SPAN: July/August 2004

he who? The Whiffenpoofs, or "Whiffs," as they are familiarly known around Yale University, are a hallowed tradition that originated in 1909, when five men from the Yale Glee Club formed a singing group. Glee clubs, or music clubs with an emphasis on singing, are standard extracurricular features of U.S. high schools and colleges ("glee" comes from the Old English word for entertainment and music).

When the Whiffenpoofs were formed, there was great appreciation for "quartets," groups of four voices-two tenors, a baritone, and a bass-who sang in rich harmony, often acapella, i.e., without musical accompaniment.

The first Whiffenpoofs performed popular ballads informally in a local pub, Mory's Temple Bar in New Haven, which itself dates back to 1848. The quartet, which included an alternate singer or two, soon became a weekly feature.

The name "Whiffenpoofs" was a nonsense word that came from a musical comedy of the day, and it appealed to one of the original singers. The others liked its carefree sound that reflected their mood. The name was quickly adopted. The Whiffenpoofs claimed as a' signature tune a song that was Kipling's, "Gentlemen-Rankers," with a few modifications, set to music. It became the Whiffenpoof Song, and it's refrain "We

are poor little lambs who've lost our way/ Baa! Baa! Baa!! Little black sheep who've gone astray/ Baa-aa-aa!" is now as well known as any traditional song in America, thanks to early recordings of the song, first by Rudy Vallee and later by Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley.

The Whiffenpoofs became an institution at Yale, with illustrious alumni including songwriter and composer Cole Porter. It is considered an honor to be chosen as a member. Yale seniors are usually selected. While the Whiffenpoofs remain an all-male ensemble, from the beginning women have occasionally been included as "honorary" members. Ella Fitzgerald was made an honorary member in 1979. The late banker and Senator Prescott Bush, the father of George Bush Senior, was a Whiffenpoof.

Today, 14 young singers are Whiffenpoofs, and they tour not only around the United States, but the world. Their 2004 summer tour brought them to Asia. Kicking off in Tokyo, they progressed through China, Thailand, Nepal, and touched down in India for five days from July 1 through 5, where the Whiffenpoofs serenaded audiences in New Delhi before visiting Goa and Mumbai. South Africa, Dubai, Egypt, Lebanon, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Spain and Ireland will hear them sing before they return home to Yale.

-L.T.

SPAN

Small But Effective: Making a Difference

By Lea Terhune

Jananeethi Development Starts From Fearlessness

Publisher

By Latha Anantharaman

Michael H. Anderson

Editor-in-Chief .'

Mitraniketan Supporting Rural Enterprise

Gabrielle Guimond

By Latha Anantharaman

Editor

DARSHN Action Through Self-Help

Lea Terhune

Associate Editor

By Latha Anantharaman

A. Venkata Narayana

IWMED Catch the Rain Building Water Resources

Hindi Editor Govind Singh

By Ronojoy Sen

Urdu Editor

Sreema Mahila Samity Freedom Through Financial Independence

AnjumNaim

Copy Editor Dipesh K. Satapathy

By Ronojoy Sen

Editorial Assistant K. Muthukumar

Tiljala Gives the Poorest a Chance

Art Director

By Ronojoy Sen

Hemam Bhatnagar

Deputy Art Directors

ISSand Samarthan Power to the People

Sharad Sovani Khurshid Anwar Abbasi

By A. Venkata Narayana

Champaner

Production/Circulation Manager

By Lea Terhune

Rakesh Agrawal

Printing Assistant

Jiva Blazes a Trail in Education

By Dinesh C. Sharma Kalam Learning Human Rights

Alok Kaushik

Business Manager

By Dipankar Khanna

R. Narayan

Onsite Teaching Essential Skills

Research Services AIRC Documentation Services, American Information Resource Center

By Dipankar Khanna

Just One Word: Plastic Front cover: Photo collage includes some of the beneficiaries of the U.S. grant programs highlighted in "Small But Effective: Making a Difference." Collage by Hemant Bhatnagar.

By Katrina Brooker

Sea Searchers

By Jeff Wheelwright

Note: SPAN does not accept unsolicited manuscripts and materials and does not assume responsibility for them. Query letters are accepted.

Published by the Public Affairs Section, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 23316841), on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi.

Printed at Ajanta Offset & Packagings Ltd., 95B Wazirpur Industrial Area, Delhi 110052. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government.

No part of this magazine may be reproduced without the prior permission of the Editor. For permission write to the Editor. Price of magazine, one year subscription (6 issues) Rs. 125; single copy, Rs. 3<J.

On the Lighter Side Master Glass

By Harry Sumrall ~

A Cool Whiz with Attitude An Interview with Suzan-Lori Parks

Walkie-Talkie

By Lisa Scanlon

Search Beyond Google

By Wade Roush

The Lowdown on Search Engines

By Dipesh Satapathy

The Lobbyists

By Ashish Kumar Sen

Valid Voting?

An Interview with David L. Dill

by Erika Jonietz

A LETTER

FROM

upport for international development has long been an important part of United States foreign policy. Millions of dollars are dedicated for development and issues of global concern, such as fighting HIV/AIDS, trafficking in women and children and terrorism. Usually this is pretty well-documented by the media. We hear less often, however, about small gifts that change people's lives. The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, through its Public Mfairs Section, gives such grants to organizations doing work in various areas of social welfare. A few thousand dollars can go a long way to buy supplies or furnish a village school, to print pamphlets about good conservation practices that spare the environment or train people in vocational skills.

In this issue of SPAN we examine a number of such projects in all parts of India in our cover feature, "Small But Effective: Making a Difference."

Latha Anantharaman covered Kerala, visiting Jananeethi, an NGO that provides help to victims of domestic abuse. She also reports on Mitraniketan, an NGO that works to empower rural women through education. Finally, she looks at the environment-focused DARSHN. From West Bengal, Ronojoy Sen tells of a dynamic NGO that is spearheading the water-harvesting movement there, and of Tiljala, which helps to educate ragpickers and street children in Calcutta. A. Venkata Narayana reports on grants that helped educate panchayats in Jammu & Kashmir and Madhya Pradesh about good governance in "Power to the People." "Champaner,"

by Lea Terhune, describes an Indian heritage site that U.S. funds are helping to restore. Dinesh C. Sharma tells the story of the innovative, Faridabadbased Jiva Institute, co-founded by American Steve Rudolph and Indian partner Rishi Pal Chauhan.

They defined a unique form of holistic education, and now Jiva explores other ways to benefit the community Dipankar Khanna writes about Onsite, a project in Bangalore that educates children of construction workers. He also reports on two groups that raise awareness about human rights in Bangalore and Tamil Nadu.

Election fever may be over in India, but it is grow-

S

THE

PUBLISHER

ing in the United States, with the Democratic and Republican party conventions just ahead. In "Valid Voting?," Erika Jonietz interviews Stanford computer science professor David L. Dill on the pros and cons of electronic voting machines.

And Ashish Kumar Sen writes about the human element in the elections: Indian An1ericans who use their skills to support and fundraise for candidates of their choice in "The Lobbyists. " The search engine Google has been in the news a lot lately, but will it remain the unchallenged, dominant Internet browser? Not necessarily, if Wade Roush's article "Search Beyond Google" is any indication. A companion interview of search engine expert Greg Notess by Dipesh Satapathy gives us "The Lowdown on Search Engines."

But computers are not the only tools that have revolutionized our lives. Those rectangles of plasticcredit cards-introduced in the United States during the 1950s, changed the way people used their money forever. "Just One Word: Plastic," by Katlina Brooker, traces the history of that now ubiquitous card.

Fish and the fishing industry are in trouble all over the world. Overfishing and pollution have reduced stocks. "Sea Searchers," by Jeff Wheelwright, chronicles an international effort by scientists to track marine life with satellite monitors in order to update information and aid conservation of precious marine resources.

Two creative people are highlighted to prove that music and drama can be serious, innovative and entertaining at the same time. In "Master Glass," Harry Sumrall profiles avant-garde composer Philip Glass, who famously composed music for the opera Satyagraha, about Gandhi's nonviolent resistance movement with a libretto taken from the Bhagavad Gita. And a recent visitor to India, Pulitzer Prizewinning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, spoke to SPAN about her life and her work.

We wish you good reading.

Small But Effective he importance of making a difference is breaking the cycle of indifference," NDTV news anchor Pankaj Pachauri observed recently, as he introduced a SPAN-sponsored panel discussion on "Making a Difference" in society. And while big things do make a difference, small successes can be transformative. Daily we hear of governments earmarking millions of dollars for development efforts around the world. But the "small change" is frequently overlooked. For a long time, the U.S. Embassy, New Delhi, has awarded small grants to organizations that have proved their worth in the community. These organizations function effectively and transparently. They are given seed money, usually for special projects, to help them extend their outreach and benefit more people. Many of these grants are offered through the Public Affairs Section of the Embassy.

The grants generally range from a few thousand to about $50,000, but this carefully targeted funding has an impact. In this issue of SPAN we look at some of the projects that have emerged and grown, thanks to these grants.

Grant recipients are found throughout India. The assortment of projects is varied. Smaller allotments may go toward purchase of property, such as computers that enable organizations to improve research, educate or bring out publications that will benefit the community. Or a small grant might fund a two-day workshop on biomedical waste management, such as that conducted by the Centre for Environment Education in Coimbatore; or the workshop organized by Prayas, "Saving Tomorrow's Children Today," on trafficking of women and children. More generous grants may go to small schools, to improve facilities and enable the hiring of staff, buy books, equipment and other essential materials. Tiljala, in Calcutta, is conducting a two-year education program for about 300 underprivileged children.

Jananeethi in Kerala provides legal aid to women who are victims of domestic violence. Sreema Mahila Samity is building the capacity of selfhelp groups in West Bengal to develop micro-enterprise. India Vision Foundation completed a documentary film to educate about the perils of drug abuse. A grant to the Global Tiger Forum funded management training for wildlife officers at the Wildlife Institute of India. These are just a few of the diverse projects which, over the years, received a critical boost from a small grant, judiciously applied. The stories that follow chronicle a few of these small, but effective, projects in different parts of India.

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Jananeethi

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. Fearlessness the ntown of Thrissur in central Kerala, a group oflawyers and activists is at work on a radical old idea: a crime-free society. The practical attempt to put together a holistic, harmonious community may sound like a utopian movement out of the 19th century, but this NGO has set goals and a schedule for the project.

Jananeethi-People's Initiative for Human Rights-focuses on redressing wrongs as a way to transform human lives. Its members run a wide range of programs for legal counseling and aid, promotion of legal literacy, human rights education, public interest litigation, dispute negotiation and settlement, consumer education, anti-corruption measures, and public participation in making and reforming laws.

Much of Jananeethi's legal help is given to women who have been neglected, abused, kicked out of their homes or forced to run away. At Jananeethi's office in Thrissur, law officer Faritha Ansari and program officer K.K. Radhamani introduce me to Mary, whose husband used to get drunk and beat her up. Mary first met Radhamani at an anganwadi class. The government's anganwadis provide day-care for preschool children and help mothers improve the overall health of their families.

They hold classes about health, hygiene, consumer awareness and other topics. The classes are an effective way for organizations to reach out to women, and for women to ask for help from a sympathetic and wellinformed outsider. Mary wanted to know how she could divorce her husband. He had stabbed her in front of their three-year-old daughter, left her (as he thought) for dead, and turned himself in to the police.

Jananeethi helped her get her divorce.

Mary still has deep scars on her face, neck and ribs from the attack eight years ago. She now runs her own tailoring shop, supports her two daughters and has refused alimony from her ex-husband. How

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has the divorce changed her life? "I was always afraid before.

Now I'm not afraid." Her husband sometimes asks her to come home again. "He just wants to live on my money. 1 plan to work, live a little better, get my daughters educated."

Last year, Jananeethi completed a comprehensive study on dowry, a rapidly growing social evil in Kerala society. The study, funded by a federal grant from the American Embassy's Public Affairs Section, was carried out in three stages: surveys on why dowry is still demanded and paid despite legal safeguards and public awareness campaigns; debates and discussions among people affected by dowry customs; and workshops for academics, social workers, human rights lawyers and activists, government officials and media persons on better ways to fight dowry.

Many women ask Jananeethi to help them get the life insurance, accident compensation, or widows' pensions they are entitled to.

Thangam's husband served in the army for 21 years, was discharged because he suffered from mental depression, and died a year later.

For decades the army refused to pay the widow's pension she was entitled to. Jananeethi filed and won her case and, when the army still delayed payment, filed for contempt of court. Thangam has now been receiving her pension for a year. Her face shines when she tells me how the lawyers at Jananeethi made this possible.

Jananeethi's most ambitious endeavor is the transformation of Ward 12 of Thrissur Corporation into a crime-free community by the end of this year. The American Embassy's Public Affairs Section also provided funds for this project.

Ward 12 has a population of over 5,000, mostly daily wage laborers and a small group of university employees. In each of its five zones, a member of the staff and a team of facilitators from the neighborhood gather people together to find out why crimes are committed. They talk about incomplete land deeds, land disputes between family members and neighbors, domestic abuse, worksite accident compensation, taxes, rent control, consumer grievances and red tape. These problems often drive them to borrow from loan sharks or commit crimes such as bribing, encroaching on others' land, stealing or demanding dowry. The lawyers aim to settle every dispute, either out of court or in court, pay back every

From left to right: Mary (center) got legal help from K.K. Radhamani (leji) and Faritha Ansari to get a divorce and start a new life; George Pulikuthiyil talks to women in Ward 12 about their legal rights; and Jananeethi workers survey households in Ward 12.

loan, get every household a valid title deed, and make every member of the community legally literate, all by December 2004.

At the same time, the community will work to prevent gambling, addiction, unhygienic environmental conditions, pollution and unemployment. According to advocate George Pulikuthiyil, director of Jananeethi, community councils for environment, health, employment, child welfare, care of elderly, and so on will take up the baton at the end of the year so that the improvements are sustained and taken further. He feels that if people know their legal rights and responsibilities, they will be able to better their lives in every way.

Faritha says people in Ward 12 were distrustful at first. "Some of them would say, first get me my pattayam [land deed], then I'll come to your meeting. But now they all talk to each other and even stop us in the street to ask what the next meeting is about."

They are also using the meetings to share information and skills. Shali, mother of four, found out why her toddler bruised so badly each time she fell. The child is now being treated for her condition. Mercy asked the staff to help her find someone to teach her bookbinding. She and other mothers were paying a high price for their children's notebooks and she felt she could produce cheaper ones on her own.

And what lies beyond this program? Jananeethi's ultimate objective, according to Pulikuthiyil, is nothing less than to create a society without fear. "We hear about the high indices of well-being in Kerala, but if you ask a woman a question she looks around to see if anyone might overhear. Development starts from fearlessness. It arises from the feeling, 'my life is secure.' That means freedom from fear in the home, on the streets, in custody-a society in which every member has his or her human rights."

0 About the Author: Latha Anantharaman Pallakkad, Kerala.

is a freelance writer based in

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Suppo.rl.ng !!A~N!R~MA~n'erpr.se mana Amma is here today to give away her kid. Over the past year, she and 99 other women acquired goats to start off a small herd. Each woman agreed that when her goat had kids, she would pass on one kid to another woman in her village. The other kids would be hers to keep or sell. amana is giving away one of her two kids to her neighbor Mini at today's women's group meeting. Five kids will change hands at the meeting, and the cycle will begin again.

Goat rearing is just one of the ways women in this small village of Madalampara in Thiruvananthapuram district are trying to bring their families to a better standard of living. Rina, a young mother of two, has been raising chickens for the ,

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past six months. "I got ten to begin with and I used the egg money to buy more chickens. Some of them have died, but I was making good money from them. I still have five left. I took them to the vet and they are healthy. I know I can get back to making a profit again."

The "starter" chickens and the goats, a special Malabari cross that usually has twins and triplets, came from Mitraniketan, an NGO that has worked intensively for 48 years to make a difference in the village of Vellanad, 20 kilometers from Thiruvananthapuram.

The women's empowerment program, funded by a grant from the American Embassy, encourages a range of self-employment activities. Mitraniketan also trained 30 women in tailoring and gave

them sewing machines. Prabhavati, 19, passed out of the People's College and learned dressmaking. She makes petticoats and other items for Mitraniketan's unit.

Some of the women work on their own.

Sheela, 23, sews clothes for women in her neighborhood. "About eight months ago' they gave me a sewing machine. I stitch blouses, petticoats. I also do repairs. I make about a hundred rupees a month now."

Nearly 200 women learned to make lotion, soap and detergent. Some now work at Mitraniketan's own center. They call their soap Swadeshi and it is wrapped entirely in eco-friendly butter paper. Usha Kumari, who comes from Madalampara, says, "Four of us started a unit from our homes."

Her neighbor Sulochana adds, "We've been selling door to door. Sometimes people

Left: Five proud new owners of kids: sharing goat offspring with other village women helps villagers in Mandalampura, Thiruvananthapuram, raise their standard of living and encourages small enterprise.

Clockwise from top right: Sulochana pours soap into molds; Shija, who trained for a year at Mitraniketan's Rural Technology Centre, puts the finishing touches on pots; Prenr.a, a novice on the handloom, learns by weaving a shoulder bag at the weaving unit.

An "educational experiment" that became an institution that transforms farmers' lives

come to.our house to buy some."

Mitraniketan was started by K. Viswanathan, who saw a glimmer of what could be done in his own home village when he traveled abroad in the 1950s. "I found a great deal of interest. In particular, the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation was a classic example of what a cooperati ve organization can contribute. In the Appalachians, I saw the John C. Campbell folk high school.

After seeing that, I felt I should go to the home of folk high schools, Denmark. These schools helped to develop a democratic system for the entire country. They were similar to our gurukula system." The folk high schools help preserve rural crafts, music and other folk techniques.

The "educational experiment" Viswanathan started when he came ba~k to

Vellanad is today a diverse but closely integrated network of programs and institutes.

Mitraniketan's 70 lushly cultivated acres encompass a nursery school, a school for the hearing-impaired, an open school, libraries, a computer center, an electronics lab, a stadium, a primary health center, and training and production centers for weaving, dyeing, carpentry, pottery, metalwork, plumbing, electrical work, fruit processing, and coil' fiber weaving.

Mitraniketan has put a special effort into agriculture and livestock rearing. The animal science center trains rural youth in artificial insemination and other livestock raising skills, and teachers and students run a dairy. The farm science center trains farmers in a wide range of subjects, including tissue culture, the raising of in-

digenous crops, intercropping and other alternative practices, farming on marginal lands, post-harvest technologies, and conservation.

Through workshops and demonstrations, says P.N. Ananth, training organizer, "we reach on average 7,000 farmers a year."

In 1996, Viswanathan started a residential people's college with hundred boys and girls 18 years and older. Says principal Reghu Rama Das, "Our [conventional] system of education is not accessible to everyone, especially tribal youth. Those in remote villages have no access not only in terms of physical distance but also in terms of money, the illiteracy of parents, the lack of information about what is available."

Das describes the college's simple oneyear program. "First there is a need-based general education, then vocational education, then associated activities, which are arts and crafts, manual work and so on.

These are to develop reading, writing, communication, leadership, and organizational skills." The emphasis is onupgrading rural and traditional skills rather than success in examinations.

To foster rural leadership, Mitranjketan encourages alumni to form groups that will follow through on development activities in their villages. One of its most popular activities is the 20-day training program for homemakers, held at various times in the year. Here, in addition to upgrading their skills in cooking, child rearing, health care, and care of the environment, women share strategies to resolve conflicts in the home and neighborhood. Das says, "When we invite, 30, 50 people come, because it is need-based.

We assess the need before we decide the topics to be taught."

Viswanathan sees the rural university concept as central to development. "Let's try to see whether we can evolve it into something simple and wholesome to be developed in other needy areas. Here we give them citizenship training and vocational training. When they go home, they are different people." He sees a very bright future for women especially. "If their freedom is ensured, they will come up very well. They will show their worth."

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Action Through

Self.Help

By LATHA ANANTHARAMAN

he coastal cities of Ernakulam and Kochi were probably among the fIrst places in Kerala to be affected by air, water and soil pollution. Because the land is low-lying, drainage is often a problem and water sources get contaminated or invaded by saltwater. The number of vehicles increases by 11 percent each year. Changing modes of consumption have reduced the quality of life for some while raising it for others. In recent years many organizations, neighborhood clubs and government agencies have worked to increase awareness about pollution and to clean up the city.

DevelopmentAction thRough Self Help Network (DARSHN), an NGO based in Kochi, has published two books in Malayalam for the use of environmental organizations. The books contain simple, illustrated instructions and ideas for cleaning up litter, composting organic waste, raising kitchen gardens, reducing garbage generation, recycling, saving water, keeping water uncontaminated and free of mosquito larvae, using public transportation, and many other measures that the average person can take to keep his or her surroundings clean. Two posters were also designed to help spread the message.

The U.S. Embassy in New Delhi provided funds for the project.

The first book is written for community environment groups and individuals who want to do their bit. The language is simple and the text focuses on day-to-day habits, choices and practices that make a difference.

The second is written especially for schoolchildren aged 11 years and up. Through a network of organizations, DARSHN has so far distributed 8,000 out of the 10,000 copies printed to schools in several districts and is already considering a reprint.

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Girinagar received 200 copies.

Sobhalatha A., who runs the students' eco-club, fInds the book easy to read and use. "In our library we had some books on the environment, but not in such simple language." The students are equally enthusiastic. Naveen G, who is in standard X, says, "The book tells us what is practically applicable, and tells us what can be done in the house itself." He has started a compost pit at home.

The school's eco-club is an active one. "This past term," says Aagneya S. Bose, "we made bags out of cloth and paper for shopping." She says parents do join them in their new environmentfriendly practices "to some extent." The club members tried out a compost pit at school, but they found the volume of organic waste too large for them to take on. Sobhalatha spoke to the principal about it and the school is now considering a biogas unit.

Among DARSHN's other programs, the most successful has been Genderline, a telephone outreach service that provides counseling to women and girls in distress, referring them to police, legal or medical assistance where necessary.

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Posters and books help spread the word that caring about the environment is in everyone best interest. This poster admonishes "Do not throw garbage on the streets. "

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Timely information and counseling can protect naive young girls from getting into bad situations. Shreedhanya Hrishikesh, who is on the Program Implementation Committee, says that a college lecturer who had heard about Genderline asked the organization to teach an orientation class for pre-college girls. He found that female students, especially those who had come from all-girl schools, were easily exploited. "They had cell phones and other things that were not given to them by their parents," says Hrishikesh. "The boys would give them gifts and create a sense of obligation. The lecturer wanted us to talk to the girls about the risks involved in accepting such things."

Over the long term, self-reliance is seen as the key to a better life for women. In 1998, groups of women were trained to make bathing soap and detergent in Aroor panchayat in Alappuzha district. DARSHN is now helping them market the detergent with brighter and sturdier packaging. This year the women put together Christmas kits, with cakes and decorations, and sold the kits within their own communities. They plan to make similar Onam kits and market them over a wider area, possibly through the margin-free shops that are increasingly popular in the state.

A business advisory center was set up with the same objective. It helped organize workshops to teach women entrepreneurial skills.

An important part of the program was its mentor system, in which successful businesswomen advised those who were just starting out.

DARSHN's day-care center for children in Eramallur in Alappuzha district has made it easier for fisherwomen in that village to work at prawn peeling. The center has one teacher and a helper to care for 25 children and is free of cost.

There will be a greater emphasis on environment in DARSHN's future programs, says Chairman Jacob Thomas.

"Environment will be an increasing concern. Even though many are talking about it and writing about it, on the ground the action is very, very slow. The basic reason is our mindset. If we address the children, we can register the importance of environment in their minds," he adds.

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Catch the Rain

llfflf}Y)Jl1@shows 'he he mercury is touching 45 degrees Celsius and the parched earth cries for water. Normally at this time of the year-when the summer is at its peak-Dulal Chandra MandaI is a worried man. But this year, Dulal, a former pradhan (headman) of Kamardanga village in Birbhum, West Bengal, has something to look forward to. By the end of June, a project to harness rainwater and supply the needs of the villagers is scheduled for inauguration.

The rainwater harvesting project is being set up by the Institute of Wetland Management and Ecological Design (IWMED), an organization under the Environment Ministry of the West Bengal government, with a Rs. 307,200 grant from the U.S. government.

Tapan Saha of IWMED says two schools-Kamardanga Primary School in Birbhum and the Kishore Bharati Ashram Vidyalay in Purulia-have been chosen as sites for rainwater harvesting.

Both Birbhum and Purulia districts have chronic water shortages and are prone to droughts. Though there is a perception that these two districts have inadequate rainfall, Saha thinks otherwise. "There is enough rainfall in Purulia and Birbhum.

The problem is storage, because of the topography of the region," he says. To get over this problem IWMED has come up with a simple solution: rooftop harvesting of water. Saha explains that the 330square-meter roof of the school in Purulia receives an average of 450,000 liters of water annually. Even if 60 percent of this water can be stored it amounts to an impressive 270,000 liters of water.

That is precisely what IWMED is doing at the two schools. It has built tanks with storage capacities of 40,000 liters in Purulia and 30,000 liters in Birbhum to stor~ water

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for sanitation, washing and agricultural purposes. Smaller tanks are also being constructed for drinking water. The rainwater is channeled from the roof to reservoirs at ground level from where water can be taken and can be used for various purposes. Of urban housing projects to keep provisions course, the water for drinking must be first for rainwater harvesting. This would be a treated. It is no wonder then that Dulal is boon for cities like Calcutta where groundexcited about the project. "Currently we water is rapidly getting depleted. have piped water coming from Nagari, the Rainwater harvesting, however, is only panchayat headquarters, with one tap for one among the diverse activities of every 250 villagers. There is also a tube well IWMED. As its name suggests, the instiin the village pond, but the pond dries up in tute was first set up in 1986 with the aim of conserving wetlands in West Bengal.. summer and winter. With rainwater harvesting, the stored water can be used during IWMED's initial focus was the East Calcutta Wetland Ecosystem. But soon the the dry months," he says. institute was researching and suggesting According to Saha, the cost of installaways of conserving the flora and fauna in tion works out to Rs. 2.60 per liter with maintenance costs being minimal. Besides wetlands across different climatic zones of the state-from the sub-Himalayan rethe cost saving, Saba is more excited about gions to the coastal zone. Over the years, the environmental benefits of rainwater the institute has taken on a host of other harvesting. "Groundwater is depleting rapidly in many areas of the state. If we can . activities including preparation of a wettap rainwater in a bigger way, the groundland inventory, estimation of land cover water situation would become much more using digital satellite data, arsenic testing stable," he says. With this in mind, and coastal zoning.

One of IWMED's biggest projects is IWMED is going all out to popularize rainmapping, monitoring and species-wise water harvesting. In fact, the organization zoning of mangrove habitats in the first introduced the concept in West Bengal Sunderbans. Both visual and digital techin 2000, at Hasnabad in the North 24Parganas district. Soon after, Haldia niques are being employed in the exercise that will eventually lead to a detailed Petrochemicals, a giant industrial complex on the coast of Bay of Bengal, approached database on the mangrove forests. In the institute with the problem of treating Calcutta, the institute is involved in saline water used in their boilers. On studying the sewage and canal systems as well as formulating an action plan for IWMED's advice, the petrochemical comcleaning up Rabindra Sarobar, which has pany switched to rainwater for its boilers.

The institute is now inundated with pro- been declared a lake of national importance by the central government. IWMED posals: rooftop harvesting in 100 schools across the state; rainwater harvesting in ar- seems to have dipped its finger in every senic- and fluoride-affected areas; and us- project in West Bengal that has anything ing rainwater for irrigation of tea gardens in to do with water and is helping to show north Bengal. Due to the pioneering efforts the way to practical conservation.

0 of the institute, new legislation is in the off- About the Author: Ronojoy Sen is afreelance ing that would make it mandatory for large writer based in Calcutta.

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Freedom Through Financial Independence

By RONOJOY SEN

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~ Saraswati says there are hundreds of § women like Kakoli whose lives have been ~ radically transformed by the micro-fi~ nance or "income generation" program, as it was known in the early days. "The ~ dignity that comes with financial independence has brought about small but important changes in the surrounding viIlages," says Saraswati. She cites the case of Jahanara Begum, a woman whose husband was so conservative that the NGO ' ':2A workers could talk to her only when she '1t. II went for her bath in the village pond. But "-.after Jahanara took a loan to start a small poultry thing" havechanged on the hou8ehold front "Earlier Jahanara used to be regularly beaten by her husband. Now her husband is a changed man--he even cooks for the children when she is away," says Saraswati with a laugh.

Saraswati says what started in a small way in 1974-75 really took off in 2000 when the Sarnity set up a separate microfinance division. Hard figures corroborate the success stories of women like Jahanara. Since July 2000, the Samity has

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Domestic abuse against women is so widespread it is even depicted in folk art kantha wall hangings such as this one. NGOs such as Sreema Mahila Samity want to change that.

akoli Biswas is seething with rage. Earlier in the day a neighbor had called her a meyechele-a pejorative term used for women in Bengal. But Kakoli refused to take the insult lying down and demanded an apology. When the man refused to apologize she slapped him in front of several villagers. It's not as if women's lib is sweeping through the villages of West Bengal.

But the women in Duttaphulia, Nadia, and surrounding areas have an air of quiet confidence about them thanks to a microfinance program initiated by Sreema Mahila Samity, a local NGO, in 1974.

Sitting in her spartan of{ice at the Samity headquarters in Duttaphulia, Bani

disbursed loans worth nearly Rs. 57.5 million to over 16,000 beneficiaries. The local branch of a nationalized bank and an international NGO have provided funds.

According to Saraswati, the majority of the loans are taken for agricultural activities, including rice processing. Some other businesses that have been funded by the Samity are dairy and poultry farming, tailoring, vending of vegetables or rice products and handicrafts. Sometimes the women take loans to help their husbands.

There have been instances where a woman bought a rickshaw with a loan that was then jointly owned with her husband or money was borrowed to set up a furniture business where the husband and wife

were partners. Saraswati is most encouraged by the fact that the recovery rate for loans is around 94 percent.

The most recent initiative of the Sarnity is the micro-enterprise program that is being financed by the U.S. Government Under this scheme women are trained to set up their own businesses, especially in the field of animal resources. To date, over 300 women have been trained in the intricacies of running a business. The Sarnity has not only been sowing the entrepreneurial spirit among women spread over 400 villages in Nadia, Murshidabad and North 24-Parganas districts in West Bengal. It has also been instrumental in the formation of women's self-help groups. These groups, which usually comprise 10 women each, meet twice a month to discuss savings and how to best invest it. Kakoli and her neighbor Bandana Haldar have been involved in such groups for almost eight years. "We initially started with savings of Rs. 10 per member every month. Now we have iI).creased it to Rs. 20 every month," says Bandana. From this group saving, members can borrow to set up a business or tide themselves over an emergency. "A member can borrow up to Rs. 5,000 at one time," says Kakoli.

The self-help groups are not merely about financial independence. They are bringing about a silent revolution in their villages. Most of the group members can now write and keep rudimentary accounts.

They also take it upon themselves to enforce certain norms in their villages. For instance, the Samity women recently beat up a man who used to regularly abuse his wife. They also stopped a marriage where the bride was below 18. While some of these acts have not gone down well with the men in the village, the women are thoroughly enjoying this role reversaL "Nowadays people refer to our home as Kakoli's bari [house] and not Mrinal's [her husband]," says Kakoli.

The Samity's success has meant that the men in the area are also clamoring for loans. While the Samity loans money, particularly to women, in exceptional cases men are given loans. It is evident that because of the Samity's good work, the spirit of thrift and enterprise is truly thriving in this rural pocket of West Bengal.

0

UD~D@]~@]

Gives 'he Poorest a Chance

or a few moments the singsong rendition of Humpty Dumpty by a room full of children drowned out the chaos on the busy Belgachia Road in north Calcutta. As soon as the children finished, the noise of the traffic ruled once again, but the glow of satisfactiQn on the face of Yasmeen Bano remained for a while longer. Yasmeen has been hard at work for the past eight months teaching these 50-odd Urdu-speaking children from the neighboring slum the basics of English. And the results are quite apparent.

The 50 students in Yasmeen's charge are among 300 children being given non-formal education by the Tiljala Society for Human and Educational Development (SHED) under a project funded by a Rs. 945,000 grant of the U.S. Government. The classes are being held in six centers located in some of the most impoverished slums in the city-two at Belgachia and one each at Topsia, Tangra, Park Circus and Duttabad. "Our target is to ensure that at least 25 percent of the students get admission to mainstream schools," says Probal Chatterjee of SHED. This is no mean task since majority ofthe children are the first members of their family going to school.

However, the hard work of teachers like Yasmeen is already paying dividends. Twelve students at her center have been admitted to mainstream schools in the locality. A few minutes away at the other SHED center in Belgachia, located in the heart of the slum, Farida Khatoon has achieved a minor miracle. Nearly half the students under her tutelage have been admitted to regular schools and will begin classes in June.

On a sweltering afternoon in May, the one-room Student Soccer Circle clubhouse, which is used by SHED to hold the classes, is packed with eager students. "There is no shortage of enthusiasm here-we have almost hundred percent attendance every day.

The parents queue up with their children well before the classes start," says Farida. An added incentive is a meal of buns and eggs provided twice a week. In fact, the demand is far more than what SHED can cater to and there is a long waiting list for students wanting admission. "We cannot take in more students as we have limited space as well as funds," says A. Ahmed of SHED. However, there will be an intake of students to replace those who leave for regular schools. Vocational training in tailoring is also given twice a week to the older students at a center in

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Educated, these children can better pursue their dreams, away from bleak poverty.

Park Circus. There are also periodic nutrition classes for the parents of the students to teach them to cook low-cost, nutritional meals at home.

On any given day, the children's routine consists of classes in Urdu, exercises with numbers, English rhymes and storytelling.

The students at the two centers in Belgachia are between five and 11 years and mostly from Muslim families who survive on daily wage earnings. Five-year-old Aftab, whose father makes shoes, is a typical student. He is one of those who have got admission to the nearby government school. But he insists that he will still come to the center to meet his friends. And what does he intend to do after completing his studies? "I want to be a policeman," he says fiercely. His friend Mohammad, whose father has died and whose mother is the sole earning member of his family, is also going away to a regular school. Mohammad's goal is to become a teacher. Even after they leave for regular schools, SHED will provide some support to students like Aftab and Mohammad to meet the costs of books and tuition. Of course, the aim is to stem the high dropout rate of needy children.

The non-formal education of the 300 children is one of the many projects being implemented by SHED. The NGO has a proven track record in working with street children, ragpickers and child laborers in Calcutta. SHED has been working with the Ministry of Social Empowerment and Justice since 2001 to give non-formal and vocational training to street children. Efforts are on to provide identifica- . tion cards to the children, which would enable them to access hospitals, police stations and schools.

The NGO has a long-running program to organize and help a few hundred ragpickers in Park Circus, Narkeldanga and Topsia.

A ragpicker's association has been formed and space provided to the ragpickers for storing and sorting the waste materials.

However, this program received a setback when one of the godowns at Narkeldanga, used for storing waste materials, was demolished as part of an eviction drive by civic authorities.

SHED's endeavor to provide education to child laborers has also suffered due to various legal restrictions. The future is very bleak for most destitute children in the city, but organizations like Tiljala SHED, at least, provide a ray of hope to these children.

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he historic 73rd constitutional amendment of 1993 ushered in a new era in the political and social transformation of India. The amendment made provisions for delegation of substantial powers to villages, which hitherto were under the stringent control of both the central and state governments. This legislation introduced reforms to the moribund panchayati raj (village council) institutions. Even though the panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) have existed since independence, they were virtually nonfunctional because of financial controls and lack of functional autonomy. Long ago Mahatma Gandhi cautioned that India would perish if villages perish. He, therefore, argued for a vibrant, self-contained and

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self-governed village, and this legislation greatly reflects the views of Gandhi by trying to fulfill his dreams.

With the 73rd amendment, the government faced fresh challenges. Elections were made mandatory every five years, and with the introduction of 33 percent reservation of seats for women, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and other backward castes in proportion to their population, more than 3.2 million representatives were' elected to PRIs, who were neither aware of their rights and responsibilities nor had experience to run the local bodies. How to strengthen and empower these elected representatives and realize the devolution of powers was one of the major tasks before the government.

From top: Delegates getting their names registered at the picturesque venue of the convention of panchayat representatives in Srinagar; delegates at the training convention; Mani Shankar Aiyar, the present Union Minister of Panchayati Raj, who drafted the 73rd constitutional amendment, addressing the convention.

To devolve powers to about 235,000 PRIs across the country was an enormous task for which neither the central nor the state governments were prepared. Many NGOs came forward to assist the government in educating the ele,cted representatives about the

political process. The Institute of Social Sciences (ISS) in Delhi and Bhopal-based Samarthan: Centre for Development Support were two of these. Both educate and train thousands of elected representatives of panchayati raj. The Public Affairs Section of the American Embassy has provided grants to these NGOs which work for strengthening grassroots democracy. The NGOs sensitize the elected representatives about panchayat-level issues, sources of funds available with the Planning Commission for rural development, and issues about local infrastructure such as roads, poverty alleviation, education, health-care and sanitation projects. This enables panchayats in preparing village developmental plans ensuring wider and creative public participation.

"We believe that a little bit can help a lot. With some support to the NGOs we played our part in strengthening the roots of democracy in India," says Sheila Hoban, program development officer in the Public Affairs Section of the American Embassy who supervises the grants projects in New Delhi.

With a grant of Rs. 1.36 million from the Public Affairs Section, ISS organized three conventions at Jammu, Srinagar and Leh during the past two years to train and educate the elected representatives and chairpersons of the panchayats. The conventions brought into sharper focus the issues of decentralization, transparency and accountability in panchayati raj institutions.

The representatives were also trained in public speaking and basic planning for development and program implementation.

"We brought the representatives of panchayats and some senior resource persons for the convention at Jammu in December 2002. We told the delegates what's happening in the rest of the

A still of the acclaimed film, Swaraaj: The Little Republic, produced by ISS, depicts the sacrifice ofa woman representative in Tamil Nadu.

country, what is grassroots democracy, what is local government, what is decentralization and how important is the role of local bodies in this terrorism-infested state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Through the presentations, the delegates were briefed about things that are happening in the rest of the country," says ISS Director George Mathew.

To work independently, Mathew says, the local bodies need four Fs-functions, funds, functionaries and freedom. "Once these four Fs are given, local bodies will bring about a paradigm shift in the socio-economic structure of the country. More importantly, neither the central government nor state governments are willing to offer the four Fs on a silver platter. The representatives have to demand for them and that's where we are helping the local bodies," says Mathew.

ISS invited professional activists to train elected representatives and discuss with them various issues of panchayati raj.

What are the rules and regulations of panchayati raj, how to go about village planning, when to come to braces and how to tap the available funds from the central and state governments are some of the issues discussed at the conventions. "That way the training helps the elected representatives who need to know about their rights and responsibilities. When people in the village approach them, they should know how to go about their various tasks," says Mathew.

The important point of discussion at the conventions was sources of funds earmarked for rural development available from the central and state finance commissions. The conventions also discussed generating their own funds from local taxes, and what they need to do in situations when money is not reaching the grassroots. ISS's ,

newsletters and updates periodically provide information which the panchayats use to improve efficiency in their councils.

As a multi-disciplinary organization, ISS focuses on various contemporary social, political and economic issues with interdisciplinary perspective. Its in-depth reports and recommendations on issues such as women's empowerment, human rights and the impact of globalization have been well received by the government agencies, both at the central and state level, and the policy makers and think tanks in the country. In association with the Public Affairs Section, ISS last December organized a lecture tour of Margot Badran, senior fellow at Georgetown University. who ~poke on "Gender, Islam and Community" in Delhi. As part of educating the elected representatives, ISS produced an award-winning feature film, Swaraaj: The Little Republic, which portrays the struggle of a woman representative who gave up her life in the fight against the water mafia in Tamil Nadu. The film received critical acclaim and won an award from the President of India.

Bhopal-based Samarthan has been working on a project to empower women panchayat representatives in Morena district of Madhya Pradesh. In partnership with Dharti, another NGO, Samarthan's field workers adopted 65 villages in Morena district, traditionally a feudal area. The Public Affairs Section's grant of Rs. 175,000 to Samarthan focused on empowering women representatives, the marginalized section of the society.

Rural women members of the panchayati raj in Morena have fought relentless battles against liquor, illiteracy, gutkha (chewing tobacco) and lotteries. The project also helped datit leaders create a peer group within the village councils. Samarthan's initiative

sensitized the district authorities on many important socio-economic issues.

According to Samarthan executive director and founder Yogesh Kumar, political empowerment of women representatives is more important than economic empowerment. "In the feudal society, women, who are marginalized, and dalit women, who are not only marginalized but also made vulnerable, it is important to give them social recognition within their own village. Equally, the upper caste people, who so far have been enjoying power, are made to be aware of the power shift within their village."

Set up in 1995, Samarthan functions around two themes: Participation in governance and participation in development.

The former strengthens panchayati raj institutions, because that constitutionally mandated institutions are the backbone of local self-governance. Samarthan works in tandem with women chairpersons who have gained the trust of v~llagers. "Issues of governance cannot be adequately addressed only by the formal structures of representative democracy. They must be accompanied by work at the grassroots level so that the poor develop the confidence or articulate their concerns and make their voices heard in the centers of power," says Kumar.

Samarthan intensively trained women in Morena district in maintaining account books and holding meetings. Women were also trained in micro-planning for village requirements in health care, sanitation and education.

The acceptance of women in their roles has been surprisingly quick. Through its centers, Samarthan provides information on changes in the acts, rules and orders of the government and about funds utilization in an easy-to-understand format. Kumar believes in building networks for maximum returns. "Unless there is a collective strength, the villagers will not be able to have a collective bargain. Periodical interaction and sharing their views and experiences with central, state and district level officials enabled them to take steps to prevent corruption in the panchayati raj. Collective strength gave them hand-holding support between women, dalit and other weaker sections who are less articulate and less confident because of the social milieu in a rural society," he observes.

Because of Samarthan, women have grown significantly as leaders during the five-year period they served in their local panchayats. Samarthan made a critical difference preparing women to accelerate the decision-making process and developing women's leadership through training workshops. ''The experience of the women representatives reveals the power of the human spirit. By being together and seeing other village women who express natural leadership, all the women experience a new space of possibility," says Kumar.

One of the objectives of Samart~an was to raise the level of

participation in the development process and to infuse greater sensitivity to women's concerns. Guidelines were issued to ensure better participation of women at every stage of the planning process which resulted in allocation of 10 percent of the budgetary outlay for that.

Obstructive social attitudes were the major impediments for empowerment. Yet as they gain knowledge and expertise in handling village concerns effectively, women in panchayats are also gaining community acceptance and support. The major thrust of Samarthan is to generate leadership among women and the dalit community so that they can raise their voice against the denial of their basic rights with a celtain degree of assertion, and speak for their people.

The wings of Samarthan have spread not only to Morena, but to the rest of Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgarh. Its 50 full-time Women of Bichola village in Morena district participate in the village council meeting.

staff members and hundreds of volunteers have been working in villages on various developmental projects, especially in the area of education, health care, sanitation and the fight against liquor.

Because of Samarthan's initiative the status of women and dalit representatives in panchayats has improved, and the attitude of men toward women has undergone a positive change. With each passing year, the socio-economic life in many villages has taken a new turn.

Indeed, both ISS and Samarthan are grappling with the dynamics of change in the panchayati raj institutions. Their dedication has already shown some good results, and if they continue with their mission, it will not be long before their goals are realized.

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Text by LEA TERHUNE Photographs by ANNE GRIMES

A 15th-century heritage site attracts interest and funding from the United States

Right: Langurs pass the time on an intricately carved wall.

Below, right: An overview of Mehdi Talao. Funds have been allocated by the U.S. Embassy for its restoration.

Below: Deputy Chief of Mission Robert O. Blake and his wife Sofia listen to Heritage Trust President Karan Grover as they tour ChampanerPavagadh.

Pavagadh, could be funded. The Ambassador's Fund was created by the U.S. Congress in 2001 to help preserve cultural heritage abroad. The purpose, noted by Congress at the time, was to show respect and appreciation of other cultures and "to show a different American face to other countries, one that is non-commercial, non-political and non-military."

It is not the first time the U.S. Government has joined with India to preserve important national monuments.

In the early 1990s the U.S. National Park Service worked jointly with the Government of India on the Agra Heritage Project. The result was a comprehensive Planning Synopsis published in 1994. Indian and American assessment teams examined factors affecting the Taj Mahal complex and other sites in and around Agra. Their report made recommendations for conservation and preservation of these heritage sites as national parks.

Other South Asia U.S. Ambassador's Fund for Cultural Preservation grants last year include restoration of the Kal Bhairav temple in Kathmandu, Nepal; the 17thcentury Mullah Mahmud Mosque, Kabul, Afghanistan; and documentation, conservation and lighting of the Man Singh Haveli in Islamabad, Pakistan, which is part of the Rohtas fort, built in the 16th century by Sher Shah Suri. Another grant went to preserve traditional metal craft in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

0

o a Trail in Education

It began with two guys, an American and an Indian, who wanted to do something to educate kids in India. Their original idea evolved into a unique method of learning. t looks like any other public school in downtown Faridabad-a nice, multistoried building, a large playground with shade trees, well groomed boys and girls, the children's posters and paintings hanging in the corridors. But a closer look reveals a difference. The 25 or so children in the class sit in small groups. In many classes there is play-like atmosphere, with students participating in all kinds of learning activities. Children may be taught about only one theme in all subjects in a particular week. If the theme is architecture, they will be learning about historical buildings in the history class, building materials in the science class, building dimensions in the mathematics class and maybe writing an essay on their favorite building in the English period.

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Activity-based instruction is used to make students employ their skills practically so that their knowledge does not remain theoretical.

This is the Jiva Public School, a 10year-old experiment in bringing innovation to Indian education. "Teaching is not one-way transmission of information from teachers to students," said Meenakshi Chauhan, project manager in charge of the school curriculum. "Our focus is on 'learning' and not just 'teaching' or covering the syllabus. Our teachers work to create an atmosphere that is conducive to learning." Techniques like cooperative learning or group work are employed in which students spend longer periods in interactive sessions for learn-

ing. Activity-based instruction is used to help students make practical use of their skills so that their knowledge does not remain theoretical.

Unlike most schools, teaching good values is part of the program in all the subjects. For example, children are encouraged to credit the person who helped them with their homework, be it their mother or elder sibling. Similarly they are told to mention the source of material or information for their project work. In science, the emphasis is on honest reporting of experiment results, and in the computer lab, students maintain ethical practices like not accessing others' files.

Every day during prayer time, students share with their class what they have done

for self-improvement, for others and for the environment. For instance, a child may say he or she helped cut vegetables, serve a glass of water to a guest or throw a used tetrapack in a dustbin. The value of punctuality is built in the school system so much so that the school has no bell!

Education gurus often preach about reforming school syllabi by including tools that can help students become life-long learners. The Jiva experiment is an effort to do just that, using techniques of holistic education pioneered by philosophereducators such as John Dewey, Maria Montessori, Rudolph Steiner, Jiddu Krishnamurti and John Holt. More recent educators have gone on further to introduce newer concepts: Howard Gardener

Above: Steven Rudolph, Jiva cofounder.

Above left: Jiva Public School emphasizes cooperative learning where students have longer interactive sessions.

of Harvard who has introduced the theory of multiple intelligences (that people have an array of intelligences, not just mathematical and linguistic, but also physical, musical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic). Spencer Kagan introduced a theory and methodology called "cooperative learning," which posits that people learn more effectively through interaction, and sets a variety of activities that require learners to work together instead of sitting independently and inter-

Jiva's EarthOne proied, Textbooks designed under Jiva's fCOTsystem are activityoriented and interactive.

supported by a grant from the American Embassy in New Delhi, aims at promoting environmental awareness, information and action among students of India. It answers a need to integrate environment-related activities and resources into the curriculum, teacher training and support. All the resources will ultimately be used to create an Environmental Education Resources Center to provide content, materials, training and online resources.

EarthOne will also run environmental projects with schools and environmental organizations.

acting with only the teacher. Based on seven years of research of curricula in India and other countries, and extensive discussions with teachers, students and parents, Jiva came up with an innovative blueprint for learning called India's Curriculum of Tomorrow, or ICOT. It removes monotony from textbooks. It encourages students to question, explore, discover, and finally establish meaningful connections with the world around them.

Jiva's American cofounder, educator Steven Rudolph says, "We include all types of activities for learners, which require them to sing, read poetry, draw pictures, role play, interview each other, solve problems, debate, and so on. It fldds a dynamic to classroom learning that inculcates a wide range of skills. Ultimately, this type of learning fosters a spirit of innovation, which is really what is necessary in today's world for survival."

Normally a theme would be fragmented in a regular syllabus, preventing students from making logical connections between concepts. But in ICOT, similar topics are organized under common themes, making course content easier to comprehend.

Technically, such a thing is called "thematic, cross-subject and interdisciplinary connection." Under ICOT, some 80 interactive textbooks for all subjects and classes have been developed. All are based on syllabi of bodies like the Central Board of Secondary Education and Indian Certificate of Secondary Education.

"More than 500,000 children have used our innovative learning materials. The feedback we've gotten from students, teachers and parents is tremendous. These materials have also influenced other publishers, as we have raised the standard for learning materials. We find other publishers emulating different aspects of our style," says Rudolph. Jiva Institute was founded in 1992 and the school in 1994.

Not satisfied with only memorizing information contained in textbooks to score better marks in the examinations, Ji va cofounder Rishi Pal Chauhan says, "We decided to change textbooks, while using the existing syllabi prescribed by government boards. We made textbooks activity-oriented and interactive by using totally new

concepts, like Indianized cartoons. For instance, we don't teach our children science, we teach them how to become scientists by inculcating a sense of inquiry."

Jiva's amalgamation of ideas and personalities has shaped its program.

Chauhan, a mechanical engineer from Faridabad, met Rudolph while working in the United States in the late 1980s.

Chauhan wanted to do something back home and Rudolph was interested. Both of them came to India and started a school in a rented accommodation with just nine students. The duo was joined by Chauhan's younger brother Dr. Partap Chauhan, an ayurvedic physician. Thus education and health became main areas of work for the organization.

After a decade at Faridabad, Rudolph recently moved back to the United States to nurture the institute's branch there.

Now, he says, he will spend most of his time trying to attract partners and investors for scaling up Jiva's health and education projects in India. Jiva's goal is to spread its new learning system to as many Indian schools as possible. So far, some 600 schools-mostly in the private sectorhave adopted ICOT, and this number is growing. While all these schools pay to access the learning system and curriculum, Jiva decided to provide the course content free of charge to government schools. It has signed agreements with half-a-dozen state governments for this purpose.

Jiva does not like to call itself an NGO. It is a social enterprise-a means to solve social problems with a strong business model. "Our organization runs just as effectively and efficiently as top multinational companies run." Rudolph says they rely on a business model more than donation for support. "We have put our energy less into that end of it, and more into the business side of things, because we have found that we can earn the same amount of money or more by doing business. In many cases, organizations spend so much time and energy raising money. And often the amount of money they receive from those donations hardly goes to cover the costs of the fundraising exercise itself," he says. Jiva generates income by selling

Below: Health workers collecting information from villagers using a hand-held device, as part of the TeleDoc project.

Bottom: Village women queue up for a health camp organized by JivaAyunled at Tikawali village in Faridabad district.

products and services related to its work.

Yet another Jiva program that is having an impact is a unique telemedicine project called TeleDoc. It has its origin in the online ayurvedic clinic that Dr. Partap started in 1995. Through the Web site (www.ayurvedic.org), he offers holistic treatment-ayurvedic drugs as well as lifestyle recommendations-to patients around the world, mostly in North America and Europe. The clinic is backed by a pharmacy that produces ayurvedic drugs for shipping to patients.

Though the online clinic caught on with Internet-savvy people, it was not possible to replicate it in Faridabad villages where

there were neither computers nor connectivity. So, the online doctor came up with a unique solution. The software that Dr. Partap uses for interviewing his online patients was adapted for use in a mobile device. Health workers were trained to collect data using this device from patients in villages. The information was sent to the pharmacy in Faridabad, where doctors examine the information, prepare the medicine and send it back to the patient the next day through the health worker.

After trying out various mobile devices, the choice was a Nokia phone with keypad and GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) facility for data transfer.

Now health workers collect information and queries from villagers using a predesigned consultation form on the mobile.

The data is then sent to Faridabad over the mobile network. Some funding for the pilot project came from the Soros Foundation, while Naren Ayyar, founding managing director of Dell India, and development expert Edmond Gaible provided technical advice.

The project, now running in 16 villages around Faridabad, has attracted international attention, for it uses off-the-shelf technologies and networks to deliver low-cost health care. "The TeleDoc story has become required reading for my Developmental Entrepreneurship class at MIT," says Alex Pentland, the MIT professor known for his wearable computers.

TeleDoc is an example of social enterprise, an approach to solve social problems while making use of business techniques. It is a company and the patients are customers, who pay for the service. Patients are charged Rs. 70 for a week's medicine, which, Dr. Partap Chauhan pointed out, is much lower than what would be spent traveling to the city, paying the doctor and losing productive hours. Similarly in the ICOT program, learning materials are sold to private schools for a profit. This way the programs remain sustainable and can expand.

Jiva has plans to expand its programs through franchising.

0 About the Author: Dinesh C. Sharma is a New Delhi-based science and technology journalist, who writes for Cnet News.com (USA) and The Lancet (UK).

The uneducated poor are exploited because of their ignorance of their rights, but some NGOs are trying to change that

n upper caste man misbehaves with a dalit girl at a bus stand.

When her uncle objects to the man's indecent behavior, he proudly claims: "She is an outcaste. Therefore, she must submit herself to my wishes and I can do what I like to her."

A dominant caste member, Balakrishnan, makes an old dalit, Muthiah, take a loan of Rs. 6,000 but uses it for himself. The old dalit keeps receiving notices to repay the loan. On his death the burden of loan passes on to his son. When the son Murugan approaches Balakrishnan to tell his inability to pay the loan, he is thrashed, drenched in a solution of cow-dung, paraded around the village, assaulted with chappals and is on the verge of being killed when the police intervenes.

These are but two cases of many in which ignorance and social factors have led to human rights violations in the Tirunelveli area. But several nongovernmental organizations, committed to ending such routine abuses, hope to make a difference through education. Moved by his personal life experiences asa member of the dalit community, M. Bharathan has spent much of his life working to protect fundamental human rights. He is currently director of the Human Rights Education and Protection Council (HREPC), also called Kalam in Tamil. It strives for "a humane social order wherein every human being will. lead a decent and dignified life, without any discrimination on the basis of sex, caste, creed or color," according to Bharathan. He started HREPC in Tirunelveli in 1993 as a nonprofit, voluntary organization, monitoring human rights issues, particularly in the dalit community, in . three violence-prone districts of Tirunelveli, Tuticorin and Virudhnagar.

These districts have large dalit populations between 21 percent and 32 percent, of which only about two percent are educated and trained in skills.

Most are unskilled laborers.

Kalam, jointly with the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe Cell of the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University in Tirunelveli and HREPC, assumed the task of designing a curriculum for human rights education for college students. The effort was funded by a grant of Rs. 557,000 from the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Consulate in Chennai. It was no easy task, since human rights are social, political and legal in nature and have been documented in legal terminology over the last five decades. The United Nations alone has about 90 human rights instruments that have been agreed upon

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Learning

Human Rights

over the years, many of which have become obsolete as the human rights climate has evolved worldwide. And this had to be put in a format that could be easily accessible to young students.

The next step for Kalam was to train 450 dalit youths in the three districts (150 for each district) and run workshops at the village level. Bharathan says, "Kalam offers awareness-training in human rights. It also offers legal aid." Between January 2001 and December 2003, 56 human rights awareness programs were conducted by Kalam, some of them specifically for women.

Participants learned to write petitions, interact with the police, take victims to hospitals, promote awareness about laws. People gained more confidence in knowing their rights and how to ask for redress in the event of abuses. This in turn has had a positive effect on the community. Now the dalits feel less intimidated and are less likely to run away to towns to escape abuse. Sylvie, who works as a volunteer with Kalam, says she feels more protected and less threatened. Bharathan proudly points out that nearly 900 young people have so far been educated in workFrom left to right: Professor K.M. Mani Kumar, who works with Kalam, believes human rights should be taught in colleges; skits and other entertainment are used to impart awareness about civil and human rights under the law; the HREPC wants the concept that all people deserve equality under the law instilled early, as at this class in Tirunelveli.

shops and at the university, twice the number provided for in the original grant proposal.

Education is the key, says K.M. Mani Kumar, a professor working with the SC/ST Cell of the Manomaniam Sundaranar University, who has traveled to the United States on a Fulbright grant. Both Bharathan and Mani Kumar recognize the need to run parallel programs of promotion of human rights issues and active protection through legal action, whenever the law has been broken or rights infringed upon. They feel that the new generation must be formally educated and human rights should be part of the college cuniculum, so that more citizens may know about their rights. An impOltant part of this process is instilling the concept that all people are equal and deserve equality under the law, counterbalancing the often oppressive, traditional hierarchies that exist both within and outside of the dalit community.

Kalam works closely with People's Watch-Tamil Nadu, Human Rights Foundation in Chennai and Indian Social Institute in Bangalore to campaign against various human rights abuses, child labor, and to promote just law enforcement. Conducting meetings in which specific human rights issues are discussed is part of Kalam's advocacy work. Although Mani Kumar rues the abysmal conviction rate for human rights offences, because in many instances the complainant backs out, he feels that an important positive movement has begun.

D

leae In Essential Skills

By DIPANKAR KHANNA

Kids of laborers on construction sites usually end up toting loads along with their parents. Onsite, a project of Bangalore-based Outreach, is trying to change that by bringing classes to them.

ucked in the southwest comer of Bangalore, in a natural setting, a sharp contrast to the grit, grime and harshness of construction sites, is a compound complete with cottages, an engineering workshop and an administrative block.

Outreach, an NGO working through its urban arm, Onsite, utilizes part of these premises to house a group 150 children of migrant construction workers. Here 16 girls are taught tailoring, doll making and basket weaving and 20 boys gain skills in carpentry, lathes, drills, turning and welding machines, plumbing, driving and agriculture. The smaller children are sent to a local school.

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In north Bangalore a sprawling complex of luxury villas is under construction.

Around 600 families live in a motley group of shanties covered with blue plastic sheets to ward off the elements. They are construction workers. Both men and women work here from dawn to duskand sometimes, to meet construction deadlines, they labor well into the night. On the periphery of this project is an Onsite facility which provides an open creche-cumday-care center for children, who range in age from infants to teenagers.

There are 15 similar facilities run by Onsite on construction sites all over Bangalore, where volunteers care for children. These volunteers are trained under a

special needs education scheme called "Balasevike," which is supported by the Government of Kamataka's Woman and Child Development Council. One of the aims of the program is to educate children to acceptable levels of proficiency in basic subjects through informal teaching methods and get them admitted to regular schools.

Onsite project officer Muniraju takes pride in the protective environment that they have been able to provide.

"Even after they join regular schools they come back to the daycare centers in the evening to do their

homework," he proudly announces. The annual report of Onsite is replete with success stories of its wards.

Onsite caters to the needs of about 1,600 children in BangaJore. It strives to provide the children a life of care that is free from trauma and devastating poverty.

Both the children and their parents are instructed on basics of health and hygiene.

The children are fed twice a day. The midmorning meal is gruel followed by a balanced lunch of rice lentils and vegetables.

Their educational needs are met through enhancement of cognitive and motor skills and literacy. The warm and caring ambience created by the volunteer teachers and workers does wonders for the emotional health of these children.

The uniqueness of the Onsite project stems from the involvement of all its players. The builders provide classroom space, utensils and some also pay a salary to the volunteers. The parents are encouraged to contribute a nominal amount toward their child's upkeep. Onsite also offers micro-credit of Rs. 5,000 to single mothers to set up small businesses, such as shops or restaurants.

Initially, it was tough to penetrate the hard shells of the builders who did not want outsiders on and around their sites, iqterfer-

ing with their working methods. Legal warnings given through retired judges and senior officials, invoking child labor laws that impose as much as a Rs. 25,000 fine per infraction helped Onsite make headway. Today builders also reap practical benefits. As Outreach executive director R.M. Palanna puts it, "Now the women don't leave their work to go and attend to a newborn or sick child. They are assured that the children are being taken care of and are in a safe place. This definitely increased their productivity on the job."

Construction workers and their families are an exploited lot. Being forced to leave the security of their villages when monsoons fail, they are often subjected to inhuman working conditions, trafficking and child labor. Children are also victims of on-site accidents as a result of hazardous and dangerous construction equipment lying around.

The Onsite project began with the participation of the Swiss developmental agency Stiftung Kinderdorf Pestalozzi or Pestalozzi Children's Foundation.

Impressed with their performance and the immediate relief provided to the migrant workers and their children, the U.S. Government provided a one-time funding of about Rs. 1.1 million. According to Helen LaFave, former Vice Consul for

1. Education gives children like this boy, in front of the shanty where he lives, a chance to have a better life.

2. Children at day-care learn shapes using available materials.

3. Success at tailoring could mean a brighter future for these girls. Onsite offers vocational training to girls and boys alike. .4. Older kids at day-care practice writing and arithmetic.

Public Affairs at the American Consulate in Chennai, this project filled three key criteria of human rights, democratization and trafficking. The awarding of this grant means that On site gains credibility and can build its capability as an NGO. More importantly, these funds are being spent on administration support, medical care and training, the direct beneficiaries of which are primarily women and children. Today the project cruises along smoothly, helping economically backward segments of the society establish themselves in a better situation and improve their self-esteem, but On site staff also recognize that their work is a small contribution to alleviate a very large problem. They encourage other NGOs to lend a helping hand.

D About the Author: Dipankar Khanna freelance journalist based in Bangalore.

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One Word

How the rise of the credit card changed our lives egendhas it that the revolution began over lunch at Major's Cabin Grill back in 1949. It was an oldschool New York City power lunch. As waiters served martinis and steaks to the midday crowd, Alfred Bloomingdale of department-store fame and his dining companion, financier Frank X. McNamara, were finishing their meal when something unexpected happened. As one version of the story goes, the check arrived and they discovered they didn't have enough cash to pay it. McNamara had to call his wife to have her bring over money to cover the bill.

But rather than feeling embarrassed, McNamara was inspired. "Never again," he reportedly vowed. He and Bloomingdale cooked up a scheme to launch a network of restaurant charge accounts so that big-spending plutocrats like themselves wouldn't have to worry about carrying around cash to cover their tabs. This network, which became Diners Club, >' was the fIrst charge card company. ~ u At the time the concept seemed novel-in ~ the early days people would line up at check-

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Homo Plasticus: A happy consumer showing off his cards in /959.

out counters to watch someone pay with plastic-if not particularly revolutionary. But it was revolutionary. "In 5,000 years there have been only four times that we have changed the way we pay: There was barter to coinage; coins to paper; paper to checks; and then cards," says David Evans, economist and co-author of Paying With Plastic.

Today, of course, the credit card is like the telephone: It just is.

You can't buy a plane ticket, book a room at most hotels, or rent a car without one. And if all you could use were cash, you'd have a hard time shopping on the Internet. In fact, last year marked a milestone in business history: For the fIrst time ever, Americans bought more stuff in stores--dothes, groceries, toys-with cards than with cash. In total, American consumers carry around one billion different pieces of plastic and use them to make nearly $2 trillion of transactions a year. That rougWy calculates to 20 percent of the GDP. The impact plastic has had on business is almost too huge to measure precisely. There are no econ.omic data on how many purchases would or would not have been made over the years were it not for cards. Nor are there numbers for how much money cards have saved companies by making transactions faster, more efficient, and more seamless. But look at almost any company on the Fortune 500, and it's clear how dependent American business has become on plastic.

For Citigroup, No. 6 on the Fortune 500 last year, cards are huge business. It issues some 145 million cards worldwide, which bring in $19 billion in revenues-25 percent of the total. For J.P. Morgan and Bank One, joining card operations was part of the rationale behind their recently announced merger. Combined, their cards will be 16 percent of the overall business, making J.P. MorganlBankOne the biggest card issuer in the United States.

Other companies have built entire businesses around plastic.

Dell, No. 36 on last year's Fortune 500, couldn't exist in its present form without it. The company has created one of the most successful operations in the world by manufacturing and selling computers faster, cheaper, and more efficiently than anyone else.

Imagine what a cash-only world would do to Dell's speed and efficiency. How much would it cost the company to wait five to seven business days for each customer check to clear? What would it do to its operations to have its boxes waiting that long for shipment? How many sales would it lose when people decided it was easier to buy in a real store? It's safe to say that Dell would have had a lot more trouble coming up with the $35 billion in revenues it made last year without plastic.

Wal-Mart, the largest company in the world, would still be awfully big in a cardless economy. But how many of its millions of customers would have passed on that new DVD player or Weber grill if they hadn't been able to borrow the money for it so easily with their credit cards? FedEx, Amazon.com, eBay-all of these companies have to some degree built their empires around the convenience of plastic.

The most extraordinary episode in credit card history is the great Fresno Drop of 1958. The brainchild of a Bank of America middle manager named Joe Williams, the "drop" (which is marketing-speak for "mass mailing") was an inventive tactic to give

Americans their first highly addictive taste of credit card living.

Diners Club Keep in mind that charge cards in those days-like or American Express-were mainly used by jet setters, businessmen on expense accounts, and ladies who lunched. One American Express ad of the era told its customers, "You are part of a group whose finances and credit rating are among the top five percent of the nation."

The middle class used cash. To buy a plane ticket, for example, you'd physically hand over a wad at a travel office. To reserve a hotel room, you'd mail in a check. If you wanted to buy a new dress, or golf clubs you couldn't quite afford, you'd save till you had the cash to buy them or pay on some sort of installment plan. Of course the middle class did have access to credit, but it was a cumbersome process. It meant going to the bank, talking to the lending officer, and proving you were a stand-up guy.

Williams wanted to change that. In September 1958, he mailed out 60,000 credit cards, named BankAmericards, to nearly every household in Fresno. Mind you, these cards arrived in the mailboxes of people who had never seen-let alone applied for-a card like that. (It goes without saying that banks don't send out credit cards anymore without an application and a credit check.)

But now thousands of ordinary people suddenly found that thousands of dollars in credit had literally dropped into their laps.

Frank X. McNamara was one of the co-creators of the first credit card, Diners Club.

The appeal of credit cards was the same then as it is now: They make spending easy. Maybe too easy. "There's something about plastic that makes people make purchases they might not have made previously," says Maria Nemeth, psychologist and author of The Energy of Money. "If you had to layout all the dollars you

Internet-reliant companies like Amazon.com couldn't exist in a cashonly world. Ten years after it was started in founder Jeff Sezos' garage, a worker' scans bar codes in the vast Amazon. com book warehouse at its shipping and receiving facility in Fernley, Nevada.

were using to purchase something, you might think twice about buying it. With plastic, there is no real psychological connection that you are spending money." Adding to the inherent appeal of credit cards was a pent-up urge to splurge. After years of scrimping and saving during the Depression and war years, Americans of the 1950s felt rich and prosperous, and they wanted to spend.

"Thrift is now un-American," declared Fortune in 1956.

BankAmericards in hand, the residents of Fresno were now free to spend at will. And spend they did. They went on such a spree, in fact, that in the second year after the Drop, they racked up $59 million of purchases on their BankAmericards ($350 million in today's dollars). The credit card age had arrived.

By the mid-1960s cards were in such high demand that other banks that wanted in on the action joined Bank of America to form an association around the BankAmericard. The individual banks issued the cards; the association handled the marketing and backoffice processing. (In 1976 this association changed its name to Visa.) In 1960 there were 233,585 BankAmericards in use; by 1968, more than one million. In 1966 another group of banks formed Interbank, later known as MasterCard. All told, between 1966 and 1970 approximately 100 million cards were mailed out. (In 1970, the government outlawed the mass mailing of unsolicited cards.)

This postal blitz led to big spending: In 1970, volume on credit cards topped $7 billion. "It was like fmding a genie in a bottle," says Lewis Mandell, economist and author of The Credit Card Industry.

And like a genie, cards brought trouble too. For one thing, banks were mailing out so many credit cards that they were losing track of which customers got what, where they got it, and for how much.

Some 10 percent of the cards sent out by U.S. banks were never accounted for. During one mass mailing in Chicago, newborns were sent credit cards. The carbon-paper slips that credit card transactions were written up on were fast becoming a quagmire for the industry. Chuck Russell, a former Visa CEO, recalls taking over an entire gymnasium once to organize, all the paper. "The whole room

~ was filled with piles and piles of sales drafts that ~ we couldn't reconcile. Those drafts were worth ~milJions of dollars-and we didn't know whose ""accounts to debit. Our customers thought we were Santa Claus," he recounts in the company's corporate history.

Then there were the delinquencies. "A few people didn't quite grasp the idea that at the end of the month, or later, they would actually have to pay for what they bought," the corporate history recounts. The delinquency rate on those first cards was 22 percent. (Today it's closer to two percent.)

Another problem was credit card crime, which was born almost the minute credit cards were. In one incident thieves broke into a Bank of America warehouse, stole unembossed cards-which were as good as cash-and then audaciously offered to sell them back to the bank. In 1969 postal workers in Washington, D.C., stole 1,000 cards. Shopkeepers cooked up scams, charging fictitious sales to nonexistent credit cards. One theatrical agent bought $3,794 of airplane tickets on stolen cards and sold them to his clients at a 50 percent discount. In New York there was a mini-industry of stolen card dealers who bought bad cards for $25 and sold them for $150.

Given the rampant errors, delinquency, and fraud, it shouldn't come as a surprise that the banks lost money on credit cards for years. Bank of America racked up $20 million in losses on the cards within a year of the Fresno Drop-a huge sum back thenand Williams resigned. Between 1967 and 1970, Wells Fargo lost $7 million on its card business; Bankers Trust lost $10 million between 1968 and 1970. In 1973, 15 years after the Drop, banks lost a total of $288 million on cards.

Into this fray entered Dee Hock, the legendary CEO of Visa.

Hock, who took over BankAmericard in 1970, turned out to be just what the troubled industry needed. From the start, he believed that plastic could beat cash. To get there, it needed two things: to be faster-and to be everywhere.

Hock saw early on that cards needed computers. In 1973 he spent $3 million building the first electronic credit-card processing system. It was primitive by today's standards--cashiers had to give the credit card number over the phone to someone in a back office who would then manually enter the number into a computer-but it was still a huge improvement. The typical credit card transaction had been taking five minutes; the new system brought it down to 56 seconds and allowed BankAmericard to process

How Cards Beat Cash back. The recent Starbucks Visa card, 5,000 transaction in one hour. (Today Used to be cash was king. But over the past five which awards points toward cups of Visa can process 5,000 purchases in decades plastic has taken over. Just since 1995 coffee, was launched in October, and one second.) Computers cut down on the amount of stuff American consumers buy in within a week 25,000 people had time, paper, and fraud. And all that, of stores using plastic has increased 430 percent applied for it. course, cut costs: Within a year, according to a Dove Consulting study on conDebit and ATM cards, which both Hock's new electronic system saved sumer preferences. In 2003, for the first time, the banks that issued BankAmericards started in the 1970s, also hit it big in Americans bought more using cards than cash. $30 million. the early '90s. Thanks to advances in technology, stores started installing The more difficult challenge was getting his cards to work everywhere. machines at their checkout counters The relationship between stores and that enable customers to swipe an ATM or debit card, tap in a security cards has always been tense: Retailers like the sales that cards bring in but code, and pay for their purchases hate paying the fees on those sales. without having to use cash or credit. Debit cards are now the fastestThroughout the 1970s many stores, including J.C. Penney, Montgrowing sector in the industry. gomery Ward, and Sears~the big According to The Nilson Report, an industry publication, by 2007 three of the day-refused to accept third-party plastic. Retailers often the volume on debit cards will had their own cards, which they double, to $1 trillion.

Ironically, the future of plastic wanted their customers to use, and viewed other cards as rivals. But might not actually be plastic.

Several companies are experimenting Hock was relentless, and during his with ways to eliminate cards altogethtenure he persuaded more than a miler. One startup called Pay By Touch lion merchants to accept Visa.

In 1979, Hock had a breakthrough: has come up with a way to pay by putting your fInger on a scanner. Its He finally persuaded J.e. Penney to Web site declares that it is "completeaccept Visa. The deal made headlines, ly eliminating the need to carry cards, checks, or cash." Other comand other stores followed. Thanks to these efforts, it's rare today to go into a store that doesn't accept at least one of the big cards. panies such as Vodafone and T-Mobile are making it possible to pay remotely by using a cell phone. MasterCard and American Express Even the last major stronghold of cash-based commerce-the grocery store-has succumbed. At the beginning of the 1990s are currently testing ways to pay using wireless chips that could go only five percent of supermarkets accepted cards; now more than anywhere. "It could be worn on clothing or even implanted under the skin," Art Kranzley, MasterCard vice president, recently told 90 percent do. (The tension between card issuers and stores isn't completely gone: In 1996, Wal-Mart, along with other mer- American Banker. In the future, it seems, we'll be paying for lunch chants, sued Visa and MasterCard over their debit card fees. The with our forearms. big-box retailer forced Visa to cut its debit fees, and in February Plastic has changed American life. We pay bills, our rent, even kicked MasterCard's debit cards out of its stores.) our taxes, using cards. We get mortgages, in part, because of By the time Hock left Visa in 1984, the card industry had been credit records we've built up by using plastic. Anyone can buy transformed. For the fIrst time since its inception, plastic was almost anything anywhere at any time: a computer from Dell at starting to make a profit. What's more, he'd set it on a path of 3 a.m., a sweater from L.L. Bean on the commute home, a phone near universal acceptance-even overseas. Today travelers can call from 30,000 feet in the air.

Think about how much time it used to take to buy, say, a new take a trip across the world from San Francisco to Singapore with TV. Chances are the process went a lot like this: You found out just a few dollars and a piece of plastic in their pockets. how much it cost, you visited the bank to get the right amount, and Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the card industry exploded.

Indeed, there were whole new categories of cards invented during then you went back to the store to buy it. Now you see that 48-inch this time. Affmity cards, fIrst introduced in the '70s, took off as every- plasma screen at Best Buy, briefly yearn for it, even more briefly one from Mothers Against Drunk Driving to the National Hockey wonder whether you can really afford it, and then throw caution to League came out with a card. AT&T unveiled its Universal Card, the wind and buy it on the spot. Indeed, stores count on our makoffering phone minutes in exchange for dollars spent using it. ing impulse buys. And a massive, intricate, trans global technologAmerican Airlines teamed with Visa to introduce its air-miles card, ical and fInancial infrastructure is waiting all day, every day, to one of the most successful innovations in the industry. Today you can make that impulse buy as easy as, well, an impulse buy.

0 get any number of "reward cards" that offer an amazing array of freebies-hotel rooms, groceries, cloth~, insurance, books, even cash

After scientists attach a sensor to a captive tuna in the research center, they rush the fish into a boat and motor out to Monterey Bay, where they check on the animal and the device before lowering it back into the deep and releasing it.

ssessing the status of marine life around the world has gained urgency in this era of coastal pollution and alarming overfishing.

by side. "Keep the hose on that one," she told an associate, and he trained a stream of aerated water into its mouth and thus through its gills.

She picked up a tool that resembles a spear. Attached to one end was an electronic device containing a sensor and a transmitter. It looks like a wireless microphone and can beam a signal to an orbiting satellite, conveying the transmitter's whereabouts on the globe. Block bent over the animal and stuck the "satellite tag" into the fish just below the dorsal fin. The researchers lifted a sling holding the fish and then lowered it over the side of the boat and into the water. "One, two, three!" they chanted, and pushed the tuna free. For a minute the tuna appeared to swim woozily near the surface, the tag bobbing above its back like a mechanical pilot fish, before disappearing into the depths.

In the coming months, the device would make a daily record of the tuna's travels, then, after roughly six

months, detach itself from the animal, float to the surface and upload the data to a satellite. One of the fish that Block and her coworkers tagged that November day swam some 2,100 kilometers over the next several months, at depths of up to 300 meters, and was last detected in March near Magdalena Bay, Mexico, about 320 kilometers north of Cabo San Lucas.

The animal played a bit part in an unprecedented global biological research project known as the Census of Marine Life, an estimated $1 billion, lO-year effort by scientists in at least 50 nations to identify, characterize and track the movements of scores of life-forms. Those include a wide range of animals other than bluefin tuna, from whales and turtles to sea-bottom bloodworms and albatrosses. Some researchers will scuba dive. Others will send robots to the ocean floor. And still others will soar above the sea's surface in aircraft equipped with laser-based radar devices that can penetrate the ocean and monitor, among other variables, the locations of schools of fish. Researchers also plan to study historical records to gain a view of ocean life in the past.

Assessing the status of marine life around the world has gained urgency in this era of coastal pollution and alarming overfishing. Policymakers who set ocean-fishing quotas and pollution limits are working with outmoded or incomplete data, the census researchers say. They argue that the project is needed because the oceans, which make up 90 percent of the Earth's biosphere, "are largely unexplored, and the life in them largely undescribed."

Block's study of Pacific bluefin is only part of the larger census project, but it highlights how the researchers hope to gain a detailed picture of not only where the creatures go but also the watery world they inhabit. "Let's take the animals we know that can carry the electronics and get them to sample the oceans for us," Block says. "Let's use the organism as a way to get a window into the world it lives in-to get the organism's-eye view."

After releasing the tagged fish, Block and her associates motored back to the tuna research center, where a group of graduate students was matching wits with two dozen bluefin swimming around a 12-meter-diameter tank. The center is world famous for its studies of captive bluefin tuna, most of which are caught off the Southern California coast and trucked to the facility. Tuna can survive in the tanks for several years. The water in the tanks turns over every 70 minutes, and ,its temperature, acidity and oxygen content are carefully regulated.

The water in the tank had been drawn down to hip level, and the graduate students, wearing wet suits, maneuvered a vinyl mesh corral to capture the circling fish. Once the students caught a fish, they guided it into a sling, which was hoisted out of the water, transferred to a forklift and rushed to the dock. Block trotted alongside the animal like an emergency room physician tending to a patient on a gurney. She jumped into the skiff, and the crew raced out to the bay to release the fish.

eople exploit just a few路 hundred fish species for food, and populations of those species have fallen precipitously, some as much as 90 percent.

Block is among the world's leading experts on warmblooded ocean fish-tuna, mackerel sharks and billfishes such as marlin. She has authored or coauthored 60 studies on their physiology, behavior, genetics and ecology and has pioneered methods for keeping tuna in captivity. In 1996, she received a MacArthur Foundation grant, and she poured most of the $250,000 so-called genius award into the research center at Monterey Bay. Tuna are among the most economically important creatures in the sea. Worldwide, the tuna fishing and processing industry amounts to some $3 billion annually. In the United States, people consume more than 400 million kilograms of canned tuna a year. It troubles experts that so little is known about t,he behavior of tuna, never mind less

commercially valuable creatures. "We can go to Mars and the moon," Block says, "but we haven't had a way to see where the ocean animals go."

Tuna draw heat from the action of their own muscles.

That gives the fish more power, according to Block's laboratory experiments, but it also means they need lots of oxygen: water must flow ceaselessly through their gills. If they don't swim, they die. In the wild, a bluefin grows rapidly. If it lives long enough, it might top 450 kilograms. Yet it's a marvel of hydrodynamics, says Randy Kochevar, a biologist at the Monterey tuna center and a colleague of Block's.

A bluefin can sprint 65 kilometers an hour and cruise 240 kilometers a day. The giant Atlantic bluefin, which Block has studied even more extensively than the Pacific variety, may survive 25 years or longer and reach 680 kilograms.

The Pacific bluefin is one of the world's most prized fishes. Sushi lovers pay a premium for its fatty meat. At Tokyo auctions, dealers routinely spend $10,000 for a fish.

Though bluefin are caught with hook and line, in commercial operations they are typically captured with a purse seine, an enormous net that encircles a school and entraps the fish when cinched at the bottom. A large school in the eastern Pacific can consist of 2,000 fish.

Unlike other tuna species, the Pacific bluefin appears to be holding its own in the face of fishing pressure, although population data from the Pacific, which Block calls "that big blank slate," are limited. As Chuck Farwell, codirector of the Monterey tuna center, remarked, "If there were a problem, we wouldn't know it."

In the Atlantic Ocean, the problem is worse, but the data, thanks largely to Block and coworkers, are better. Each winter since"1996 she has chartered fishing boats to survey tuna off the North Carolina coast. She follows the animals with satellite tags or another type of sensor, known to the scientists as an archival tag, which she sews into the abdomen of a large tuna. It, too, records the fish's movements and the ocean temperatures and depths, but furnishes researchers with more data-provided that whoever catches the fish is willing to return the device to the researchers for decoding. (It's plastered with a return address and the promise of a $1,000 reward.)

Sitting in her office at the tuna research center, a joint venture between Stanford University and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Block, a Stanford professor of biological sciences, pushed an archival tag across her desk. It looks like a metal cigarette lighter with a short probe and is surgically implanted in a fish's belly. The probe pierces the skin and measures the water temperature and pressure every two minutes. The pressure indicates the depth at which the tuna is swimming. A clock and a light-sensitive diode establish the time of the setting and rising sun, which can be converted to latitude and longitude. Thus, the scientists can reckon a tuna's position on the globe once a day within 100 kilometers.

Block took out a map showing the distribution of plankton in the North Pacific. Plankton, a general term for tiny drifting plant and animal life, are at or near the bottom of the food chain, and all sorts of marine creatures flourish where plankton abound. "In the center of all oceans are empty gyres-'deserts' with low chlorophyll and plankton-across which the animal migrates to get to 'hot' zones off the continents," she said. Color-coded, the hot zones were strips of reddish yellow and the desert a yawning blue. "If you're a tuna, why do you risk your life crossing the desert? You wake up in the Coral Sea, and you swim to the other side. That's a journey of 6,000 kilometers. Why? We think they somehow know the food is better that particular year in the zone of rich upwelling off Baja California, for instance." She glanced at the ocean outside her window. "We can't tell you where the most lucrative animal in the sea feeds or breeds," she said, shaking her head. he idea for the census of rp.arine life originated with Jesse Ausubel, a program officer at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Based in New York City, the foundation sponsors research and helps launch new scientific programs. In 1997, following a National Academy of Sciences report calling for increasing research on marine biodiversity, the foundation proposed a sweeping tally to be called the Census of the Fishes. But counting even a fraction of the fish in the sea, scientists hastened to point out in several brainstorming sessions, would be impossible. After all, scientists estimate there are 20,000 kinds of marine fish-including perhaps 5,000 yet to be discovered.

Sloan Foundation advisers, led by Frederick Grassle of Rutgers University, scaled back the plan, deciding to hunt for some new species and assess others. The project shifted focus again after biologists studying marine mammals and other nonfish creatures said they wanted in on the action too. So it was renamed the Census of Marine Life. All told, the enterprise will consist of 30 to 40 separate field studies, at $5 million to $25 million apiece, with the money coming largely from the U.S. and foreign governments.

The census's senior scientist, Ronald O'Dor, a marine biologist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, who is now based at the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education in Washington, D.C., says the virtue of the approach is that the animals lead the way. "They cover more area than an expensive, traditional research cruise can," he says. "You let the animals choose your sites."

The study that Block and three other scientists are heading is called Tagging of Pacific Pelagics (TOPP), and the plan is to monitor a dozen animal species, including tuna, Humboldt squid, great white sharks and elephant seals. Some tagged creatures are likely to cross paths, the researchers say, possibly providing new insights into how the animals interact in the wild. One of the scientists, Daniel Costa of the University of California at Santa Cruz, mounts electronic sensors and transmitters onto elephant seals, which weigh up to 3,175 kilograms, when they come ashore to breed. He says he looks forward to learning whether the seals' travels overlap with tuna m,igration patterns. If so, that

T

might hint at common feeding strategies that the two species were previously not known to share.

Though the marine census project officially started last year, pilot studies had been under way for a couple of years. Besides Block's tuna-tagging project in Monterey, another pilot study involves tagging squid in the Sea of Cortes. William Gilly, of Stanford's Marine Station, has worked with fishermen in Mexico to see how willingly they would return a yellow plastic ring attached to squid they caught-a dry run before attaching electronic sensors to the animals. First, Gilly went out with the fishermen at night and, using handheld lines, caught squid, some weighing 22 kilograms or more. The scientists put the plastic rings on nearly 1,000 animals and released them. Signs posted near fishing docks offered a $50 reward for each tag returned. Over a three-month period, about 80 tags were recovered. That pleased the scientists, who also were glad to learn where the squid were caught, hinting at winter migrations of squid in the Sea of Cortes.

"The census is an example of an old-fashioned mentality in science," Gilly says, meaning it addresses a basic curiosity.

"We're reopening the blinders, the way we used to look at the world, through wide exploration."

Block and others engaged in the census may shed light on the condition of some of the world's fisheries, which are under great strain. People exploit just a few hundred fish species for food, and populations of those species have fallen precipitously, some as much as 90 percent. Some environmentalists and marine experts call the situation a crisis, but even people who dispute that view do not doubt that fishermen and fishing nations are working harder than ever for smaller catches.

Whether the fishing industry will make the best use of data collected by the sea searchers is open to question. Recent studies by Block and colleagues in the Atlantic have found that far more tuna than previously believed cross the ocean. The finding overturns a basic assumption held by not only biologists but also international policymakers, who set different fishing quotas for the eastern and western Atlantic. But it now appears that alleged overfishing in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean has reduced catches in the western Atlantic and North America, say some researchers, who are calling for lower fishing limits in the Atlantic. Block says she hopes that fisheries managers take steps to "make the changes necessary to ensure the future of the species."

At the end of a long day for Block in Monterey, she was still wearing a wet suit. She climbed down into a tank at the tuna center with her graduate students and resumed showing them how to affix satellite sensors to a couple of the corralled fish. Even when she got out of the tank, Block continued coaching from a walkway above it. "Keep the fish under water," she called, pacing back and forth. Below her, the captured bluefin were swimming round and round, never stopping, as relentless as the researcher herself. D

About the Author: Jeff Wheelwright is a California-based freelance writer and a former science editor with Life magazine. He has authored Degrees of Disaster: Prince William Sound: How Nature Reels and Rebounds.

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had come to hear the future.

It was a sunny afternoon in the spring of 1974, and my band and I, all jazz players, had ventured to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to hear what was being touted by critics and writers as the future of classical music.

The style was called minimalism, and its guru was a guy named Philip Glass.

As we sat down on the floor of an upper lobby in the vast performing arts complex, along with about 200 other seekers of a new musical faith, the future did not look particularly auspicious. For starters, there was the floor itself: no seats, not even carpeting to sit on. Then there was the stage-or, rather, there wasn't one. Apparently, the Philip Glass Ensemble was going to perform on the floor. Their equipment didn't inspire much confidence either: a couple of small amplifiers, a sax, a microphone and a pair of gray vinyl Farfisa electric organs, the kind used by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs on their rock classic, "Wooly Bully."

Something didn't seem right, here.

The future of classical music arrived in a wrinkled shirt, faded dungarees and worn sneakers, his hair akimbo and his mood nonchalant. The ensemble followed with the same tattered look and manner, as if they'd all just tumbled out of a Manhattan loft and were headed to the nearest garage to practice a set of Velvet Underground covers. They looked less like the future of music than they looked like ... us.

Now seated at the Farfisa, Glass nodded to the ensemble and the music began. But instead of stating a theme and moving through variations on it, as would a piece

by Bach or Beethoven, the sounds seemed frozen in time and space. What sticks in my memory is a series of repeating phrases: dee-doo, dee-doo, dee-doo beeped from Glass's Farfisa, slowly giving way to something like doo-dee, doo-dee, doo-dee from a soprano sax.

Then a voice joined in, singing syllables: doo-doo-dee-dee-doo, doo-dqo-dee-dee-

doo, doo-doo-dee-dee-doo.

The music went on and on, like a Mondrian painting come to life in sound, lines of notes closing and intersecting in incessant rhythm, punctuated by primary-colored blocks of harmony.

And as it went on, glacially changing its beats and chords, so, too, did the range of reactions shift in the listeners. At first, we felt shock at the sheer simplicity, which immediately snared the ear. Slowly, shock gave way to resistance against the newness of it all, then acceptance, and, finally, the rapture of trance, the music forcing thoughts out and feeling in.

"I remember that day at the Kennedy Center," Glass tells me almost 30 years later. "I remember it because, afterward, we told everyone that we'd played the Kennedy Center." He laughs. "We didn't mention that it was in the lobby! It just sounded so prestigious to say we'd played there. At the time, we were playing in lofts and clubs and parks, anywhere we could.

Everything mattered then." A pause. "It still matters."

The composer is holding court on a black leather couch in a digital recording studio amid a warren of offices, collectively dubbed Looking Glass Studio, on lower Broadway in Manhattan.

He's just turned 66, and his fourth Wife, Holly, has recently given birth to the latest twig on the Glass family tree-a son, Cameron. (He has two adult children, Zachary and Juliet, from his first marriage.) Later in the week, he says, he will complete his 20th opera, The Sound of a Voice (which premiered in June in Cambridge, Massachusetts), and earlier in the day, he learned he had received his second Oscar nomination, this time for the score of the Nicole Kidman-Meryl StreepJulianne Moore tour de force, The Hours.

(The first was for the score of the 1997 Martin Scorsese film Kundun.)

He doesn't look the part of the enfant terrible anymore; the hair, still akimbo, is graying. His eyes are framed by delicate rimless glasses. His face hasn't changed much, although it is clearly yielding to gravity. The rumpled clothes remain: a brown polo sweater, casual pants and sensible leather walking shoes. Only now

his appearance reinforces the carelessly confident demeanor of what he has become: arguably America's most prominent contemporary classical composer. minimalism, Philip Glass "With invented a new kind of music that attracted an enormous group of people who had never listened to classical music before and, in some cases, who still only listen to his form of it," says Joseph McLellan, classical music critic emeritus of the Washington Post.

Glass and minimalism appeared at a curious moment in music history, when listeners of various persuasions suddenly seemed to have been cast adrift. After taking us on a magical tour, the Beatles had broken up. The bluesman from Mars, guitarist Jimi Hendrix, and the sax man from a jazz universe of total expressive freedom, John Coltrane, had died. And when we turned to the world of contemporary classical music, we found it still stuck in a decades-old malaise of abstract, dissonant, atonal music made by composers like the didactic Pierre Boulez and the slightly loopy Karlheinz Stockhausen, who once instructed his musicians to "play only when one has achieved the state of nonthinking."

Enter Philip Glass.

"What is minimalist music?" he asks rhetorically. "It's a term invented by journalists. I never liked the word, but I liked the attention!" More seriously, he goes on, "I would say that the term became a kind of shorthand for people who were making music that was a radical return to tonality, harmonic simplicity and steady rhythms."

Minimalism bridged seemingly conflicting musical categories. To younger pop types, it was cool and calculated and it had a great beat-even if you couldn't dance to it. To more serious jazz and classical types, its intellectual gravitas stimulated the mind as well as the ears.

And to all involved-from scruffy proles, like my bandmates and me, to cultivated swells-it was actually listenable.

"We changed the course of music in the latter half of the 20th century," says Kurt Munkacsi, who played that day at the Kennedy Center and who has continued to

work with Glass as a producer over the years. "Part of that had to do with the fact that Philip spoke to a new generation in its own language. When the ensemble was formed, it was completely modeled on a rock 'n' roll band, with the high volume, the steady beats and bass lines."

Two years after the Kennedy Center gig, Glass and director Robert Wilson astounded the world with their revolutionary concoction, Einstein on the Beach, which combined the former's minimalist score with the latter's avant-garde theatrical staging. Four years later, Glass added Romantic-era flourishes to his music in the 1980 opera Satyagraha, which transfornled him into a fully acknowledged Modernist master. Over the next two decades, that status enabled him to pursue musical, theatrical and film projects from the world's preeminent concert and opera halls to the red carpet of the movie world, where, in addition to his Oscar nominations, he also earned a Golden Globe in 1999 for his score for The Truman Show.

"The thing is, I've never had a high artlow art set of standards," Glass explains.

'Tve spent my life in the avant-gard,e. But

I think that every art form is honorable, and I never look down on anyone who enjoys what they're doing. Musically, I love everyone from [R.E.M. vocalist Michael] Stipe to [opera singer] Jessye Norman. I got that from my father. He owned a record store, and he loved everything in there."

In fact, it was from the castoff stock in his father Ben's store that Glass first encountered much of the music that has formed the basis of his work. When certain records did not sell, Ben Glass took them home and asked his children to listen to them in an effort to figure out why. In this way, Glass was introduced to such works as Beethoven quartets and Schubert sonatas.

"It was a great way to become familiar with music," Glass says. "Listening to all these different pieces allowed me to see that music is about quality, not categories."

Born on January 31, 1937, in Baltimore, Glass began studying music at age six. He took up the flute but abandoned it after a few years, frustrated by the lack of pieces written for it in the classical repertoire. He was also growing

Seattle Opera's 1988 production of Satyagraha by Philip Glass. The libretto was in Sanskrit, taken from the Bhagavad Gita. Glass has long been drawn to eastern themes. He recorded the album Passages (1990) with Ravi Shankar.

bored with the staid musical atmosphere of his hometown. So, at 15, after passing an entrance exam, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he majored in mathematics and philosophy.

"I was very fortunate that the University of Chicago was militantly liberal arts," he says. "I didn't specialize; I studied everything: history, biology, social studies and the arts."

Graduating at age 19, he made his way to New York's fabled Juilliard School of Music, where he studied composition with such illustrious teachers as Vincent Persichetti. There, his tastes evolved away from the dense and dissonant music of Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, which had dominated musical thought and practice in the first half of the 20th century, and the trendy music of Boulez and Stockhausen.

Instead, he turned toward American composers, most of whom were meltingpot mavericks. The granddaddy of them all, Charles Ives, used military marches, church hymns and clashing time signatures to achieve his creative visions -at times, all in the same work. Aaron Copland borrowed folk songs like the Shaker melody "Simple Gifts" and turned them into fresh, modern works like Appalachian Spring.

But Glass had yet to combine his myriad influences into a voice of his own.

He set out for Paris in 1964 to study with the renowned composition teacher Nadia Boulanger, who had guided a whole generation of American composers, including the young Copland. Instead of helping Glass figure out who he was, she made him realize what he wasn't.

"One of the most important things I learned from Boulanger was that I didn't have the temperament to be a teacher," Glass says, laughing. "It just wasn't in me. I looked at people like John Cage, who made his living from composing and playing, and I thought, I don't have to teach!"

At the time, in the late 1950s and early '60s, many composers subsidized their creativity by teaching at universities and conservatories, which tended to isolate them and their music from the culture at large. That would not be a problem for Glass. "The American arts scene thrives on the marketplace," Glass says. "When I formed the ensemble in 1967, the idea was that it would be part of that marketplace. I wanted to be independent, to put myself in a position where I could create what I wanted without having to answer to a council of elders about whether I was a serious composer."

The retailer's son, who had paid his way through college and music school by loading planes at the airport and operating a crane at Bethlehem Steel, went about achieving his goal with atypical-for a composer, at least-practicality.

He booked enough gigs to pay each musician a salary for part of the year, which allowed them to collect unemployment when they weren't playing. After a few years, when he had made his name, and his performance fees increased, he added

health benefits. Years later, he even threw in a 40l(k) retirement plan.

"I found that unemployment was an excellent way for the government to support the arts," he says with a wink.

"The fact is, I like to work. I had day jobs from the age of 15 until I turned 41. I was a member of the steelworkers' union and the cabdrivers' union before I became a member of the musicians' union! I've always tried to be self-sufficient-and so has the ensemble. We've never been funded by a foundation or a charity."

One of his jobs would profoundly influence his music. A gig in Paris converting a score by sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar into Western notation led to a fascination with Indian music and a sojourn in India. Glass was drawn to the droning, trancelike Indian ragas, which evolve over hours-long or all-night performances into seemingly simple (but, in fact, immensely complex) dialogues of themes and rhythms. He also discovered the reedy textures and vivacious beats of Middle Eastern music. These would all combine with the classical music of his past to form the music of his future: minimalism.

Returning to New York in the mid1960s, Glass plunged into the city's avantgarde music scene, which was already on its way to a minimalist aesthetic. In 1964, American composer Terry Riley had shocked musicians and audiences with his epochal work, "In C," which consisted of 53 musical fragments, or cells, that any number of musicians-using any kind of instrument, including their voices-played as quickly or as slowly and for as many times as they wanted, until all musicians had played all 53 cells. The result was a kind of Middle Eastern mystical-musical blending of endlessly echoing motifs.

Other composers, such as Steve Reich, reduced music to unadorned rhythms produced by drumming or clapping.

What these innovators shared was a desire to take classical music out of the conservatory and return it to the real world, to make it less a theoretical exercise than a human experience. They made music that was strongly rhythmic, hypnotic and simple to the ear. Simple,

but not easy. Washington Post classical music critic Tim Page once described Glass's music as "sonic weather that twisted, turned, surrounded, developed."

Gradually, word about the new movement spread outside New York City.

In 1971, minimalism reached the rock world when the Who's Pete Townshend used repeated synthesizer riffs on songs like "Won't Get Fooled Again." By the time Glass assembled 1974's "Music in Twelve Parts"-the piece he played at the Kennedy Center-his name had become synonymous with the movement.

Glass's status seemed confirmed in 1976, when he and Robert Wilson staged Einstein on the Beach at New York City's Metropolitan Opera House before standing-room-only audiences. The fourand-a-half-hour work (sans intermission) was an amalgam of performance art, opera and multimedia spectacle.

Dramatist Wilson's jump-cut staging featured trains, a bed, a spaceship and the scientist playing a fiddle. Each recurring image had corresponding music, often a chorus singing numbers or solfege syllables (do, re, mi, etc.) over a foundation of rapid arpeggios-the notes of a chord played one at a time. "A listener. .. reaches a point, quite early on, of rebellion at the needle-stuck-in-the-groove quality, but a minute or two later he realizes that the needle has not stuck, something has happened," critic Andrew Porter wrote in the New Yorker. Wrote Page: "Some listeners were transfixed ... while others were bored silly." The event made Wilson and Glass instant stars.

"It was a radical evening," says Michael Riesman, the music director of the ensemble, who conducted the Einstein performances. "It transformed Philip from a fringe New York art-world character into a legitimate composer in the eyes of the world."

But like Stravinsky and the Beatles, Glass seemed compelled to move beyond the style that brought him fame just as the public caught up with him. "For me, minimalism was a platform that I pushed off from like a swimmer," he says. "From it, I leapt as far and as deep as I could go.

Writing for the theater has allowed me to

address issues of the aJts: science, religion, politics, the whole range of human society."

The first result, in 1980, was the opera Satyagraha, which premiered to soldout audiences in Rotterdam. In this exploration of Mohandas Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolent resistance (a loose translation of satyagraha), many of the composer's interests convergedIndia, history, social justice. The libretto was in Sanskrit from the Bhagavad Gita.

The stage action depicted scenes from Gandhi's years in South Africa, "witnessed" by figures that evoked his past, present and future-his friend Leo Tolstoy, poet Rabindranath Tagore and Martin Luther King Jr. Glass scored the work for conventional orchestral instruments. And the music changed too: he created stirring Romantic-era, nearly melodic theme lines that soared above repeated figures. "In harmony with his subject," wrote critic McLellan, "Glass has adopted a new, nonviolent style in his music."

Glass expanded on this mesh of history, social consciousness and music in other "portrait operas," such as 1984's Akhnaten, about the Egyptian Pharaoh who rebelled against the religion of his time and espoused a monotheistic god, and in 2002's Galileo Galilei, which examined the personal and intellectual trials of the astronomer who took on the religious establishment and laid bare the universe to Renaissance minds. As in Einstein and Satyagraha, Glass chose as subjects, he once wrote, "men who revolutionized the thoughts and events of their times through the power of inner vision."

He has always welcomed collaborators. With choreographer Twyla Tharp, Glass created In the Upper Room. He wrote 1,000 Airplanes on the Roof with playwright David Henry Hwang. On 1986's Songs from Liquid Days, Glass flirted with the pop world, composing for words provided by songsmith Paul Simon, among others. In 1990, he closed a circle of sorts with Passages, a collection that mixes Indian and Western themes, which he composed with Shankar. In 2000, he worked with his first wife, theater director JoAnne Akalaitis, ,

on a treatment of Franz Kafka's book In the Penal Colony.

Perhaps his most accessible works are his soundtracks to films. He recently completed a 20-year-long collaboration with director Godfrey Reggio on the "Qatsi" trilogy of art-house movies (the films are titled in Hopi: Koyaanisqatsi, PQwaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi). In these, Glass's frenetic music blends with images of the impact of urbanization and technology on humans and the earth. Errol Morris called Glass's score for Morris's 1988 murder documentary, The Thin Blue Line, "the single most important element" of the film. (Glass also provided the music for Morris's new film, The Fog of War, on former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara.)

While the Oscar eluded Glass again for his recent soundtrack for The Hourswith at least one critic disparaging the score as "browbeating [and] melodramatic" -many noted the crucial role the music played in the film. In fact, Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours, wrote, "Glass can find in three repeated notes something of the strange

A /992 photo of Glass in his New York home. Since then his successes include film scores, notably for The Hours, which got an Oscar nomination for its soundtrack, Kundan, the documentaries The Thin ,Blue Line and The Fog of War, and more recently, the Johnny Depp vehicle Secret Window, in which Glass's music is important in setting the eerie scene.

rapture of sameness that Woolf discovered in a woman named Clarissa Dalloway doing errands on an ordinary summer morning." And there's another similarity, says Cunningham: "The last 30 years have served to move Glass in from the margins, just as time has moved Woolf from aberration to mainstay."

"That is the great thing about getting older," says the composer. "It gives you a sense of perspective that is the doorway to wisdom. When you think--or you are told-that you are the 'future of music,' you're probably not."

0 About the Author: Harry Sumrall, a composer and journalist, is the editor-in-chief of the classical music Web site www.RedLudwig.com. He has been a music critic with the Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News and The New Republic.

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very young playwright's dream is to have a play produced on Broadway, and from there, perhaps, move on to write screenplays for (preferably blockbuster) films. Suzan-Lori Parks is one of those rare writers who accomplished both. She is also a songwriter and novelist.

Her play Top Dog/Underdog won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Drama-she is the first African American woman playwright to do so-and her debut novel Getting Mother's Body (2003) has been compared by reviewers to William Faulkner and Toni Morrison, while being praised for its original voice. She is currently working on screenplay adaptations of Toni Morrison's novel路 Paradise and Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Act 5, a Miramax film starring Brad Pitt. She has previously written screenplays for Spike Lee, Jodie Foster, Danny Glover and Oprah Winfrey. Her plays include In the Blood, which was a 2000 Pulitzer nominee, Venus, which won the 1996 Obie Award, Fucking A, The America Play, Imperceptible Mutabilities in the Third Kingdom, which won the 1990 Obie award, and The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World. And, she says, she's writing another novel, a sequel to her first. Besides all that, Parks is a professor at the California Institute for the Arts, where she heads the Dramatic Writing Program. It is no surprise, then, that Parks, who turns 40 this year, received the coveted MacArthur Fellowship grant in 2001. She was in India this spring at the invitation of the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy. She visited Delhi, Patiala and Chennai to talk about her work and interact with writers, directors and students. She enjoyed it tremendously, as she told SPAN editor Lea Terhune, who had a chance to chat with her in New Delhi.

SPAN: Reaching the top of your profession didn't happen overnight. What was it like, struggling to pull together Off Off Broadway and Off Broadway productions in the years before things started humming for you?

SUZAN-LORI PARKS: When I moved to New York in 1986, I was just out of university and I was writing a lot of plays, and hanging out in a lot of theaters. And in New York you've got the whole spectrum. You've got little, tiny theaters that are no bigger than someone's office, small theaters with maybe 10 seats. In New York there are people who do theater in their living rooms or in storefronts. There're a lot of theaters like that. Then you've got the middle places like the public theater, which houses several different theaters within it-a wonderful place to do plays.

You've got places like Broadway. Huge! Places where the enormous musicals are done. So that's the spectrum you get in New York. I started out in the little, little theaters. And I was even outside of that.

I couldn't find anyone to do my plays when I started out, and after a couple of years of trying to get someone to do my plays, finally I decided to do my own play. I had a job, and I saved my money, and I put on my own play. I'm really big on "don't wait around for someone to give you an opportunity." Create an opportunity. So I took a hundred dollars saved from my job. I had a little bit to pay the director and a little bit to pay the actors and I was doing the lights in the show. I had this extension cord and the light cues in the show were very simple. They were "lights up, lights down," because that's all we could afford. So

now you can say, "Well, I've done this play at The Gas Station."

And that pub enjoyed doing the play so much that they became a theater; they built a stage and actually put in real lights.

1 understand Faulkner is an inspiration for you. What is it about American Southern writers?

Yeah. He's a great writer. In America, Southern writers are juicy. There's a lot of juice down there. Swamp. And it's slow.

And even though Getting Mother's Body takes place in Texasand a Texan would not call Texas the South, it's like an offense, you know-but it is the South, even if the Texans just think they're just Texans, in their own sort of place. Southern writers in the States, there's a rich soil, the lifestyle is slower, probably because of the heat, and there is a lot of time for reflection. In New York it's go, go, go. Boston, it's go, go, go. There's lots of movement and action. In the South there's not so much excitement, I think, which gives opportunity for reflection.

Ethnic diversity is a growing force in contemporary literature.

Is it becoming mainstream?

I think that's the really big question for America. I think that's the question that America's been asking itself from the very beginning, you know. The Founding Fathers, they left out a whole section of the population when they designed the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. I think, actually, it was always a question, the parenthetical fine print, so fine that they couldn't even see it. And I think that's just a question we've been asking ourselves since the begin-

with Attit when the show started I would plug in the extension cord andboom!-the lights would come on. When we had a cue for the lights to go down, I would unplug the extension cord. This was my first play in New York. It was at a bar, like a pub. I liked the atmosphere. It was a renovated gas station, a garage, basically, which served some beer. Nice guys ran it, and I hung out with them. One day I said, "You should do a play here." They didn't do plays there. They said, "You think so?" and I said, "Yeah, it'll be real cool," so one of them said, "I'll buy some chairs."

They didn't have chairs. They had a ratty old big green couch that everyone used to sit on, that's all they had ... So he went out and bought about 10 plastic folding chairs and helped design the poster, which was very small, no bigger than a postcard, so he was putting a little money in there, so that was cool.

Then what happened?

A few people saw it and liked it and, you know, the show had its run. I think we ran for two days. Then you think, "So where am I going to get my next show d"one?" So you continue. But

ning of the country, and I think that's a question we'll continue to ask. And the answer-we continue to answer it, too. So does literature, a book or a play written by a black person, does that speak to anybody other than black people? That's the question that we're asking. "Do you all have any relevance to us other than race literature?"

And this is sort of my big, bandwagon-y thing. Because literature about African Americans, I think, from the beginning, needed to be racial literature. We needed to talk about ourselves in opposition or in contrast or whatever to the "white man." But now we are in 2004, and I think the problems of society are very different, and I think now we need to talk about ourselves in relation to ourselves. And by doing that we create universal literature. That's the kind of zen koan thing. And in that way we create a work that speaks to everybody Does your work have universal, mainstream appeal?

When Top Dog played on Broadway, we had an audience of young black kids and older white folks, I mean people who had seen Tennessee Williams on Broadway, little old ladies with their pocket books in their laps, kids with their hats turned around

backwards, we had people from India, people of Far Eastern extraction, we had all kinds of people. We had Latina people there. We had little old ladies going, "that reminded me of me and my sister," I mean little old white Jewish ladies. When you create a work in which you study yourself and contemplate yourself, instead of always looking out and pointing to the other, you are contemplating yourself, you're engaging in self-study, which is swadhyaya-I'm not saying it right. It's a yoga thing. But when you engage in self-study then you create a work that's truly universal. So that people when they read Getting Mother's Body-and I did the book tour all over the country-I had the older white men going, "This book meant so much to me. It sounded like my family." Well, of course, of course. That's why everyone wants to do Hamlet. Because it's not pointing out there, it's Hamlet wondering about his own existence, it's "To be or not to be." His main issue, his main problem is with himself.

That's the oicky thing about literature written by people who are outside the mainstream. Can others relate to it? Well, the answer is yes. You just have to give yourself a minute to get over the fact that with Top Dog there are two black men on the stage and thinking, "Well I don't know anything about that." Well, relax for a minute.

I don't know anything about Denmark, but I can get into Hamlet.

And listen, take it in, you'll realize, "Shit, that's like my family."

Does the ethnic writer have a particular obligation to voice issues?

Yeah, but I think that people think very narrowly about political issues. Like, for African American people it's a little more complicated. We have African American women like me, we have African American women like Condoleezza Rice. What issues are we talking about? That's only two women. Then we got a sister who's in jail, in lock-up, and that's another one. And then we have a multi mega fantastically amazing millionaire woman like Oprah Winfrey, and that's just four women. What issues are we talking about? It's not as if there is only one issue. There are many issues.

And so I think, yeah, we have to raise the issues, but we have to start raising the issues by recognizing that there's complexity. We are not in the 1950s or '60s, where there was pretty much, like, one or two issues. We are in the 2000s and there are lots, hundreds of issues. Is there one women's issue? Is there one Indian issue?

That's what makes a book.

Exactly, that's what makes a book. But I think issues come out of character, and not the other way around. The root of any of my writing, so far, has never been an "issue." "I want to talk about black on black violence. Hmmm! I think I'll write Top Dog." No! That's not how my work starts. It starts, "I know, two brothers.

Great idea. One named Lincoln the other named Booth." I go and write. Issues, then, as the play is completed and performed, issues are gleaned from the work. Not the other way around.

You teach at Cal Arts and lecture elsewhere. Could you sum up what is essential for good writing?

For me, I would say it's gott~ be what it is, which means that

sometimes-which is kind of more like my writing-that sometimes you get plays like The Death of the Last Black Man in the Whole Entire World, where there are 12 characters, and it's kind of a jazz funeral play in which they speak in standard English, non-standard English, Ebonics (African American vernacular English) and tongues (religious trance speech), the whole range.

And the shape of the play is very rhythmic, kind of like an improv jazz piece, you get that. But that is what it is. And I don't have one rule, one-size-fits-all writing. And that's actually the way I teach my students. I encourage them to be who they are, so I'm not inviting them to come and study with me so I can change them into a version of me, a mini-me, I invite them to study with me so I can fan the fire that they've got going.

How do you balance all your commitments?

I don't, I don't. (Laughs) I have a movie career and I tell them, 'Tm going to India, I'm sorry, bye," because I so wanted to come here. It's difficult. It becomes more difficult....Teaching is important to me. Movie writing is important and fun. It's important to me that I do both, because they are at the very opposite ends of the spectrum. Teaching is very grounding, centering and nurturing; the movie thing is very fast-paced and exciting, stressful and weird. The novel and playwriting are somewhere in the middle. I do a lot of public speaking. I like to go out into the rural community and encourage people, so that's also different from the teaching. I like it all.

You've been in India just a few days, but what's your impression of it?

This is the first opportunity to come to place I have wanted to visit for such a long time, so this is just my first, little, putting my toe in th'e water, because we are just here for a couple of weeks. It's actually difficult, the poverty. My husband Paul Oscher, who's a blues musician, said "We Americans live at their expense, don't we?" I said, "Yeah. It looks like that." And I'm sure there are a lot of internal problems that cause these things, too. And in America we have our own, crazy internal issues that cause a lot of our problems. In California we live in a place where there are a lot of homeless people, so it's not anything new to our eyes, but you just look at people and say, "What can we do?" Or "Is this the way it is?" So that really struck me. But I love seeing all the different kinds of Indians.

And I don't know what Indian people know of America, I don't know what the majority of Indian people think of Americans.

We have a narrow perception of Indian people and it's great to be reminded that, "Wow, look at this variety. It's such incredible variety and it's beautiful It's just great to see all these different people." They look so different, it's cool, it makes you proud in a weird way. Look at all these people! And it makes you see America, because that's what we look like, in America.

We look like that. We look multi. I felt proud, and I don't know why I was feeling proud. It was like, "Look at us. Look at us.

Huh!" And I'm not an Indian person. You could feel the universal current surging, and it's cool.

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A young ham radio enthusiast pioneered wireless telecommunication with the walkie-talkie

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the n late 1930s, Al Gross, a teenage ham radio enthusiast in Cleveland, Ohio, built some hand-held devices that allowed his friends and him to comnmnicate on an unused portion of the radio frequency band; he named his creation the "walkie-talkie." Although Gross's innovation later played an important part in World War II, neither it nor his other major inventions became commercially successful until many years after his patents expired.

As an electrical engineering student at Cleveland's Case School of Applied Sciences, Gross discovered a way to cause miniature vacuum tubes to operate at about 300 megahertz, a relatively unexplored high frequency. By 1938, he had built battery-operated models that allowed him to communicate with radio op~rators

more than 45 kilometers away.

Early in World War II, the U.S. Office of Strategic Services learned about Gross's walkie-talkies and called the young inventor to Washington, D.C. The office asked him to develop a system that would allow Allied agents in Germany and occupied countries to communicate with pilots flying overhead. Because the system operated at a virtually unused high frequency, operators could transmit military intelligence without being detected by enemy shortwave-radio operators.

After the war ended, Gross founded Citizens Radio to commercialize the technology. The company's customers included the U.S. Coast Guard and farmers, but the walkie-talkie wasn't a commercial hit.

Meanwhile, Gross built other communi-

cations devices, including cordless telephones and personal paging systems.

Gross had begun developing the pager during World War II, when he designed a "device that could be attached to dynamite on the ground and signaled to ignite it from an airplane flying nearby. Gross thought that a modified version could be used to page doctors. He built a prototype device in 1949, but when he demonstrated it at a medical convention, his audience wasn't interested. "They said it would interfere with the patients, and it would interrupt their leisure time, like golf games, I suppose," Gross said during a 2000 interview on Canada's CBC Radio One. Although Gross's key inventions didn't become popular until after his patents expired in the early 1970s, he didn't become frustrated. At the time of his death in 2000, at age 82, he was working as a senior principal electrical engineer at Orbital Sciences in Chandler, Arizona, helping design electrical systems on rockets.

D About the Author: Lisa Scanlon checker at Technology Review.

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Google's search techniques have tamed the Web and earned the com pany a massive following, not to mention a fortune in ad revenues, But now the search business is priming for another big leap-with Microsoft and a pack of startups readying new technologies and vying to dethrone the reigning king,

employees at Google are anxious about the future, you wouldn't know it from a visit to the company's headquarters. Since last fall, when talk of an initial public offering got investors salivating, the organization has been under unusual scrutiny: some observers have called it "the hottest company on the planet," while others claim it's a business in leaderless disarray, with competitors crowding in and major customers on the verge of defection. But the Google complex in Mountain View, California, is as outwardly carefree as any college ~ampus.

The main lobby is a study in shagadelic kitsch, with a baby grand piano, a spinning party light, and a row of neon-bright lava lamps arranged in the same blue-red-yellow-blue-green-red sequence as the company's familiar logo. The cafeteria pulses with rock music, shouted conversation, and the sounds of geeks slurping free gourmet food. Upstairs, in the cubicle farms, programmers chitchat across walkways littered with toys, Segway transporters, and the occasional canine.

It's only when I sit down in a quiet conference room with Google director of technology Craig Silverstein that the giddy dot-com mood turns more serious.

Now that companies like Google and Internet ad agency Overture have demonstrated that displaying subject-specific paid ads alongside the results on a search page is a real moneymaker-contributing to an estimated $2 billion in industrywide revenues in 2003-a pack of wannabes are investing in search software they say will give users more pertinent results than Google's, faster. I ask Silverstein whether Google's famous focus on better technology will keep it ahead of all that competition. His answer is circumspect.

"It's very easy to move from one search engine to a better one," he says. Google pays hundreds of researchers and software developers, including more than 60 PhDs, to man the front lines in this technology war, explains Silverstein, who is himself on extended leave from his doctoral studies in computer science at, Stanford

University. But he acknowledges that's no guarantee of victory. "We hope the next breakthrough comes from Google-but who knows?"

Who knows, indeed? According to Reston, Virginia-based research firm comScore, Google has a large lead over its rivals in U.S. audience share, accounting for 77 percent of all searches in August 2003 (including searches conducted at AOL and Yahoo!, which used the Google search engine). But in the search industry, innovation is a wild card. "In 1999, you could have said that AltaVista had pretty much finished off the search market," notes Whit Andrews, a research director at technology advisory firm Gartner. "In 1997, it was Inktomi. In 1995, it was Yahoo!. You never know in the search business when there's somebody down the street who is going to make you look like yesterday's news."

Google is vulnerable partly because it has few of the infrastructural advantages, like AT&T's once exclusive ownership of most of the telephone network or Microsoft's control of PC operating systems, that typically help to perpetuate dominance. And the company's claim to fame-the ability of its search algorithms to find the most relevant results, based on their popularity-may be growing stale.

"When Google first launched, they had some new tricks that nobody else had thought about before," says Doug Cutting, an independent software consultant who wrote some of the core technology behind search engine Excite and has designed search tools for Apple Macintosh computers. But plenty of other search engines now offer intriguing alternatives to Google's techniques, Cutting believes.

For example, there's Teoma, which ranks results according to their standing among recognized authorities on a topic, and Australian startup Mooter, which studies the behavior of users to better intuit exactly what they're looking for. And then there's the gorilla from Redmond: Microsoft is turning to search as one of its next big business opportunities. Its researchers are devising a new operating system that melds Google-like search functions into all Windows programs, as

well as software that scours the Web for definitive answers to questions you phrase in everyday English. Meanwhile, Yahoo! launched its own research laboratory in January, and Cutting himself is building an open-source alternative to Google.

"Nowadays," he says, ''I'm not convinced [Google is] markedly better."

Whichever technology hooks tomorrow's Web surfers, its builder will earn enormous influence-and handsome profits. Some 550 million search requests are entered every day worldwide (245 million of them in the United States). By 2007, the paid-placement advertising revenue generated by all these searches will reach about $7 billion, says Piper Jaffray analyst Safa Rashtchy. Yet surveys indicate that almost a quarter of users don't find what they're looking for in the first set of links returued by a search engine. That's partly because the precious needles of information we seek are buried under a haystack that grows by some 60 terabytes every day. And it's why brutal competition in the search industry is certain to continue, especially as search companies usher in a host of advanced technologies, such as natural-language processing and machine learning. "Over the next five to ten years," says Rashtchy, "we could see massive improvements that provide orders-of-magnitude increases in relevancy and usage."

And it's the competition to deliver those improvements-much more than the success or failure of Google's rumored IPO, expected by many to happen this springthat is likely to determine how we will be navigating the Web a few years from now.

Pulling Rank By nature chaotic and decentralized, the Web screams out for tools to help people hunt down documents no matter where they reside. Say you want information on treatments for scurvy in the 18th century: without a search engine, you have no way of knowing that the data you need is stored only in places like a cryptically named file (www.james lindlibrary. 0 rg/triaLrecords /17th_18th_ Centuryllindllind_kp.html) on a server at the library of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, Scotland.

When you type "scurvy" into a search box at Google or MSN or Ask Jeeves, however, you're still not touching the actual file at the Royal College. You're merely rifling through the search company's index of the Web-a huge list assembled by software "spiders" that crawl through thousands of pages every second, copying keywords, phrases, titles and subtitles, links, and other descriptive information. Once a fragment of information lands in the index, it's usually compressed, assigned a "weight" or importance, and stored in a database for quick retrieval.

The search terms you enter are compared against this index, and links to pages that contain one or more of your terms are displayed in order of relevance.

How a search engine determines that relevance is the secret sauce. Google rocketed to prominence in 1999 largely due to PageRank, an algorithm invented by founders Lany Page and Sergey Brin that was the first to capitalize on the l11assive

interlinking of Web pages. Each link is, in search firms Media Metrix and Alexa. effect, a vote made by the author of one . Google has so pervaded the Web that its page for the contents of another. Page and very name was selected by the American Brin realized that if their index were big Dialect Society as the most useful new enough, they'd be able to assess a page's word of 2002. importance by counting the number of Despite its advantages, PageRank has other pages that linked to it. They took a few flaws. Just as earlier search engines other factors into account as well, such as could be fooled by pages peppered with the pertinence of the text surrounding the thousands of keywords in "invisible" links and the linking pages' own popularwhite-on-white type, an unscrupulous ity. But their groundbreaking insight was site owner who wants his Web address to that the Web is a giant popularity conappear higher in Google's search results test-and that the most-cited pages will can easily publish thousands or even milprobably be the most useful. The techlions of junk pages that contain links to nique worked fiendishly well, and Web his site, artificially raising its rank. users voted with their clicks. Between (Google says it has ways of counteracting June 2000 and January 2004, former top such attacks, but won't discuss them.) dog AltaVista, which ranked results The same loophole in PageRank allows recent phenomelargely according to the number of times a "Google bombing"-a page mentioned the user's search keynon in which bloggers make a humorous words, dropped from eighth place in overor political point by creating so many links to a given site that it comes up first all Web traffic rankings to 61st, while Google climbed from near-invisibility to when users type a specific term into the fourth place, according to data from re- Google search box. Google bombers

A Starburst of Ideas

protesting the war in Iraq, for instance, managed to make George W. Bush's White House biography the first-ranked result under "miserable failure."

More bothersome to some critics, however, is PageRank's obsession with fame.

A legitimate page that matches a Google user's search terms perfectly may get buried in search results simply because there aren't enough other pages pointing to it, notes Daniel Brandt, a Web developer who runs a critical site called Google Watch. A page's relevance to an individual user, Brandt and other critics argue, may depend on more than its popularity. "Just because the rest of the planet thinks that this is the number one travel site doesn't mean it is the number one travel site for you," says Liesl Capper, founder and CEO of Sydneybased upstart Mooter, who believes she just might have a better way.

I'm lunching with Capper on a brilliant early-winter day in San Francisco. She's in town to call on potential investors and customers. "People who control the flow of information have a subtle but pervasive power," she tells me earnestly. "Someone has to hold that power, and it is important that the people who do are those who consciously try to have a positive impact, and who give power back to the individual." Mooter aims to do that by making Web searches easier and more personal. Capper grew up in Zambia, studied psychology in South Africa, and founded a chain of early-childhood-development centers before emigrating to Australia in 1997 and choosing search technology as the place to make her next impact. She set up shop in downtown Sydney and hired Jondarr Gibb, an experienced software architect, and John Zakos, a graduate student writing his Griffith University doctoral thesis on the applications of neural-network theory to Internet searches.

The three have mixed their ideas on psychology, software, and neural networks to create a ranking algorithm that learns from the user as a search progresses. Before dumping a long list of links on a user, Mooter analyzes the potential meanings and permutations of the starting keywords and, behind the scenes, ranks the relevance of the resulting Web pages within broad categories called clusters. The user first sees an on-screen "starburst" of cluster names. A search on the name Paul Cezanne, for example, yields clusters such as art, artists, Cezanne, France, galleries, andfamaus paintings. That's the psychology part. "When you do a traditional search, you get your millions of results, and your mind does a conceptual grouping," says Capper. "But our minds are

hard-wired to process only three to five kinds of information at once. We decided not to override that but to work with it."

Then comes the learning part. To develop a more precise understanding of what the user is probably looking for, the Mooter engine notes which clusters and links get clicked and uses that information to improve future responses. Suppose a user enters the term "dog," clicks on a cluster called "breeds," and then spends a lot of time looking at sites about Schnoodles (a popular Schnauzer-Poodle mix). When the user clicks on a' new search result, Mooter will personalize the ranking to reflect this apparent pattern of interest, which might, for example, lead to sites about "dogs" plus "breeds" plus "Schnoodles" appearing higher. A refined set of results appears on every page; the engine continues to adjust the rankings based on the user's behavior.

The whole idea is to give people the results they want in as few clicks as possible. ''Two clicks and we already have a very good idea of where you're heading," says Capper.

When Mooter's beta site debuted last October, Capper ctidn't expect it to be noticed outside Australia. But traffic from around the world has been so heavy, she says, that the company has had to install more Web servers to keep the service running.

Spend much time talking to searchindustry insiders and you'll realize that there are almost as many ways to rank search results as there are pages on the Web. Google's supposed overreliance on popularity was one of the inspirations behind Teoma (pronounced tay-a-ma), founded in 2000 by computer scientist Apostolos Gerasoulis and colleagues at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Teoma's' search software now powers Ask Jeeves, the number six search site. Google "looks at the structure of the Web, but that method doesn't go down to the next level," says Paul Gardi, Teoma's senior vice president for search. "When you get down to the local level, you will find that links cluster around certain subjects or themes, very much like communities."

For instance, pages on "home improvement" don't simply link upward to more popular pages; they also tend to link to each other, forming circles around

prominent sites like Hometime.com, Homeideas.com, and Bob Vila.com.

The Rutgers scientists designed Teoma (Gaelic for "expert") to find those subjectspecific communities and exploit their wisdom. Before the Teoma engine presents the results for a given set of keywords, Gardi explains, it identifies the associated communities and looks for the "authorities" within them-that is, the pages that community members' Web sites point to most often. Teoma tries to verify the credibility of these authority pages by checking whether they're listed on resource pages created by subject experts or enthusiasts, which tend to link to the best pages within the community. It then ranks search results according to how often each page is cited by authority pages.

IBM and other organizations experimented with similar authority-based ranking systems in the late 1990s, but Gerasoulis says their approaches could take hours to slog through all the pages out there. Gerasoulis's proprietary technique does the same thing in about a fifth of a second. Ask Jeeves dumped its previous search provider and switched to Teoma's technology in 2001, and its query volumes jumped 30 percent per year in 2002 and 2003.

Hard as it may be to believe when you're looking at a dozen pages of search results, today's search engines ignore most Apostolos Gerasoulis who, along with Rutgers University colleagues, founded Teoma. Teoma search software powers Ask Jeeves.

of what is out there on the Internet.

Software spiders have difficulty indexing content that is protected behind sign-up forms or stored in databases such as product catalogs or legal and medical archives and only assembled into Web pages at the moment users request it. This so-called Deep Web may amount to as much as 92 petabytes (92 million gigabytes) worldwide, or nearly 500 times the volume of the surface Web, according to the School of Information Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley.

Mining the Deep Web is the mission of another fresh face in the search businessChicago-based Dipsie.

"Google and Teoma only index about one percent of the documents out there," says Jason Wiener, Dipsie's founder and chief technology officer. Wiener, a self-taught programmer who ran a San Francisco Web development company until the dot-com crash, has spent the last two years building a more nimble crawler, one that can get past forms and database interfaces. Say you're wondering about the standard equipment on a Mercedes 55SL convertible. At Cars.com, drilling down to the page with detailed product information will take about six steps. Dipsie, however, will have indexed the entire Cars. com database in advance, so it can send you to the same page with a single click. "We don't handle anything

that requires authentication with a username and password, but we do almost everything else," Wiener says. He claims that by the time Dipsie's search site becomes publicly available this summer, its index will include 10 billion documentstriple the current size of Google's index.

So while Google is still king of the hill, the hill itself is now crawling with competitors with their own bright ideas.

"Google knows this," says Gartner analyst Andrews. "They were born at Stanford, and they know there are students in Stanford's classes who are saying, 'Hey, I've got an idea-what if we take this algorithm and stitch it together with that algorithm?' They've got to either hire the young turks or defeat them."

But if there is one software company that knows how to hire young turks and turn their ideas into market-dominating products, it's Microsoft. ame any hot comer of computer science, and the company Bill built is likely to employ at least one or two of the field's leading investigators: after all, the five Microsoft Research labs around the world employ more than 600 researchers. And when Microsoft smells a big market, it usu'ally moves with full force to stake its claim.

There's nothing blue-sky about Microsoft's forays into information retrieval, the discipline from which the search engine sprang. The company has already won a 97 percent market share in PC operating systems and a 90 percent share in office software; search is one of the last big pieces of the computing landscape that Microsoft does not dominate. And a survey of R&D projects at the company confirms that it sees enhanced forms of search as key to its business growth. As the release of the next version of Windows, code-named Longhorn, grows nearer-a test version will be ready later this year-researchers and product developers are accelerating efforts to make Web searching an integral part of it.

One of the flashiest pieces of software in the works promises to allow you to enter your questions in simple English and get a direct answer back. The company believes search users shouldn't have to worry about

selecting the right keywords, linking them together with the right Boolean operators (and, or, not, etc.), and scrolling through page after page of search results. Instead, says Microsoft researcher Eric Brill, search engines should understand and answer questions in natural language.

Take Microsoft Research's AskMSR program, which Brill and his colleagues have been testing on Microsoft's internal network for more than a year. At its core is a simple search box where users can enter questions such as "Who killed Abraham Lincoln?" and, instead of getting back a list of sites that may have the information they seek, receive a plain answer: "John Wilkes Booth." The software relies not on any advanced artificial-intelligence algorithm but rather on two surprisingly simple tricks. First, it uses language rules learned from a large database of sample sentences to rewrite the search phrase so that it resembles possible answers: for example, "_ killed Abraham Lincoln" or "Abraham Lincoln was killed by _."

Those text strings are then used as the queries in a sequence of standard keywordbased Web searches. If the searches produce an exact match, the program is done, and it presents that answer to the user.

In many cases, though, the program won't find an exact match, but only oblique variations on the text strings, such as "John Wilkes Booth's violent deed at the Ford Theater ended Lincoln's second term before it had started." That's okay, too. As its second trick, AskMSR reasons that if "Booth" frequently appears in the same sentence as "Lincoln," there must be an important relationship between them-which allows it to posit an answer, even if it's not 100 percent confident. "We are tapping into the redundancy of the Web," explains Brill.

"If you have a lot of places where you are somewhat certain that you have found the answer, the redundancy makes it more certain." As the Web grows, so will its redundancy, making AskMSR ever more powerful, Brill reasons. While plans for AskMSR aren't definite, Brill believes the code will see the light of day, perhaps as part of a future Microsoft search engine.

Another Microsoft Research effort is less concerned with how search engines work than with how and when,users need

information. "Right now, when you want to search for information, you basically stop everything you're doing, pull up a separate application, run the search, then try to integrate the search result into whatever you were doing before," says Microsoft information retrieval expert Susan Dumais. "We are trying to think about how search can be much more a part of the ongoing computing experience."

Toward that end, Dumais is developing a program called Stuff I've Seen that's designed to give computer users quick, easy access to everything they have viewed on their computers. The interface to the experimental program, which will influence the search capabilities in Longhorn, is an always available search box inside the Windows taskbar. Enter a query into the box, and StuffI've Seen will display an organized list of links to related e-mail messages, calendar appointments, address book contacts, office documents, or Web pages in a single, unified window. One emerging feature of StuffI've Seen, called Implicit Query, would work in the background to retrieve information related to whatever the user is working on. If you're reading an e-mail message, for example, Implicit Query might display a box with links to the titles and e-mail addresses' of all the people whom the message mentions, and to all of your previous e-mail from the sender. To make the software even more useful, Dumais is working on adding an item to the two-button mouse's standard Windows right-click menu that would be labeled "Find me stuff like this" and would search both personal and Web data for information related to a highlighted name or phrase.

AskMSR, Stuff I've Seen, and related projects are all part of a larger shift in technology strategy at Microsoft, one that could position the company to convert hundreds of millions of Windows users around the world to its own search technology, much as it wrested the Web browser market from Netscape back in the 1990s. The crux of this transformation is the new Windows File System, or WinFS-the very heart of Longhorn.

Under the current Windows file system,

one o looks at 98 percent of the Web. What you usually see is a very small portion," says search engine expert Greg R. Notess. And the Web always had clutter. "Even during the early stages, some Web sites and pages were of low quality, were of uncertain origin-that is one of the strengths of the Web, the ability for anyone to publish," says Notess, an associate professor and reference librarian at Montana State University-Bozeman.

What might be junk to one might be important to somebody else. The clutter varies from each person's vantage point. What really is a big problem on the Web is spam directed at search engines, he notes. The search engines are fairly successful these days for many kinds of searches. But there is a risk of spammers starting to win the war on the Web as they have on email. There will always be a struggle between the search engine companies, spammers and people trying to promote Web sites and attract new traffic, feels Notess, who was in India in February on an invitation of the Public Affairs Section of the American Embassy.

What inherently differentiates various search engines on the Net? One gets slightly different results, he says.

Having more than one search engine is good for everyone because competition spurs improvement. There are various advantages. Personalization is one area that interests Yahoo!, Notess says. "There are various differences in the additional services and I think Yahoo! certainly offers a lot of popular information on its site." Then there are directories offered by various

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The LO\Ndo\Nnon Search Engines they [new algorithms] will. The speed now is so fast in terms of processing ... we're talking pretty much in fractions of a second." The real concern, he says, is that the comprehensiveness of a search is being compromised or sacrificed in favor of speed. That's why the numbers that search engine results provide are often estimates because this saves time, avoiding a comprehensive search. Popular results are given firstand quickly. As search engines continue to increase their database size, it is to be seen whether speed can be maintained,

search engines. Both Google and Yahoo! offer Usenet discussion groups that provide additional sources of information. Now there is marke buzz that Microsoft will join the tr de.

Notess, who maintains Search Engin,e Showdown (www.searchengineshowdown. com) which reviews, compares and analyzes Web search tools, says, "Now that Yahoo! has switched its online database from using Google to something from their own company's creation, it can now give different results from Google, providing other alternatives for the searcher for finding different kinds of information."

Most search engines give quick results. Search engineers know they need to keep up the speed because if people have to wait too long for results they will use another search engine.

Notess thinks new algorithms under development may not enhance the search speed further. ''1' m not sure that

Notess confesses.

People now enter a few words and the search engine provides pretty good guesses about the results, which is easy.

"But generally when we ask a question w don't say 'New Delhi' and expect any kind of reasonable answer. What do we want to know about 'New Delhi'?" he asks. Search engines do a remarkable job of providing general information. It gets much more difficult when we have a more precise information need. If we need something more specific, part of it is asking a better question and part of it is the search engine providing better results. Search accuracy relies on relevance. However, improvement in one search area might cause another kind of search to get less satisfactory results.

Notess primarily uses Mozilla browser, which is Netscape's successor on the Web, and finds its new features very

useful. But everybody cannot switch from Internet Explorer (IE) even though Mozilla is a free browser because majority of users are using IE, he says.

There are plug-ins in Mozilla for blocking different kinds of pushed graphic ads like flash ads and pop ads. It is much easier to increase or decrease the font size in Mozilla whereas Internet Explorer does not always have that capability. Mozilla also allows tab browsing-browsing two or three sites inside a single window.

On security loopholes in Web browsers, Notess thinks that although there is a risk for most users, it will not have a huge impact. Often the holes are fixed very quickly. People who do not upgrade their browsers are most at risk.

On his preference for search engines, he says: "It is easier to get used to one search engine. Nowadays many people are using Google but I think that closes you off to other information." Yahoo! might be good for popular culture information, while Alltheweb might be better for scientific research. "They don't seem to divide quite that way. One should tryout other search engines like Ask Jeeves.

Altavista has improved greatly in recent years," he says. One of the latest search engines that he prefers is Gigablast.com which indexes much smaller-over 200 million-sites and pages compared to other search engines. But he feels that is the only search engine that does a good job of reporting dates when they were actually crawled. "That is one I recommend as they have certain features and experiments that no one has tried to date," he says about Gigablast. For searching web logs his choices are Feedster.com and Daypop.com.

0

each software application partitions its allotted storage space into its own peculiar hierarchy of folders. This makes it nearly impossible, for example, to link a chunk of information such as the name of the author of a Word document with the same person's address or phone number in Outlook. WinFS, by contrast, has at its core a relational database: an orderly set of tables stored on your hard drive where all the data on your computer can be searched and modified by all applications using a standard set of commands.

If Longhorn includes tools based on Stuff I've Seen and allows them to communicate directly with a Web search engine, it could create the "single search box" dreamed of by software makers-the gateway to all the information you need, whether inside your PC or out on the network. Gartner's Whit Andrews, for one, is looking forward to Microsoft's new software. "Bring it on!" he says. "I am sitting here looking at my e-mail. If 1 want to look you up, I've got to remember to go Google you. But what 1 really want is to find out if 1 have talked with you in the

If there is one message spread by the priests of the dot-com boom that still holds true, it is that people's desire for faster, more efficient way to do things trumps brand loyalty every time. past. So 1 want to right-click and search globally, search my e-mail and contact folders, search U.S. Search.com [which sells access to information stored in public records]. Who has that advantage?

Microsoft is there, and for the low-price stuff that consumers aren't going to throw a whole lot of money at, they are in a terrific position."

Meanwhile, Back at the Googleplex 1 ask Google technology director Craig Silverstein whether Microsoft's search buildup keeps him up at night. He acknowledges that Microsoft and Google are exploring some of the same technical territory but contends that because Google is so much smaller than Microsoft (1,000 employees versus 55,000), it can act more nimbly on its ideas. And despite its smaller size overall, Google has more researchers devoted primarily to search than Microsoft. Silverstein also points out that each of Google's several hundred software developers is required-as part of the jobto spend 10 percent of his or her time on far-out personal projects, which provide a continuous flow of creative ideas.

Some of those projects smface at Google Labs (labs.google.com), a section of the Google site where the public can try outand comment on-search-related software that's still in development. Google Viewer, for instance, animates results so that they scroll up the screen like movie credits. Voice Search lets you enter a search by telephone if you happen to be away from your desk, then retrieve the results online later. The Google Deskbar installs a permanent Google search box in the Windows taskbar; results appear in a small, temporary window, so users don't have to launch their Web browsers every time they want to look something up.

But none of the Google Labs prototypes represents an innovation of the magnitude of Page and Brin's original PageRank algorithm. Nor are they in the same league as Microsoft's eff0l1 to reinvent Windows and integrate the applications that lUnon it. While Silverstein and his colleagues will talk about the efficiency of Google's more than 10,000 Web servers and the passion and drive of Google's programmers, they won't say how the company hopes to improve PageRank, or what new technologies might counter threats such as Teoma and AskMSR. So in the end, there's little outward proof that Google has the new ideas it will need to retain its market share. Says open-source prograrnnler Doug Cutting, "Google has a whole lot of people trying to come up with monumental advances, but we haven't seen them. 1 think if

they had them, they would show them."

One thing Silverstein does like to talk about is his long-range goal for search technology, which he believes is still in its infancy. "It's clear that the answer [to search] is not a ranked list of Web sites," he says. No one expects to approach a librarian, ask a question about the Panama Canal, and get 50 book titles in response, he argues. Silverstein thinks information retrieval experts should aim high, building software that is every bit as good at pointing users toward the specific resources they need as a well-trained reference librarian. That, of course, will require major advances in fields such as probabilistic machine learning and natural-language processing-and Google continues to hire some of the best new PhDs in those areas, including four recent graduates from the Stanford laboratory of Daphne Koller, a leading machine-learning researcher.

But will all that talent be translated into tools people can use? Google itself appeared seemingly from nowhere, rapidly overshadowing other prominent search engines such as AHaVista. And if there is one message spread by the priests of the dot-com boom that still holds true, it is that people's desire for faster, more efficient ways to do things trumps brand loyalty every time. If rivals like Ask Jeeves and upstarts like Mooter or Dipsie achieve even part of their visions of better ranking algorithms, simpler interfaces, and larger, more comprehensive indexes, they could take a big bite out of Google's business. Microsoft's sweeping overhaul of the Windows environment, meanwhile, promises to change the very concept of search for the vast majority of computer users.

The good news for Internet smfers is that competition will make search utilities an even more helpful part of our daily lives.

Without search tools, the Web's riches would be just as inaccessible as the tablets, scrolls, and hand-copied tomes of the preGutenberg age, and as the Web itself grows, so does our need for better ways to penetrate it. But which technologies will provide the access we crave-and who will profit most from them-are questions that not even the best search engines can answer.

D About the Author: Wade Roush is a senior editor with Technology Review based in San Francisco.

Indian Americans

Ig~N Lobbyists Bobby Jindal's gubernatorial bid became a symbol of the Republican Party's success in ethnic outreach. He lost, but now he is standing for Congress.

Congressman Joe Wilson (center), co-chair of the India Caucus, campaigning for Jindal (from left to right) with Ash Jain, White House staffer; Suhail Khan, legal counsel at the Department of Transportation; Joe Wilson; Dino Teppara, senior legislative assistant; and Eric Dell, counsel to Wilson.

Both Democrats and Republicans are listening up like never before, Indian Americans, who are politically visible and able fundraisers, are likely to play an important role in November election,

s electoral victory margins diminish, both the Democratic and Republican parties are turning their attention to immigrant vote blocs for a muchneeded boost to breast the tape in the race for the White House. Both parties' candidates have already made a point of wooing Hispanic and Jewish Americans, and have now set their sights on the Indian American community.

New Republic Online reported that all the attention paid to the Republican Party's courting of the Jewish vote "obscures an important trend: Democrats might have an answer in the increasingly powerful, wealthy and energized Indian American community."

The Far Eastern Economic Review added: "Other Asian communities ...are stepping up their involvement in U.S. politics, but none are as organized as the Indians."

Left: Vikram Chatwal and his family greet President Bill Clinton. Chatwal is chairman of South Asians for Kerry in 2004, which is involved with the Kerry campaign at its chapters in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York and San Francisco.

Below: Joseph and Jenny Melookaran with President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush. Melookaran co-chairs the Indian American Networkfor Bush-Cheney.

Facing page: Florida cardiologist Zach Zachariah with President Bush.

Zachariah is a leading fundraiser for the Bush campaign 2004.

With a population of 1.8 million and a median family income over $60,000, the Indian American community is fast becoming a political force to reckon with. Joseph Melookaran, a member of President Bush's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, admits the community has made "considerable progress in establishing itself in the American political spectrum.

The latter part of the Clinton administration and certainly the George W. Bush presidency, greatly valued the Indian Americans participating in the political process and serving the administration."

Melookaran co-chairs the Indian American Network for Bush-Cheney (lANBC). The network works toward development of an "Indian American agenda" to address issues pertaining to the community's interests and bringing them to the attention of the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign and the Republican National Committee. "We are putting together support groups for Bush-Cheney 2004 in 18 battleground states where a few hundred or a few thousand votes can make a difference," he says.

Congressman Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican and cochair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, has observed a heightened interest in politics in the Indian American community. The Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans was founded in the early 1990s under the stewardship of Congressman Frank Pallone, New Jersey Democrat, and Congressman Gary L. Ackerman, New York Democrat. In its formative years, Narayan D. Keshavan, a special assistant to Ackerman, was instrumental in shaping the caucus and played a key role in keeping the spotlight on D.S.India relations till his death in November last year.

Earlier this year, 32 senators formed a Senate India Caucus similar to the House caucus. "I see a deeper and more meaningful relationship developing between Indian Americans and

Republicans in the future," said Wilson, pointing out that successful professionals and those who share strong family values are being welcomed into the Republican Party.

Former assistant secretary in the department of health and' human services, Bobby Jindal's congressional bid on a Republican Party ticket has energized Republicans in the community. Jindal has become a potent symbol of the party's success in ethnic outreach.

According to unofficial data, the breakdown of Democrats to Republicans in the community is roughly 60:40. "Most Indians are Democrats at heart," says Vikram Chatwal. The New Yorkbased hotelier is a prominent supporter of Senator John Kerry and says the community's support for the Democratic presidential candidate has been "very strong and positive."

South Asians for Kerry in 2004 (SAKI) was created in an effort to invigorate the South Asian presence in the political

process and tap into potential supporters. SAKI is officially recognized by and works closely with the Kerry campaign with chapters in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York and the San Francisco Bay Area. The group is focused on fundraising, voter registration, and policy initiatives throughout the South Asian community.

The Indian American community has realized that in order to have its views represented it needs to become a part of the democratic process, says Congressman Joseph Crowley, New York Democrat and co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans.

The U.S.-India Political Action Committee (USINPAC) is actively involved in a "policy dialogue" with both President George Bush and Senator Kerry's campaigns.

"We are bringing key Indian American Democrats and Republicans to have a dialogue with key policy officials ... who will occupy top positions in the new administration," says Sanjay Puri, USINPAC's Virginia-based executive director. The committee plans to send delegations to both the Democratic and Republican Party conventions "to make sure that the Indian American viewpoint is heard."

During the primaries, Democratic presidential candidates, including Senator Kerry, sent policy papers to USINPAC. "[As president] I will nurture the important relationship between the United States and India and ensure that the rights of Indian Americans are protected here at home," Kerry said in his letter.

While USINPAC does not intend to endorse a candidate, its members are partisan and have formed "Indian American Support Groups" for both President Bush and Kerry.

Virginia-based Inder Sud, coordinator of the John Kerry Support Group, says the community has been very energized by Kerry's candidacy. "In part, it is because of their natural Democratic leanings; and in part because of a dissatisfaction with the policies of the Bush Administration, particularly with regard to his approach to foreign policy," says Sud. He expects Indian Americans to vote overwhelmingly for Kerry in November.

However, Kerry's public 0pposltlOn to outsourcing of jobs could push many potential supporters into the Bush camp. "We support Kerry's goals of creating jobs in the United States, so that anyone willing and able to work has a job," says Sud. However, he adds, "we are opposed to any attempts at creating artificial barriers. Senator Kerry has assured us that he favors free and fair trade. We are also concerned that the rhetoric on outsourcing does not translate into prejudice against immigrants generally, and the Indian American community specifically."

Crowley shares these concerns. "I want to make sure that the issue of outsourcing isn't vilifying India," he says. "India has been receiving some of these contracts but the issue should not be where these jobs are going but why they are going abroad."

In the 2000 presidential election, Indian Americans contributed over $7 million to the various campaigns. The community has, for some time, been seen as a cash cow willing to fork out donations to political campaigns without asking for much in return. That impression is gradually changing.

The Bush campaign has an elite class of fundraisers for the 2004 election cycle. The "Rangers" have raised at least $200,000 individually, and the "Pioneers" have pledged to gather $100,000. Florida cardiologist Zach Zachariah is a Ranger and his brother Mammen Zachariah, also a cardiologist, is a Pioneer.

Other Indian Americans in this elite group include Dr. Raghavendra Vijayanagar, chairman of the Indian American Republican Council (IARC), and Texan Dr. Sharad Lakhanpal, president of the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin, who are both Pioneers.

Indian Americans are "serious movers and shakers" in the Bush Administration, says Dr. Vijayanagar. "President Bush has shown that if you are intelligent, hard working and dedicated to conservative principles, the White House and [Republican] congressional leaders want you on their team ... .Indian Americans are turning to the Republican Party ... the GOP is embracing us," he says.

The community's ability to raise money is undoubtedly another factor that attracts politicians from both sides of the aisle. Maryland-based Sambhu N. Banik has been a loyal Republican Party supporter for most of his life. A Bush delegate at the Republican National Convention, which will be held in New York from August 30 to September 2, Dr. Banik says that as the first Indian American delegate from Maryland he has the added responsibility of representing the Indian American community. "My job will be to ensure more Indian Americans are elected delegates at future conventions by educating them about the process of grassroots involvement and networking," he says.

Sud wants to ensure that Indian Americans are recognized for their contributions in a Kerry administration and receive "equal and fair opportunities" for important positions. Both President Bush and Kerry have taken note of the Indian American community's political potential. Now it's up to them to tap this vital vote bank.

D About the Author: Ashish Kumar Sen is a Washington, D.C.-based journalist with the Washington Times. He also contributes to the Times of India and Outlook.

Valid Electronic voting machines are a topic of growing debate in the run up to the 2004 U.S. presidential elections.

Computer scientist David L. Dill highlights areas of concern.

Ithough Indian elections have been conducted using electronic voting machines since the 1980s, there has been little controversy here surrounding their use. In fact, since the electronic voting machine was introduced, it has become pervasive to the point that in the 2004 Lok Sabha election, all voters throughout the country exercised their franchise using an electronic touch-screen. The Indian electorate has whole-heartedly adopted it.

Not so in the United States, where electronic devices proliferate. Ironically, many people, when it comes right down to it, suspect the reliability of new-fangled devices, at least in something as critical as casting their votes. After the debacle of the 2000 election, where counting went on for weeks, and where unprecedented irregularities were exposed, Americans are extra-cautious going into the voting booth in 2004. An increase in Internet-based fraud, identity theft and destructive incidents

ERIKA JONIETZ: Electronic voting is a relatively new concept in the United States. How do these systems work?

DAVID L. DILL: We have touch-screen machines, or more generally, directrecording electronic machines. The voter puts in the vote either via a touch screen or a knob, and the ballots are recorded electronically in the machine's memory.

Wouldn't that make counting votes faster and more accurate than other systems, like punch cards? Why o,bject?

of hacking or VIruses that shut down systems and cause significant data loss, contribute to wariness about electronic voting. Recently the trend-setting state of California decertified electronic voting machines. Some of the districts may be recertified if several security conditions are met, but use of Diebold machines, manufactured by a company whose CEO endorsed the Bush campaign, is barred in California. Whether other states will follow remains to be seen, but in May a concerned bipartisan group of federal lawmakers called for a study of the security of electronic voting machines. It has become a hotly- debated issue particularly in states that used federal funds to purchase such machines in an attempt to upgrade voting procedures as provided for in the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Some computer experts, who admit that no voting system is immune to tampering, advise backup paperwork that can be audited in the event of a failure.

The problem with this technology is the voter can't observe the record that it made. So a voter could vote for candidate A, and the machine could record a vote for candidate B. There is no way that anyone can tell that that voter voted for candidate A. No matter how you conduct a recount, you're going to get what appears to be a vote for candidate B-we're unable to do a meaningful recount.

Are errors and fraud really more likely with these machines, though?

Of course, there has been election fraud with paper ballots. Sometimes what the debate gets down to is, people admit that electronic voting is completely insecure but say that paper is insecure as well. It really depends on how well your election is run. People have had a hundred-plus years of experience with paper ballots. It's pretty well known how to maintain the integrity of a paper-ballot election.

The problem with the touch-screen machines is, regardless of how diligent election officials are, there can be errors or

fraud committed by the programmers or anybody who had access to the software before it was installed on the machine.

Now, I suspect that the most frequent problem we'll see-or more worryingly, the most frequent problems that will occur that we don't see-will be errors, just accidents, causing changes in the vote.

Intentional fraud wouldn't seem to be much of a concern, then.

If you think about it rationally, there's a set of questions. Who might commit

fraud, and what is their level of motivation? Can they get technical experts to do it? What kind of money or other resources can they muster? And if you think about people who would want to alter the results of elections-particularly at the national level-they can bring tremendous resources to bear. We're talking about foreign governments, organized crime, major government contractors-people who have a major financial stake in who is controlling the U.S. government.

There are certainly case studies of these

David L. Dill, professor of computer science at Stanford University.

things happening in foreign countries, but in our own country, if you look at Watergate as an example-suppose those guys weren't trying to bug the Democratic Party headquarters but were actually going after the electoral system through a voting company? It's a pretty scary prospect, and it seems to me from examining the system that there's little likelihood that somebody committing that sort of fraud would get caught.

Voting-machine companies face severe criticism for the security of their software. But couldn't these machines be made secure enough to avoid that scenario?

As a computer scientist, I don't think they can make it secure enough, no matter what their procedure, or how they design the machine, or how the machines are inspected at independent laboratories. I have, however, attempted to fmd out what the actual processes are, and they are much worse than what is achievable. The place where we learned the most was when [touch-screen-voting leader] Diebold's source code and many of their other files were placed on the Internet. They were examined by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University. And various possibilities for external attacks-even by voters--came up in that review.

I don't know how concerned to be about that. It could be that these systems have major weaknesses that they don't need to have. That was certainly the case with Diebold. And the various regulations, the testing laboratory, the logic and accuracy tests are not solving the problem.

Diebold has sold touch-screen machines to Georgia, and has a contract with Maryland?

Yes. [Note: A Diebold spokesman says these machines use updated source code, different from that posted on the Web.] What is required to avoid fraud or large-scale errors?

I wrote the Resolution on Electronic Voting with help from other computer scientists. We tried to make the most general requirement we thought would work. So we asked for a voter-verifiable audit trail-a permanent record made of the vote that the voter can check is accurate, and that is available for a recount. Now, the only way to do that that is proven at this point is to use paper somehow. You can have a fully manual process, in which case the ballot that you fill out is that voter-verifiable audit trail: you have the

ability to make sure it's correct because you're actually filling it out. The same for an optical-scan ballot or punch card.

With the touch-screen machine, the solution is to add on a voter-verifiable printer. That prints a copy of your vote, and you get a chance to look at it, make sure that it correctly registers your vote, and reject it if it does not. Then that paper record goes into a locked ballot box. It's important that the voter not be able to take it out of the polling place because that facilitates vote selling or coercion.

There's nothing inherently wrong with having computers in the process. You just have to do it right. The Help America Vote Act, a national election reform law passed in 2002, says something about a manual audit capacity. And California's Proposition 41 says that the machines have to print paper copies of the ballot either during the election or right after the polls close. The problem with the second solution is, if we go back to the scenario where the voter votes for candidate A, and a vote is recorded for candidate B, anything that's printed after the polls close cannot be verified by the voter.

You'll end up with a copy of what's in electronic memory. Your recount is always going to come out the same as your electronic copy, and it will fail to catch errors in recording the votes.

So what is currently the best option?

It's a really difficult question because people have a very long wish list for electronic votingor for any kind of voting. It's hard to satisfy all of these requirements. But given what I know now, I think the best option is a precinct-based optical-scan system-with some special device such as a touch-screen machine for use by people who cannot use that system. In a precinct-based system, the voter himself puts the ballot into the machine which reads it. The advantage is that the machines can be programmed to reject ballots that have stray marks or too many votes, so that the voters can correct them then and there.

The other option is to go with directrecording electronic machines with a voter-verifiable printer. I really only have two concerns about that. One is that it is even more expensive than the touch-screen machines, which are pretty expensive. The other concern is that it's a relatively new idea that hasn't been tested a lot in actual elections. I think we should have the pioneering counties try it out and then, once we understand how that system works better, consider deploying more machines.

The U.S. Department of Defense has a pilot program using Internet voting to help soldiers stationed abroad vote more easily.

Might we all vote that way someday?

They've succeeded in finding the only idea worse than electronic voting in precincts. Even people who disagree witli me about touch-screen voting say that Internet voting is a bad idea. I understand the need to make sure that people in the services vote. And I understand the problems they have now with getting absentee ballots. But I think Internet voting is not the right solution. I'm too busy with my particular battle to combat that, but I hope somebody is able to get it killed.

D About the Interviewer: Erika Jonietz is a contributing editor with Technology Review.

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