March 1995

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SPAN Jack Welch and Hazel O'Leary are two Americans who like to cross boundaries, in more ways than one. Both travel abroad a lot and were in India recently-Welch to survey the operations and options here of General Electric, the multinational that he heads, and O'Leary, the U.S. Secretary of Energy, to discuss energy policy and pursue some more Indo-U.S. joint ventures.

Welch, one of America's most dynamic corporate leaders, says that to succeed in today's competitive world, companies must promote communication and understanding at all levels. His solution to achieving that is "boundarylessness"-the elimination of barriers that job, hierarchy, and geographic location create within companies, and between companies and their suppliers and customers. In an excerpt we have this month from the book Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will, Welch describes boundarylessness as "an open, trusting, sharing of ideas. A willingness to listen, debate, and then take the best ideas and get on with it."

Secretary O'Leary obviously shares that concept. During her four-day visit to New Delhi last month, in which she oversaw the signing of 23 bilateral energy-development projects, she talked repeatedly about sharing ideas and hearing from Indians from all walks of life. This she did, as our short report notes, in meetings with ministers, scientists, industrialists, and residents of a village near Delhi.

Several other articles this month feature individuals who, like Welch and O'Leary, make things happen by dint of their intelligence, clear goals, and tireless work.

We open with a profile of the Port of Seattle and its director, Mic Dinsmore, who had stints as a bush pilot, commercial fisherman, and horse rancher before assuming the helm at America's closest major port to Asia.

Next we have a report, also from Seattle, about the University of Washington's one-of-a-kind department of molecular biotechnology. It is the creation of Microsoft Corporation founder William Gates III, who gave $12 million to fund it, and Leroy E. Hood, a renowned medical scientist who set it up and recruited its top-flight faculty, E.O. Wilson has dedicated his life to gaining a better understanding of the world's insects, plants, and animals, and to preserving them. Betsy Carpenter, in her profile of the Harvard sociobiologist, notes that Wilson "argues passionately that the hemorrhaging of biological wealth not only destabilizes ecosystems and squanders priceless sources of medicines, crops, and fuel, but also-most frightening to Wilson--eats away at the human soul."

American anthropologist Stephen Huyler has found expressions of the soul in the house-decorating tradition of rural Indian women and worries that their art form may disappear some day.

Doing his part to encourage its preservation, Huyler recently published a book of photog¡raphs, Painted Prayers: Women's Art in Village India. "The paintings appear to provide balance in a world of chaos, moments of serenity in the midst oflife's ceaseless demands, a form of creative self-expression," he writes. The pictures we have show just what he means. Many were on display recently at New Delhi's Crafts Museum.

2 The Man and His Port by Theresa Morrow 8 Pioneering a New Biology by Peter Monaghan 1 0 A Treaty for All Time by John D. Holum 14 The Art of Nature 16 Go-Teams-Solving Air-Crash Mysteries

by Kenneth C. Danforth

1 8 Living With Nature

22 Painted Prayers

by Betsy Carpenter

by Stephen Huyler

28 GE in India-Connections and Commitments 32 Jack Welch's Lessons for Success 34 Energy-Keeping the Momentum Going

38

Focus On ...

40 On the Lighter Side 41 You Just Don't UnderstandWomen & Men in Conversation

by Deborah Tannen

Front cover: Stephen Huyler photographed this woman decorating her home In Motisinghkilokidhani, Jaisalmer district, Rajasthan, in 1991.

Photographs: Front cover-Stephen Huyler. 2-7-Rich Frishman. 8 left-Joel Levin Photographic Services; right-Kathleen King Photography. 9 top right-University Photography, University of Seattle, Washington. 14-15-Š 1989 Terry Isaac. 16courtesy The Charlotte Observer. 17-Rich Strauss, Smithsonian News Service. 18, 19 right-Jeffrey MacMillan, U.S. News & World Report/Museum of Natural History; 19 left-Gregory Heisler. 21-Jeffrey MacMillan, U.S. News & World Report/Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University. 22-27-Stephen Huyler. 28-29, 30 leftcourtesy GE India; 30-31, 32left-Avinash Pasricha. 34 left column, top and bottomVijay Kranti; center and top right, 35 top left-Jotinder Takhar; 35 top right, bottomAvinash Pasriy~a. 38-Kumud Mohan. Back cover~ourtesy GE India.

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it would seem that he had everything.

But everything wasn't enough.

Nine years after his premature retirement, this would-be cowboy is the executive director of one of the largest shipping centers in the world. From his desk in his waterfront office, Dinsmore can survey some of the 20 commercial marine terminals that make up his empire: The Port of Seattle.

The scene at the huge port in the state of Washington is far less peaceful than the bucolic view from his saddle on a horse in Idaho. Tugboats nudge giant container ships from Korea and Japan into docks where giraffe-like orange cranes steadily lift containers onto waiting trucks and trains--eontainers filled with clothing, aircraft parts, and video games. Fish-processor ships with their crews of up to 200 head out of the port docks toward the pollack grounds in the Bering Sea. Ferries slip in and out of a terminal, carrying professionals to the high-rise buildings of the city. Overhead, jets vie for position to land at the Port of Seattle's busy airport.

Above all this, in the port's flagship building, sits Dinsmore, now 47, who took over as the head of the Port of Seattle in mid1992. The book Jacocca by Lee Iacocca, the businessman who led the Chrysler Company out of bankruptcy and back into business, sits on his bookshelf right next to Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth and Violence at the Edge o/the 21st Century.

This visionary book by Alvin Toffier may reveal more than anything else can about this man who couldn't turn his back on the world of commerce. "Power" is, in fact, a word that comes to mind when Dinsmore is around. He struts rather than walks.

He is built like a short bodybuilder, which he has been. His hair and clothes are perfectly styled. When he talks, he can be cocky and arrogant. Occasionally a little country twang sneaks in. He admits he has rarely been on a ship, but there's no question who runs this port, which boasts more than $30,000 million annually in two-way trade.

The Port of Seattle's location in the northwest corner of the United States gives it the closest proximity to Asia of any major U.S. port. That prime position-and the fact that Seattle has a natural deepwater bay at its doorstep-are what has made this city of 560,000 grow to its current status as a trade center for the Far East. It has a century-long legacy: It was in 1896 that the first regularly scheduled steamship service to the United States from an Asian nation called at the port. The Nippon Yusan Kasha Line of Japan first called at Seattle in 1896and still does.

In its infancy, Seattle was a timber town with a log port at its feet. Douglas fir and cedar trees were cut with two-man hand saws on Seattle's many hills and sent through a log chute down onto the docks that stuck out into Elliott Bay like porcupine quills. The logs were loaded onto sailing ships, usually by Asian laborers brought to the city for that purpose, which then departed for Japan and other points in Asia, as well as to South America and even Europe.

As the city grew, the waterfront changed. Timber became less

dominant, and the docks were used for passenger ferries, farm produce, and supplies for the growing area. Transit sheds were built at road ends so that Model-T trucks could drive right down onto the docks, load up with eggs from a steamer from some outlying area, and take off for the market at the foot of Pike Street in Seattle.

After World War II, the Boeing Company (see SPAN, October 1991) became the city's lifeline, and aircraft engines were imported while aircraft parts and aircraft were exported.

And Japan's postwar economic boom produced goods that the U.S. consumer wanted-toys, electronics, autos, and auto parts. They crossed port docks in increasing amounts. Ships came in bearing consumer goods and other ships went out bearing the products of the land around Seattle. Fruitmost notably Washington state's famous apples and pearswas exported through the port around the world, as were grain and lumber.

Today, Japan ships 18 percent of its total U.S. exports through Washington state. Other Asian countries, including China, Korea, and Taiwan, ship products through Seattle in quantity. In fact, the port has regional offices in Hong Kong, Taipei, Korea, and Singapore.

If trade changed over time, so did the appearance of the port.

Those finger piers that had stuck out into the bay were for the most part dismantled to accommodate the larger ships and new technology created to serve them. And as the city behind it grew, the high-rise office buildings began creeping down the hillsides to the waterfront until suddenly there was little room for the railroads, rumbling trucks, and other accoutrements of sea trade. Increasingly, city residents wanted office buildings with views of the water and the mountains behind it instead of the grit of industrial commerce.

Included in Dinsmore's purview, in addition to the shipping terminals and airport, is a marina for recreational boats, a colorful Fishermen's Terminal-home of the North Pacific and Alaska fishing fleets that are headquartered in the city-and a planned cruise ship terminal and trade center.

Seattle is no longer a timber town, and the Port of Seattle has become an urban port.

'J

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In the early spring, Mic Dinsmore gets on his bicycle and rides along the waterfront, where condominiums and parks mingle with fish mongers and container-carrying trucks. Once a week he rides 100 kilometers around Lake Washington, an hourglass-shaped lake bordering Seattle. Once a year, he rides the grueling 340-kilometer Seattle-to-Portland (Oregon) bike-touring event popular with Seattle's outdoor enthusiasts.

And when he is not riding his bike for exercise, he runs.

That's fitting for a man whose energy has driven him to the top.

Unlike many CEOs, Dinsmore truly did start at the bottom. His path to the plush office in the Port of Seattle's Pier 69 began in a tiny Alaska maintenance shed.

As a young man, maritime affairs meant nothing to

The use of standardized containers has greatly speeded port operations.

A big container ship can offload one cargo, load another, and be at sea again in 24 hours.

Sea"le's growth from a timber town with a log port at its feet to a major trade center is symbolized by the hectic commercial activity at the city's port.

Auto-transport ships, such as the one at bo"om from Japan, can carry up to 4,000 automobiles in one trip.

More than 50,000 automobiles come through the port each year.

Dinsmore. He was raised far from a port in the mining town of Butte, Montana, where he attended the Montana School of the Mines before moving to Anchorage, Alaska, to study dentistry.

"I was enamored with the lifestyle in Alaska," he says.

Dinsmore became a bush pilot and worked at an air-products company. "Really, I was searching for what I wanted to be."

It wasn't to be a dentist.

In 1968, he was fishing on the banks of the Kenai River with a friend who worked in the Anchorage maintenance facility of Sea-Land Services, Inc., a major U.S. shipping company with a large Alaska shipping interest.

"He was quitting and asked me why didn't I take his job," says Dinsmore. "I asked him what his job was and he said 'cost accountant and purchasing agent.' Now, that sounded pretty good. I was impressed by the title and the maintenance facility. I thought it was the biggest in the world."

He never did finish undergraduate school and the visions of being a dentist gave way to the pull of ships and trains. "I was," he says, "infatuated with transportation and ships."

But Dinsmore never did really play by the rules of the corporate shipping world. A couple of years later, he got an offer to go on a lucrative commercial salmon fishing trip. He decided to take a leave of absence from his job, but at the time he was offered a management position at the Sea-Land facility.

It was a big promotion and he was interested, but Sea-Land said he would have to forgo the fishing trip.

He went fishing.

When he returned, the position was still open and he got it. It was his first step into management.

"I was maintenance supervisor on the night shift, managing 'thousands' of people-five, but it seemed like a thousand," Dinsmore says with a laugh. "I was still learning, reading everything that was available."

He worked for Sea-Land for 11 years in nine positions until the nex't promotion would have placed him at company headquarters on the East Coast in New Jersey where he definitely did not want to live.

Instead, he went to the Oakland Sea-Land office where he was port and terminal manager. Dinsmore was there two years when Sea-Land competitor American President Lines (APL) hired him as corporate liaison with Asia. In one year, he traveled 500,000 air kilometers.

When Eagle Marine Services, a subsidiary of APL, started up, Dinsmore was asked to be vice president. "I said I'd only go in if I could run the company. And I did," he says. Dinsmore eventually became CEO of Eagle Marine.

When APL's parent company sold the shipping line and its subsidiary, Dinsmore retired to his horse ranch-at the age of 38.

"But I missed the industry," he says. And he couldn't resist the opportunity to take on a challenge. When he was asked by the director of the Port of Seattle to step in as a consultant, there was no looking back. Dinsmore not only reorganized the port into the marine and aviation divisions, he also marketed the

Dinsmore attends a Port of Seattle Commission meeting (right) and holds an impromptu press conference at one of the port's commercial terminals (far right).

port's main container terminal, Terminal 5.

"I found a customer-APL. Life is funny," Dinsmore says.

Dinsmore left the port to try other positions for a few years, returning as second in command in 1991. When the executive director quit in 1992, Dinsmore mounted a campaign for the job with his typical determination. He competed against canaffairs-but he didates more experienced in governmental persevered and, once again, got the job, He is not an elected official; instead, he is appointed by a board of five elected port commissioners. His title is executive director, but he says, "This is CEO. If it was privatized, it would be called CEO."

J

With an annual salary of $153,000, more than any other top executive at comparable West Coast ports, Mic Dinsmore oversees 1,265 employees who work on the waterfront and at the port-run Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. The port lays claim to another 60,000 jobs indirectly related to its activities. He has 30 department directors who work for him, and deals with 24 organized labor entities that can make or break the port depending on their productivity.

At the port terminals, Dinsmore has more than 30 "customers"-steamship lines for whom Seattle is a port of call. And he has 1.5 million "shareholders"-the citizens who own the port.

Former port director Jim Dwyer, now a trade attorney, describes U.S. ports as "two-headed animals." One head, Dwyer says, is the business side of a port. That side courts overseas shipping lines looking for long-term terminal leases on port-owned land. The Port of Seattle is a "landlord port," which means that it leases its terminals directly to shipping lines or to private companies that operate shipping terminals as a business. The leaseholder then hires members of a longshoremen's union to tie up the ships, work on the docks, run the cranes, and see that the cargo gets onto the railroad or trucks for the trip to its final destination. (Other ports, such as the Port of Tacoma to Seattle's south, are "operating ports" that run the terminal operations and hire long" shoremen themselves.)

The other "head" of this animal is the public one. The port is

owned by the voters of King County, the county that includes the city of Seattle. They elect the commissioners in often lively elections and a portion of their property taxes-$35.6 million in I994---goes to help support the port.

Because it is basically a public entity, port meetings are always open to the public, with a few exceptions, which have to do with personnel, real-estate, or legal issues. The voters have a say-and very often do speak out-about such things as the director's salary. If, for example, the port decides to raise rates at its marina, there is a public hearing-and sometimes hundreds of people turn out to complain or support the port's position.

Sometimes that public "head" is at odds with the very private business "head. " For example, there is a citizens' group, Portwatch, that monitors port activities and often complains about the tax levy, saying that the port'should be self-sufficient.

On the other side, there is a relatively new group, Portworks, made up of area business representatives who lobby the port for such things as better rail connections, less traffic congestion, and attention to customer needs.

Dinsmore takes issue with Dwyer's two-headed description of a port. "I would refer to it as a hybrid, a special-purpose government, public but accountable to the private sector.

We compete as the private sector, but are not two heads. It is public and we have to make sure we manage it that way," Dinsmore says.

He describes his own characterization of the port: "In Japan they call it wa, the quest for balance-harmony."

He sees it as a balancing act, with the commission and the executive director in the middle, institution and community on one side, and port and customer base on another. "All have to balance."

When port districts were formed in the early part of the 1990s, their specified mission, proclaimed by statute, was economic development.

Sometimes that's seen as being probusiness and anticommunity.

Dinsmore is attempting to combine those two factors, and, more than any port director before him, is often seen with the city's mayor and other officials.

With his employees, too, there's a balance, says port communications director Janet Pelz, who tells a story about

Dinsmore's relationship to those who work in the port offices. During a campaign to contribute to several charities, the rather dapper port director volunteered to be the object of a pie throw by employees. Employees bought tickets for $1 each and then three were picked at random for the honor of throwing pies at their boss.

Dinsmore was meeting with a delegation from Shanghai the day of the contest, and he excused himself from the meeting to don a painter's outfit and a frizzy wig before standing up before the employees. With great hilarity, the three lucky workers let fly with the whipped-cream covered pies.

The Shanghai delegation watched. Pelz says, "They thought it was very strange."

But Dinsmore says, "You have to show that you value your employees .... We have very capable people."

There are no pies thrown, and no hilarity, at the meetings regarding noise from the port's airport. Seattle needs more capacity at the busy airport, but residents of nearby neighborhoods decry the increased noise that would result.

The airlines-which are, like the shipping lines, port customers-say any limits on noise would result in a decrease in business.

This is where Dinsmore's wa philosophy is still being put to the test. The port formed a task force made up of residents, agencies, airline representatives, and others. The group forged a compromise and came up with a noise budget for the airport.

One of the things they agreed upon was that only "Stage Three" flights, made with quieter planes, would be made at night. The issue is still a hot one for Dinsmore, but at least the compromise was reached.

Dinsmore meets, often on Asian turf, with potential and current shipping and airline customers for the port. When abroad, he has five to six meetings a day, often until late at night.

"Commerce starts with relationships," Dinsmore says of a recent trip to Vietnam. "We look at the market, see where the opportunities lie. Fundamentally, we meet the appropriate individuals ...and build relationships that make it easy to allow commerce to flow."

And commerce, after all, is what the Port of Seattle is all about. It's the reason for the lacocca book in Dinsmore's office.

It's the reason he gave up his dreams of being a dentist and riding a horse into the sunset. "I still have deep feelings when I stand on a marine facility. I get heart palpitations when I think of the part we play in commerce," Dinsmore says. "Some 25 years later I am as excited-more excited-than when I entered the business."

D

Pioneering ~o~e\V Biology Under the dynamic chairmanship of Leroy E. Hood, the University of Washington's new department of molecular biotechnoiogy in Seattle-established with a gift of$12 million from billionaire William Gates III-is pioneering a new style of biology that breaches interdisciplinary boundaries to get a better understanding ofthe human body.

Leroy E. Hood foresees a time, not far off, when curing disease will be a matter of lightning-fast analysis of staggering amounts of information. followed by genetic tweaking, perhaps using microscopic robots.

Hood's work in pioneering this new combination of medicine and molecular biology has been aided by the University of Washington's establishment of the United States' first department of molecular biotechnology.

That was made possible by a $12 million gift in 1991 from William Gates III, the billionaire founder and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation, the computer software industry giant. As head of the department, Hood holds a chair that is named for Gates.

Gates became interested in helping the University of Washington set up a new department after hearing Hood deliver three lectures there in 1990. After the third, Gates and Hood went to dinner. "We had a terrifically interc:sting evening talking about computers and biotechnology."

Hood recalls. Gates was so impressed by Hood's blueprint for an ideal biotechnology lab, and by his standing among biotechnologists, that he decided to bankroll not just a chair for Hood, but a whole department. Hood's arrival has put the university and the city of Seattle in a prominent position in biotechnology.

Like others in his field, Hood believes biotechnology can help doctors and researchers understand human genetics much better than they do today. But that, he i.s certain, will

require a revolutionary new style of biology performed by researchers versed in several fields, including computer science, computation. applied physics, an'd engineering.

Technology far ahead of current capabilities will also be essential, he says. Only then will it be possible to catalog, analyze, manipulate, subdivide, and re-categorize vast amounts of biological information quickly enough.

"If our department has any overriding theme," Hood says, "it is the idea that the future of biology is all about the analysis of complex systems and networks, and those can be immunologic networks, they can be neurologic networks, they can be networks of molecules. " Modeling networks and finding the physiological relevance of them, he says, won't be predictable or linear. So, he concludes, "we need to develop completely new approaches to tools, new ways of thinking."

Hood's department has been operating since September 1992, with an annual budget of $5.5 million in federal government research grants that he hopes to double within a few years. It already has a staff of 43, more than half of whom have worked with Hoo.d since he was head of the National Science Foundation's Science and Technology Center for Molecular Biotechnology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

Biotechnology is shaping up as one of the most ballyhooed and competitive of modern

industries.

And it is one in which the United States has a clear but increasingly challenged lead.

Foremost among biotechnological undertakings is the Human Genome Project. Hood is one of the most prominent lobbyists for the mammoth, U.S. government-financed, 15year effort, which is expected to cost at least $3,000 million and involve hundreds of scientists. Its goal is to produce a database that details the organization and functions of the approximately 100,000 genes in the human body, and all 3,000 million of their nucleotides. (Genes consist of complex strings of four types of nucleotides.)

Once the database is complete, scientists believe, it will revolutionize the medical profession's capacity to predict the health that people will enjoy during their lives, and the diseases that will afflict them.

Such research may lead to gene therapypreempting or correcting genetic defects in cells. Hood believes, for example, that it will be possible to design a protein that will selectively attach to lung-cancer cells and kill them.

At Caltech, Hood earned international renown as a medical scientist for his work in molecular immunology. In the 1980s, he was a pioneer in using computers and microsensors to invent automated gene sequencers to study genes, hormones, antibodies. and cells.

That work contributed to rapid advance-. ments in biotechnology and was among the developments that made the ambitions

Human Genome Project possible.

The gene-sequencing machines help scientists locate genes by identifying the nucleotides that make up a strand of deoxyribonucleic acid, or DNA, the long molecules found in the nucleus of every cell of a body. Once the nucleotides are identified, the scientists must figure out where one gene ends and the next begins.

In appearance, the machines are deceptively simple: They are plastic-encased boxes about the size of washing machines into which samples of biological material are fed. Lasers scan the samples, and readings are recorded by attached computers.

A striking measure of the prestige that Hood has brought with him to the University of Washington is the speed with which he persuaded more than a dozen highly regarded scientists to join his new department.

One of them, Maynard Olson, a genome pioneer and professor of molecular biotechnology, says his reasons for coming from Washington University in St. Louis were simof ple. "My view is that the technology the 1970s and 1980s, which enjoyed pretty spectacular success, has largely run its course," he says. "I think the most pressing need is to inject a higher-level input from nonbiological disciplines."

Hood has high hopes for what he expects his department to accomplish. "If we talk about the human genome as a specific target, I would guess that sequencing machines ...would have to be somewhere between 100 and 500 times more effective than they are now. And I think there's no question whatsoever we can achieve that within five years, given adequate resources."

He and his colleagues, or researchers at several other institutions, will probably try to develop nanotechnological approaches-tiny machines that are fast and efficient. "In principle," Hood says, "you could think about having a silicon chip the size of your thumbnail on which you could analyze 500 different DNA sequences." Current machines can analyze 36 possible sequences.

A mountain climber who hopes to spend Among the senior scientists who have joined the new department is Maynard Olson, a pioneer of the Human Genome Project.

weekends scaling the several ranges near Seattle, Hood says his biggest professional challenge will be to develop a novel, interdisciplinary approach to climbing the mountains of data that separate scientists from a view of fundamental human biological structures.

To reach that view, he says, graduate students-the researchers of the future-must be taught the latest advances in physics, engineering, computer science, mathematics, and chemistry, all at once. "Breaching the interdisciplinary boundaries as we're talking about it," he notes, "has rarely been done.

And I think it's the most difficult thing we have to do. ''I'm optimistic, but the way you'll test our success is to look in ten years at the kinds of students we've produced," he says.

From the money G,ates donated as "intellectual venture c.apital" Hood has set aside $2 million to seed novel research projects by young scientists. Those in the molecular-biotechnology department work alongside staff members with interdisciplinary backgrounds in computer science and biology, as well as in engineering and biology. The department also collaborates with researchers in Washington's engineering and medical schools.

Local biotech companies, including the ICOS Corporation, in which Gates invests, are expected to benefit from having such a major laboratory at the University of Washington.

Hood hopes benefits will flow to academic research as well. To achieve his goals, he will need to call on the most highly skilled computer-software programmers 'around. Gates has announced that he will set up a research group at Microsoft that may in the future develop the software that will run futuristic sequencing machines and other technologies.

University labs are in the best position to take the risk of developing the tools needed to do biotech work, Hood says, but others may end up actually using the tools. "If we can develop instruments that are 100 or 500 times faster than what we have now," he says, "then they my view is that a few large centers-and could be companies, they could be private research institutes-will really take on most of the task of sequencing the human genome."

He is considering starting such a company,

Hood and his department have placed the city of Seattle in a prominent position in biotechnology, giving afillip to local uiotech companies and academic research.

The University of Washington campus is at the center of this photo. together with local biotech researchers and industry executives.

Not only will those companies bring universities handsome royalties, Hood says, but their work will free up departments like his to tackle the enormous task of analyzing and processing the mountains of information about the genome.

Another important benefit of Hood's department could be its potential impact on schools in the Seattle area. It is beginning cooperative outreach programs with local schools that will allow outstandIng secondaryschool science teachers to work with the department's researchers to develop courses.

Another program will permit teachers to bring students to the department to sequence small segments of chromosomes.

Says Valerie Logan, the department's outreach-education coordinator: "That would allow students to do real science that would go into a national data bank."

0 About the Author: Peter Monaghan is the Seattle correspondent of The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Representatives of the 171 nations that have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty will meet in New York next month to decide the treaty's future. The author, director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, says that because the treaty has been so successful, it should be extended indefinitely. ~J

may have heard the apocryphal story of the young man who climbs a distant mountain to seek advice from the revered old wise man who renouneed vast riches and celebrity. When he asks the wise man what he should do he is told only, "My son, avoid hedonism, do not seek fame-such things are a snare and a delusion."

The younger man looks at the wise man and says: "Thank you sage one. Could I just try them for a month first?"

One of the problems with nuclear weapons, of course, is

Y

OU

Reprinted

by permission

Copyright

Š

from

The Bulletin

1994 by the Educational

of the Awmie

Foundation

for

ScientisTS,

uclear Science.

November-December

1994.

that you can't just try them for a month.

It is human nature to try things out, keep options open, explore new possibilities. That's often not a bad thing. But the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is too essential to put at risk.

Nevertheless, as April's NPT Conference approaches, we hear many voices demanding that Wetinker with the treaty. While some of them may be sincere, experimentation would be folly.

The NPT's entry into force in 1970 transformed the ac- • quisition of nuclear weapons from an act of national pride into a violation of international law. If it crumbles-indeed, if

cracks are detected-a great deal of the nuclear security architecture painstakingly constructed by the international community may collapse.

The NPT serves two mutually reinforcing aims: Nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament. It does this by balancing positive and negative rights and obligations. It is at once an agreement to forgo nuclear weapons; an agreement to put peaceful nuclear facilities under international safeguards; an undertaking to end the arms race and pursue nuclear disarmament; and an agreement promoting access to technical cooperation in the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

Winning the NPT's indefinite and unconditional extension is my agency's highest priority. Let me summarize why the United States holds the treaty so dear.

A Vital Global Norm During the 1960s, many predicted that, if nothing were done, there would be 20 or 30 avowed nuclear-weapons states by now.

But in fact, there are only five-the same as when the NPT was brought into force-and three other "threshold" states.

The NPT system has steadily expanded since 1970, and there has been considerable tangible progress in recent years. China has joined, as have France, South Africa, Algeria, Argentina, and most of the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. And Chile and Brazil have announced that they will not acquire nuclear weapons.

With 171 parties (and counting), the NPT enjoys the widest adherence of any arms control agreement in history. It has codified an international standard of behavior-a global norm-against which the actions of even states outside the regime are measured.

When the Argen tines communicated their decision to join the NPT, the words they used revealed this powerful legal and moral norm at work. They said that they had long kept their nuclear option open out of a desire to add to their security. But they found that keeping the nuclear option open had the opposite effect of excluding them from the political and economic circles where, they finally realized, their true security lies.

They told us-with evident emotion-that they wanted to join the NPT in order "to join the civilized world."

Another argument one hears is that indefinite extension would legitimize nuclear weapons for all time. In fact, the opposite is true.

In recent years, with the NPT in place-the United States and the former Soviet Union have: • eliminated more than 2,500 missiles and taken an entire class of weapon systems out of commission under the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty; • decided unilaterally to withdraw and dismantle thousands more tactical nuclear arms; • agreed in START and START II to reverse the strategic arms race and take more than 17,000 nuclear weapons off missiles and bombers.

Taken together, these actions have resulted in nuclear disarmament on a massive scale. The NPT's call for an end to the arms race has been met. The race is now to bring down force levels as quickly, safely, and securely as possible. Thousands of nuclear weapons are being dismantled. The United States alone is dismantling around 2,000 nuclear weapons a year, the highest rate that technical limitations will permit.

Test Ban Treaty in Sight

Reflexive Egalitarianism

The ledger in fulfillment of Article VI of the NPT includes two additional entries: Multilateral efforts to negotiate a worldwide fissile material cutoff treaty, and the drive to conclude a comprehensive test ban treaty.

A cutoff treaty would cap the amount of material available for nuclear explosives. It could bring the unsafeguarded nuclear programs of certain non-NPT states-India, Pakistan, and Israel-under some measure of restraint for the first time. And it would prevent any further production of separated plutonium and highly enriched uranium for weapons in the five declared nuclear weapon states.

Achieving a comprehensive test ban treaty is also an imperative for the United States-a fact underscored last year when I delivered a personal message from President Clinton to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. The President's message said that of all the items on the conference's agenda, "none is more important" than negotiating the treaty "at the earliest possible time." We want to insure that the first half-century of nuclear explosions is the last.

Some complain that the NPT is "discriminatory" because it accepts five nuclear powers and freezes out all others. But remember that the treaty did not create nuclear-weapon "haves" and "havenots." It only recognized that inherited reality-and helped stop a deadly trend in its tracks-while at the same time committing the nuclear-weapon states to pursue nuclear disarmament.

Remember this: The measure of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements lies not in their egalitarianism, but in their contributions to international security.

The fact is, if the world were to insist today on a reflexive nuclear equality, the likely result would be a leveling up, not a leveling down. Not a world freed of nuclear weapons, but a world filled with nuclear-weapon states.

The NPT is an important stimulus to disarmament. Pressure to disarm will be kept on the nuclear weapons states by reaffirming Article VI of the treaty and keeping the treaty in force indefinitely. Anything less will have the perverse result of easing the pressure to disarm.

The NPT also fosters the global conditions that permit deep reductions in nuclear arms. It is a simple, practical reality that arms control will suffer if the barriers against nuclear proliferation are lowered. Indeed, it is clear that-perhaps unlike the Cold War period-future progress in arms control depends on the security offered by a permanent NPT.

Well, it is then argued, why not hold up the NPT -or just extend it for a short time-as a way to force even greater progress on the nuclear-weapon states? Some, for example, suggest that we should hold an NPT extension hostage to the conclusion of a comprehensive test ban treaty, then make it permanent.

There are many flaws to such arguments, but two main ones.

First, treating the NPT as a bargaining chip is dangerously selfdefeating. And second, it jeopardizes what in practical terms is our one realistic opportunity to make the NPT last forever.

Those who think the NPT is a bargaining chip ignore a cardinal rule: Don't gamble with something you can't afford to lose.

For reasons that include geography, the countries most immediately put at risk by nuclear proliferators are their immediate and regional neighbors. We support the NPT in our own interests, to be sure. But it is even more strongly in the interests of countries located in regions of tension.

The NPT gives all member countries the security of knowing that their neighbors and regional rivals will not be able to effectively pursue nuclear-weapons ambitions-not only because they have agreed not to, but also because there is a global system to verify that they haven't.

So for all those whose votes will decide its fate, the NPT is a source not ofleverage but of security. The NPT's greatest value to the international community is not as a lever for moving the nuclear states, but as a shield to ward off regional arms races and nuclear dangers.

Many countries have testified to this truth with their deeds.

In Latin America, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, and Africa, nations have adopted or are moving toward nuclearweapon-free zones that do not contain analogues to the NPT's Article VI. This confirms that it is not principally Article VI that draws countries to a commitment against acquiring nuclear weapons, but rather a recognition that their own security is enhanced when they codify the norm of nuclear nonproliferation in their own backyards.

A corollary of the bargaining-chip argument, the notion that indefinite extension can be put off, is particularly dangerouf; because it is so seductively plausible-and so wrong.

Article X of the treaty explicitly spells out the three and only three extension options the parties have in 1995: Indefinite extension, extension for a fixed period, or extension for fixed periods. What is not made explicit in the treaty-but is so important to its fate-is that 1995 represents the only realistic opportunity the parties have to give the NPT an indefinite extension that is legally binding on every member without the need to go back to parliaments for ratification.

Extending the treaty for a fixed term won't work. Because the treaty currently contains no provision for a further extension after the first, it would have to be amended to provide for such a decision, or else expire. Treaty amendment, in turn, would require not only the votes of a specialized majority of the parties-including all members of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency (lAEA) and all five nuclear

weapons states-but also ratification by 83 national legislatures (at present count).

It is not realistic to count on achieving amendment. Simply collecting the ratifications of most parties could take yearsafter all, it took 19 years for the 98 original NPT signatories to ratify the treaty. And even if the amendment were brought into force, it would only apply to those states that actually ratify it, giving many states an easy way to back out of the treaty.

The treaty also can be extended for fixed periods. The length of each period, number of periods, and the type of transition mechanism that would be needed to go from one period to the next would have to be resolved. By requiring (and deferring) such difficult decisions-many of which have uncertain legality-this option also clearly risks the possibility of eventual treaty expiration. Again, indefinite extension is the only way to insure that the NPT will endure.

Another frequent criticism of the NPT is that certain countries have not joined. Some states, for example, have said that support for indefinite extension would be difficult without Israel's adherence to the NPT. But enlarging the prospect that the NPT may lapse at some point makes it less likely-not more likely-that states like Israel, India, and Pakistan ultimately will join. The best chance for their ultimate adherence lies in a strong treaty that is a permanent part of the international security system.

The same principle holds in every region. It is the NPT that provides the essential worldwide framework for addressing diverse proliferation problems and promoting stability.

Had there been no NPT, an agreement very much like it probably would have had to be invented to address the proliferation dangers inherent in the breakup of a nuclear superpower into a dozen newly independent states. The commitment of most of these states to the NPT as non-nuclearweapon state parties has done much to ease tensions and reduce risks during this challenging formative period.

In Africa, South Africa's adherence to the NPT helped to open a security dialogue with other African states and pave the way for negotiation of an African nuclear-weapon-free-zone treaty. Here, as in Latin America with the Treaty ofTlatelolco, the NPT and regional nuclear-weapon-free-zone treaties complement and reinforce one another.

In the Middle East, the NPT is the only norm in force against nuclear proliferation. If it should expire after some limited extension, there would be no formal constraints on Iraqi, Iranian, and Libyan nuclear weapons programs, for example, and no basis for acting against these or any other states whose nonproliferation bona fides might be open to question.

Related to the universality argument is the argument that the NPT does not deserve indefinite extension because it has not solved every nuclear proliferation problem, such as North Korea and Iraq. But this betrays a misunderstanding of where arms control and nonproliferation regimes leave off,

and where the need for political will in the international community begins.

The IAEA has risen to the challenge revealed by the case of Iraq by strengthening its system of safeguards-reaffirming the right to special inspections at undeclared sites, and approving a voluntary program of reporting nuclear exports. And field trials are also under way to test other strengthening measures.

In North Korea, the IAEA's inspections have demonstrated its dogged vigilance in the pursuit of international safeguards agreements. In verifying North Korea's initial declaration, the agency found discrepancies that led it to seek special inspections at undeclared sites.

While the case of North Korea is yet to be resolved, the fact that the NPT's enforcement requires political will in the. international community is hardly an indictment of the treaty.

To the contrary, the U.N.'s engagement demonstrates that the NPT system works-for it is only the U.N. Security Council that can act on behalf of the international community to enforce its norms.

If the NPT reflects so much wisdom, why not follow its own initial pattern and extend it for a 25-year term? The answer: Because any doubts that led to that compromise have been resolved.

The NPT was untested then; now we know the global nonproliferation regime works. Then the future was unclear; now we have experienced the treaty's effective operation over time and through changing conditions. Countries' responses to it could not be predicted then; now we know it has the broadest adherence of any international arms control agreement. So our best guide now is not the uncertainty of 1968, but the informed confidence of 1995.

Arms control regimes typically are permanent-including the ABM, START, and INF treaties, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and even the regional nuclear-weapon-free zones.

Surely the most successful, broadest, and now increasingly vital global arms control regime deserves equal status.

I believe it is established that anything less than an indefinite extension will jeopardize the NPT's future. So the question becomes, why would that be a bad outcome?

No one can predict definitively the nature of the world without the NPT. But each of us must think concretely about the massive proliferation pressures that could be tragically unloosed if the treaty ever expires.

Among the nuclear-weapon states, the obligation for good faith negotiations toward disarmament would be gone-and pressures to maintain and build large arsenals and develop new weapons would reappear.

In the former Soviet Union, the basis for averting several newly independent nuclear-weapon states would be undermined.

As to the threshold states, any political leverage for universal adherence to nonproliferation norms would be gravely weakened, not strengthened.

In Northeast Asia, would the spotlight of world attention shine as white-hot as it does now on North Korea without the NPT? Consider what the other nations in that region might feel compelled to do without the bulwark-the constant gravitational pull and pressure--exerted by the NPT. And then consider the cascading effect their actions would likely have on still other countries.

Consider the countries that are almost entirely ignored in NPT discussions-all the countries for whom nuclear arms are not an issue, because they have made and kept nuclear nonproliferation commitments.

The NPT's greatest achievements are invisible--eonsisting of bad things not happening, nuclear material not diverted, weapons not made. We cannot know which additional countries might have decided, but for the NPT, that they needed nuclear arms. We do know that more than 40 countries may well have the required technical and economic resources to produce such weapons.

Without the NPT, we have to assume that over time many of those bad things would begin to happen. We would be very hard pressed to keep states fJ;om hedging their nuclear bets against an uncertain future.

The Japanese have a saying: "The nail that stands out will be hammered down." Today, proliferant countries know how that feels, because they are exposed to the global hammer against nuclear weapons-the NPT. But in a world without the treaty, the nails sticking outespecially in regions oftension--eould become those states not pursuing or possessing nuclear arms. Countries might avoid standing out in such a world not by resisting pressures to have nuclear weapons, but by succumbing to them.

With the end of the Cold War, nuclear proliferation pressures may be more substantial than ever. So this is at once the best time to buttress international security-and the most essential.

Our challenge is to recognize the singular nature of this decision and seize the moment. We need to elevate NPT extension to a higher plane-above the din of politics as usual at the United Nations, above the ordinary international jockeying and horse-trading. History will not treat us kindly if we act irresponsibly.

But far harder to bear would be our own realization that we miscalculated with our children's security.

We must realize instead that in April 1995, we will be taking, together, the most fateful single vote for world peace of the remainder of this century and for years to come.

If our seriousness of purpose reflects the true stakes, I know we will do the right thing-and enshrine this indispensable agreement for all nations, for all people, for all time.

0 About the Author: John D. Holum previously practiced law, worked on arms control andforeign affairs issues at the State Department during the Carter Administration, as a staff member of the U.S. Senate, and as a member of the Clinton campaign staff. This article was adaptedfrom a speech he delivered last summer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California.

e

Below: Afternoon Light-Young 50.8

X

Cougars, 1989, acrylic on Masonite,

76.2 em. Right: Reference photographs for the painting.

"I've always loved nature and I've always been interested in art," says Terry Isaac. "But Ijust didn't know that you could combine the two." Now he does, and the result is stunningly realistic wildlife paintings that have brought Isaac considerable critical acclaim.

American Artist magazine has described his acrylic paintings as "inventions." Isaac draws from various sources, collaging them in his mind to compose the perfect picture. He combines sketches and photographs of different settings and subjects, researches information about the theme from his reference library of nature and animal books, and then rearranges the elements to produce a work of art that is not just beautiful but also "accurate and convincing."

While taking photo-

graphs, the artist in Isaac is already at work "envisioning how I may use certain elements of a scene in a painting." The challenge, the 36-year-old artist told American Artist, is "to try to make what I'm painting look natural." He wants his paintings to be seen as "pieces of fine art."

J

The story of the creation of Afternoon Light-Young

Cou-

gars (left) illustrates how Isaac works. He "composed" the painting mainly from the above reference photos of three different locations. Isaac saw the brother-and-sister pair of cougars at the Denver Zoo in Colorado; the plants are from his home state Oregon (some of the grasses are from his own

ature

backyard); and the rocks froITlPalm Springs in California.

Isaac works on Masonite, which he primes with gesso and smooths with sand, so that the texture doesn't "interfere with the illusion I am trying to create."

D

GO-TEAMS

Solving Air-Crash Mysteries Within minutes of an airline crash anywhere in the United States, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board prepare to rush to the crash site to determine the cause of the disaster. Their amazing record of success in solving air-crash mysteries has resulted in safer air travel.

They chase disasters. Their motive is to find the defect that just caused one airplane to crash, in time to keep it from dooming another.

They don't always succeed, not with thousands of aviation accidents a year to investigate. But a combination of intelligence, skill, integrity, and daring has brought them an amazing record of success-which translates into increased air safety. They learn something from every accident, they say, and maintain that no two airplanes ever crash for the same reason. They are the prestigious "GoTeams" of the aviation branch of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, standing by 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to rush anywhere from Maine to Hawaii on 90 minutes' notice. Once on site, these investigators might work -18hour days for the next two weeks. . Getting to a site isn't always simple. "I've ridden a lot of horses and oxcarts, and I've ridden in more boats than I'd care to guess," . ~Q~ s Robert Macintosh, a team leader ~ . no~n as the "investigator-in-charge."

"I've jumped out of helicopters with sand flying in m}; eyes, and out of others with snow swirling around me. I took tropical cloN?e1f1'oHawaii, and then found myself - hivering at 2,800 meters. The sunburn was orse than the cold."

Safety Board investigators stand by in a large gray building between the U.S. Capitol and the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. The constant air of expectancy has an almost palpable hum. Within minutes of an airline crash, beepers trill all up and down the hall. A big fuselage a thousand kilometers away is still in flames. Pieces of metal are scattered through woods. Perhaps it's a crash landing, and survivors are fleeing across an open field.

Investigators will bring all the skill, technology, and luck they can muster to find an answer.

The Safety Board's Go-Teams are universally acknowledged as the best in the world. The crash of a U.S.-manufactured aircraft or an American airliner overseas us_ually brings frantic requests from a foreign government to have one of the Go-Teams dispatched to the scene.

For any accident, determining "probable cause" is the goal. From that finding grow recommendations that have enough moral authority to qualify as edicts. Typically, several recommendatjons arise from each major accident.

Go- Team _findings are specific, succinct, and often devastating. The teams never speculate. If: they can't nail down a fact, they say so.

An independent agency since 1972, the National Transportation Safety Board assigns blame without fear or favor. The boara' 4c~~i s are not concerned

I

'..c.

with the possible effects on politics, insurance settlements, pilots' careers, or corporate stocks. The five-member board also directs investigations into railroad, highway, marine, and pipeline accidents, but aviation is the largest division.

After a major air crash, attention focuses on information that may have been recorded in the famous "black box," which actually consists of two orange boxes. The entire flight record is recorded in these boxes.

One "black box" is the cockpit voice recorder (CVR); the other is the flight data recorder (FDR). Specialists at the Safety Board laboratory in Washington analyze every nuance of the information frozen in them.

Sometimes information on the CVR and the FDR is complementary, providing a picture that neither recorder alone could have given. For example, following a takeoff crash in Detroit, Michigan, on August 16, 1987, the plane's FDR indicated that wing flaps had not been extended as they should have been.

"Early on, that helped us focus on the flap setting," says Monty L. Montgomery, chief of the Engineering Services Division at the Safety Board. "Then we listened to the CVR, expecting it to issue the articulated warning, 'Flaps!' But we didn't hear it.

We did hear 'Stall!' but nothing to tell the crew that the flaps were up." Colleagues of killed crew members are often asked to help identify voices on the CVR, because knowing who said what is vital.

Not surprisingly, the Safety Board makes use ariety of technological tools such as

global-positioning systems, laser transits, and computer-graphics simulations.

A global-positioning system is a group of satellites that surveys a wide area around the crash site and sends a picture of what it sees to the Go-Team.

Laser transits are simply high-tech tape measures and surveying tools. At a crash scene in which aircraft parts might be scattered for miles, laser transits reveal precisely how far the engines are from each other and from other sections of the plane.

Computer-graphics simulations enable investigators to see an oncoming disaster the way the pilot saw it.

Montgomery says that some of the newest technology is being developed in the voice-recorder lab. "We can use a computer to extract as much information as possible from the voice recorder," he says. "For example, we can analyze stress in a crew member's voice and gain information quite apart from the actual words."

The Safety Board's equipment runs the gamut from a scanning electron micro-. scope-which can magnify a specimen more than 100,000 times-to a tape used to measure dirt gouges and tree scars left by careering airplanes. r n the field, Go-Teams are organized into eight specialties. The operations group, for example, develops a history of the flight and analyzes the crew's activities in the days preceding the crash.

Other specialists gather weather data, analyze the plane's systems and instruments, examine the power plant, reconstruct ground communications with the aircraft, document factors that allowed some passengers to survive, and evaluate crew performance. Structures specialists recover the

Clockwise from above: Investigator Jeremy Akel opens the "black box "-a cockpit voice recorderof a crashed airplane in the Safety Board's laboratory; Jean Bernstein examines a piece of plane wreckage; and Michael Marx, director of the lab's Materials Division, operates a high-powered microscope to analyse pieces of wreckage.

airframe and flight controls and document the wreckage to calculate, among other things, the plane's angle of impact. Depending on the circumstances, other staff members interview witnesses and comb through aircraft maintenance records.

All of this activity is in dramatic contrast to the situation when flying was in its infancy. Nick A. Komons>, former chief historian of the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and author offour books about air commerce, has described early aviation in his book, Bonfires to Beacons (recently reissued by the Smithsonian Institution Press): "Prior to 1926, an American engaged in flying either for a livelihood or for pleasure could go about his business and scarcely notice the existence of federal, state, or local authority."

Moreover, he writes, "the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce. which investigated crashes in the early days, actively resisted the release of its reports.

They were worried that the facts might harm the infant air-passenger industry."

Once a "would-be birdman" was airborne, Komons writes, he "was not required to abide by any rules of flight.

There were none .... He could dive, spin, buzz, or do a figure eight-perform any outrageous stunt-and answer to no one for his actions."

Nowadays, pilots who survive outrageous stunts, or even minor lapses in vigilance, do indeed answer for their actions-to a Safety Board Go-Team. The investigators say they never get used to seeing dead bodies, and these images are in their minds when they dish out hardnosed criticisms. Careers might be ruined, they say, but in the process they may teach others how to avoid mistakes and save countless lives.

0 About the Author: Kenneth C. Danforth writes for Smithsonian News Service.

I Living ~!!!!RNature

Biologist Edward Osborne Wilson, a modern-day Darwin, warns that unless something is done to preserve the planet's endangered plants and species, humanity itself will be at peril.

S

weat plastering the shirt to his back, the man hurries through a ruined pasture.

After searching all day, he is exultant to have finally found a remnant patch of rain forest. Entering the grove, he scans several araucaria pines for familiar insects.

But instead of the teeming communities of tiger beetles and ants he expects to find, he spies only a few stray ants. Dropping to his knees, he pulls out a magnifying glass.and riffles anxiously through the leaf litter. Calm down, he tells himself: They can't all have disappeared. Then suddenly he senses that the light filtering through the canopy is far too bright, and looking around he sees only fields. The trees are just a windbreak. The rain forest has vanished like a mirage.

This recurring dream always leaves Edward Osborne Wilson with a terrible sense of urgency. Floating to consciousness, he worries, what more can I do to forestall this calamity?

Harvard professor, controversial father of sociobiology, and international authority on ants, Wilson already knows where his skills lie, and he is all too familiar with the difficulties of juggling competing demands on his time. But now the stakes are higher, his earlymorning worries more intense: With the publication of his book, The Diversity of Life (Harvard University Press, 1992), he has sounded a poignant and powerful alarm over species loss and has reluctantly assumed the demanding role of defender of the planet's endangered plants and animals.

"This is a make-or-break decade," says the modern-day Darwin.

"Humanity's future is in the balance."

Indeed, all other environmental problems pale beside the ongoing extinction crisis. In the next three decades, fully a fifth of the Earth's species could vanish forever. Yet currently, little is being done to preserve our rich natural heritage.

Wilson hopes to change that. He argues passionately that the hemorrhaging of biological wealth not only destabilizes ecosystems and squanders priceless sources of medicines, crops, and fuel, but alsomost frightening to Wilson-eats away at the human soul. Human beings, he contends, have a natural affinity and reverence for living things, attachments that are not simply inculcated by culture but deeply ingrained in basic genetic makeup. "If we let too many species go," he warns, "we face an enormous psychological and spiritualloss."

This grand yet sobering worldview had its origins for Wilson in something humblingly small-the ant. As the bespectacled, unassuming professor readily acknowledges, he is first and foremost an ant man, or myrmecologist. Three colonies of leaf-cutter ants in plastic tubs dominate his office at Harvard's Museum of Compara-

tive Zoology. He has discovered (or, in the.parlance of taxonomists, "described") some 300 species, and withe-ntomologist Bert Holldobier, he has written the definitive volume on the creatures, The Ants, winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction. (He also won a Pulitzer in 1979 for his book On Human Nature.)

Agts awakened Wilson's enduring interest in the biological roots of social behavior. As a young instructor at Harvard in the late 1950s, he was the first to detail the way ants communicate with chemicals. He removed the tiny Dufour's gland from the abdomen of a fire ant and crushed it against a glass plate near a captive colony.

He was astounded to see ants boil out of the nest and follow the chemical trail across the glass. He w~nt on to discover that a variety of social behaviors are controlled by chemicals, including "necrophoric" substances that, when painted on live ants, prompted workers to cart the protesting "corpses" off to a refuse pile.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Wilson traveled widely throughout the Pacific collecting and observing ants. He often ventured into remote regions like New Guinea's Huon Peninsula, an enchanted world, he recalls, of "interlocking trunks and branches blanketed by a thick layer of moss, orchids, and other epiphytes that ran unbroken off the

tree trunks and across the ground." The forest had not yet been explored by biologists, so it was exciting scientifically. But it also was nourishing spiritually: "It was like entering heaven; I could expand my soul indefinitely."

The jewel of the forest was the resplendent bird of paradise, but Wilson confesses that he never saw one because his eyes usually were trained on the complex insect kingdom at his feet. Increasingly, he was captivated by insect societies and the parallels he saw between them and vertebrate societies.

Consider termites and monkeys, he later wrote: Both live in cooperative groups that defend territories. Group members communicate hunger, hostility, rank, and reproductive status through as many as 100 sounds, gestures, and chemical signals, and in both societies there is a well-marked division of labor.

He became convinced that it was not just lower animals with small brains whose social behavior was genetically programmed; it appeared that behavior in a wide range of species was shaped by eons of genetic evolution in much the same manner as physical traits are formed. It made perfect sense from an evolutionary point of view that the most socially adept of any species would be most likely to pass on their genes to offspring.

In 1975, Wilson advanced these ideas in a groundbreaking book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis. For the most part, he analyzed the social behavior of nonhuman animals, from social ranking of lemurs and lions to territorial displays of lizards. But in the final chapter he broadened his theory to encompass people, postulating a genetic component to aggression and warfare, territoriality and the division of labor between the sexes, among other social traits.

The book ignited a firestorm. Though it generally received favorable reviews in scientific journals, some academics accused Wilson of providing a genetic justification for a raft of social ills, including racism and sexism. He tried to reassure his critics, explaining that in human beings only a small fraction of behavior is genetic and that most is shaped by cultural forces. But the attacks continued, reaching a fever pitch in the 1978 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The hotel was packed for the panel on sociobiology, and when it was Wilson's turn to speak, a dozen people stormed the stage, screaming "Nazi!" and "racist!"

One of the hecklers, yelling "You're all wet," dumped a carafe of ice water on Wilson's head.

Ultimately, Wilson won the National Medal of Science for his scholarship in the field, and he maintains that the sociobiology wars had little lasting impact on him personally. Even so, he concedes that he feels "safer as a person" out of the public eye.

Indeed, he feels safest in the woods, especially subtropical forests like those he explored growing up in the Florida panhandle and southern Alabama. For Wilson, the natural world salved the loneliness of a childhood filled with wrenching separations and loss. His parents divorced when he was seven, and his mother moved away to Kentucky. His father, Edward Sr., jumped from one job to another, and, as a result, Ed Jr., an only child, attended 16 schools in 11 years, skipping a grade because of rapid progress.

In contrast to his chaotic home life, the natural world was reassur-

ingly constant. No matter where his family moved, within a day or two Ed Jr. would be out exploring nearby swamps and forests, butterfly net or snake handler's stick in hand. And there, amid the dense patches of cabbage palmetto, carolina parakeets, ivory-billed woodpeckers, and diamondback rattlers, he found companionship and a sense of community.

Even on excursions into the field today, he finds he derives real joy from seeing a familiar creature, especially if he hasn't encountered it for a while: "I actually find myself saying silently, 'Hello, little friend,' or 'Bingo, am I glad to see you.' " Given this background, it's not surprising that Wilson has mixed feelings about assuming a more public role as a bard of biodiversity.

But he feels he has no choice. Species are slipping into extinction at a stunning rate. The main culprit is habitat destruction. At least half of the world's species-and perhaps 90 percent-inhabit tropical rain forests, which are being destroyed at a rate of 17 million hectares a year. Wilson estimates that in these forests alone 27 ,000 species vanish each year.

Pollution and the introduction of exotic species-which crowd out native plants and animals-are also to blame. In recent decades, populations of migratory songbirds in the mid-Atlantic United States have dropped 50 percent. About a fifth of the world's freshwater-fish species are extinct or seriously threatened. Fungi, many of which aid the absorption of nutrients by plants, are on the verge of mass extinction in Western Europe: frogs and other amphibians are declining throughout the world.

And these are just the species known to science. The planet's biological storehouse is so unexplored that researchers can't even say for sure how many species exist: The total could be ten million or as many as 100 million, says Wilson. Marvelous diversity dwells in the most unexpected places. The plumage of a bird, for instance, can harbor dozens of species of feather mites, each specialized for a particular location, such as the vane of a primary wing feather. The cold, dark depths of the ocean support armies of worms, crustaceans, and mollusks. Insects are the most diverse of the 1.4 million species that have been described thus far. Yet their diversity is dwarfed by the wealth of species in the microscopic world of bacteria. It is estimated that a pinch of ordinary soil contains 4,000 to 5,0,00 species of bacteria.

Given such abundance, some skeptics maintain that a few million species could slip safely into extinction. But whenever a species dies, Wilson argues, a treasure trove of biological information encoded in its genes vanishes, too. All living species are survivors, shaped and honed by billions of acts of natural selection. All are very good at something, whether it is fighting bacterial pests or manufacturing oils, and in destroying them we block the development of a host of potential medicines, crops, petroleum substitutes, and fibers.

Despite limited research, dozens of species already have yielded vital medicines. A drug used to treat rheumatism and contusions, for instance, was derived from the saliva of the vampire annelid worm.

Fully one-fourth of all prescriptions filled by pharmacies each year are for substances derived from plants, and when drugs from microorganisms and animals are added in, the total jumps to 40 percent.

Species are slipping into extinction at a stunning rate. In the next three decades, fully a fifth of the Earth's species could vanish forever.

Wild plants also have helped researchers vanquish countless agricultural pests. For example, scientists in Mexico have scored a victory against leaf rust, a wheat blight, by crossing domesticated wheat strains with rust-resistant varieties found in Brazil.

An even more vital reason to protect biodiversity, Wilson argues, is to preserve the ecosystems that we depend on to enrich the soil, modify the climate, even create the air we breathe. Turning over a stump on a walk near his home in Lexington, Massachusetts, he pointed out a profusion of small and obscure life forms, organisms that "hold the world steady"-a metallic blue beetle, a centipede, mites, a crane fly, slugs galore, and a riot of orange, white, and yellow fungi, topped by green and eggplant-hued colonies of algae.

Without this life-sustaining matrix, Wilson says, "our tenure on Earth would be nasty and brief."

In what he calls a "traitorous digression," Wilson acknowledges that most ecosystems probably could lose a hefty fraction of their species and still function, at least in the short term. Though some species play essential roles-beavers' dam building, for example, creates pond ecosystems that are much different from free-running streams-most do not, so their extinction probably would have little practical effect on the rest of the system.

But loss of diversity has an insidious consequence, he argues.

Ecosystems with fewer species tend to be less stable in the long term, and in the event of global climate change, diversity will help determine which ecosystems collapse and which flourish, Wilson believes. Fossil evidence suggests that the ponderosa pine, now prevalent throughout America's Rocky Mountain forests, was a marginal species at the end of the last ice age. Similarly, some of today's rare and apparently insignificant species may be the ones best able to cope with the climate of the next century.

Yet for Wilson, the most compelling reason to fight for every scrap of biodiversity has more to do with humanity's emotional health. In Diversity of Life, he writes, "Signals abound that the loss of life's diversity endangers not just the body but the spirit. If that much is true, the changes occurring now will visit harm on all generations to come." On the face of it, a spiritual argument seems a stretch for a scientist whose roots are in evolution and entomology. But in fact, it is a logical outgrowth of his lifelong study of the biological bases of behavior. Wilson contends that human beings inherit a tendency to feel an affinity and awe for living things, the same way we are predisposed to be territorial or protect our young at all costs. And when we destroy the natural world we "court spiritual disaster."

According to Wilson, this biophilic response is fundamental and complex. How could it be otherwise? he asks. "The brain evolved into its present form over a period of about two million years, from the time of Homo habilis to the late Stone Age of Homo sapiens, during which people existed in hunter-gatherer bands in intimate contact with the natural environment. Snakes mattered. The smell of water, the hum of a bee, the directional bend of a plant stalk mattered. The naturalist's trance was adaptive; the glimpse of one small animal hidden in the grass could make the difference between eating and going hungry in the evening."

Indeed, recent research supports Wilson's notion of a genetic spirituality. Biophilia may well explain why individuals fill their homes with plants and pets and are instinctively drawn to certain landsfapes. It may explain why human beings are reassured by the thought of untrammeled wilderness and outraged when it is despoiled.

Wilson [whose latest book, Naturalist, was published last year] contends that until we better understand the depth and complexity of nature's hold on the human spirit, continuing to raze habitat is extraordinarily risky. Right now, it is mostly field biologists who dream at night of destroyed ecosystems and mourn, during the day, the passing of much-loved plant and animal species. But in time, as the casualties mount, many more may find themselves griefstricken. The loss of biodiversity, Wilson believes, is "the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us."

0 About the Author: Betsy Carpenter is a senior editor with U.S. News & World Report.

PAINTED PRAYERS American anthropologist Stephen Huyler has been photographing the home-grown art of rural India's women for many years. An exhibition of his photographs taken from his new book, Painted Prayers: Women's Art in Village India, just concluded in Delhi and will be shown in Calcutta this month.

J

ust today I was allowed a rare treat: To witness and partake in Lakshmi puja in Puri district, Orissa. Here I was-a tall, fair foreigner accepted as an equal by the members of a farming family that lives far from tourist centers and congested urban life.

For two days the women of the household had been painting the walls, inside and out, of their small one-roomed house using a white paste ground by stone from the rice they recently had harvested. One exterior wall was covered with a mural of an arched mound of paddy surmounted by lotuses; another with stylized elephants, flowers, trees, and vines.

This morning one daughter patiently strung garlands of marigolds while a second daughter

and a daughter-in-law painted the floor of the courtyard, the exterior verandas, and the entire inside floor with motifs dedicated to Lakshmi.

Small pairs of footprints were drawn in a curving line from the street, in through the courtyard, through the door, and into the house, stopping before a simply drawn lotus altar. They symbolized the footsteps of the goddess being prayerfully encouraged to enter the home. Lakshmi herself was represented by a pot brimming over with freshly harvested paddy in which was placed a small black stone to receive her spirit, the entire assemblage dressed in red silk and surmounted with garlands of flowers.

The women of the household ululated in

Far left: Women in Orissa paint nell' decorations on the walls outside their homes every Thursday during the two months dedicated to Goddess Lakshmi; here a woman covers over the previous week's paintings with a layer of mud and cow dung before she starts aji-esh. Below left: In laisalmer district, Rajasthan, a woman primes the walls of her courtyard with clay and camel dung before beginning her painting. Below: A woman in Kutch district, Gujarat, gives finishing touches to a clay panel inset with mirrored glass pieces.

Top: Women never sign their wall and floor decorations. However, even as this girl in Puri district, Orissa, was crafting elaborate peacocks to celebrate her sister's wedding, her brother signed theirfather's name on the painting.

Above: [n Orissa women usually do not sketch on the wall before painting. These three walls were painted by one woman in less than an hour and a half.

Right: Elephants decorate the walls of a house in Deoria district in Uttar Pradesh where a wedding is to take place; the groom's aunt is weaving a basket for the new couple.

Above: Although it originated as a Hindu custom, the practice of drawing kolams is also popular among Christians and Muslims in Tamil Nadu. After painting other symbols and prayers on thefamily's lime kiln in Madurai district, this Christian woman completes a colorful kolam. high-pitched voices, a ringing, singing sound to request Lakshmi's presence. With lamps and incense lit, Lakshmi was welcomed into the home and into their hearts. There she would remain during the day while special foods were cooked for her and then eaten together by all the members of the family.

Once the family was blessed and their prosperity ensured, a final ceremony invited the goddess to depart.

Observing these activities sums up for me the essence of my work in India. As an American and a non-Hindu, my heritage and my family belief system are very different from those of this Oriya farming family. And yet once again, an Indian family has permitted me to share in a ritual of intimate devotion. I am again in awe of the warm generosity of the Indian people, of their willingness to con tinualiy open their hearts and their minds to me.

I have spent an average of four months each year for the past 23 years traveling in India and documenting its rural cultures. I began my work as a cross-cultural surveyor-----<:onstantly visiting different parts of the subcontinent and observing and recording their rural architecture, tools, crafts, and arts. Over the past 15 years I have

focused more and more upon ritual arts-the means by which individuals embellish their lives as a part of personal devotion, I became fascinated with the reciprocal relationship between devotee and deity in Hinduism when I was conducting research for my doctorate at London University's School of Oriental and African Studies. The focus of my thesis was Indian votive terracottas: Images sculpted of clay and offered to the gods.

Over a period of several years I interviewed 109 potters living in 54 districts in 15 states. (A book based upon that research, Gifts of Earth: Terracottas and Clay Sculptures of India, is to be released by Mapin in Ahmedabad later this year.) These potters and the devotees who commissioned their products affected me profoundly. In India, most terracotta sculptures-some elaborate, others simple-are important for one moment only, the moment they are offered to the gods. After the offering, they have no further value and are left in the shrine to crumble and decay. I am in awe of this sense of impermanence in art.

All existence in India begins with mitti, translated as earth, mud, clay, and terracotta. Hindus believe that it is the most primal substance, that of which the world is fashioned. Mittiis the earth upon which man is born and lives. The food that sustains him and the fibers of the fabrics that clothe him, all are nurtured in mitTi. Mitti is used to make the walls and roofs of his houses; the vessels he uses for carrying, storing, washing, cooking, eating, and worshiping; the gifts he gives to his gods; and sometimes even the images of his gods. Numerous Indian myths and legends describe the earth as the body of the god or goddess, composed of soil. The mother goddess, worshiped throughout India today, is most closely associated with the ground and clay and all creation. Religious rituals equate the fashioning of a simple clay figurine with the birth of the goddess: The goddess is clay and clay is the goddess. After the rituals, she is dissolved in wat~r and returned to the earth-the Indian counterpart of the biblical "Dust to dust."

As I traveled around the subcontinent in search of shrines to which terracottas were given, I observed everywhere houses painted with ritual designs intended to propitiate the gods. Most of these paintings adorned the walls and floors of simple mud houses. As I began to try to gather material on wall and floor decorations in India, I made two discoveries-that such decorations had received little scholarly attention, and that almost all of these decorations were made by household women, not professional artists. The remarkable creativity and diversity of these women had been largely ignored. Often paintings

adorn houses on primary routes to major tourist sites; yet, when asked, few travelers appear to have seen them, often too overwhelmed by India's demands on their senses.

It is time that the world acknowledges-and honors-the creativity and artistic talents of Indian women.

At some point each year, the women of almost every Indian household create decorative designs on their walls or floors to cleanse, beautify, honor, bring good luck, ward off evil, or to pray for a specific wish.

Most often the purpose is spiritual. The paintings act as visual prayers to secure the gods' blessings on the households. Each region and group of communities have a unique artistic style and each household creates its own innovations. Given India's vastness, the range of this art is breathtaking.

These wall and floor decorations are usually ephemeral, remaining hours, days, or weeks before being worn off by the abrasion of activity or weather and replaced by new designs. In some areas decoration is done frequently: Daily in the far south or weekly in eastern India. Elsewhere it is done less often.

Women throughout the subcontinent herald important occasions either by repainting their entire houses or by decorating auspicious portions of them. The most common occasions are the festivals associated with specific gods and goddesses and the rituals involved with seasonal changes (the planting of crops, the first rains, harvest., and special days associated with phases of the sun and moon, or configurations of the planets and stars). Women also paint their walls and/or floors to celebrate significant family events such as birth, puberty, marriage, pregnancy, and death. Even the arrival of an important guest or the visit of a son or daughter who has moved away may be cause for fresh decoration of the home.

Occasionally when I have returned to visit friends in a village after a long absence, I find they have repainted their homes with beautiful designs in expectation of my arrival! It is certainly a tender and heartwarming tribute to friendship.

Wherever I travel in India, I find different names for household decoration. In the western Himalayas, for example, it is called apna or likhnu; in Uttar Pradesh it is cowka puma or sona rakhna; in the Gangetic Plain to the east it is aripan or alpona, and in Orissa it is chila. In western India it is known as salhiya and mandana, while in central and southern India it is called rangavalli, rangoli, muggu, and kolam.

The majority of Indian women are still illiterate. Interestingly, throughout India, except in the eastern state of Orissa, the verb used to describe the ornamentation of homes

is "to write," not "to paint." Women view their paintings as a means of communicating directly with the gods. Kamala, a basket weaver in northern Bihar, remarked: "First I am silent and in quiet the picture is made in my heart. Then I bring it out whole from my heart to write on the walls. It is a message from me to the Mother (Lakshmi), my painted prayer, and when it is pure I know she will hear me."

The front door of a house, its threshold, and the walls that face the street or road are commonly decorated either as an invitation for the goddess's protection or for prevention of evil. In many areas this painting is an unadorned whitewash or flat color that the uninformed might regard as simple household maintenance.

It is not. In fact, the walls, particularly at the front of a house, are the boundaries that separate within from without, the familiar from the foreign, the known from the unknown.

A farmer's wife in Sawai Madhopur district, Rajasthan, told me: "How can I know what is outside my house? Anything might be out there! I must protect my family from danger. It is my primary duty in life. So I paint my house inside and out. At normal times just simple paint is enough. One color made from reddish

Above: A woman in Salmi Madhopur district in Rajasthan works on a mandana, afloor decoration that is painted on every important occasion-birth, marriage,festivalsincorporating the symbols associated with the event. Right: Many houses in the small hilly lanes of urban Jodhpur are painted bright blue, a trend that is said to have begun some years ago when a woman accidentally put too much blue in her whitewash.

earth covers the whole house. For important festivals such as Diwali, my daughters and I make elaborate mandanas (floor paintings) on the ground outside the house and just inside the front door. These prevent any evil from entering. Then we paint designs on all the outside walls, usually peacocks or elephants or other symbols that we know Goddess Lakshmi likes.

We believe that if the painting is pleasing to her, then she will want to bless our home and our family will prosper."

Before sunrise on every day of the year, the women living in more than a million homes in Tamil Nadu paint the ground in front of their houses with new designs .. They pride themselves in never repeating a design. Created of rice powder, plain or brightly colored, the paintings last only an hour or two before they

Top: The reputed artistic sensibility of the women of Kutch district in Gujarat is evident in the sophisticated compositions and color combinations used on the walls of their homes. Above: While everyday kolams are usually made with white rice powder, on special occasions such as Pongal, the women of Tamil Nadu use brightly colored powders. Above right: The surfaces of verandas in northern Madhya Pradesh are outlined with two muted tones of slip, a mixture of cow dung and mud. are worn away underfoot. Each day in each house a different design-a tradition that has continued for centuries, perhaps thousands of years! The magnitude of this creativity is inconceivable. My mentor and good friend, the famous Bharatanatyam dancer and teacher Rukmini Devi Arundale, once told me: "In nature around us, beauty is fleeting; it has no permanence. Droplets of morning dew on a leaf, the billowing shapes of clouds, the dancing movements of a bird, the soft eyes of a calf, the smile of a young child-these all change quickly. They are not frozen in time. Why should art be frozen, be still? So much of our art here is made only for the moment. It is beautiful right now. The artist knows it, and

the gods surely know it. The earth just for this moment is more beautiful because of it. What more is needed? It changes as we change, as the day changes, until again we make something of beauty." No two alike and yet in common purpose, these paintings link mother and daughter to countless past generations and to the women of every family, community, and occupation.

Painting the house forms part of Indian women's traditional activity, which is centered in the home or in the fields around the home, caring for the family, helping to raise and harvest crops, and preparingJmeals.

Women are the authorities on family tradition, particularly that regarding ritual and faith. Through the conscientious maintenance of inherited customs and beliefs they ensure their families' wellbeing. Unlike the arts of men, ritual arts are not relative to vocation. The men who paint murals on household or temple walls in India are professionals. Their works are their livelihood and are intended to last decades, even centuries.

The decorations that Indian women apply to their walls and floors as invocations to the gods for protection, though ephemeral, are vital to their very existence.

Wherever I have traveled in India the women have happily allowed me to document these paintings, although some regard me as

odd for photographing and wrItmg about images that they view as personal statements of devotion. For years I have been bringing back color photocopies of my slides to show and give to villagers. This year I have been able to bring back my new book: Painted Prayers: Women's Art in Village India. The excitement generated by women seeing themselves and their paintings in this book is deeply rewarding. I tear out pages for them, occasionally giving copies of the entire book to those women who have been particularly helpful in its genesis. Equally exciting is being able to show them photographs of the paintings produced in other areas of South Asia, to let them know that this art form is all pervasive, that it ties them to the identity and creativity of women across the country. Perhaps in some small way it may even encourage them to carry on this beautiful tradition.

Regrettably, each time I come to India I find fewer and fewer examples of this art. In some areas it has almost entirely disappeared. If this ancient tradition truly has no value, then it should be discarded. However, in my experience I have found much to value. The paintings appear to provide balance in a world of chaos, moments of serenity in the midst of life's ceaseless demands, a form of creative self-expression for women, who otherwise are often repressed and discriminated against.

At 5:00 a.m. a few weeks ago, I was walking along a street in Sri Rangam, Tamil Nadu, doing one of the things I love best in life: Watching the fluidity of line as women and girls rapidly drew their colorful morning kolams. It was the first day of the annual Pongal festival. The whole street was transformed into an explosion of color and pattern.

The curvaceous lines of one turned into an expanding lotus whose brilliance and intricacy would complement the windows of the Chartres Cathedral in France. Another had the bold serenity of the dome of a Persian mosque, while a third was a delicate mandala of butterflies in flight. Within two hours all of the paintings I had seen created were erased, dissolved into the dust of the street's morning activities. But their purpose was intact. They gave each woman a sense of worth and individuality, a moment to communicate with her deity, and to express her soul.

It is an art made for the moment and for itself alone, a lesson I find valuable in the midst of the hectic world in which I often find myself. And so as I soon return to Maine and to the family and the culture that I call home, I know that I will come again next year, the year after that, and for as long as I am able-to learn from the eloquent creativity that infuses the life I experience here in India.

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Above: A technician checks plastic granules at the GE Plastics India plant in Baroda. Right: A popular feature ofGE India joint ventures are work-out sessions, where employees are encouraged to make suggestions without fear of criticism.

Far right: Each Godrej-GE refrigerator goes through hundreds of tests before it leaves the factory.

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Connections and Commitments General Electric has been in the forefront of foreign investors in India.

In the past few years, the giant U.S. multinational has invested $100 millionand by the end of the decade it hopes to increase this to $500 million.

In the late 1960s, so the story goes, the United States asked Israel if it could borrow the services of General Moshe Dayan to lead America out of its quagmire in Vietnam. Israel agreed, provided that in exchange for its legendary war hero, America send two U.S. generals to Israel. The United States quickly said yes, then pulled out of the deal as soon as Israel named the two-General Motors (GM) and General Electric (GE).

Of course, no such deal was required to bring these venerable generals of American manufacturing to India.

India's program of economic liberalization has been enticement enough.

This was apparent in January when GE's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Jack Welch (see page 32), visited India to take stock of the company's investments-so far the largest of any U.S. corporation in this country-and to discuss the prospects for future investments. Says Welch, "I love India .. .India is a developing country with developed intellectual infrastructure ...India is going to be great in the next century."

Welch has taken GE to the number five spot on the Fortune 500 since he became its youngest chief, at 45, in 1981. This giant $60,000 million corpora-

tion, with headquarters in Fairfield, Connecticut, was founded more than a century ago by the inventor of the electric light bulb, Thomas Alva Edison. In 1993 it posted a dazzling $60,000 million in sales and was the second biggest moneymaker-$4,315 million-of all U.S. corporations.

Among the company's diverse range of products and services are aircraft engines, broadcasting, electrical distribution equipment, electric motors, industrial and power systems, locomotives, major appliances, engineering plastics, diagnostic medical equipment, finance, and lighting systems. And, with its insatiable drive for productivity and profits, GE is ever expanding. Over the past decade, it has set up scores of joint ventures (JVs) in several developing countries, India being among the most prominent.

Although GE's India connection goes back to 1902, when it built the country's first hydroelectric plant in Mysore, the company began its major investment forays here in the late 1980s when it accepted an invitation from the Indian Petrochemicals Corporation Limited (IPCL), a public-sector undertaking, to set up a JV in India to manufacture engineering plastics, a deceptively simple-looking, high-tech plastics material used in hosts of industries.

But the deal with GE almost didn't come through, says Sarup Chowdhary, who was then one of the chief negotiators for IPCL and who now heads GE Plastics India Limited. This was mainly because GE, which is accustomed to sales in thousands of millions of dollars, On January 25 in Bombay, Maharashtra Governor P.c. Alexander presented the annual award o/the Indo-American Society to General Electric CEO Jack Welch. Welch was cited/or contributing to goodwill and understanding between India and the United States, particularly through his role in forming the India Investment Group o/top American companies.

had a sale selling agent for engineering plastics in India whose yearly sales were a measly $1 million. GE didn't think there would be enough demand to warrant settjng up such a plant anytime soon-unless India liberalized and opened its economy to foreign investment.

"In the course of our discussions with GE," Ch6wdhary recalls, "they asked us a simple, straight question: 'Given our Indian experience, give us one good reason why we should collaborate with you.' To this, we gave an equally plain, businessman's reply: 'The demand for engineering plastics is bound to go up sooner than you think, and we are committed to manufacturing it within the country. So, this is perhaps your only chance to com~ to India. If you don't come, we'll approach SOmeone else, who may be the second best, even the third best. But somehow, we'll manage to meet the requirements of this raw material from within India.'"

Chowdhary, a bespectacled, soft-spoken chemical engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, says that "as the negotiations were on, fortunately

Above: Wipro-GE in Bangalore develops medical software for GE businesses around the world. At the applications development center of GE Plastics India in Gurgaon, a researcher (right) uses computer-aided design to analyze a plastic part;. General Manager Peter Sahviczek (center) checks a sample from a plastic molding machine; and lab executive Anju Srivastava tests plastics' tensile strength.

for us, Jack Welch, who has a background in plastics, came to India in 1989 on an exploratory trip--to gauge his company's investment potential in the country. We made a pitch to him, and GE Plastics India, a 50-50 partnership between GE and IPCL, came into being in 1991."

GE Plastics India comprises a manufacturing plant in Baroda and an applications development center in Gurgaon, near Delhi. When the project is completed in another two-three years, it will have a total investment of Rs. 7,000 million and produce 15,000 tons per year of advanced engineering plastics alloys, blends, and compounds. "We are already producing plastics worth about $15 million which means savings of precious foreign exchange through import substitution," says Chowdhary with pride. "In fact, we also have made modest beginnings in exports of this raw material, and soon we hope to export finished plastics."

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GE Plastics India is just one of about half a dozen JVs that GE launched here in the early 1990s, thanks to Jack

WeIch's faith in India .. Among them are Wipro-GE Medical Systems in Bangalore, which manufactures state-of-the-art CT scanners, ultrasound equipment, and medical applications software; GE Elpro in Pune, which designs and manufactures X-ray equipment; Godrej-GE Appliances in Bombay, which makes refrigerators and washing machines and will soon add a host of other innovative white goods; GE-Apar Lighting in Limbasi, Gujarat, to manufacture the entire international range of energy-efficient lighting systems; GE-Motors, a joint venture with DLF Industries in Faridabad, Haryana, to upgrade DLF's existing product line of electric motors as well as add new products; and GE Capital Services India Ltd., ajoint venture with HDFC (Housing Development Finance Corporation) to provide personal finance for consumer durables.

Although in existence only a few years, these JVs, nurtured assiduously to adhere to GE's stringent global standards for quality, are already widely respected here

and abroad for their world-class products.

"We decided in 1989-90 that we are going to make a major commitment to India, and as of now we have invested $100 million and have approvals from corporations for that number to go up to $200 million," says GE India President and CEO Scott R. Bayman, a native of Warren, Ohio, who has a master's degree from the Sloan School of Management of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"When we first came to India, our initial thrust was to take advantage of the emerging local market, but we're finding increasing success in exporting both products and components from here back into the GE distribution and manufacturing global network," adds Bayman. "So our view is that over time we'll have all of GE's major businesses here. In fact, we would like to recreate in India the success that GE has created in other parts of the world." By the end of this decade, GE India hopes to have an investment of $500 million with sales touching $2,000 million.

Bayman, who started his career with the other "general," General Motors, and later worked with AT&T and United Technologies before he joined GE, is Welchian in his actions and philosophy-impatient with delays, obsessed with quality and cost, and emphatic that "in present times no corporation can succeed in the global marketplace unless it can produce the best product and sell it at a price lower than that of any of its competitors."

Says Bayman, "We recognize that India is still an emerging industrial country going through major changes. But it has to accelerate the liberalization process and especially improve its infrastructure-power, roads, ports, airports-to reach global customers cost effectively and maintain delivery schedules."

On GE's part, Bayman says, "We are committed to be a good corporate citizen. We behave in India as we do anywhere else. For example, we are very sensitive to the environment issue. We make sure that our JVs conform to local environmental laws. In fact, if local standards are not as stringent as we have in the United States, we adhere to the American environmental standards which are perhaps the stiffest in the world."

To glimpse GE's concern for the environment, one need only pay a visit to its plastics CEO Sarup Chowdhary of applications development center GE Plastics India with his in Gurgaon.

The center is, indeed, deputy Rakesh Chopra, vice a gleaming testament to the fine president (finance), in art of cleanliness, so clean it could front of the applications serve as a model even for a hosdevelopment center in Gurgaon, which develops new pital. Not only that. The center's uses for engineering plastics energy-efficient architectural deand provides technical sign lets so much natural light services to customers. trickle into the working area that one could operate without electric lights on a sunny day.

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Perhaps General Electric's most significant contribution to India's economic growth is the tectonic shift it has helped to bring to the country's business environment, opening the floodgates to foreign investment.

As the company's Vice President (Business Development) Ashwani Gupta says: "Joint ventures are now being negotiated by the dozen each day, which, of course, demonstrates that India's businesses, often portrayed as rigid and competition shy, are in fact quite adaptable and dynamic. In the late 1980s hardly any multinational was interested in doing business in India because of its shackled, closed economy.

"However, when Jack Welch committed GE to be a major player here, he became the beacon, the inspiration 0 for others to follow."

More than any other executive, Jack Welch is knownfor breakthrough management ideas and the will to apply them. As General Electric's chief executive since 1981, Welch, 59, has led the revolution that is transforming GE from a stodgy industrial giant into one of the world's most valuable and competitive companies. Welch's remarks here are excerptedfrom the new book about his tenure at GE: Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will, by Noel M. Tichy and Stratford Sherman.

The authors spent more than 100 hours interviewing Welch, and spoke with scores of other GE staffersJrom heads of businesses to young management trainees. Tichy, a professor of organization at the University of Michigan, was a key participant in the GE revolution. A consultant there since 1982, he ran GE's Crotonville management-development school for two years. Sherman, a member of Fortune's board of editors, has been writing about GEfor more than a decade. Their book explains how companies and individuals can face accelerating change and intensifying competition-and win.

Jack Welchls

Lessons forSuccess he Value Decade has already begun, with global price competition like you've never seen. It's going to be brutal.

When I said the 1980s was going to be a white-knuckle decade and the 1990s would be even tougher, I may have understated how hard it's going to get.

Everywhere you go, people are saying, "Don't tell me about your technology, tell me your price." To get a lower price, customers are willing to sacrifice the extras they used to demand. The fact is, many governments are broke, and people are hurting, so there's an enormous drive to get value, value, value.

During the global expansion of the 1980s, companies responded to rising demand by building new factories and facilities in computers, airplanes, medical equipment-almost every industry you can think of. Then, when the world economy stopped growing, everybody ended up with too much capacity.

Globalization compounds the problem: It doesn't matter where you are anymore because distribution systems now give everybody access to everything.

Capacity can come from anywhere on the planet, and there's too much injust about every industry in every developed country. No matter where you go, it's the same story.

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his worldwide capacity overhang, coming at a time when everybody feels poor, is forcing ferocious price competition.

As it intensifies, the margin pressure on all corporations is going to be enormous. Only the most p.roductive companies.are going to win. If you can't sell a top-quality product at the world's lowest price, you're going to be out of the game. In that environment, six percent annual improvement in productivity may not be good enough anymore; you may need eight percent or nine percent. And while that bar keeps getting raised higher, higher, higher, we're all going to be experiencing slow revenue growth. It's brutal!

In our aircraft engines business our cus-

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From Contro! Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Noel M. Tichy¡ and Stratford

Sherman.

Stratford Sherman.

Bantam

Doubleday

Used

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1992 by Noel M. Tichy and

by permission of Doubleday.

Dell Publishing

Group.

Inc.

a division of

tomers aren't asking about the latest advances, the last two percent of fuel burn.

They want to know, "How much will it cost?

Can you provide financing? Can we walk away from the lease?" Boeing and ourselves lost a billion-dollar-plus bid at United Airlines to Airbus. Simply put, we couldn't afford to sell them the planes.

Technology is still absolutely critical, but in industry after industry it will be value driven.

Who can make the most energy efficient light bulb or refrigerator? Whose medical imaging system is the most cost-effective? The medical diagnostic imaging business is a perfect example of what's happening everywhere. The mar-

In the end, there's going to be a global standard for the environment, and anyone who cuts corners today will wind up with enormous liabilities down the road. ket is shifting away from the technology leader in the high-end niche to the guy with the basic, proven, low-priced systems that produce acceptable images. Governments have decided they don't want to pay more for health care, so if you're trying to pitch some new hot technology the customer is going tOJsay, "See you later." nvironmental soundness is another form of value. We won an order from Swissair for jet engines because ours produced the lowest emissions. Multinational companies have to maintain world class environmental standards wherever they go-even where local laws are lax-in their plants as well as their products. In the end, there's going to be a global standard for the environment, and anyone who cuts corners today will wind up with enormous liabilities down the road. If we're going to be global citizens, we can't have one set of standards in some

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countries and different standards in others.

Some of the biggest dangers I see ahead come from governments. You can do everything right as a manager, and then government deficits, or interest rates, or whatever, can cause a currency to change value by 30 percent or 40 percent and knock your business completely out of whack. About 65 percent ofGE's manufacturing base is still located in the U.S. I have to worry about whether government policies here will allow us to deliver the productivity we need to win on a global basis.

But it's not just the U.S.: Wherever you travel these days, you encounter increasing fear of government. Constituents want more.

And to get more, they seem willing to accept enormous increases in government power. I worry about a return to overregulation and protectionism. I don't want to see governments meddling in industrial policy-bureaucrats picking winners and losers. Governments set out to create Silicon Valley and wind up building the Motor Vehicle Department.

In terms of jobs, government may become the world's main growth industry. When the European Community was formed, it created thousands of jobs for bureaucrats. Now they are telling the French which cheese is good and which isn't. It's frightening!

I think the U.S. is in a great position competitively.

We're looking better compared with Germany and Japan than we did five or ten years ago, and many of our companies are in a position to win. We've restructured our industries. Our businesses have _better leaders than ever before. Our people have learned the value of their jobs and the principle that job security comes from winning. Some of the most passionate pleas for worker productivity I've ever read have been made by tough union leaders.

They lecture our managers on the subject at Crotonville. That change in attitude is one of the most positive developments I've seen.

The U.S. did have a gap in product quality before, but during the 1980s we made great strides in closing it. Our cars are better, and so are our computers and semiconductors.

We thought they'd all be Japanese by now, but they're not. And if you look at the J.D. (Continued on page 36)

Companies can't promise lifetime employment, but by constant training and education we may be able to guarantee lifetime employability.

Power surveys of customer satisfactionU.S. vs. foreign auto companies-we're pretty close. A few years ago few would have believed that could happen. hat we have to do now is educate our people. Companies have to get involved in the school systems, with dollars and volunteers. Within GE, we've got to upgrade workers' skills through intense and continuous training. Companies can't promise lifetime employment, but by constant training and education we may be able to guarantee lifetime employability. We've got to invest totally in our people.

For U.S. companies, at least, globalization is getting increasingly difficult. The expansion into Europe was comparatively easy from a cultural standpoint. As Japan developed, the cultural differences were larger, and U.S. business has had more difficulties there. As we look ahead, the cultural challenges will be larger still in the rest of Asia-from China to Indonesia to Thailand to India-where more than half the world lives. U.S. companies will have to adapt to those cultures if they are to succeed in the 21 st century.

Trying to define what will happen three to five years out, in specific, quantitative terms, is a futile exercise. The world is moving too fast for that. What should a company do instead? First of all, define its vision and its destiny in broad but clear terms. Second, maximize its own productivity. Finally, be organizationally and culturally flexible enough to meet massive change.

The way to control your destiny in a global environment of change and uncertainty is simple: Be the highest-value supplier in your marketplace.

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hen I try to summarize what I've learned since 1981, one of the big lessons is that change has no constituency.

People like the status quo. They like the way it was. When you start changing things, the good old days look better and better.

You've got to be prepared for massive

tion, employee satisfaction, and cash flow. If resistance. you're growing customer satisfaction, your Incremental change doesn't work very well global market share is sure to grow too. Emin the type of transformation GE has gone ployee satisfaction gets you productivity, qualthrough. If your change isn't big enough, ity, pride, and creativity. And cash flow is the revolutionary enough, the bureaucracy can pulse-the key vital sign of a company. beat you. When you get leaders who confuse Another thing I've learned is the value of popularity with leadership, who just nibble stretching the organization, by setting the away at things, nothing changes. I think that's bar higher than people think they can go. true in countries and in companies.

The standard of performance we use is: Be as Another big lesson: You've got to be hard good as the best in the world. Invariably to be soft. You have to demonstrate the people find the way to get there, or most of ability to make the hard, tough decisionsthe way. They dream and reach and search. closing plants, divesting, delayering-if you The trick is not to punish those who fall want to have any credibility when you try to short. If they improve, you reward thempromote soft values. We reduced employeven if they haven't reached the goal. But ment and cut the bureaucracy and picked up unless you set the bar high enough, you'll some unpleasant nicknames, but when we never find out what people can do. spoke of soft values-things like candor, I've made my share of mistakes-plenty of fairness, facing reality-people listened. them-but my biggest mistake by far was not If you've got a fat organization, soft valmoving faster. Pulling off a Band-Aid one hair ues won't get you very far. Pushing speed at a time hurts a lot more than a sudden yank. and simplicity, or a program like Work-Out Of course you want to avoid breaking things or [in which GEers of all levels team up to find stretching the organization too far-but genbetter ways of working), is just plain not erally human nature holds you back. You want doable in a big bureaucracy. Before you can to be liked, to be thought of as reasonable. So get into stuff like that, you've first got to do you don't move as fast as you should. Besides the hard structural work. Take out the layhurting more, it costs you competitiveness. ers. Pull up the weeds. Scrape off the rust.

Every organization needs values, but a lean verything should have been done in organization needs them even more. When half the time. When you're running an you strip away the support systems of staffs institution like this you're always scared at and layers, people need to change their habits first. You're afraid you'll break it. People and expectations or else the stress will just don't think about leaders this way, but it's overwhelm them. We're all working harder true. Everyone who's running something and faster. But unless we're also having more goes home at night and wrestles with the fun, the transformation doesn't work. Values same fear: Am I going to be the one who are what enable people to guide themselves blows this place up? In retrospect, 1 was too through that kind of change. cautious and too timid. I wanted too many To create change, direct, personal, two-way constituencies on board. communication is what seems to make the Timidity causes mistakes. We didn't buy a difference: Exposing people-without the profood company in the early 1980s because I tection of title or position-to ideas from everywhere, judging ideas on their merits. . didn't have the courage of my conviction.

We thought about it, we discussed it at You've got to be out in front of crowds, Croton ville, and it was the right idea. I was repeating yourself over and over again, never afraid GE wasn't ready for a move like that. changing your message no matter how much Another thing we should have done is elimiit bores you. You need an overarching mesnate the sectors right away. [GE eliminated sage, something big but simple and underthe sectors-a layer of top management bestandable. Whatever it is, every idea you tween the CEO and the operating busipresent must be something you could get nesses-in 1985.) Then we could have given across easily at a cocktail party with strangers. the sector heads-who were our best peoIf only aficionados of your industry can underpIe-big jobs running businesses. We should stand what you're sayiI?g, you've blown it. have invented Work-Out five years earlier. I wish we'd understood boundarylessness betnother take-away for me: Simplicity ter, sooner. [Boundarylessness is Welch's applies to measurements also. Too often term for the breaking down of barriers that we measure everything and understand nothdivide employees-such as hierarchy, job ing. The three most important things you need function, and geography-and that distance to measure in a business are customer satisfac-

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companies from suppliers and customers.] I wish we'd understood all along how much leverage you can get from the flow of ideas among all the business units.

Now that we've got that leverage, I wonder how we ever lived without it. The enormous advantage we have today is that we can run GE as a laboratory for ideas. We've found mechanisms to share best practices in a way that's trusting and open. When our people go to Xerox, say, or their people come here, the exchange is good-but in these "flybys" the take-a ways are largely conceptual, and we both have difficulty getting too far below the surface. But when every GE business sends two people to Louisville for a year to study the Quick Response program in our own appliance business, the ideas take on intensity and depth. [The Quick Response streamlining program enabled GE Appliances to cut the 80-day cycle time from receipt of an order to delivery of a finished product by over 75 percent. The business reduced inventory by $200 million and increased return on investment by 8.5 percentage points.] The people who go to Louisville aren't tourists. When they go back to their businesses to talk about Quick Response they're zealots, because they're owners of that idea. They've been on the team that made it work.

All those opportunities were out there, but we didn't see them until we got rid of the staffs, the layers, and the hierarchies. Then they became obvious. If I'd moved more quickly in the beginning, we'd have noticed those opportunities sooner, and we'd be further ahead than we are today. he only way I see to get more productivity is by getting people involved and excited about their jobs. You can't afford to have anyone walk through a gate of a factory, or into an office, who's not giving 120 percent. I don't mean running and sweating, but working smarter. It's a matter of understanding the customer's needs instead of just making something and putting it into a box. It's a matter of seeing the importance of your role in the total process.

The point of Work-Out is to give people better jobs. When people see that their ideas count, their dignity is raised. Instead of feeling numb, like robots, they feel important. They are important.

I would argue that a satisfied workforce is a productive workforce.

Back when jobs were plentiful and there was no foreign competition, people were satisfied just to hang around. Now people come to work with a

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different agenda: They want to win against the competition, because they know that the competition is the enemy and that customers are their only source of job security. They don't like weak managers, because they know that the weak managers of the 1970s and 1980s cost millions of people their jobs.

With Work-Out and boundarylessness, GE competwe're trying to differentiate itively by raising as much intellectual and creative capital from our workforce as we possibly can. That's a lot tougher than raising financial capital, which a strong company can find in any market in the world.

Trust is enormously powerful in a corporation. People won't do their best unless they believe they'll be treated fairly-that there's no cronyism and everybody has a real shot.

The only way I know to create that kind of trust is by laying out your values and then walking the talk. You've got to do what you say you'll do, consistently, over time.

It doesn't mean everybody has to agree. I have a great relationship with Bill Bywater, president of the International Union of Electronic Workers. I would trust him with my wallet, but he knows I'll fight him to the death in certain areas, and vice versa. He wants to recruit more members for the union. I'll say, "No way! We can give people everything you can and more!" He knows where I stand. I know where he stands. We don't always agree-but we trust each other. hat's what boundarylessness is: An open, trusting, sharing of ideas. A willingness to listen, debate, and then take the best ideas and get on with it.

If this company is to achieve its goals, we've all got to become boundaryless. Boundaries are crazy. The union is just another boundary, and you have to reach across, the same way you want to reach across the boundaries separating you from your customers and your suppliers and your colleagues overseas.

We're not that far along with boundarylessness. It's a big, big idea, but I don't think it has enough fur on it yet. We've got to keep repeating it, reinforcing it, rewarding it, living it, letting everybody know all the time that when they're doing things right, it's because their behavior is boundaryless. It's going to take a couple more years to get people to the point where the idea of boundarylessness just becomes natural.

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W

ho knows exactly when I'll retire?

You go when it's the right time to go.

You pray to God you don't stay too long.

I keep asking myself, "Are you regenerating? Are you dealing with new things? When you find yourself in a new environment, do you come up with a fundamentally different approach?"

That's the test. When you flunk, you leave.

Three or four times a year, I hop on a plane and visit something like seven countries in 15 days. People say to me, "Are you nutty~" No, I'm not nutty. I'm trying to regenerate.

The CEO succession here is still a long way off, but I think about it every day. Obviously, anybody who gets this job must have a vision for the company and be capable of rallying people behind it. He or she has got to be very comfortable in a global environment, dealing with world leaders. Be comfortable dealing with people at all levels of the company. Have a boundaryless attitude toward every constituency-race, gender, every-

Another thing I've learned is the value of stretching the organization, by setting the bar higher than people think they can go.... Invariably people find the way to get there.... thing. Have the very highest standards of integrity. Believe in the gut that people are the key to everything, and that change is not something you fear-it's something you relish. Anyone who is too inwardly focused, who doesn't relish customers, who isn't open to change, isn't going to make it.

Finally, whoever gets the job will have to have what I call an edge~an insatiable passion for winning and growing. In the end; I think it will be a combination of that edge and those values¡ that will determine who gets this job.

I think any company that's trying to play in the 1990s has got to find a way to engage the mind of every single employee. Whether we make our way successfully down this road is something only time will tell-but I'm as sure as I've ever been about anything that this is the right road.

If you're not thinking all the time about making every person more valuable, you don't have a chance. What's the altemative~ Wasted minds? Uninvolved people? A labor force that's angry or bored~ That doesn't make sense!

If you've got a better way, show me. I'd love to know what it is.

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• Keep In g th e M omentum • G Olng ENERGY

On her second visit to India in less than a year last month, U.S. Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary joined Minister of Power N.K.P. Salve and Minister of State for NonConventional Energy Sources S. Krishna Kumar in overseeing the signing of 23 IndoU.S. energy-development projects valued at $1,400 million. This brought to $9,900 million the value of bilateral energy agreements signed since O'Leary's first trip to India last '\IOU July. :heyinclud~ agreements reached BSES .1\Ill I, IIIthe Illtenm dunng VISitSby Salve and EPRI. USI Kumar to the United States and by U.S. Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown to Representatives from the Electric Power India (see SPAN, February 1995).

Research Institute of California and "As a result of these business arrangements, Bombay Suburban Electric Supply Ltd., both nations will become more competitive,in shake on their deal. international markets, creating newjobs in India and the United States and resulting in improved power generation capacity by the year 2000. livesin homes and villages," O'Leary said. "The • A partnership among Lockheed Enenergy partnerships offer light for children to vironmental Systems and Technologies of read and for hospitals to provide better care."

Texas, Econergy International Corporation of Minister Salve underscored this point, say- Colorado, and Tata Energy Research Institute ing, "Through our partnerships with U.S. to develop two 50-megawatt, bagasse-fueled companies, we are improving the lives of our power plants in Uttar Pradesh valued at $50 people by providing energy for better health million each. and educational opportunities, industrial • An MOU between Bechtel, the Apollo growth, and good jobs."

Hospital Group of India, and the Energy Among the agreements, large and small, Management Centre of the Ministry of Power signed last month were: to develop an advanced, 200-megawatt power• A memorandum of understanding (MOD) generating facility in Delhi. The overall value between EFH Coal Company of Pennsylvania of the project is $300 million. and Mokul International Private Ltd., to form a • An MOU between the Electric Power joint venture for a community development Research Institute (EPRI) of California and project involving solar thermal energy, coal Bombay Suburban Electric Supply Ltd., to preparation and power generation, fertilizerand form a partnership to evaluate the applicabilbuilding materials from coal ash, and waste- ity of EPRI's electricity transmission and water treatment. The $750 million project, to be distribution technologies for India for the funded from outside investors, willgenerate 100 purpose of cutting transmission losses and megawatts of power for a population of about lowering power costs.

100,000near Delhi and include construction of When questioned at a press conference greenhouses and a fish farm. about the size of some of the projects, O'Leary asserted that "the small deals are equally • An MOU between Dodson-Lindblom International, Inc., of Ohio' and Madhya Pra- important, especially [those concerned with] desh State Electricity Board to develop five alternative energy, because that's the energy small hydroelectric projects with an invest- that's going to come to the villages and make an immediate difference in the health and ment of $9 million.

• An MOU betweenthe BechtelCorporation ability to educate people in those villages and of California and KEI Energy Ltd., and the to change their lifestyle dramatically."

Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency O'Leary underscored this point when she to form a joint venture to acceleratecommercial visited Dhanawas, a village outside Delhi, to use of renewable energy technologies in India, see how residents were using the 50 photowith a goal of achieving 1,000 megawatts of voltaic lanterns she had given them last July and to learn more about their project for producing biogas energy.

Residents of Dhanawas welcome U.S. Energy During her four days in India, O'Leary, Secretary Hazel O'Leary with a dupatta along with Salve and Kumar, also inaugurated (top) and show off one of the photo voltaic the ENCON pavilion at the 11th annual Inlanterns (bottom) that she previously gave dian Engineering Trade Fair in New Delhi. them. O'Leary shows them a photo (middle) The United States was the largest exhibitor, from her visit to the village last July.

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with 24 of the 49 stalls at ENCON, which focused on energy conservation equipment.

One of the most popular exhibits featured electric-powered vehicles.

An Indo-U.S. workshop, attended by some 150 delegates, was held to discuss technology and policy issues related to electric vehicles, or EVs. Minister Kumar promised that the Indian government would give full support to EV designers and planners. Echoing similar views, Terry Myers, an official of the U.S. Agency for International Development, a sponsor of the workshop along with several Indian government agencies, stressed the need to collate information on EV programs. He urged EV planners to "invent the future."

Companies in America and India have been producing limited numbers of EVs for years.

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, for instance, produces electrically powered minibuses. Extensive discussion at the workshop revolved around research and development of cost-effective, longlasting batteries. Such power cells are essential before a mass market can be created for EVs. Workshop participants called for a combination of regulation and support from government-with complementary industrial efforts-to do such things as design clean-airisland areas, require that a certain percentage of vehicles be electric-powered, and specify exclusive EV use at airports, tourist parks, industrial estates, and other areas.

Delegates noted that many U.S. companies see India as a natural choice for battery production, because manufacturing costs here are low. India is also a potentially strong market for EVs, given the already high demand for powered vehicles, the increasing volume of poisonous emissions from internal combustion engines, and the country's dependence on imported crude oil.

At the agreements-signing ceremony, Secretary O'Leary emphasized America's interest in doing energy-related business with India. She said, "I think what you're seeing in the total that we have announced today is that India has made a vigorous start. The important thing is now to keep the momentum going."

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FOCUS

Jimi Jolley-the name fitstravels around the world helping people build play spaces for kids with recyclable materials and local volunteer labor. The areas he designs are meant for climbing, rolling, crawling, balancing, cruising midair along a cable, and sliding down banisters-quite different from the swings and seesaws at standard playgrounds. He uses whatever is easily found-old tires, chains, pipes, pulleys, cables, cable spools, and sand, among other things-to create low-cost play spaces that are easily replicated and require little maintenance and upkeep.

Jolley understands the importance of play in children's lives. He says his playgrounds offer children the opportunity "to choose from different alternatives and to manipulate their environment according to their own level of skill." They encourage learning, and can be used effectively to create an educational atmosphere. In all, he has completed nearly 200 jnnovative play areas in 15 countries, giving form and substance to the dreams of chil-

dren the world over.

Armed with some tools and a master's degree in early childhood education, James A. Jolley first came to India in 1989 to construct six low-cost playgrounds in Bombay's slum neighborhoods as part of a UNICEF project.

He has been back several times, most recently in December to create an activity park for the children of a school run by Yash Paper Mills at Faizabad in Uttar Pradesh. Within a few days Jolley had inspired staff from the mill and the children's parents to work as volunteers along with him. In less than a week, the team had prepared an unusual, fun-filled 530square-meter playground with 50 types of activities. The park's community swing, made of a honeycomb of tires-in which six to ten children can swing together-is a typical example of Jolley's belief in providing opportunities for "cooperative play" to balance the "competition in life" "Children get tired of standard stuff like swings, slides, and seesaws," says Jolley.

Jolley makes the final connection to a jungle gym under the "supervision" of a couple of concerned clients at Faizabad, where old tires and pipes were used extensively

Jolley's fun comes at a low price: While a single "normal" playground with just five types of standard play equipment would have cost approximately Rs. 125,000, Jolley's 50-activity park (which the company plans to replicate at two more schools) cost Rs. 100,000.

Jolley's fee of Rs 20,000 for design and consultation went to Srijan, a Lucknow-based voluntary organization that sponsored his trip to India. "I like to work as a volunteer in such

community projects and only ask for traveling expenses," says Jolley, whose regular income comes from teaching assignments.

During this trip to India Jolley also worked in Bhimtal, Himachal Pradesh, on an "adventure hill" for a holiday camp being planned by a local social worker.

Jolley is impressed with the ingenuity and imaginativeness of Indian children. "A sevenyear-old in India can do more with a Swiss army knife than many 30-year-olds in America can do with an entire tool kit," he says.

Now off to Australia, this educator with construction skills continues his merry way around the world, bringing Jolley good times to the lives of children.

Points of Convergence Vinay Kumar Malhotra, a member of the political science faculty at Gandhi Memorial National College in Ambala Cantt., Haryana, has published a topical book on Indo-U.S. Relations in Nineties. A compilation of essays by eight contributors, all of whom are young academics from colleges and universities throughout India, the book examines contemporary trends in bilateral relations.

In light of Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao's visit to the United States last year, and the recent trips to India by U.S.Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, Defen"seSecretary William J. Perry, and Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown, the book provides a timely, thoughtprovoking look at the relationship between the two countries from a

number of angles. It covers various points of convergence, noting that leaders from both countries have called for a new "mutually beneficial partnership" in economic and trade matters.

Divergent views of India and the United States are discussed as well-among them nuclear nonproliferation, human rights, Kashmir, Pakistan, missile technology, and intellectual property rights.

"The dynamics of international relations have undergone a seachange," says Malhotra, with convergences outweighing divergences as India and the United States demonstrate a desire to enlarge their economic and trade ties. This apparent upswing in bilateral relations, despite some lingering problems, is cause for optimism, he writes.

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has been a mainstay for students of American literature at U.S. colleges and universities for decades. It is now available in India in one hefty volume of 2,000 plus pages, offering a comprehensive survey of American writing from the early 17th century to the present.

Arranged chronologically, the anthology begins with historical accounts of life in the New World written by early colonists. It continues with a selection of treatises and sermons on democracy and social order by such 18thcentury "revolutionaries" as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. The book moves through the 19th and 20th centuries, presenting short stories, plays, poetry, songs, essays, and literary criticism by virtually all major American writers up to the present day.

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This latest edition, according to the editors, responds to in-

creased critical attention being given to the literature of women and minorities. New additions to the section titled "Later Twentieth Century," which already included Alice Walker and Toni Morrison, are Amy Tan and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Edited by George and Barbara Perkins, The American Tradition in Literature is being distributed in India by Tata McGraw-Hili, and is available in paperback for Rs. 616.

5tn 5tdvocate Of 9\fsmviofence Glenn D. Paige, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Hawaii, received the Jai Tulsi Foundation's annual Anuvrat Award in New Delhi last month. The voluntary, nonprofit foundation recognizes individuals who strive for moral and spiritual enlightenment by making "small pledges" in their daily lives.

Paige, 65, has spent more than 30 years advocating non-

violent political alternatives in his teaching career at Princeton University and later at the University of Hawaii. He has visited India on many occasions, beginning in 1973, and is the author of several books, among them The Scientific Study of Political Leadership and To Nonviolent

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highlighting his belief that nonviolence is the key to human survival.

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Women & Men in Conversation According to Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics, men and women see themselves connecting to others in such profoundly different ways that the two sexes are really trying to communicate across two different cultures. In this excerptfrom her influential book You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, Tannen analyzes the different conversational styles of each sex in a way that does not judge one as superior to the other. Tannen is a rarity-an academically respected researcher whose work has tapped a vein of popular culture. Her book, which has been much talked about and credited by some couplesfor saving their relationships, spent numerous months on the New York Times Bestseller List.

was sitting in a suburban living room, speaking to a women's group that had invited men to join them for the occasion of my talk about communication between women and men. During the discussion, one man was particularly talkative, full of lengthy comments and explanations. When I made the observation that women often complain that their husbands don't talk to them enough. this man volunteered that he heartily agreed. He gestured toward his wife, who had sat silently beside him on the couch throughout the evening, and said. "She's the talker in our family."

Everyone in the room burst into laughter. The man looked puzzled and hurt. "It's true," he explained. "When I come home from work, I usually have nothing to say, but she never runs out. Ifit weren't for her, we'd spend the whole evening in silence." Another woman expressed a similar paradox about her husband: "When we go out, he's the life of the party. If I happen to be in another room, I can always hear his voice above the others. But when we're home, he doesn't have that much to say. I do most of the talking."

Who talks more, women or men? According to the stereotype, women talk too much. Yet study after study finds that it is

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men who talk more-at meetings, in mixed-group discussions, and in classrooms where girls or young women sit next to boys or young m~n. For example, communications researchers Barbara and Gene Eakings tape-recorded and studied seven university faculty meetings. They found that, with one exception, men spoke more often and, without exception, spoke for a longer time.

When a public lecture is followed by questions from the floor, or a [radio] talk-show host opens the phones, the first voice to be heard asking a question is almost always a man's. And when they ask questions or offer comments from the audience, men tend to talk longer.

Rapport-talk and Report-talk Who talks more, then, women or men? The seemingly contradictory evidence is reconciled by the difference between what I call public and private speaking. More men feel comfortable doing "public speaking," while more women feel comfortable doing "private" speaking. Another way of capturing these differences is by using the terms report-talk and rapport-talk.

F or most women, the language of conversation is primarily a language of rapport-a way of establishing connections and negotiating relationships. Emphasis is placed on displaying similarities and matching experiences. From childhood, girls criticize peers who try to stand out or appear better than others.

People feel their closest connections at home, or in settings where they feel at home-with one or a few people they feel close to and comfortable with-in other words, during private speaking. But even the most public situations can be approached like private speaking.

For most men, talk is primarily a means to preserve independence and negotiate and maintain status in a hierarchical social order. This is done by exhibiting knowledge and skill, and by holding center stage through verbal performance such as storytelling,joking, or imparting information. From childhood, men learn to use talking as a way to get and keep attention. So they are more comfortable speaking in larger groups made up of people they know less well-in the broadest sense, "public speaking." But even the most private situations can be ap-

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proached like public speaking, esta blishing rapport.

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Private Speaking: The Wordy Woman and the Mute Man What is the source of the stereotype that women talk a lot?

Dale Spender, [who also has written on the gender aspects of communication], suggests that most people feel instinctively (if not consciously) that women, like children, should be seen and not heard, so any amount of talk from them seems like too much. Studies have shown that if women and men talk equally in a group, people think the women talked more. So there is truth to Spender's view. But another explanation is that men think women talk a lot because they hear women talking in situations where men would not: On the telephone or in social situations with friends, when they are not discussing topics that men find inherently interesting; or, like the couple at the women's group, at home alone-in other words, in private speaking.

Home is the setting for an American icon that features the silent man and the talkative woman. And this icon, which grows out of the different goals and habits I have been describing, explains why the complaint most often voiced by women about the men with whom they are intimate is "He doesn't talk to me"-and the second most frequent is "He doesn't listen to me."

A woman who wrote to [newspaper advice columnist] Ann Landers is typical: My husband never speaks to me when he comes home from work. When I ask, "How did everything go today?" he says, "Rough ... " 'or "It's a jungle out there." (We live in Jersey and he works in New York City.)

It's a different story when we have guests or go visiting.

Paul is the gabbiest guy in the crowd-a real spellbinder. He comes up with the most interesting stories. People hang on every word. I think to myself, "Why doesn't he ever tell me these things?"

This has been going on for 38 years. Paul started to go quiet on me after ten years of marriage. I could never figure out why. Can you solve the mystery?

-The Invisible Woman Landers [in her column] suggests that the husband may not want to talk because he is tired when he comes home from work.

Yet women who work come home tired too, and they are nonetheless eager to tell their partners or friends everything that happened to them during the day and what these fleeting, daily dramas made them think and feel.

Sources as lofty as studies conducted by psychologists, as down-to-earth as letters written to advice columnists, and as sophisticated as movies and plays come up with the same insight: Men's silence at home is a disappointment to women.

Again and again, women complain, "He seems to have everything to say to everyone else, and nothing to say to me."

When something goes wrong, people look around for a source to blame: Either the person tht;y are trying to communicate with ("You're demanding, stubborn, self-centered") or the group that the other person belongs to ("All women are demanding"; "All men are self-centered").

Some generousminded people blame the relationship ("We just can't communicate"). But underneath, or overlaid on these types of blame cast outward, most people believe that something is wrong with them.

If individual people or particular relationships were to blame, there wouldn't be so many different people having the same problems. The real problem is conversational style.

and his girlfriend had decided to get married. "That's nothing?" the woman gasped in frustration and disbelief.

"Talk to Me!"

Home is Ihe selling for an American icon Ihal fearures Ihe silel1l man and Ihe lalkalive woman. And Ihis icon ...explains why Ihe complainl mosl oflen voiced by women about Ihe men wilh whom Ihey are inlimale is "He doesn'l /islen 10 me."

Women and men have different ways of talking. Even with the best intentions, trying to settle the problem through talk can only make things worse if it is ways of talking that are causing trouble in the first place.

Once again, the seeds of women's and men's styles are sown in the ways they learn to use language while growing up.

In our culture, most people, but especially women, look to their closest relationships as havens in a hostile world. The center of a little girl's social life is her best friend. Girls' friendships are made and maintained by telling secrets. For grown women too, the essence of friendship is talk, telling each other what they're thinking and feeling, and what happened that day: Who was at the bus stop, who called, what they said, how that made them feel. When asked who their best friends are, most women name other women they talk to regularly. When asked the same question, most men will say it's their wives. After that, many men name other men with whom they do things such as play tennis or baseball (but never just sit and talk) or a chum from high school whom they haven't spoken to in a year.

Men and women often have very different ideas of what's important-and at what point "important" topics should be raised. A woman told me, with lingering incredulity, of a conversation with her boyfriend. Knowing he had seen his friend Oliver, she asked, "What's new with Oliver?" He replied, "Nothing." But later in the conversation it came out that Oliver

Women's dissatisfaction with men's silence at home is captured in the stock cartoon setting of a breakfast table at which a husband and wife are sitting: He's reading a newspaper; she's glaring at the back of the newspaper. In [the popular comic strip], Blondie complains: "Every morning all he sees is the newspaper! I'll bet you don't even know I'm here!" Dagwood, reassures her: "Of course I know you're here. You're my wonderful wife and I love you very much." With this, he unseeingly pats the paw of the family dog, which the wife has put in her place before leaving the room. The cartoon strip shows that Blondie is justified in feeling like the woman who wrote to Ann Landers: Invisible.

Another cartoon shows a husband opening a newspaper and asking his wife, "Is there anything you would like to say to me before I begin reading the newspaper?" The reader knows that there isn't-but as soon as he begins reading the paper, she will think of something. The cartoon highlights the difference in what women and men think talk is for: To him, talk is for information. So when his wife interrupts his reading, it must be to inform him of something that he needs to know. This being the case, she might as well tell him what she thinks he needs to know before he starts reading: But to her, talk is for interaction.

Telling things is a way to show involvement, and listening is a way to show interest and caring. It is not an odd coincidence that she always thinks of things to tell him when he is reading.

She feels the need for verbal interaction most keenly when he is (unaccountably, from her point of view) buried in the newspaper instead of talking to her.

These cartoons, and many others on the same theme, are funny because people recognize their own experience in them.

What's not funny is that many women are deeply hurt when men don't talk to them at home, and many men are deeply frustrated by feeling they have disappointed their partners, without understanding how they failed or how else they cou'ld have behaved.

J Some men are further frustrated because, as one put it, "When in the world am I supposed to read the morning paper?"

If many women are incredulous that many men do not exchange personal information with their friends, this man is incredulous that many women do not bother to read the morning paper. To him, reading the paper is an essential part of his morning ritual, and his whole day is awry if he doesn't get to read it.

To this man, a woman who objects to his reading the morning paper is trying to. keep him from doing something essential and harmless. It's a violation of his independence-his freedom of action. But when a woman who expects her partner to talk to her is disappointed that he doesn't, she perceives his behavior as a failure of intimacy: He's keeping things from her; he's lost interest in her; he's pulling away. A woman I will call

Rebecca, who is generally quite happily married, told me that this is the one source of serious dissatisfaction with her husband, Stuart. Her term for his taciturnity is stinginess of spirit. She asks him what he is thinking, and he takes a long time to answer, "I don't know." In frustration she challenges, "Is there nothing on your mind?"

For Rebecca, who is accustomed to expressing her fleeting thoughts and opinions as they come to her, saying nothing means thinking nothing. But Stuart does not assume that his passing thoughts are worthy of utterance. He is not in the habit of uttering his fleeting ruminations, so just as Rebecca "naturally" speaks her thoughts, he "naturally" dismisses his as soon as they occur to him. Speaking them would give them more weight and significance than he feels they merit. All her life she has had practice in verbalizing her thoughts and feelings in private conversations with people she is close to; all his life he has had practice in dismissing his and keeping them to himself.

In the above example, Rebecca was not talking about any particular kind of thoughts or feelings, just whatever Stuart might have had in mind. But the matter of giving voice to thoughts and feelings becomes particularly significant in the case of negative feelings or doubts about a relationship. This difference was highlighted for me when a 50-year-old divorced man told me about his experiences in forming new relationships with women.

On this matter, he was clear: "I do not value my fleeting thoughts, and I do not value the fleeting thoughts of others." He felt that the relationship he was currently in had been endangered, even permanently weakened, by the woman's practice of tossing out her passing thoughts, because, early in their courtship, many of her thoughts were fears about their relationship. Not surprisingly, since they did not yet know each other well, she worried about whether she should trust him, whether their relationship was really right for her. He felt she should have kept these fears and doubts to herself and waited to see how things turned out.

As it happens, things turned out well. The woman decided that the relationship was right for her, she could trust him, and she did not have to give up her independence. But he felt, at the time that he told me of this, that he had still not recovered from the wear and tear of coping with her earlier doubts. As he put it, he was still dizzy from having been bounced around like a yo-yo tied to the string of her stream of consciousness.

In contrast, this man admitted, he himself goes to the other extreme: He never expresses his fears and misgivings about their relationship at all. If he's unhappy but doesn't say anything about it, his unhappiness expresses itself in a kind of distancing coldness. This response is just what women fear most, and just the reason they prefer to express dissatisfaction and doubts-as an antidote to the isolation and distance that would result from keeping them to themselves.

She asks him what he is thinking, and he takes a long time to answer, "I don't know." In frustration she challenges, "Is there nothing on your mind?"

Public Speaking: The Talkative Man and the Silent Woman So far I have been discussing the private scenes in which many

men are silent and many women are talkative. But there are other scenes in which the roles are reversed. Returning to Rebecca and Stuart, we saw that when they are home alone, Rebecca's thoughts find their way into words effortlessly, whereas Stuart finds he can't come up with anything to say. The reverse happens when they are in other situations. For example, at a meeting of the neighborhood councilor the parents' association at their children's school, it is Stuart who stands up and speaks. In that situation, it is Rebecca who is silent, her tongue tied by an acute awareness of all the negative reactions people could have to what she might say, all the mistakes she might make in trying to express her ideas. If she musters her courage and prepares to say something, she needs time to formulate it and then waits to be recognized by the chair. She cannot just jump up and start talking the way Stuart and some other men can.

Eleanor Smeal, president of the Fund for the Feminist Majority, was a guest on a call-in radio talk show, discussing abortion.

No subject could be of more direct concern to women, yet during the hour-long show, all the callers except two were men. Diane Rehm, host of a radio talk show, expresses puzzlement that although the audience for her show is evenly split between women and men, 90 percent of the callers to the show are men. I am convinced that the reason is not that women are uninterested in the subjects discussed on the show. I would wager that women listeners are bringing up the subjects they heard on The Diane Rehm Show to their friends and family over lunch, tea, and dinner. But fewer of them call in because to do so would be putting themselves on display, claiming public attention for what they have to say, catapulting themselves onto center stage.

Many men are more comfortable than most women in using talk to claim attention. And this difference lies at the heart of the distinction between report-talk and rapport-talk.

Report- Talk in Private Report-talk, or what I am calling public speaking, does not arise only in the literally public situation of formal speeches delivered to a listening audience. The more people there are in a conversation, the less well you know them, and the more status difference among them, the more a conversation is like public speaking or report-talk. The fewer the people, the more intimately you know them, and the more equal their status, the more it is like private speaking or rapport-talk. Furthermore, women feel a situation is more "public"-in the sense that they have to be on good behavior-if there are men present, except perhaps for family members. Yet even in families, the mother and children may feel their home to be "backstage" when Father is not home, "onstage" when he is: Many children are instructed to be on good behavior when Daddy is home. This may be because he is not home often, or because Mother-or Father-doesn't want the children to disturb him when he is.

Rapport-Talk in Public Just as conversations that take place at home among friends can be like public speaking, even a public address can be like

private speaking: For example, by gIVing a lecture full of personal examples and stories.

At the executive committee of a fledgling professional organization, the outgoing president, Fran, suggested that the organization adopt the policy of having presidents deliver a presidential address. To explain and support her proposal, she told a personal anecdote: Her cousin was the president of a more established professional organization at the time that Fran held the same posi tion in this one. Fran's mother had been talking to her cousin's mother on the telephone. Her cousin's mother told Fran's mother that her daughter was preparing her presidential address, and she asked when Fran's presidential address was scheduled to be. Fran was embarrassed to admit to her mother that she was not giving one. This made her wonder whether the organization's professional identity might not be enhanced if it emulated the more established organizations.

Several men on the committee were embarrassed by Fran's reference to her personal situation and were not convinced by her argument. It seemed to them not only irrelevant but unseemly to talk about her mother's telephone conversations at an executive committee meeting. Fran had approached the meeting-a relatively public context-as an extension of the private kind. Many women's tendency to use personal experience and examples, rather than abstract argumentation, can be understood from the perspective of their orientation to language as it is used in private speaking.

A study ofa faculty meeting at a secondary school in England found that the women's arguments did not carry weight with their male colleagues because they tended to use their own experience as evidence, or argue about the effect of policy on individual students. The men at the meeting argued from a completely different perspective, making categorical statements about right and wrong.

The same distinction is found in discussions at home. A man told me that he felt critical of what he perceived as his wife's lack of logic. For example, he recalled a conversation in which he had mentioned an article he had read in the New York Times claiming that today's college students are not as idealistic as students were in the 1960s. He was inclined to accept this claim.

His wife questioned it, supporting her argument with the observation that her niece and her niece's friends were very idealistic indeed. He was incredulous and scornful of her faulty reasoning; it was obvious to him that a single personal example is neither evidence nor argumentation-it's just anecdote. It did not occur to him that he was dealing with a different logical system, rather than a lack of logic.

The logic this woman was employing was making sense of the world as a more private endeavor-observing and integrating her personal experience and drawing connections to the experience of others. The logic the husband took for granted was a like gathering information, more public endeavor-more conducting a survey, or devising arguments by rules of formal logic as one might in doing research.

Another man complained about what he and his friends call

women's "shifting sands" approach to discussion. These men feel that whereas they try to pursue an argument logically, step by step, until it is settled, women continually change course in midstream.

Speaking for the Team

~__ 3 H/hen men do all the talking at meetings, many H'omen ...see them as .'dominating " the meeting, intentionally preventing \\'omenfrom participating, plubliclyffexing their higher-status muscles.

A final puzzle on the matter of public and private speaking is suggested by the experience I related at the opening of this chapter, in which a women's group I addressed had invited men to participate, and a talkative man had referred to his silent wife as "the talker in our family." Following their laughter, other women in the group commented that this woman was not usually silent. When their meetings consisted of women only, she did her share of talking. Why, then, was she silent on this occasion?

One possibility is that my presence transformed the privatespeaking group into a public-speaking event. Another transformation was that there were men in the group. In a sense, most women feel they are "backstage" when there are no men around. When men are present women are "onstage," insofar as they feel they must watch their behavior more. Another possibility is that it was not the presence of men in general that affected this woman's behavior, but the presence of her husband. One interpretation is that she was somehow cowed, or silenced, by her husband's presence. But another is that she felt they were a team. Since he was talking a lot, the team would be taking up too much time if she spoke too. She also may have felt that because he was representing their team, she didn't have to, much as many women let their husbands drive if they are in the car, but do the driving themselves jftheir husbands are not there.

Obviously, not every woman becomes silent when her husbffild joins a group; after all, there were many women in the group who talk a lot, and many had brought spouses. But several other couples told me of similar experiences. For example, when one couple took evening classes together, he was always an active participant in class discussion, while she said very little. But one semester they had decided to take different classes, and then she found that she was a talkative member of the class she a trended alone.

Su,ch a development can be viewed in two different ways. If talking in a group is a good thing-a privilege and a pleasurethen the silent woman will be seen as deprived of her right to speak, deprived of her voice. But the pleasures of report-talk are not universally admired. There a re many who do not wish to speak in a group. In this view, a woman who feels she has no need to speak because her husband is doing it for her might feel privileged,just as a woman who does not like to drive might feel lucky that she doesn't have to when her husband is there-and a man who does not like to drive might feel unlucky that he has to, like it or not.

A voiding Mutual Blame The difference between public and private speaking, or report-ta'ik and rapport-talk, can be understood in terms of

Some men arefitrtherfrustrated because, as one puts it, "When in the world am I supposed to read the morning paper?"

status and connection, It is not surprising that women are most comfortable talking when they feel safe and close, among friends and equals, whereas men feel comfortable talking when there is a need to establish and maintain their status in a group.

But the situation is complex, because status and connection are bought with the same currency. What seems like a bid for status could be intended as a display of closeness, and what seems like distancing may have been intended to avoid the appearance of pulling rank. Hurtful and unjustified misinterpretations can be avoided by understanding the conversational styles of the other gender.

When men do all the talking at meetings, many womenincluding researchers-see them as "dominating" the meeting, intentionally preven'ting women from participating, publicly flexing their higher-status muscles. But the result that men do most of the talking does not necessarily mean that men intend to prevent women from speaking. Those who readily speak up assume that others are as free as they are to take the floor.

In this sense, men's speaking out freely can be seen as evidence that they assume women are at the same level of status: "We are all equals," the metamessage of their behavior could be, "competing for the floor."

If this is indeed the intention (and I believe it often, though not always, is), a woman can recognize women's lack of participation at meetings and take measures to redress the imbalance, without blaming men for intentionally

locking them out.

The culprit, then, is not an individual man or even men's styles alone, but the difference between women's and men's styles. If that is the case, then both can make adjustments.

A woman can push herself to speak up without being invited, or begin to speak without waiting for what seems a polite pause. But the adjustment should not be one-sided. A man can learn that a woman who is not accustomed to speaking up in groups is not as free as he is to do so. Someone who is waiting for a nice long pause before asking her question does not find the stage set for her appearance, as do those who are not awaiting a pause, the moment after (or before) another speaker stops talking. Someone who expects to be invited to speak ("You haven't said much, Millie. What do you think?") is not accustomed to leaping in and claiming the floor for herself. As in so many areas, being admitted as an equal is not in itself assurance of equal opportunity, if one is not accustomed to playing the game in the way it is being played. Being admitted to a dance does not ensure the participation of someone who has learned to dance to a different rhythm.

0 About the Author: Deborah Tannen, a professor of linguistics at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., has also written three other and Discourse, That's Not books on therapeutic linguistics-Gender What I Meant, and Talking From 9 to 5.

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