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HYDERABAD FRIDAY 4 | NOVEMBER 2011 MORE COWBELL DELEB

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Something extra that will take a project A dead celebrity, particularly one or endeavour to a higher level used to endorse products

OP-ED
or more children each, the UN says. In rural Africa, Ive come across women who have never heard of birth control. According to estimates from the Guttmacher Institute, a respected research group, 215 million women want to avoid getting pregnant but have no access to contraception. Whats needed isnt just birthcontrol pills or IUDs. Its also girls education and womens rights starting with an end to child marriages for educated women mostly have fewer children. In times past, the biggest barrier to reducing birth rates has been a lack of access to contraceptives, the Population Institute notes in a new report. Today, the biggest barrier is gender inequality. The seven billion population milestone is also a reminder that we need more research for better contraceptives. One breakthrough is an inexpensive vaginal ring that releases hormones, lasts a year and should not require a doctor. Developed by the Population Council, it has completed Phase 3 trials and seems highly effective. It could even contain medication to reduce the risk of an infection with the AIDS virus. Traditionally, support for birth control was bipartisan. The Roman Catholic hierarchy was opposed, but Republican presidents like Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush provided strong support. Then family planning became tarnished by overzealous and coercive programs in China and India, and contraception became entangled in Americas abortion wars. Many well-meaning religious conservatives turned against it, and funding lagged. The result was, paradoxically, more abortions. When contraception is unavailable, the likely consequence is not less sex, but more pregnancy. Contraception already prevents 112 million abortions a year, by UN estimates. The United Nations Population Fund is a bte noire for conservatives, but its promotion of contraception means that it may have reduced abortions more than any organisation in the world. Republicans are seeking to cut more money from global family planning which, in poor countries, would mean more abortions and more women dying in childbirth. Conservatives have also sought to slash Title X Family Planning programmes within the United States. The Guttmacher Institute estimates that in a year these domestic programmes avert 973,000 unintended pregnancies, of which 406,000 would end in abortions. Guttmacher calculates that these family-planning centres in the United States actually save taxpayers roughly $3.4 billion annually that would otherwise be spent on pregnancies and babies. Finally, a ray of hope: A group of evangelical Christians, led by Richard Cizik of The New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good, is drafting a broad statement of support for family planning. It emphasises that family planning reduces abortion and lives lost in childbirth. Family planning is morally laudable in Christian terms because of its contribution to family well-being, womens health, and the prevention of abortion, the draft says. Amen! Contraceptives no more cause sex than umbrellas cause rain. So as we greet the seven-billionth human, lets try to delay the arrival of the eight billionth. We should all be able to agree on voluntary family planning as a cost-effective strategy to reduce poverty, conflict and environmental damage. If you think family planning is expensive, you havent priced babies. By arrangement with the New York Times

Alchemy of silence
Shiv Visvanathan

Dividing Lines

ears ago, my friend, philosopher R a m u Gandhi and I were walking through Kamla Nagar, an area at the outskirts of Delhi University. It was festival time and megaphones were rending the air. Ramu was extremely irritated with the noise and dubbed it Ravana Electronics. He longed for a bit of silence. Ever the teacher, Ramu reminded me noise is not the opposite of silence. Silence is something more, it is a journey, a craft, and then lapsed into silence himself. The recent reports that Anna Hazare had taken maun vrat, a vow of silence, reminded me of the old story. I wished Ramu had been around. He would have produced a few exemplary performances around the event. I realise I am a poor surrogate for Indias most inventive philosopher. Silence for Ramu, was a pilgrimage, a search groping into the very interiority of the self. Silence needed prayer but went beyond prayer. It was dialogue. Silence talked but in a different way and we misunderstand the power of silence. The English language sees silence as passive. It talks of the silence of the grave, the silence of the weak. It does not see silence as spiritual humus for harmony, for recovery for a literal recollection of the self. One must see silence not as erasure but as an awakening of possibilities. One meditates in silence; one often prays in silence, one grieves in silence. There is an alchemy to it. Ramu might have said we think of silence in the same way we confuse fasting and dieting. Dieting is a calorific idea, a search for physiological balance, or a technique of a fashion aesthetic. Fasting is an experiment with the self, a search for harmony, a fine-tuning of the spirit. When Gandhi fasted during his satyagraha, he sought a harmony. Fasting was a fine-tuning of the music of the self. Gandhi fasted as part of his quest for brahmacharya. Anna Hazare understood this when he explained in an interview that he could fast for so many days because of his celibacy. There is a danger, however, in reading this simplistically. Silence is not a technique. One cannot take a vow of silence to avoid publicity or embarrassment. Silence cannot be tactical. It is a ritual and like most rituals demands that the body be

home within itself and the cosmos. Silence is that real experiment with truth, the truth of the self. It is a demand on the self and cannot become as it does, occasionally, for Mr Hazare, an advertisement for the self. Then silence becomes philistine and a maun vrat, an inability to cope with the cacophony of the self. Silence invites the mystical, the mysterious and the meditative. Silence in its singular fullness is different from the silences that history talks about. The metaphysics of each is different. One author who understood silences was the great English novelist Virginia Woolf. Silence, for Woolf, was not just part of a womans statement of being; it was integral to her writing style. Silence provided the rhythms between language and space, sound and silence. Silence gave

One hopes Annas silence is a prayer that his colleagues restrain their cacophony. It should be a signal that he is readying himself for a deeper struggle.
plasticity to a sentence made it elastic, energetic and diverse. It provided a beat to life and language. The critic Ganesh Devy talked of silence in terms of a genocidal act of being silenced. He explains that the linguistic tragedy of India is that we officially recognise as languages only those that carry the appendage of script. Languages without scripts cease to be, officially, languages. Since tribal languages lack script, they are not, officially, languages. Devy argues that it is silencing

of cultures, a muting of voices and truths that constitutes an Indian tragedy. I have explored a variety of silences to ask where does maun vrat as an idea stand. The idea of vrat is a promise to a self and a cosmos. As a promise it is a sacrament not a contract. It becomes a sacramental rendering of the self through the ritual of silence. It must be used frugally and not as a threat, to hammer home something. Silence cannot be a provocation, an act of thuggery where you bludgeon another into submission. It cannot be an act of trickery. It is ritual invitation to be true to oneself so one can be true to the integrity of a collective situation. One hopes Mr Hazares silence is a prayer that his colleagues restrain their cacophony. It should be a signal that he is readying himself for a deeper struggle. Silence as a ritual has to be beyond threat and blackmail. Unfortunately, the publicity around Mr Hazare misses this. Mr Hazares decision almost becomes an act of eccentricity or a spiritual spectacle. There is a sadness here that the media escalates by reading his silence as a timetable. This destroys the spiritual salience of the act. Instead of an epic of silence, it becomes a limerick and acquires a slapstick quality. Mr Hazare must use his silence to reflect on his movement and the sheer cacophony it has created in the later phases of the struggle. In fact, the silence of Mr Hazare brings out the circus like noise of Kiran Bedi. Her arguments sound like speeches of a sales woman selling patent medicines. Only the power of silence can turn the noise of protest into welcome music. I keep wondering how Ramu Gandhi would read Mr Hazare. He would have joined the protest. I can imagine him watching quizzically, sympathetically, whimsically wondering whether Mr Hazare would ever have shades of the equanimity of Ramana (maharishi). The comedy of silence would have intrigued him. The writer is a social science nomad

Nicholas D. Kristof

The solution of birth control W

hat if there were a solution to many of the global problems that confront us, from climate change to poverty to civil wars? There is, but it is starved of resources. Its called family planning, and it has been a victim of Americas religious wars. Partly for that reason, the worlds population just raced past the seven billion mark this week, at least according to the fuzzy calculations of United Nations demographers. It took humans hundreds of thousands of years, until the year 1804, to reach the first billion. It took another 123 years to reach two billion, in 1927. Since then, weve been passing these milestones like billboards along a highway. The latest billion took just a dozen years. In 1999, the United Nations best projection was that the world wouldnt pass seven billion until 2013, but we reached it two years early. Likewise, in 1999, the UN estimated that the world population in 2050 would be 8.9 billion, but now it projects 9.3 billion. Whats the impact of overpopulation? One is that youth bulges in rapidly growing countries like Afghanistan and Yemen makes them more prone to conflict and terrorism. Booming populations also contribute to global poverty and make it impossible to protect virgin forests or fend off climate change. Some studies have suggested that a simple way to reduce carbon emissions in the year 2100 is to curb population growth today. Moreover, weve seen that family planning works. Women in India average 2.6 children, down from six in 1950. As recently as 1965, Mexican women averaged more than seven children, but that has now dropped to 2.2. But some countries have escaped this demographic revolution. Women in Afghanistan, Chad, Congo, Somalia, East Timor and Uganda all have six

Weve seen that family planning works. Women in India average 2.6 children. Mexican women who averaged more than seven children have now dropped to 2.2.

THE NYT CROSSWORD

ACROSS 1 He played Joe Palooka in the 1934 film Palooka 9 Elite 15 Like the trades 16 Press agent? 17 Able to be drawn out 18 National park whose name means the high one 19 Bunny fancier 20 Itch 21 Like Jesus 22 Hot chocolate time, maybe 24 Horrors! 25 Author of the 1968 work named in the circled letters (reading clockwise) 28 Cinma ___ 30 Cartoon Yuck! 31 1950s political inits. 32 Perfume, in a way 35 Subject of the 1968 work 39 Source of the saying The gods help them that help themselves 40 Detectives look for them, briefly 41 Emulate Don to make them 57 Ciao! 59 Will words 60 Italian scientist who lent his name to a number 61 Hauled (off) 62 Like summer school classes, often DOWN 1 MacFarlane who created TVs Family Guy 2 Amount ignored in weighing 3 Org. with the ad slogan Its not science fiction. Its what we do every day 4 More quickly? 5 Make more presentable, as a letter 6 More twisted 7 No way! 8 Nevada county containing Yucca Mountain 9 Seconds 10 Loners 11 Actress Anderson 12 Related on the mothers side 13 The Color Purple protagonist 14 Double-cross, e.g. 21 Georgia was one once: Abbr. 22 Something new 23 Some bagel toppers 25 Stenos stat. 26 Cup ___ (hot drink, informally) 27 Neon sign, e.g. 29 Recommendation letter, maybe 31 Valued 33 High ___ 34 Language from which spunk is derived 36 I played already 37 Willing to consider 38 Writer in cipher, maybe 43 Slowing down, in music: Abbr. 44 Workable if awkward solution to a computer problem 45 Like Hindi or Urdu 46 Last word in a showmans spiel 47 Let out, e.g. 49 A flower is pretty when its in this 51 Leave ___ that! 53 Episode VI returnee 54 Meeting places 55 Noted gang leader 57 Swabbie 58 Man of tomorrow

Corleone 42 Castle part 44 Leader of the 35Across 45 Archers wife in

The Maltese Falcon 48 Like ruckuses or roadster roofs 50 Like some poker

betting 52 ___-ray 53 1950s-60s political inits. 56 Secretaries used

50 YEARS AGO IN

Significant day for Indias Navy

Bombay, Nov. 3: Prime Minister Nehru welcoming INS Vikrant, Indias first Aircraft Carrier, said this is a significant day for Indias Navy and also for the defence forces. The Aircraft Carrier would help them to serve the country and would enable them to defend the country better, he said. Mr Nehru declared that Vikrant was a powerful and mighty vessel and would take its share in defending the country. It would also help in training various personnel of the armed services. Mr Nehru ceremoniously received Indias first Aircraft Carrier INS Vikrant on its arrival in Bombay this evening from the United Kingdom. While steaming into the harbour, Rear Admiral B.S. Soman, Flag Officer Commanding the Indian fleet proceeded in his launch and boarded the carrier, where he was greeted by the Commanding Officer of the Vikrant. Earlier, Mr V.K. Krishna Menon, Defence Minister, requesting the Prime Minister to formally welcome the carrier said that Vikrant was the most modern aircraft carrier of its kind.