Please find below a few points of interest in Indian Polity
GOVERNOR AND CM
The recent cultural agreement between Italy and China, apart from its bilateral importance, has far reaching significance for the cultural policymakers and heritage enthusiasts worldwide. This first of its kind agreement allows China to have museum space in Rome and Italy likewise in Beijing. The arrangement is for five years but it is renewable and can translate into long-term possession. China has got about 600 square metres of space at the National Museum of Venezia Palace and a unique exhibition comparing the two empires — Roman, and Qui and Han dynasties — is currently open for viewing. This is a radical departure from the usual agreements which make provision for travelling exhibitions or loaning select cultural objects for a fixed period of time. When secure space without hurdles is provided, it is bound to encourage source countries to bring in more precious artefacts and offer a memorable experience in the host countries. Over the long term, free circulation of museum objects has the potential to reduce trafficking in antiquities, the third most pervasive criminal activity in the world.
This innovative approach is also a superior alternative to the commercially oriented franchise model promoted by internationally well known museums such as Guggenheim and the Louvre. When the United Arab Emirates wanted to exhibit some of the prestigious international collections of the Louvre and benefit from the brand value, it signed an agreement with France to set up a branch of the Louvre Museum in Abhu Dhabi. In addition to the cost of construction and management, the UAE had to pay a fee of US$ 500 million to use the name of the Louvre. The Mayor of Rio-de-Janeiro also made similar attempts to build a Guggenheim museum, but it failed to take off in the face of opposition to the huge costs and legal tangles. Indian policymakers struggling to improve the substandard exhibiting environment can creatively adopt the public-spirited Italy-China model. Countries with advanced museum experience can be invited to build their own space and showcase their precious heritage without having either to sacrifice social objectives or compromise the integrity of the institutions. As important, this approach will enable museum officials and designers to benefit from the most advanced international expertise.
Science when hyped loses credibility. Two separate incidents in a span of three weeks show how scientists who hype up and sensationalise their work end up diluting the significance of their discovery. In a paper published online in theScience journal in the first week of December (“A bacterium that can grow by using arsenic instead of phosphorus” by Felisa Wolfe-Simon, et al), authors from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and other institutions report that a particular bacterium isolated from California's Mono Lake was capable of substituting arsenic for a small percentage of phosphorus and still sustain its growth. This is a most surprising finding considering that arsenic is a toxic element and is not one of the six elements — carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus — that make up most of the organic molecules in living matter. Days before publication of the paper, the worldwide web went wild with speculation about extra-terrestrial life. The reason: a media advisory sent out by NASA on a press briefing “to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for extra-terrestrial life.” In consequence, most media reports following the publication of the paper dwelt on the issue of extra-terrestrial life. It turned out that the paper did not discuss the possibility of life outside Earth; nor did the accompanying news item published in the journal propose anything of the kind.
The second instance of hyping up science relates to a press release from Tel Aviv University. According to this, the earliest evidence of existence of modern humans has been found in Israel, predating evidence found in Africa by about 200,000 years. The conclusion contradicts the prevailing view of human evolution and migration out of Africa. What followed was sensationalist media coverage of an otherwise stodgy work of purely academic interest. The paper, which reports the morphological analysis of human teeth recovered from Israel's Qesem Cave, was recently published online in The American Journal of Physical Anthropology (“Middle Pleistocene dental remains from Qesem Cave [Israel]” by Israel Hershkovitz et al). The paper says the teeth cannot be conclusively identified as belonging to modern humans (Homo sapiens) or to Neanderthals or to other human species. While the journalists can be faulted for oversimplifying and hyping up the findings of science, the deliberate misleading of the media and the public by some scientists and their institutions must be condemned. Such acts by a few take a heavy toll on the credibility of science.
The Little Girl’ — La Nina — has had an outsized impact across globe since manifesting itself in mid-2010. La Nina and its equally rumbustious sibling, El Nino, come about when the waters of the eastern and central Pacific Ocean along the equator become unusually cold or warm. These changes in the Pacific produce swings in atmospheric pressure, winds, temperature, and rainfall that have a global impact. These coupled with changes in the ocean and atmosphere are collectively called the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO). For India, an El Nino is often a cause for concern because of its adverse impact on the south-west monsoon; this happened in 2009. A La Nina, on the other hand, is often beneficial for the monsoon, especially in the latter half. The La Nina that appeared in the Pacific in 2010 probably helped last year’s south-west monsoon end on a favourable note. But then, it also contributed to the deluge in Australia, which resulted in one of that country’s worst natural disasters with large parts of the north-east under water. It wreaked similar havoc in south-eastern Brazil and played a part in the heavy rains and consequent flooding that have affected Sri Lanka.
It is becoming increasingly clear that global warming is contributing to the impact that ENSO has. The Indian Ocean is warming rapidly. There are already indications that this warming along with the growing temperature of the western Pacific is influencing the effect of a La Nina. A paper, ominously titled ‘The Perfect Ocean for Drought,’ which was published in the journal Science in 2003, linked the prolonged droughts from 1998 to 2002 that afflicted the United States, southern Europe, and south-west Asia to the warmth of these ocean waters during a protracted La Nina. Such heightened ocean temperatures may well have played a crucial part in weather-related events in recent months. While the La Nina that developed in mid-2010 lent a helping hand to the south-west monsoon, the warmth of the tropical Indian Ocean may have prevented a more equitable distribution of rainfall — eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and much of West Bengal received far too little of it. The warming of the Indian Ocean and western Pacific probably provided the extra moisture and energy for the exceptionally heavy rains that Australia and Sri Lanka experienced. It could be one reason why in India the north-east monsoon, which is usually retarded by a La Nina, has this time seen a surfeit of rain. The writing on the wall is clear enough: global warming will worsen the swings of climate variability brought about by factors like ENSO, making extreme weather events such as droughts and floods more frequent. The world needs to pay heed.
