Walking Like a Cow

India, October 2012

We were getting ready to cross a busy street in Delhi, and our tour leader advised us to "walk like a cow", meaning when you see your chance, go and don't hesitate. Cows wander the streets of India with apparent nonchalance and manage not to get themselves killed or to disrupt traffic (much). We all crossed the street safely; the flow of rickshaws, tuk-tuks, taxis, buses and trucks simply enveloped us, we keep walking and break through to the other side. Walking like a cow is good general advice for walking around tourist attraction in India.

We travel in a huge white bus air conditioned bus with the word "Tourist" emblazoned on the front window. When we stop anywhere, we draw a crowd. In the country, it is usually children curious to see strangers. In the cities or at tourist destinations, hawkers and beggars are attracted to the bus like bees to a flower. Every time we stop, we must run a gantlet to get from the bus to our destination. Conversations are started by single word "No", eye contact, or even glancing at merchandise.

Hawker: "Pashmina? 200 rupees." (An impossibly low price for the genuine article.)
Me: "No, thanks".
Hawker: "100 Rs".
Me: "No. I don't want a pashmina".
Hawker: "Gandhi statue? 200 Rs"
Me: "No"
Hawker: "100 Rs".
...

The bus stops and we all prepare to go do our touristic duties. I jam my hat onto my head, adjust my Ray-Bans, and take a deep breath. I get off the bus and am engulfed in noise and exotic smells. I begin walking like a cow. I become invisible. The crowd parts for me as the Red Sea parts for Charlton Heston. I do not see the tacky elephant key chains. I do not see the postcards, the singing bowls. I do not feel the slender woman holding a child gently touch my arm. I do not see the man infected with elephantiasis display a foot like a tennis racquet with toes. I do not hear the price of the Gandhi statue drop to 2 for 100 Rs. I am indeed walking like a cow.

These scenes repeated in multiple languages everywhere tour buses stop. After a few days, one of our group asks "How to you like India?", perhaps expecting a value judgment. Value judgment in India is slippery. The hawkers, and even the beggars, are operating some sort of enterprise. It is a truism to say that there is poverty in India. The question to ask is how are people dealing with their own poverty. Business in India operates on all scales. The hawkers and beggars are participating on a microscopic scale. The man with the tennis racquet foot has declined medical treatment because it would reduce his income. A man in Jaipur, missing a foot from birth, upgraded his business from begging to selling postcards and helping tourists cross the street. Hawkers bring cash home and put food on the table while being spared from the indignity of begging. Our tour guide recounted a success story of three brothers from Varanasi who parlayed their hawker business into a multinational business enterprise. It is a hallmark of contemporary India - 1.2 billion people creating ways to put food on the table. Value judgments are irrelevant.

Walk like a cow.

Hiatus

Haven't posted anything since August 2009.

Lets just say I have been doing other things. I plan to keep up writing stuff. Here is a sampling of what might appear.

Karen and I visited India this year, so you might read something about that.

We recently had a mayoral election in Honolulu with a clear choice between pro-rail candidate Kirk Caldwell and anti-rail candidate, former Hawaii governor Ben Cayetano. Cadwell was city manager when Mufi Hanneman and received bags of campaign donations from construction companies and unions.  My penultimate post in June 2009 was on "Honolulu Traffic". I re-read it, and don't see much I would change.
 
It looks like we will have Mufi's mickey mouse rail plan. Frankly, I support some form of rail transportation system in Honolulu, but this plan sucks. It does not stop where people need to go (eg the Manoa campus of the University of Hawaii). It will be constructed in the wrong direction (eg from Ewa towards downtown). It will include stops in places where there are no houses (eg the proposed Hoopili subdivision). The equipment supplier, Ansaldo, was recently fired by the city of Los Angeles.

I held my nose and voted for Cayetano hoping he might come to his senses and try to fix the rail plan. Now there is no hope.

Also who really believes that rail will relieve traffic congestion? Cities with rail have rally bad traffic. The purpose of public transit is to get people where they need to go.

You might read more about rail.

But Superstorm Sandy gives us something else to think about. Although most of Mufi's train will be on pylons  Will the route be high enough above sea level to stay dry? You might read more about climate change and Honolulu  urban planning.

Or I just might stay lazy.

Tunageddon Revisited

We have all heard a lot of doomsday prophecies about the death of the oceans and the immanent collapse of all fisheries in this century. The principal prophet of doom recently published an article in the 31 July 2009 issue of the popular magazine Science that acknowledges that fisheries can be managed. All you need is some credible stock assessments and some managers willing to decide in favor of sustainability. The trouble is that most jurisdictions have neither.

The first author of this paper, Dr,. Boris Worm, was also a coauthor, with the late Ransom Myers, of the 2003 paper that attempted to show that tuna populations had decreased by 90%. That paper was wrong in just about every way it is possible to be wrong. If it had been submitted as an exercise in a beginning fisheries class, it would have received an F. Yet Nature magazine published it. See the whole sorry saga. Some of the many well managed and non-collapsed fisheries included in Worm's most recent emission are tuna fisheries. I'll leave it to the reader to imagine whether the 2003 paper is discussed.

Alarmist junk science, such as that perpetrated by Nature magazine in 2003, does a great disservice to the cause of sustainable resource management. It undermines the credibility of serious scientists (and thereby encourages fisheries managers to do nothing). It instills a sense of helplessness and dread in the general public (and therby fosters widespread indifference). Worst of all, no practical solutions are offered to redress the situation. I guess the intent is to mobilize public support for some cause or other. But I haven't seen any improvement in tuna fishery management since 2003; if there has been any change, it as been for the worse.

Nature magazine should repudiate the 2003 paper. It clear the air for a more constructive debate tuna fishery management. It would also probably sell a lot of copy.