[Assam] [Supporting Akhil Gogoi] It is extremely unlikely that the authority of...

[mc mahant]

   Dear Ritu  Raj,

  You have quoted   verbatim from Dr. Sanjib Barua's recent letter.

 I have   some things to say  on  the Economist  paper's  supposed-to- be-infallible   observations: 

Economist  is neither owned  NOR edited    by Engineers.  A mediocre  thinker-  like today's UK leadership is.
England and UK are   not run by Engineers    at any level .
Three Gorges dam      World's largest dam, Largest  Hydro Power Producer--  safe on Hard rock sides -  is running to full capacity in Power,Irrigation,Ship lift  Tourism  modes .
SARS    EPIDEMIC WAS   not  the  Engineers   Leaders' creation.    Please read the PostScript **-   and note  who-- not engineers .
High Speed Rail Net   is running very well. What   has  SPECTATOR   to   comment on World's largest High Speed Network of Rails?
<But democracies can find ways of engaging with ontological politics that autocracies cannot>   Wonder which one is a democracy -- India or China. Had India   been - The work at Lower Subansiri   dam site   would have been stopped a year back. The  Indian  Plan would have been discussed at all schools of learning in Assam   since its first  planning in 1970's -- and since its  being declared a wrong Geological   site in 1980  by Indian Geologists .  Now can   the Assamese find ways of engaging with ontological  INDIA- ASSAM Congress politics?

<Elected Govt .  or the Law>>   Poor   clueless India /Assam Voters  only cast   Votes. Some say the Voting machine does that . They do not ELECT LEADERS . 

  <THE LAW.  >     Did Barua   mean the India Constitution-"WE THE PEOPLE" -- copied from the USA one?   POOR PEOPLE!!

  The logical  recasting of a    solution    for Lower Subansiri  Dam  is  common sense Engineering-- not political ONTOLOGY  /Ontological Politics.

Do you need   that Common Sense  Engineering?  

MM


PS


**Should every Scientist know the
facts??

H5N1, which devastates chicken flocks, first caused human disease in 1997.
Since then there have been 581 confirmed cases, 342 of them fatal. Nearly all
have occurred in Southeast Asia in people with close contact with infected
birds. Person-to-person spread is extremely rare.

The two research groups — Fouchier’s in Rotterdam and one at the University
of Wisconsin led by Yoshihiro Kawaoka — created H5N1 strains that were both
lethal about 60 percent of the time and easily transmitted between ferrets, the
lab animals used as surrogates for human beings in flu research.

The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, created by the  US federal
government after the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, reviewed the papers. It advised
the Department of Health and Human Services that it ask the journals not to
publish the methods for making the strains, and not to identify the specific
gene sequences and mutations that appear responsible for the virus’s easy
transmissibility.

The journals reluctantly agreed as long as provisions were made to give all
the data to scientists and governments with a legitimate need for it. Who those
are and how to do it will be major topics of the Geneva meeting---.

MM



 
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2012 07:05:09 -0800
To: supportingAG at groups.facebook.com
From: notification+m5_p5i3m at facebookmail.com
Subject: [Supporting Akhil Gogoi] It is extremely unlikely that the authority of...




FacebookRitu Raj Hazarika posted in Supporting Akhil Gogoi.Ritu Raj Hazarika 8:35pm Jan 25 It is extremely unlikely that the authority of experts would at this point be able to bridge the trust gap that has developed regarding the Lower Subansiri project.  But we should be glad that we do not have an “unconstrained technocracy” like that in China where as the Economist magazine pointed out last year, “all but one of the nine members of the Politburo Standing Committee are engineers.”  Unconstrained technocracy, says the Economist has not been a guarantee of “good ideas or decisions” in cases such as the says the Economist has not been a guarantee of “good ideas or decisions”
 in cases such as the Three Gorges dam, the SARS epidemic or the 
high-speed rail network. the SARS epidemic or the high-speed rail network.
 
 But democracies can find ways of engaging with ontological politics that autocracies cannot.  However, to find a way out of the impasse on Lower Subansiri the authorities will have to go beyond dogmatically asserting the authority of the elected government or of the law.
 
 Fortunately, in a democracy people who fear the potential adverse impact of a government decision has the ability to organize itself into a public.  The memories of devastating earthquakes, the lived experience of frequent floods, and the knowledge of scientists, technologists and intellectuals deeply engaged with the region, have constituted an extremely well-informed regional public around the issue of Lower Subansiri.  Indian democracy has to find a way of meaningfully engaging that public.
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