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A Dialogue With Myself
Dr. Kavita Sharma President of South Asian University & Advisory Council For me to think of Indian women is to dialogue with myself. What are the influences that I grew up with in post independence India? What are their sources? What are the contemporary images and ideas that I absorbed, puzzled over, accepted or rejected? There was my mother from a small village of U.P. without even a school, whose father defied convention, refused to marry her off at the age of nine, was condemned by the community for his pains, but who succeeded in making her a doctor and begin practice in 1946. There was her struggle with the extended…
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Foundation of Indian Culture
Dr. Kavita Sharma President of South Asian University & Advisory Council Religion has been one of the most dominant forces in India, since the beginning of time. According to Sri Aurobindo and many scholars, the key to India’s culture and civilization lies in its spirituality. A book was published by Sir John Woodroffe, a scholar and a critic, called India Civilized as an answer to the negative criticism of Indian culture by the English drama critic William Archer. Sri Aurobindo was in broad agreement with Woodroffe so he used the occasion for reflections on Indian culture and civilization published as a series of articles on Indian Art, Architecture, History, Literature…
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Financing of Higher Education: Canada and India
Dr. Kavita Sharma President of South Asian University & Advisory Council Canada and India present several points of convergence and divergence in the expansion of higher education and its financing. Many of these arise out of federal and provincial jurisdictions. While education is a provincial subject in the Canadian Constitution, it is on the concurrent list in India. This has certain implications. While in India, the bulk of higher education takes place through state universities; in Canada, it is the provinces that are primarily responsible for higher education, and the federal government negotiates post-secondary education through areas of federal responsibility like national defence, Indian affairs, the territories, external affairs and the…
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The Game of Dice
Dr. Kavita Sharma President of South Asian University & Advisory Council The pivotal movement in Mahabharata is the game of dice. Several questions arise: why should a game be a part of a ceremony as solemn as Rajsuya Yagya? Even if there has to be a game why should it be a game of dice rather than a game of skill and valor? Further, why should the whole action turn on the outcome of this game of dice?. One reason could be that the game of dice represents the unforeseen challenges that a king must endure during his reign. India. Significance of a Game or a Sport A sport or a…
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20 years of NaMo – Aura, Ideology, Popularity and Trust
Navika Kumar Managing Editor of Times Now Mr Narendra Modi, whether you support him or not, has changed Indian politics and thinking within government forever. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was sworn in as Chief Minister of Gujarat for the first time on October 7, 2001. This was the first time Mr Modi occupied a public office. The beginning of the twentieth year of Mr Modi holding public office, a constitutional post, is an apposite juncture to look back on the impact his persona has had in Indian politics. Mr Modi throughout his career has been the quintessential outsider. He became Chief Minister first and only thereafter was elected…
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Military Applications of Blockchain Technology
Rear Admiral S Kulshrestha Indian Navy(Retd.) “Blockchain protocols are a new class of protocols that are extremely resilient to attack ‒ they gain that resiliency by virtue of being decentralized,” Professor Emin Gun Sirer, Cornell University Blockchain technology is fundamentally a mutually trustable storage facility for information of a transaction between multiple users. It is a decentralized and secure way to record, share, store, and redistribute information. There is no central authority controlling the Blockchain, it is run, monitored, and owned by everyone. Anyone can download it free and run it or develop it for new applications/types of transactions, just like an open source code. It enables…
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Cyber Warfare: A Perspective
Rear Admiral S Kulshrestha Indian Navy(Retd.) The US Defense Science Board report of 2013 states that “in a perfect world, DOD operational systems would be able to tell a commander when and if they were compromised, whether the system is still usable in full or degraded mode, identify alternatives to aid the commander in completing the mission, and finally provide the ability to restore the system to a known, trusted state. Today’s technology does not allow that level of fidelity and understanding of systems.” The report brings out that, systems such as automated intrusion detection, automated patch management, status data from each network, and regular network audits are currently…
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Smarter Eyes in the Skies
Rear Admiral S Kulshrestha Indian Navy(Retd.) “…[t]he main advantage of using drones is precisely that they are unmanned. With the operators safely tucked in air-conditioned rooms far away, there’s no pilot at risk of being killed or maimed in a crash. No pilot to be taken captive by enemy forces. No pilot to cause a diplomatic crisis if shot down in a “friendly country” while bombing or spying without official permission” [1] – Medea Benjamin, 2013 The aim of this article is to look at some of the developments and the technological spinoffs that are likely to have a profound impact upon uninterrupted 24/7 gathering of real…
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Resurgence of High Power Microwave Weapons
Rear Admiral S Kulshrestha Indian Navy(Retd.) “It will fully suppress communications, navigation and target location, and the use of high-precision weapons….The system will be used against cruise missiles and will suppress satellite-based radio location systems. It will actually switch off enemy weapons.” Vladimir Mikheyev, adviser to the Radio-Electronic Technologies Group (KRET), Russia. Directed energy weapons (DEWs) emit energy in the desired direction and cause damage to the target by transferring energy and generating uneven heat stresses. The DEWs comprise two distinct types of weapons namely, the high-energy lasers (HELs), and the high power microwaves (HPMs). The US Air Force has been funding research and technical programs…
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New Dimensions of Swarm Warfare
Rear Admiral S Kulshrestha Indian Navy(Retd.) “They were coming at us like bees”. “We would kill one lot and then more would appear. It was the most amazing thing.” – Lt Col Twitty, Commander 3rd Battalion 15th Infantry, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Iraq, 2003. Swarms in nature have always intrigued humans because individually the animals or the insects do not appear to have intelligence but in a swarm, they are able to move as a cohesive intelligent formation capable of taking actions befitting an intelligent life form. Some of the world’s largest swarms in animal kingdom include mosquitoes, Argentine Ants, Christmas Island Crabs, krill, springbok, and locusts. Peter Miller, in…
