Some more content-heavy sessions today so more detailed notes.
The Ambassadors and Ministers Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary to China: Nirupama Rao and David Dabydeen
NR: Indian Ambassador to Sri Lanka (2004-06), China (2006-09) and the US (2011-13), and head of the Indian Foreign Service 2009-11
DD: Guyanan Ambassador to China (2010-15), also novelist/poet
NR: The thing with China and India is that India remembers 1962 (war embedded in national psyche)
DD: The common person on the street in China sees India as caste-ridden and its cities as dirty
DD: China took the Caribbean states very seriously (politically not economically) because such a high proportion of UN votes
NR: India and China share very long border; Chinese people have supercilious attitude towards India; (quoting) "the relationship was created in heaven but constructed on earth"; China is an unfinished country with many aspects needed to become great
DD: When DD was ambassador, China was transitioning from regional to world superpower and at the time did not have the obligations of a world superpower
DD: There is a view held by some (not DD) that China is plotting to take over the world, by putting its people everywhere and by taking over economic infrastructure (e.g. owning ports)
DD: There have always been 'three Ts' that are difficult to engage China on: Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square; after Liu Xiaobo's death in custody, an 'N' was added (Nobel)
DD: Human rights picture should be more nuanced: millions of people lifted out of poverty
NR: India has also lifted millions out of poverty
NR: What sets India apart is democracy; open government; what you see is what you get; the Dalai Lama and a Tibetan refugee community have been living in India for nearly 60 years; post-Davos heard Modi referred to as leader of the free world!!
NR: No doubt China has the dollars to make inroads
NR: Chinese presence in SL has been much debated in India: what does it mean for India's security and welfare, what does it mean for India-SL relationship? India-SL is based on history, religion, ethnicity, migration; China-SL will always be defined by development aid, credit, concessional loans, projects
DD: Language is also an issue (Mandarin can be impenetrable from outside)
DD: China has great fear of disintegration a la USSR - 53 ethnic groups, large Muslim population
DD: Official Chinese policy is now that market forces are "decisive" (previously they were "critical") - they don't want to impose culture, it is not like western imperialism, it is all about money
NR: "Take that with a huge double salt"
NR: Look at the belt that China is constructing; not just Chinese $, also a way of doing it - lack of transparency, lots of Chinese workers, Chinese economic interests being entrenched
DD: But the long term benefit is to the country where the infrastructure (e.g. road) is built
DD: China also adopts differing levels of transparency in different countries
DD: btw Guyana has just discovered huge oil reserves; now China will come to us; compare Exxon vs CNOC in levels of corruption; look to emulate Norwegian model of resource development
NR: The issue for India is how do we bring China into a rule based set of relationships
DD: It is very understandable that China is testing the limits, flexing its muscles, with its own history of colonialism, Japanese occupation, internal division - we should wait and see and be less fearful
NR: "Diplomacy is life without maps" and we can't afford just to sit back; moreover public opinion is increasingly a factor in the formation of policy and citizens may have different views
Q: Where does China see itself in 50, 100 years?
NR: Chinese dream: strength and power; it's all about power; China has become increasingly more granular in how it perceives power
DD: In many ways an echo of US dream; wants to be at the high table; want to recover from a past of shame and colonial intervention
Q: Doesn't the real power rest with multinationals; isn't SL just a vassal state anyway?
NR: In India, you have 1.2bn people much more invested in belief in power of government, not corporations
Q: Is India failing to grasp the opportunity offered by tourism?
NR: Yes, we've been too inward looking over the last few ... centuries; haven't listened enough to what the rest of the world is saying about us
Q: What is the Indian view on current US administration (Trump)?
NR: Purely from an Indian view, it's been quite good: he's right to focus on the Korean peninsula (America must remain involved; China hasn't been able to do anything about it); hasn't done too badly with China since elected (Cf inflammatory campaign statements); US-India r/ship been in a good place since Clinton, Trump hasn't done anything to indicate moving away from fundamentals
Climate Change: A View from the Future - Lord David Puttnam
How possessive are you about your books?
AMS: It takes into account fear, avarice, ambition, vanity
MdK: Even translation, even each reading changes - each reader makes his own film of the book
Does the prospect of film adaptation influence how you write?
SB (author of Victoria and Abdul): The screenplay is the key
What if the focus of the film is different?
MdK: It might be a different story then, not the point of the book, but no one forces you to sell the rights to make your book into a film
What do you look for in a script?
DP (producer): Try to work with a screenwriter from concept stage - if you get it as a script it's already someone else's vision; also, when working from short story (rather than novel) the interpretive gap is minimised
Would you ever start with a novel if trying to make a great film?
SF: Never - a novel is about slow psychological processes, a film tells a story in pictures (and dialogue)
SB: The most important thing is that Abdul's story has now been told, and to so many more people via film, when it had previously been erased
Does film have a knock-on effect on books?
AMS: It does have implications for readers' and authors' ownership of how characters 'are' and of ideas
MdK: Cinema is an art of incarnation; when writing, MdK is full of movies, they are in her head, sometimes feels like she is translating cinema into literature
Murder She Said - Justice Shiranee Tilakawardane
Accounts of the forensic processes and chains of evidence that led to convictions in three cases where the judge herself has sat: the gunning down of another judge, Justice Ambepitiya, the trials of several police officers after two young men died in their custody; and the 'Royal Park condo' case where a young woman was killed in her penthouse.
She did a good job whipping through the cases and how the evidence of fingerprints, vomit, cell phone records, ballistics, police records and more led to the convictions, was engaging in how she told the stories, and ended by dedicating the session to the 'government servants' (of which she counts herself as one, for 37 years) who are serving the public good, but the reason I was moved to join the standing ovation she received at the end was much more because of - taking the material at face value, as one must - her whole career of dedication to human rights and justice in a system where that must not have always been easy, as apparent even just from the three examples she gave.
The Ambassadors and Ministers Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary to China: Nirupama Rao and David Dabydeen
NR: Indian Ambassador to Sri Lanka (2004-06), China (2006-09) and the US (2011-13), and head of the Indian Foreign Service 2009-11
DD: Guyanan Ambassador to China (2010-15), also novelist/poet
NR: The thing with China and India is that India remembers 1962 (war embedded in national psyche)
DD: The common person on the street in China sees India as caste-ridden and its cities as dirty
DD: China took the Caribbean states very seriously (politically not economically) because such a high proportion of UN votes
NR: India and China share very long border; Chinese people have supercilious attitude towards India; (quoting) "the relationship was created in heaven but constructed on earth"; China is an unfinished country with many aspects needed to become great
DD: When DD was ambassador, China was transitioning from regional to world superpower and at the time did not have the obligations of a world superpower
DD: There is a view held by some (not DD) that China is plotting to take over the world, by putting its people everywhere and by taking over economic infrastructure (e.g. owning ports)
DD: There have always been 'three Ts' that are difficult to engage China on: Tibet, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square; after Liu Xiaobo's death in custody, an 'N' was added (Nobel)
DD: Human rights picture should be more nuanced: millions of people lifted out of poverty
NR: India has also lifted millions out of poverty
NR: What sets India apart is democracy; open government; what you see is what you get; the Dalai Lama and a Tibetan refugee community have been living in India for nearly 60 years; post-Davos heard Modi referred to as leader of the free world!!
NR: No doubt China has the dollars to make inroads
NR: Chinese presence in SL has been much debated in India: what does it mean for India's security and welfare, what does it mean for India-SL relationship? India-SL is based on history, religion, ethnicity, migration; China-SL will always be defined by development aid, credit, concessional loans, projects
DD: Language is also an issue (Mandarin can be impenetrable from outside)
DD: China has great fear of disintegration a la USSR - 53 ethnic groups, large Muslim population
DD: Official Chinese policy is now that market forces are "decisive" (previously they were "critical") - they don't want to impose culture, it is not like western imperialism, it is all about money
NR: "Take that with a huge double salt"
NR: Look at the belt that China is constructing; not just Chinese $, also a way of doing it - lack of transparency, lots of Chinese workers, Chinese economic interests being entrenched
DD: But the long term benefit is to the country where the infrastructure (e.g. road) is built
DD: China also adopts differing levels of transparency in different countries
DD: btw Guyana has just discovered huge oil reserves; now China will come to us; compare Exxon vs CNOC in levels of corruption; look to emulate Norwegian model of resource development
NR: The issue for India is how do we bring China into a rule based set of relationships
DD: It is very understandable that China is testing the limits, flexing its muscles, with its own history of colonialism, Japanese occupation, internal division - we should wait and see and be less fearful
NR: "Diplomacy is life without maps" and we can't afford just to sit back; moreover public opinion is increasingly a factor in the formation of policy and citizens may have different views
Q: Where does China see itself in 50, 100 years?
NR: Chinese dream: strength and power; it's all about power; China has become increasingly more granular in how it perceives power
DD: In many ways an echo of US dream; wants to be at the high table; want to recover from a past of shame and colonial intervention
Q: Doesn't the real power rest with multinationals; isn't SL just a vassal state anyway?
NR: In India, you have 1.2bn people much more invested in belief in power of government, not corporations
Q: Is India failing to grasp the opportunity offered by tourism?
NR: Yes, we've been too inward looking over the last few ... centuries; haven't listened enough to what the rest of the world is saying about us
Q: What is the Indian view on current US administration (Trump)?
NR: Purely from an Indian view, it's been quite good: he's right to focus on the Korean peninsula (America must remain involved; China hasn't been able to do anything about it); hasn't done too badly with China since elected (Cf inflammatory campaign statements); US-India r/ship been in a good place since Clinton, Trump hasn't done anything to indicate moving away from fundamentals
Climate Change: A View from the Future - Lord David Puttnam
- Look at this through the lens of personal responsibility and trust - need both, and ability to interrogate information if we are to make any progress on climate change
- Climate change will produce unimaginable levels of migration
- Raising awareness of impacts of change change is equivalent of the civil rights movement for this generation
- Sacrifice will be a necessary component of people's lives; we must find a way to bring young people to believe that service is core to living
- Droughts, floods, landslides, cyclones
- Change takes longer than you expect and when it happens it happens faster than you ever believed possible
- The notion of individual freedom, and its associate creative freedom, comparatively recent therefore vulnerable and first line of defence must be our own standards and integrity, as part of a sustainable social agenda --> collective responsibility
- We've ceased to actively negotiate with each other, own own roles in the world, and this boils down to trust; trust gap --> concerns become fears --> fears further erode belief in system --> the echo chamber accelerates this until official sources become less trusted than rumours
- TV is no longer a public square; look at media, consider its effects and whose interests are being promoted
- Predict there will be a serious climate change induced incident in Asia by 2028 at which point it will become apparent that only China will have the resources and the will to address it
- Never understood why education is a political football; needs to advance in an apolitical environment
- Why is it that science have moved forward so much more quickly than teaching and learning? Science builds on shoulders of giants. If someone has an illness and someone else offers a solution, the patient will try it. Whether it works, science advances. Whereas in education we consistently default to the known because we're (rightly) terrified of damaging a cohort.
- Now the challenge is so great - changing jobs in future etc - that we are all becoming aware that all we can do is teach children to be flexible, collaborative etc
- A teacher today is doing something no teacher in history has ever been asked to do: guide students into a world that we don't fully understand (in the past, the world was pretty well known) (I think what he really meant by this, which is right, is that in the past the known world and what it might ask of children of any given situation (class etc) was pretty well known, whereas now what awaits any given child is much more unknown (both known unknowns, and unknown unknowns)
- Were it possible: allow NGOs into schools
How possessive are you about your books?
AMS: It takes into account fear, avarice, ambition, vanity
MdK: Even translation, even each reading changes - each reader makes his own film of the book
Does the prospect of film adaptation influence how you write?
SB (author of Victoria and Abdul): The screenplay is the key
What if the focus of the film is different?
MdK: It might be a different story then, not the point of the book, but no one forces you to sell the rights to make your book into a film
What do you look for in a script?
DP (producer): Try to work with a screenwriter from concept stage - if you get it as a script it's already someone else's vision; also, when working from short story (rather than novel) the interpretive gap is minimised
Would you ever start with a novel if trying to make a great film?
SF: Never - a novel is about slow psychological processes, a film tells a story in pictures (and dialogue)
SB: The most important thing is that Abdul's story has now been told, and to so many more people via film, when it had previously been erased
Does film have a knock-on effect on books?
AMS: It does have implications for readers' and authors' ownership of how characters 'are' and of ideas
MdK: Cinema is an art of incarnation; when writing, MdK is full of movies, they are in her head, sometimes feels like she is translating cinema into literature
Murder She Said - Justice Shiranee Tilakawardane
Accounts of the forensic processes and chains of evidence that led to convictions in three cases where the judge herself has sat: the gunning down of another judge, Justice Ambepitiya, the trials of several police officers after two young men died in their custody; and the 'Royal Park condo' case where a young woman was killed in her penthouse.
She did a good job whipping through the cases and how the evidence of fingerprints, vomit, cell phone records, ballistics, police records and more led to the convictions, was engaging in how she told the stories, and ended by dedicating the session to the 'government servants' (of which she counts herself as one, for 37 years) who are serving the public good, but the reason I was moved to join the standing ovation she received at the end was much more because of - taking the material at face value, as one must - her whole career of dedication to human rights and justice in a system where that must not have always been easy, as apparent even just from the three examples she gave.
