free market.

The battle is just beginning. Weighing in favor of the network operators, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) on Thursday said that “some regulatory proposals offered by various companies and organizations in the name of “net neutrality” could deter broadband Internet providers from upgrading and expanding their networks to reach more Americans.” The DoJ was responding to a US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Notice of Inquiry regarding broadband practices.

The DoJ said in a statement that precluding broadband providers from charging content and application providers directly for faster or more reliable service could shift the entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers. If the average consumer is unwilling or unable to pay more for broadband Internet access, the result could be to reduce or delay critical network expansion and improvement.

The Internet has until now been about freedom of expression (blogs etc.), freedom of communication (email, instant messenger etc.), freedom to socialize (social networking sites), and freedom of choice (online commerce). That could fade away or get compromised going forward. We are all up against commercial realities, unless US lawmakers intervene. The party may be getting over.

Internet traffic growth slowing down, according to MINTS

Minnesota Internet Traffic Studies (MINT) has reported that the growth rate of Internet traffic is down to 50 to 60 percent in mid-2007 both in the US and the rest of the world.

In spite of the widespread claims of continuing and even accelerating growth rates, Internet traffic growth appears to be decelerating, according to the report.

In the US, there was a brief period of "Internet traffic doubling every 100 days" back in 1995-96, but already by 1997 growth subsided towards an approximate doubling every year, and more recently even that growth rate has declined towards 50-60 per year, it added.

As this passage is being written (in August 2007), there are concerns about "exafloods" of traffic, primarily video, that might overwhelm the Internet, according to the report. This is motivating calls for new business models, with many implications for issues such as "net neutrality". But there is very little solid data about what is happening on the network, and many conflicting estimates, the MINT report said.

The MINTS project is supported by the Digital Technology Center and the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute, and the ADC Chair held by Andrew Odlyzko, which comes from an endowment donated by the ADC Foundation.

Internet reflects, nay amplifies social problems

The Internet is a mirror to the population that uses it, Google Inc.’s vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vinton Cerf told the BBC in August. “When you have a problem in the mirror you do not fix the mirror, you fix that which is reflected in the mirror”, Cerf said while rejecting regulation of the Internet.

To my mind, to stretch Cerf’s metaphor a little, the Internet is like a concave shaving mirror. It magnifies and throws up every blemish in society, because it offers a far greater degree of anonymity, and much greater and easier access to people.

In the old days, I had to worry about having my pocket picked by a person next to me in the subway or a bus or in the park. These days, using the Internet, a person as far away as Lagos or Moscow can dip into my pocket.

Recently I put up my laptop for sale on a popular auction site. It was my first auction, and I was delighted that someone had made me an offer within less than an hour of my posting my item ! Then the bidder got in touch with me and requested me to do him a favor and ship the laptop to his dear friend in Nigeria in time for his birthday. Incidentally, I has specified when placing the laptop for auction, that I would not arrange to ship the product.

The bidder however persisted, and even sent me an online link to his bank that showed that the funds for paying for the laptop had been kept in escrow, for disbursement as soon as I proved that the item had been shipped to his dear friend. Unfortunately, when I traced the bank web-site to its owner, I found that it wasn’t owned by a bank, but by a resident of London.

After seven days wasted, and canceling the transaction, I put up the item for auction again. Guess what ? I had a bidder again within the hour. No two guesses: the bidder wanted his girlfriend in Benin to have it in time for her birthday.

I still don’t know, and frankly don’t care who were the folks I dealt with. Were they really Nigerian scammers, as some pundits told me ? The rub is that I had been promised by the auction site that I could theoretically reach customers throughout the world. All I had succeeded in doing was attracting to myself anonymous criminal elements from around the world.

The recent hacker attack on the Bank of India site in India, and others in other countries, testify that we are at a big risk on the Internet when we least expect it. According to this report, you just had to go to the Bank of India web-site and your computer was hosed with a whole lot of compromising malware and Trojans.

Even my email is not safe. I am not talking only about folks dropping viruses and Trojans through my mailbox. Security software folks like Symantec have made a great business out of their ability to block and remove this vermin.

I am talking about the large variety of offers, some offering to cure my sexual debilitations they are privy to, others promising to keep me in a diazepam-induced Nirvana for as long as I can pay for it, and still others thoughtfully offering me a chance to share in a rich widow’s inheritance.

Apart from their being a nuisance, there is the chance that somebody may be gullible enough to be inveigled into these deals. There are a large number of reports that confirm that a lot of folks in the US have in fact got into deep trouble trying to share in someone’s loot.

The Internet gives us the most valuable and scary insights into the depths human nature can sink to, when given global access and anonymity. Does this mean that we should shut down the Internet ? No ways, I make my money of it, I download music far faster than if I had waited for the local brick-and-mortar store to stock it, I can research information on the net, I can chat up distant friends on instant messengers, people under repressive regimes can now communicate with the outside world !

The point is that we have to be very, very careful, starting with the realization that it is not a brave new world out there in cyberspace.

The Internet and its promise of Second Life is not the promise of liberation from a cruel terra firma. It is the same sad world we live in, only a lot more unsafe, because the criminals can now get you in the privacy and security of your home. Forewarned, as the old saw goes, is forearmed. Irrational exuberance could have deadly results.