Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

LASA 2014 – CALL FOR PAPERS

(Please see below a call for papers for the forthcoming Latin American Studies Association (LASA) Congress in Chicago, May 21-24, 2014)

Assembling the Contemporary Latin American City: South-South Circuits, Planning Exchanges, Policy Mobilities

In the wake of structural adjustment programs and region-wide reforms to democratize and decentralize central government authority, several Latin American cities became sites of increased experimentation and innovation in urban planning, urban development and public participation. Municipal authorities throughout the region reinvented land use, transportation, housing, and public space as planning tools to address a range of new and long-deferred infrastructural, social, and environmental issues. In this context, urban planning became a highly contentious and experimental arena where a range of actors –from public sector planners to NGOs to social movements to organized private actors- seized opportunities to push and legitimize new models of urban planning and development. Although North-South policy exchanges…

Golden Rice is being tested in experimental fields in the Philippines but some people there don’t want it. Matt McGrath at the BBC reports that, a few days ago, local farmers vandalised the field trial. I’m grateful to my fellow blogger Finn Holding at The Naturephile for drawing attention to this.

Golden Rice is a variety of Oryza sativa. It was made by genetic modification (GM, also called genetic engineering or GE) so it’s one of the biotech crops. It makes β-carotene (provitamin A) in its grains. The idea is that people in poor countries, especially pregnant women and young children, could eat Golden Rice.

Here’s how it works. β-carotene is a ‘provitamin’ because the body converts it to Vitamin A. We need Vitamin A for our eyes and immune system, among other things. In many poor countries, people are malnourished so that Vitamin A Deficiency (VAD) is a…

This video is called THE LANGUAGES OF INDIA.

From Prensa Latina news agency:

India Has Lost 220 Languages over Past 50 Years

New Delhi, Aug 11. India has lost 220 languages over the past 50 years, one-fifth of all languages spoken in the country, according to a study from the Bhasha Research and Publication Center.

In 1961, Indians spoke 1,100 languages, but nearly 220 have disappeared, said Ganesh Devy, a writer and coordinator of the so-called People”s Linguistic Survey of India, carried out over two years from 2011.

“We have found 780 languages and must have missed about 100 or so. That makes it close to 880 languages. The rest have disappeared. It’s a sad loss,” said Devy.

India is one of the countries in the world with a great linguistic diversity. Seventy-four percent of the population speaks languages that belong to the Indo-Iranian branch of…