THE ARTS
Beware The Ides of March
THE OPINION
THE ARTS
‘American Spring’ comes to Canada
On wage slavery and unemployment
the newspaper Page 4
The University of Toronto’s Independent Weekly
Necessity is the mother of innovation
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CAZ ZYVATKAUSKAS
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Multidisciplinary research at new institute to focus on Indian development by Geoff Vendeville Six years ago a potter living in a rural village in western India, where electricity is rare and clay is abundant, built an earthenware fridge that doesn’t require electricity and can keep fruit and vegetables fresh for several days. The “Metticool” refrigerator, as it is called, is one of the better-known examples of low-cost innovation in India. Professor Dilip Soman, the inaugural director of the India Innovation Institute, a joint initiative of the Munk Centre and Rotman School, said clever innovation with meager resources is the norm in India. “Conventional wisdom states that the best innovation happens in the absence of constraints. India has shown that you can innovate in the presence of significant financial and resource constraints.” The India Innovation Institute, launched last week, will bring together faculty and students from disciplines as diverse as engineering and medicine to study the innovation process in India. Initially, the institute will be a place for faculty to discuss and further their research into Indian innovation. Soman hopes the institute will eventually host seminars and think tanks, as well as offer courses for students at all levels based on research being conducted there. “We plan to draw people from all over campus. While this is primarily a Rot-
“India has shown that you can innovate in the presence of significant ... constraints.” – Dilip Soman man – Munk collaboration, we would like the institute to be a hub for anyone broadly interested in innovations.” By “innovation,” Soman does not simply mean “development.” “I see the two as distinct and independent,” he said. “I view innovation very broadly as something new and revolutionary - it could be a new thing (product innovation), a new way of doing things (process innovation) or a new way of thinking (innovation in mindsets). I would like our [institute] to study all three.” The Indian case is different and insightful, Soman explained, because - unlike “innovators in the west, who go about their Indian innovators “pare down.” “They provide the bare minimum that meets the basic needs, is inexpensive and can reach the masses. It’s a great story of what one would call frugal innovation.”
Since 1978
SPIFFY N EW DESIGN!
VOL XXXIV Issue 6 • October 13, 2011
The dullest provincial election ever?
Inside the election you probably slept through by Andrew Walt There were no surprises in what is quite possibly Ontario’s least entertaining general election yet. Dalton McGuinty will serve his third consecutive term as premier of the province, Tim Hudak will lead the opposition (for now), and Andrea Horwath will sit third in Queen’s Park with her plucky yet underwhelming New Democrats. “One of the differences between the federal and provincial elections in Ontario is that the disproportionality of the youth vote for the NDP was higher in the federal election,” said Nelson Wiseman, associate professor of Political Science at U of T. “I think that’s because a lot of people vote strategically. Voters in the provincial election concluded that the NDP couldn’t overtake the Liberals, so if their priority was to keep the Progressive Conservatives out, they favoured the Liberals over the NDP. Federally, that trend reversed in the end because a lot of people had given up on the Liberals.” While McGuinty may be premier yet again, his Liberals are no longer a majority force in the Legislative Assembly, albeit just barely. They only earned 53 of the 107 seats available, having lost 17 of the 70 seats earned four years ago. But the results seem more likely to reflect a dwindling faith in McGuinty’s administration, rather than a drastic shift of power into either PC or NDP hands. This may not only indicate a lack of faith in the Lib-
eral platform, but an insidious burgeoning sense of voter apathy as well. CBC reports that the voter turnout for the election was a record low 49.2%, sinking below even the previous nadir of 52.8% set in 2007’s general election. Only around 18.4% of eligible voters chose the Liberals, while more than half of the remaining population evidently chose not to bother. The reasons for the embarrassing turnout figures are not easy to pinpoint, but the disconnect between civic obligation and political passion could be a key factor. In lieu of strongly identifying with a particular platform to rally behind, those who abstained possibly lacked adequate
For the NDP, the party that rode the ‘Orange Crush’ in May’s federal elections, the results are very disappointing. incentive to vote since no party truly championed their concerns. For many young voters who tend towards the NDP - that warm and inviting orange tide which less than six months ago swept over the Liberals in the most recent federal election - their performance on Thursday does not at all seem to reflect the palpable momentum they’ve gained on the national scale. They may have gained seven seats and the most See “Elections” on Page 2
Inside this week’s issue
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Can this UofT band make classical music cool? PAGE 4
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How to get paid to write for Wikipedia PAGE 3