I was invited by the Department of Fine Arts, Punjabi University, Patiala, to present a paper on Punjab Murals: A journalist’s perspective. I have been interested in the subject for a while and have had the privilege of documenting the murals of Pothi Mala at GuruHarsahi, in the Ferozepore district of Punjab.
The three day three-day symposium on “Punjab Murals - Themes, Context, Patronage and Techniques’ was inaugurated by Swarn Singh Boparai, Vice-Chancellor of the university on October 30. It has been organised under the guidance of the distinguished art historian, Prof B.N. Goswami, who is a Visiting Professor in the university.
Prominent artist and poet Imroz, the creator of the Rock Garden in Chandigarh, Nek Chand and Dr Kanwarjit Singh Kang, who has converted this PhD thesis on the subject into a book and a lifelong passion, were the prominent delegates who were welcomed by Saroj Rani, Head of the department.
Dr Goswami’s brilliant lecture-cum-slide presentation on the wall paintings of Punjab set the tone of the seminar, and as expected, it was a tough act to follow. Dr Mohinder Singh of the Bhai Vir Singh Sadan, Delhi, gave a presentation on the aesthetic aspects of the manuscripts of the Adi Granth.
I could literally feel my mother watching me over my shoulder as I spoke. She had been a Vice Chancellor of the university more than three decades ago and her portrait hung over my shoulder in the room that the seminar’s second session took place.
Since murals are more or less vanishing from Punjab because of decay, ignorance and lack of interest, I suggested that maybe we could consider a Virtual Museum of Murals of Punjab, where photographs of the murals could be put on the Internet and be accessible to all. This would work till an actual Museum of Murals of Punjab, as suggested by Dr Goswami, could come up.
The virtual museum would evoke interest and that would bring on the spotlight on this literally dying art.

Europeans championing anti-trust cases

WHO wants to share confidential information that would enable competitors to compete better? Almost no one, and certainly not Microsoft, which has been resisting attempts by the European Union and earlier by US regulators, to make it part with technical information which other software makers need to make their software work with Microsoft products.
The biggest software company in the world has a history of vigorously opposing all such attempts, but it has climbed down before the European Commission’s demands for Microsoft to provide its competitors better information that allows them to make products that will run well with the Microsoft operating systems or MS Windows.
This move against a perceived monopolistic attitude of this multinational company is seen by some as downgrading of intellectual property rights (IPRs) as seen against the rights of the consumer. However, it has also been widely welcomed and it will, in the long run, affect every consumer since it will make software markets more competitive, which often translates into better products at cheaper rates.
The nine-year battle started in December 1998 when Sun Microsystems, an American software company, complained to the European Commission (EC) that Microsoft was not giving it the inter-operability information which was necessary for its server software to inter-operate with servers that run Microsoft’s operating system (OS) or Windows. An estimated 70 per cent of the servers used worldwide run on Microsoft OS. Incidentally, more than 90 per cent of PCs run on Windows.
The complaint triggered the anti-trust investigation against Microsoft and on March 24, 2004 the EC ruled that by not giving competitors in the server OS market the information that would enable their products to work with Windows, Microsoft had abused its dominant position in the PC OS market. It also ruled that by bundling or tying Windows Media Player with the Windows OS, Microsoft has thwarted competitive products. The company was fined 497 million euros and it was ordered to improve its behaviour.
Microsoft challenged the ruling, calling it “fundamentally flawed in fact and reasoning.” Later, it brought out a version of Windows without the Media Player, but did not do much to tackle the issue of sharing information with its rivals. The Windows without the Media Player did not sell well at all. The case continued till on April 2006 when the European Court of First Instance heard Microsoft’s challenge, and reaffirmed the original decision.
It later imposed on Microsoft a new fine of 280.5 million euros for non-compliance with its obligations. Later, on March 1, 2007 Microsoft was told by the commission that it would face more penalties – up to three million euros per day because of its unreasonable pricing of the inter-operability information.
Following negotiations between Ms Neelie Kroes, European commissioner for competition policy and Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, the pricing has become remarkably reasonable, as even Microsoft’s critics will acknowledge. The company has dropped its demand for a royalty of 2.98 per cent of the money made from software developed using Microsoft protocols. It will now accept a one-time fee of 10,000 euros. It has also slashed the original demand of 5.95 per cent of product revenues for a worldwide patented licence to just 0.4 per cent.
Microsoft has been accused at various points of time in many countries of exploiting its monopolistic position and violating anti-trust laws. That its rivals, American companies like IBM, Red Hat and Sun have approached the European Union to bring up their anti-trust charges shows how geographical location of multinational companies has ceased to matter as they compete for global consumers.
Even in the US, Microsoft has faced anti-trust charges. In 1994 Microsoft agreed to the U.S. Justice Department’ s demand to cease making computer-makers pay a fee for every PC sold, whether or not it contained Microsoft software. In 1998, Microsoft was sued by U.S. Justice Department and 20 states which charged it with stifling competition to extend its monopoly. Later the same year, the Justice Department alleged that Microsoft had violated the 1994 agreement by making computer makers bundle Internet Explorer along with Windows. It had settled the cases in 2002 and signed a “consent decree” with the Bush administration.
The US Justice Department maintains that the consent decree has served its purpose, and Microsoft has worked hard to implement the decree’s requirements and has changed its business practices as a result. However, some US state governments have said they will seek to extend the requirements of the decree till 2012. Microsoft will certainly be battling on various legal fronts, as will other MNCs.
American companies that complained against Microsoft to the EC did so because they hoped for a more favourable response from the commission than they had got within their own county. Right now, the EC is seen as the most aggressive anti-trust body and as such it is attracting more and more cases.
Even as the US Justice Department recently announced that it would not be investigating complaints against Intel’s business practices, EC regulators are looking into whether Intel urged Media Markt, the largest consumer electronics retailer in Europe, to exclude computers that used chips made by AMD, its rival. Google too has recently addressed EC concerns over its plans to buy the online advertising company, DoubleClick Inc.
Clearly, the EU has filled into a vacuum that existed in regulating large multinational companies, and for many American corporations, this is not quite the way they expected globalisation to go.

This article was published in The Tribune on Monday, October 25, 2007

Well, a lot happened in the two months since I have updated the blog. Jaspreet and I got married on September 30 and I think that you will agree that this is a good enough reason for the absence!

I have, however, been writing and I will post just some of my recently published works. I do promise you many more updates, soon.