April 1995

Indians on

Wall Street

Galbraith on Imperialism

The first company to manufacture a range of commercial vehicles in India. Since 1948.

A range that today comprises trucks from 7T GVW to 145T GTW, passenger buses from 26 to 90 seaters and diesel engines for industrial, genset and marine applications.

The first automobile manufacturer to receive the ISO 9002 certificate followed by the comprehensive

ISO 9001: 1994 certification.

The first commercial vehicle manufacturer to receive "Self Certification" status for defence supplies.

The first commercial vehicle manufacturer to introduce full air-brakes, multi-axled rigid trucks, articulated trucks, double decker buses, articulated vestibule buses and a host of special application vehicles in the country.

And now in technical collaboration with IVECO the European trucking giant and winner of "Truck of the Year" award for two consecutive years, Ashok Leyland offers the Cargo series of world class intermediate commercial vehicles.

Backed by a major transnational conglomerate, the Hinduja Group,and state-of-the-art technology from IVECO, Ashok Leyland is now geared to continue pursuit of its mission: Global Standards. Global Markets.

As a monthly publication, we're neither accustomed nor equipped to move with the speed of a daily newspaper or even a weekly newsmagazine. But when circumstances demand it, we can "crash in" coverage of a late-breaking event, as we did in this issue with the visit of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who departed India on March 31. This represents a measure of progress over the previous time an American First Lady came to India on her own. SPAN's coverage of Jacqueline Kennedy, who visited India from March 12 to 21 in 1962, did not appear until the May issue of that year.

A SPAN staffer who focused sharply on both visits is Photo Editor Avinash Pasricha. "What one misses today is the human contact w~th the VIP," he says. "For the 1962 cover picture, I was able to ask Mrs. Kennedy and Prime Minister Nehru to stop and pose for me as they walked up the steps of Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Nowadays, with the crush of still and video cameramen, one is positioned many meters away and must rely on long telephoto lenses for '3D-second photo opportunities.'

"Hillary Clinton carried herself with effortless poise and one could sense her genuine interest in women's and children's affairs. She had no hesitation in kneeling or sitting down on the floor to make friends with ordinary people to learn about their concerns and problems. Jackie Kennedy's trip, which also entailed visits to welfare centers and children in hospitals, had the trappings of a royal visit that included a special train trip to Agra and Fatehpur Sikri and Varanasi, and receptions with the former maharajas and maharanis of Jaipur and Udaipur."

Someone whose long and celebrated career brought him into close association with the Kennedys and the Clintons was 1. William Fulbright, who died earlier this year. Fulbright scholar Sachidananda Mohanty assesses for us the foreign-policy legacy of the late senator. He notes that John Kenneth Galbraith once said that of all men whom he had wished had been President on the basis of their foreign policy, Fulbright "stands first."

Galbraith was U.S. ambassador to India when Jackie Kennedy made her visit. It was a time of rising Cold War tensions and declining colonial rule. Galbraith refers to those times in an article this month about the death of imperialism, and he urges: "Now we must deal with the imperial legacy-the human suffering left in the wake of its retreat."

That is a sentiment that one can readily associate with Hillary Clinton and Jackie Kennedy-despite their differences in era, style, and approach.

- T.A H.

2

Hillary Rodham Clinton in India

4

Invest in Women and Children

by Hillary Rodham Clinton

7 9

Recalling J. William Fulbright The Paperless Newspaper

by Sachidananda

by Laurent Belsie

11

On the Lighter Side

12 16 21

Indians on Wall Street

28 30 32

Artists Who Make Furniture

35 41 42 44

Middle Age Isn't so Bad After All

byShobaNarayan

Computers on Dalal Street The Birth of Pop

Mohant;>

by Dan Milton

by Sandra Maxwell

Focus On ...

The End ofImperialism Romance and Poise RomanceontheRoad Sunset, Sunrise-A

by John Kenneth Galbraith

by Winifred Gallagher

byJugSuraiya byJoMcGowan

Neighborhood ofImmigrants

by Roger Rosenblatt

Front cover: Hillary Rodham Clinton with Ela Bhatt, founder of SEWA, the Self Employed Women's Association, in Ahmedabad.

Back cover: Jim Dine's Green Suit (1959, oil and cloth, 157x 61 em.) is an early example of pop art that glorified American popular culture. See page 21.

Managing Editorial Director, Designer, Manager, Research

Publisher. Thomas A. Homan; Editor, Guy E. Olson Editor, Krishan Gabrani; Copy Editors, A. Venkata Narayana, Snigdha Goswami; Assistants, Rashmi Goel, Ashok Kumar; Photo Editor, Avinash Pasricha; Art Nand Katyal; Contributing Designers, Gopi Gajwani, Suhas Nimbalkar; Staff Hemant Bhatnagar; Production Assistant, Sanjay Pokhriyal; Circulation D.P. Sharma; Photographic Services: USIS Photographic Services Unit; Services: USIS Documentation Services, American Center Library, New Delhi.

Photographs: Front cover, l-Avinash Pasricha. 2-Avinash Pasricha except left top & bottom center by R.K. Sharma. 3-Avinash Pasricha except left bottom by Jotinder Takhar and right center by Miriam Caravella. 4-Manish Swarup. 5-Avinash Pasricha.

6-R.K. Sharma. 7-Barry Fitzgerald. 8-Avinash Pasricha. 9-Melanie Stetson Freeman, Š The Christian Science Monitor. 12top& bottom right~hoba Narayan. 16courtesy Bombay Stock Exchange. l7-Dan Milton. 19 top-Avinash Pasricha; bottom-courtesy Bombay Stock Exchange. 21 top left-photo

by Ellen Page Wilson, courtesy Pace Wildenstein; top right-the Panza Collection, courtesy the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; bottom left-photo by Paul Ruscha; bottom right-private collection. 22 top-courtesy Thomas Ammann Fine Art, Zurich; bottom-private collection. 23-collection of Joyce and Jay Cooper, Phoenix. 24-collection of Mr. and Mrs. Bagley Wright, Seattle. 25-collection of Jean-Christophe Castelli, New York. 26private collection, courtesy of Gallery Bruno Bischofberger, Zurich. 27-courtesy the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Julia B. Bigelow Fund by John Bigelow. 28-29Smithsonian News Service Photos, courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 30courtesy Tamana Special School. 33-Avinash Pasricha. 43-Avinash Pasricha. 46-47-Paul Knowles. Back cover-private collection, courtesy Pace Wildenstein, New York.

Published by the United States Information Service, American Center, 24 Kasturba Gandhi Marg, New Delhi 110001 (phone: 3316841), on behalf of the American Embassy, New Delhi. Printed at Thomson Press (India) Limited, Faridabad, Haryana. The opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the U.S. Government. Use of SPAN articles in other publications isencouraged, except when copyrighted. For permission write to the Editor. Price of magazine, one yea&subscription (12 issues) Rs. 120(Rs. 110 for students); single copy, Rs, 12.

Hillary Rodhatn Clinton in India America's First Lady was in India March 28-31 as part of a two-week South Asian tour that included visits to Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

In advance of her trip, President Bill Clinton said: "As an advocate of children, families, and communities, the First Lady is the best imaginable emissary to deliver a message to South Asia that this Administration's concern for those countries is deeper than traditional geopolitics; that there is truly a human dimension to politics, policy, and diplomacy."

The photographs here show highlights from the three Indian cities Hillary Rodham Clinton visited-Delhi, Agra, and Ahmedabad. Beginning on page four is the transcript of a speech she delivered at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation in New Delhi.

Self Employed Women's Association. Right: In Ahmedabad the First Lady pauses for a prayer led by SEWAfounder

Ela Bhatt (left)

and. underneath, tries her hand at block printing. She also visited a SEWA-run

housing-loan bank

(not shown). As she departed, Clinton told Bhatt: "We'll see you in Beijing, " a reference to the upcoming u.N. Fourth World Conference on Women.

Missionaries of Charity. Left: The First Lady gets to know a young resident, and consults with a nun at Mother Teresa's

Government

leaders. Below.' Hillary Clinton meets, Fom top,

President and Mrs. Shankar K R. Narayanan

Dayal Sharma;

(u. S. Ambassador

Vice President

Frank G. Wisner in middle);

Minister

orphanage in Delhi. To the left are Margaret Alva, Union Minister for Personnel, and Maya Ray, wife of India's

of State for

ambassador to Washington,

External Affairs

Siddhartha Shankar Ray.

Salman Khursheed; and

Prayas Foundation for

Prime Minister

Integrated Learning. Bottom

P. V Narasimha

left: A student presents Hillary

Rao. President

Clinton with a scarf made at

Sharma held a

Prayas, a I'oluntary organization

dinner in Clinton's

that works with poor women and

honor and the

children in New Delhi. In center

Prime Minister

is Clinton's daughter, Chelsea.

hosted a luncheon

and at left is Mrs. Ravi Misra, a

after holding

Prayas official. In the guest

discussions

book; the First Lady wrote:

with her for more

"Thank youfor sharing your

than an hour.

work and love for children and the empowerment and education of all people. " Taj Mahal. Mother and daughter happily posefor photographers in Agra.

Roosevelt House. Below: The New Delhi residence of the American venue for a women's luncheon and an evening reception.

Bharatnatyam (boltom)

dance recital by Malavika Wisner; Shobhana

Bharlia,

execulive

Times; Lisa Caputo, press secretary

media specialist

in connection

was the

of Madras. Among Ihose al the luncheon

were, clockwise from left, Maya Ray, wife of Ambassador

wife of Ambassador Hindustan

Sarukkai

ambassador

The reception included a Ray; Christine

Wisner,

editorial direClOr of Ihe

to Hillary Clin/on; c.P. Jayalakshmi,

with the upcoming

UN. women's conference in Beijing;

Bonani Kakkar,founder Better Living in Calcutta; Assistant Meenakshi

Secretary

of People Unitedfor Robin Raphel, U.S.

of Stale for South Asiaj

Gopinath, principal of Lady Sh,.i

Ram College in New Delhi; the Firsl Lady; and Ranjana Kumari, direccor oflhe

Cen/re

(or Social Research in New Delhi.

Sabarmati Harijan Ashram. Righi: The Firsl Lady lays flowers in memory of Mahatma Gandhi in Ahmedabad

In a major speech at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation in New Delhi on March 29, text of which has been slightly abridged here, the American First Lady laid out her visionfor the social development of women and children.

She was introduced to an overflow audience in the Foundation's 700-seat auditorium by the Foundation's Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, who praised Hillary Clinton for "her long experience of work with children, families, and communities." The widow oftheformer Indian Prime

Minister also expressed her own commitment to serving women, children, and families through the efforts of the Foundation, which, she said, had adopted her laie husband's convictions "that the true wealth of nations lay not in their material prosperity alone but also in their human and natural resources. Its indices are the health of the environment, the intellectual and spiritual development of the individual, and the cultural assets of the community."

Invest in Women and Children

by HILLARY

I had not seen Mrs. Gandhi's introduction. But I must say that, after hearing it, she and I have been thinking very much alike as you will notice as I speak. It is a great honor for me to join you in New Delhi, and to be in the company of men and women who keep alive the high ideals for India and the world that Rajiv Gandhi helped to sustain.

I would like to thank the people of India for extending such a warm and gracious welcome to me. To President Sharma and Prime Minister Rao, I owe special thanks for their warm hospitality.

Prime Minister Rao's visit to Washington ten months ago opened a new chapter in Indian-American relations, one that promises to build on the many values and aspirations our peoples share. We greatly appreciate the energy and wisdom he has lent to strengthening the friendship between our nations.

Although my journey here is far too brief, it is the culmination of a life-long desire to visit India. I hope these few days will be the first of many I spend here learning about this extraordinary country and exploring the shared dreams we hold for the future of the human family.

I can think of no more fitting setting in which to reflect upon these shared dreams than here at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation-an institution dedicated to the realization of Rajiv Gandhi's dream of a better life for all the people of India.

Programs of this Foundation such as assisting children orphaned by terrorism,

RODHAMCLINTON

or promoting literacy and health among women and children in rural areas or providing fellowships for women entrepreneurs, are inspiring examples of how to translate dreams into reality.

Our meeting today occurs at a historic moment. As we approach a new century, we are also on the frontier of a new world.

It is different from the one we have known for the past 50 years. It is a world in which many old divisions have diminished or disappeared. The long reign of dictators and controlled economies has given way to democracy and free markets in country after coun try.

The opportunities for peace and prosperity are greater now than ever before.

But this is also a world of profound change that exacerbates old challenges and creates new ones: The challenge of deep poverty still confronts us. The challenge of living together in peace and harmony in the face of ethnic, religious, and other tensions among peoples has never been greater. The challenge of putting people first-of including all of our citizens as full participants in our economic and political lives-men and women, rich and poor, people of all races and creeds-remains fundamental to all of us.

I want to talk to you today about what I consider centralio our common futurethe importance of ensuring that women are invested in their own lives and able to participate fully in our national lives.

Women represent over half the world's

population. And yet in country after country, they lack access to education, to health services, to jobs, to political and civil rights. Where women lack access to education, health care, and economic opportunity, children tend to be less educated, less well nourished, and families tend to be both larger and poorer. Where women are illiterate, experience has shown that the environment is often poorly managed and democracy remains fragile. One lesson the experience of the last several decades teaches us is that where women prosper, countries prosper.

But the education of women has even greater benefits for societies. Education helps us understand and tolerate differences and so holds out the promise that we can live together more harmoniously.

Education helps us comprehend the unsettling changes in our lives today and helps us better manage those changes.

Education is as important to peace as it is to prosperity.

But what is it that we must do to bring women fully into our national lives? Well, among other things girls must be able to attend school and learn, not just to be literate but to acquire the knowledge and skills-of medicine, of engineering, of management, of computers, and so forth-that will contribute to the prosperity of their families and nations.

Women must have access to health care, especially the care they need as expecting or new mothers. Wives, together with their husbands, must have access to fam-

ily planning services to enable them to make voluntary, responsible, and informed choices about the size of their families. And, children-girls as well as boys-must have access to preventive and curative medical care that will enable them to grow into healthy adults.

I recognize that discussion of such problems as education and health care for girls and women is viewed by some as "soft," labeled dismissively as a women's issue belonging, at best, on the edge of serious debate about all the problems we confront on the cusp of the 21 stcentury. I want to argue strongly, however, that the qu~stions surrounding social development, especially of women, as discussed at the recent Social Summit in Copenhagen, are at the center of our political and economic challenges.

Governments, businesses, and citizens must recognize and act upon that truth for the betterment of nations and our global family. But, even assuming you agree with my argument, what is to be done to bring about strategies for such development? That is a question that deserves far more analysis and discussion than I can offer here today, but let me suggest there are five key commitments needed to achieve this worthy goal of social development for women.

First, governments must continue to expand the general conditions required for democracy and market economies that we know can unleash the creative energies of millions of people if they are prepared to take advantage of the opportunities available to them.

The Indian government has recently undertaken major economic reforms and these reforms have already helped stimulate investment and more rapid growth.

Such reforms are essential. But they are rarely sufficient to achieve sustainable development in any country. Where social services and women's access to those services remain limited, growth will prove uneven and unsustainable. My own country is debating vigorously the role of government in supplying social services because of the recognition that a significant number of our own citizens are not equipped to share in the rewards of the

newly emerging economy.

In addition, every government should invest more resources in the education and health care of children, especially girls. This should be a priority that takes precedence over competing budgetary demands. For some countries like those in South Asia, it means providing schools and clinics where they are needed and incentives for persuading families to educate and provide health care for all their children. For a country like the United States, it means delivering existing services more efficiently with greater accountability for outcomes.

Second, although governments have primary responsibility for creating environments that encourage economic growth and social development, businesses also have a role to play. But at a time when businesses are increasingly pressured to perform on the basis of quarterly results, they have to recognize that the social costs of doing business often have medium and long-term economic consequences. Depleting natural or human resources destroy markets and undermine peoples' confidence in them.

The world needs socially responsible business leadership now more than ever.

Third, although the role and commitment of government and business are key to development, they alone cannot achieve these social goals. Citizens, cooperating together in nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), like this foundation, must also take the initiative and even provide the lead. NGOs are often created by individuals wiJh a dreamlike Mother Teresa, whose renowned compassion-even tenacity-on behalf of the world's most unfortunate moved us deeply when we visited her home for children here in New Delhi yesterday.

NGO leadership, often volunteer, is typically highly motivated and energetic in pursuing a vision of a better world. Tomorrow in Ahmedabad I will visit with Ela Bhatt, that soft-spoken visionary whose work is infused with the ideals of Gandhi.

From her, I hope to learn more about SEWA-the Self Employed Women's Association-and how it has empowered poor women to take control of their futures and make better lives for themselves and their families.

NGOs can give voice to the aspirations of people who are left out of the modern economy and whose influence on government may otherwise be small. The Prayas School, which I visited yesterday, embodies the idea that health, education, and economic development go hand in hand, and that learning must begin at the earliest stages of life and progress throughout it.

NGOs, where their members must debate and implement programs and elect their officials, arc among the most effective training grounds for democracy. Their activism strengthens democracy by holding governments accountable for the way their policies and practices affect people.

America recognizes that in our partnerships with India, our NGOs and yours must playa central role. Our bilateral aid program relies on NGOs to implement programs and projects, and we are committed to increasing that partnership.

We' recognize also that in no area are NGOs more important than in efforts to educate and empower women. At the Social Summit in Copenhagen two weeks ago, I announced a new ten-year, $100 million USAID Girls and Women's Education Initiative. I am happy to announce that India will be the first country to benefit from this program. We will soon provide an initial grant to support NGOs-U.S. and Indian-to expand girls' education in this country.

The fourth area for action concerns the family, for it is the family that determines primarily how daughters are treated.

Deeply rooted attitudes about the value of girls are hard to change, but we must try to persuade mothers and fathers to invest love, attention, and resources in their girls, starting with education and health care. The success of that persuasion will rest on a new vision of a world in which the distinc-

tions between men and women are not viewed as reasons to demean each other, but as complementary parts of a greater whole.

In this new world, both boys and girls are loved and cared for, first by the family they are born into-by parents who want them and invest in them; then by their extended family; then by the families they build as adults and by the children whom they, in turn, invest with love; and finally by societies that value every child as a gift to be nurtured and remembered. In the words of Rabindranath Tagore: "Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man."

Finally, women have to be responsible for their own lives and futures and work together to provide opportunities for themselves and others.

All of us must participate in a conversation about how to shape the changes we seek in the world we share. It is particularly important that women find their own voice and become participants and decision-makers in the home, the workplace, community, and nation. We must develop a new language to replace the deafening silence that still sounds too of-

ten when women's concerns are raised.

I have never seen a better description of the reason why women's silence must end than in a poem I received yesterday.

This was not how my speech was to end.

But when I was handed by Meenakshi Gopinath, principal of Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi, a poem written by a student, Anasuya Sengupta of the Class of 1995, I wanted to share the words of this young woman who speaks for countless other young women here in India and throughout the world.

Because if we listen to the voices of women and pay particular heed to the voices of young women, the goals we have for women will be more likely achieved. And this is the poem I received.

It is entitled "Silence."

a woman shares her thoughts,!as some women do, graciously-lit is allowed.!When a woman fights for power,!as all women would like to,! quietly or loudly/it is questioned.!

And yet, there must be freedom-lif we are to speak.!And yes, there must be power-lif we are to be heard.!And when we have bothl (freedom and power) ILet us not be misunderstood.!

We seek only to give words/to those who cannot speak/(too many womenlin too many countries)/I seek only to forget/the sorrows of my grandmother's/silence.

As we work together on behalf of our grandmothers, our mothers, our sisters, our daughters, ourselves, let us avoid the false debate that says, on the one hand, only powerful institutions like government or business, or, on the other, only individuals, are responsible for solving the problems Too many women/in too many countriesl we confront. In fact, we all know we need speak the same language.!Of silence.!My partnerships to achieve social changes. grandmother was always silent-/always agGovernments, businesses, NGOs, families, grieved-/only her husband had the cosmic women themselves can either support or right/( or so it was said)/to speak and be heard. I undermine people as they face the moral, They say it is different now.!(After all, I am social, and economic challenges of our always vocal/and my grandmother thinks/I time. Individuals can take either initiative talk too much)/But sometimes, I wonder'! and responsibility or fall into hopelessness When a woman gives her love,!as most women do, generously-lit is accepted.!When and despair. Simply put, no government, no business, no NGO, no person can remam BRIEF ENCOUNTERS OF THE UNSCHEDULED KIND idle given the magnitude of the challenges Anasuya Sengupta was aware that the "souvenir" Cartoonist Ranganath planned to make a she had penned had been given to the American we face and the uncercaricature of Hillary Clinton during her speech, First Lady, but says, "I never thought she would read but he arrived too late to get a seat inside the tainties of the world in out the entire poem." The fact that she did brought auditorium. Undaunted, he scurried off to the which we live. instant celebrity to the next stop on her schedule, and staked out a spot If all of us take our reat the entrance to Prime Minister P.V. f ~ ell. l-year-old Delhiite and sponsibility seriously, if --..' .m.,.. 1"'~_ to.,,~ an invitation to meet the Narasimha's residence. When the First Lady we use our voice to seek , 7ao ""l'!J'k"""'~~c<&~ First Lady at her hotel arrived for J ways to achieve the goals C>'\-",{ 4),••.t,;£}_ suite two nights later. lunch, that really underlie the if " .• c'fd. tho·£ "Have I ruined your Ranganath I" ~i:.t 6e L.._ political and economic if eY4. t,,,,£' ..I·.e""'L t life?" Hillary Clinton quickly <:::::xi rc 6£ hG aspirations that are now '¥[ "'" /'",,~ 1"''''"'-_ asked at their 20-minute made thi", ( .hEE.d. h.r. . being sought around the l,t "'L ""<'L .,,, ""'"meeting. "Well, ma'am, sketch and u..z. "'c{., ~ ?~"V,--) world, women and men persuaded """""''''-,fc-n.effectively yes. In the ~l; '££{' past 20 hours I've the First will create a better world fo t!)c.~tc.

Ct,y L. '""c d've ••. ., discovered that I don't Lady to for boys and girls and ld'L "L t". '''"''''L F...... want to be famous," the autograph it that ultimately is what I hl.1:;!1 CD".If. /4 ~'&tc •• "£.c) precocious young poet for him.

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Recalling

]. Willi~E!2DAMÂŁ~lbright On February 9, 1995, in the quiet suburbs West-reveal his critical nature. Fulbright's of Washington, D.C., 1. William Fulbright iconoclasm constantly laid bare the flaws of the passed away at the age of 89. Responsible for American democratic system. Introspection and the world's largest and most important interself-correction, rather than complacency, he arnational scholar exchange program, Fulbright gued, were the true moral attributes of a democratic temper. will be remembered for his legacy of peace and international understanding.

At the heart of Fulbright's democratic ideal"Our future is not in the stars,"he wrote, "but ism was the deep belief that mass civilization in our minds and hearts. Creative leadership and and minority culture are not fated to remain liberal education, which in fact go together, are wide apart. He felt that those who are historithe first requirements for a hopeful future for cally fortunate have an obligation to the victims humankind. " of history. He showed us that the American disFulbright's contribution to the unique intercourse on nationalism is replete with the rhetoric national educational and cultural exchange of its mission in the world. The future of program that bears his name has often overshadAmerica, he contended, will not be decided in owed his lasting legacy in the field of political, the jungles of Laos, Vietnam, or Cuba, but will In a lifetime of public economic, and cultural democracy. Fulbright's service dedicated to the depend on whether America can regenerate her involvement in issues within and outside the own society and rediscover the American principles of United States Congress bore the hallmark of an Dream. Do compete with the Soviets over democracy, Fulbright extraordinarily original mind. He was an intelSputnik in outer space if you will, he said, but influenced American more importantly, tackle pressing problems at lectual crusader par excellence. foreign policy for home like poverty, illiteracy, health care, and Biographies and autobiographical accounts of William Fulbright are scanty. His early smallrace relations. decades, and became a town upbringing in Fayetteville, Arkansas, This was a refrain found in Fulbright's writing strong advocate for contrasts sharply with his later exposure to throughout his career, but it must be noted that international peace the world of learning and culture as a Rhodes in one respect his stand, opposing all of the civil and cooperation. scholar at Oxford. These factors perhaps led him rights legislation of the 1950s and 1960s, has to combine two seemingly contradictory puzzled his admirers. Perhaps the answer lies in goals-an eli tist quest for excellence and pursui t of an egalitarthe compulsion he saw in his role as a politician to be responian social order. sive to his conservative consti tuency in Arkansas. In a 1975 article for the Columbia Journalism Review, he wrote: As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for several decades, Fulbright was able to promote his vision of "In truth, I have neverthought of myself as anything but a politician-until my American foreign policy. Many of his contemporariesrecent retirement-trying to advance the national interest, as best I understood it, while also doing my best to service my constituency, readily if not hapamong them Franklin D. Roosevelt, John Foster Dulles, pilycompromising between the two when it seemed necessary."

Joseph McCarthy, and John F. Kennedy-were legendary, and didn't always agree with his point of view. But Fulbright Fulbright believed that true democracy accommodates stood out among them. minority opinion and tolerates dissent, indeed glorifies it as John Kenneth Galbraith, America's ambassador to India a trait essential to healthy political life. It affirms the spirit of from 1961 to 1963 (see page 32), once wrote: "Of all persons dialogue and promotes what critic Patrick 1. Hill calls a "conwho, for their foreign policy, I've wished might be President, versation of respect" among dissenting groups. It does not atBill Fulbright stands first." tempt to see or create every person or group in a mirror image The titles of Fulbright's books alone-The Pentagon of itself, nor does it threaten extinction. In this sense the greatPropaganda Machine, Arrogance of Power, The Crippled est folly for American foreign policy in Fulbright's eyes lay in Giant, Old Myths and New Realities, Prospects Before the its obsession with rival ideologies or systems of government.

under the strong belief that "in foreign afHe conceded that democracies must be on fairs and certainly in war, the President guard against the forces of tyranny or totalitarianism, but believed they must also must be backed, no matter how unsuccessful his policies." This certainly did not affirm the cardinal principle that respects serve the interest of democracy in the right of every nation or society to deAmerica, argued Fulbright. He sought a termine its own destiny, free from external more effective and vigilant Congress with interference or subversion. restored powers to make war and sign At the height of the Cold War, FulA new scholar exchange program, the 1. William Fulbright Fellowship in State treaties, and to require presidential acbright had the courage to assert that nacountability to the legislative branch of tionalism in the Third World was not to Government, will be established at the government. be equated with anti-Americanism.

American Studies Research Centre Fulbright was a cautious optimist, seekWhether it was the Cuban missile crisis, (ASRC) in Hyderabad. ing solutions to the problems of social rethe U-2 spying affair, or the Gulf of The program, under the combined form in the idealism of the young, the Tonkin Resolution, Fulbright was unsponsorship of the state of Masflinching in his determination to tell the power of ordinary people to come tosachusetts and the Fulbright exchange gether for a common cause, and the leadAmerican people and their leaders the program, will bring a leading scholar on ership of intellectuals who could bring state government and the U.S. federal truth, as he saw it, about democracy an errant regime to task. If democracy among nations. system to India for three to six months were rooted in legitimized power and the In his view, there were several acts in the each year for a series of seminars with rule of law, he observed, then there should drama of post-World War II American Indian officials throughout the country.

Massachusetts Governor William F. be no gap between democratic precept foreign policy. Among them was the and practice. And this was the best messigning of the Truman Doctrine on Weld announced the fellowship during sage that America could send to the rest March 12, 1947, which provided the his recent visit to India as head of a 22of the world. rationale for the Cold War; George company trade delegation from his state.

Fulbright's democratic idealism, based Kennan's famous advocacy of "firm and The Fulbright exchange program, adon the principle of equality among men, vigilant containment" of systems that opministered in India by the United States institutions, and nations, had many maniposed democracy; and Secretary of State Educational Foundation in India Dean G. Acheson's view that the United festations beyond the educational ex(USEFI), has enabled more than 120,000 Nations "wasn't worth a damn." In addichange program that he promoted and foreign visitors to study or teach in the steered through Congress in 1946. tion, Fulbright pointed out that it was United States, and another 90,000 a fatal mistake to ignore the early Examples include his active support for Americans to go overseas on similar misthe United Nations as the best means messages of American envoys in China sions since its inception in 1946. India for achieving peace among nations, for and Vietnam. has been involved in the Fulbright proa United States of Europe, for Senate In Crippled Giant (1972), Fulbright gram since 1950(see SPAN, April 1994). approval in 1945 of the Bretton Woods describes America's tragic slide into Agreement, and his advocacy for multinaVietnam, relating a conversation Ho Chi tional aid rather than the use of aid for narrow political ends.

Minh had with Major Frank White, an officer in the Office of This last issue has been at the center of debate in American forStrategic Services, in 1946. It was one of many appeals made by Ho Chi Minh for self-determination in accordance with eign policy circles for the past four decades.

J For those living in the Third World, Fulbright's democPresident Woodrow Wilson's principles, starting with the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. In Fulbright's view, Ho ratic vision has salutary implications. True democracy believes Chi Minh was primarily a nationalist, and ought to have been in pluralism and in the accommodation of many voices, including conflicting ones. It is, as Fulbright showed us, about treated as such. sharing power. The days of elitist power centers are over, Fulbright drew upon lessons from history and argued that and the conflicts of the 1990s will not be the result of big the greatest threat to democracy came from a state of propower rivalries but will flow from the awakened aspirations longed warfare and the glorification of the military, agreeing with these words from Alexis de Tocqueville: of many groups of people. Fulbright's vision was solidly anchored to such a view; this is the legacy that he has left "All those who seek to destroy the freedom of the democratic nations must know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish this. That is the behind for us.

0 very first axiom of their science."

Fulbright chronicled a sequence of events, from the annals of John Foster Dulles to those of Lyndon B. Johnson, that led to the rise of what he called the "Presidential War"in America, wherein the Congress had abdicated its responsibility

About the Author: Sachidananda Mohanty, who teaches English literature at the University of Hyderabad, is currently working on a book about the Fulbright program in India. He was a Fulbright fellow at Yale University and the University of Texas in 1990-91.

The Paperless Newspaper Yosi Amram's young company delivers the morning paper each day-to your computer.

here are no printing presses at Individual, Inc., in Cambridge, Masschusetts. No grouchy managing editors. No delivery trucks. Yet every weekday this small company puts out a newspaper.

It's an unusual publication, because every reader gets a customized edition either by fax or by electronic mail. Some people think Individual's newspaper, called First!, represents the future of newspapers.

"I think it's the front edge of the new wave of the information society," says Kenneth Allen, senior vice president with the Information Industry Association, an organization that tracks trends in information technology. "It restores control to the individual."

Newspaper entrepreneurs and researchers say the industry is due for dramatic change. "The next era will be customized and personalized media," says Yosi Amram, Individual's president.

The average newspaper bristles with high technology behind the scenes. Reporters and editors use sophisticated tele-

T

Reprinted

by permission

from

the opinion

page of

The Christian

Science Monilor.

CopyrightŠ

1992 TheChristian

All rights reserved.

Science Publishing

Society.

communications systems and computers to gather, edit, layout, and transmit the news. Nevertheless, at the last step, most newspapers do what they've been doing for hundreds of years. They print the news on paper and distribute it by hand.

"The newspaper business is technologically one of the most sophisticated around," says Roger Fidler of KnightRidder, Inc., publisher of a chain of newspapers. But "we put it on 1800s technology." Fidler has been experimenting with a computer screen about the thickness of Vogue (a prominent women's magazine). It is his idea of the future newspaper.

Can a newspaper, though, be paperless?

Yes, says Walter Bender, director of the Electronic Publishing Group at the Media Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Paper isjust one way to transport the idea of a newspaper. Decouple the idea from its physical medium and all sorts of possibili ties emerge.

Several news experts believe electronic mail delivery of news shows real promise.

Using a sophisticated network, Individual's computers sift daily through journals, magazines, a dozen news wires-more than 400 sources in all.

Then they compare each story with the computer profiles for each customer. The relevant stories are ranked. Duplicates are dumped. The top five or ten stories are sent to the customer by 8:00 a.m. the following day.

Five-year-old Individual counts some of the United States' largest corporations among its customers. "We're extremely pleased," says Paul Allgyer, who subscribes to First! and is tect-mical marketing manager for Motorola's microprocessor division in Austin, Texas. "It's an easy way for us to see the first thing in the morning what's going on."

"It has almost become a daily ritual of coming in [in the morning] and checking the news wire," adds David Settle, another First! customer and manager of competitive analysis with Convex Computer Corporation in Richardson, Texas. Settle now reads fewer trade publications and concentrates more on technical reports, he says.

The technology, however, remains expensive. First! offers customized news services for as low as $15 and as high as several thousand dollars per month, based on the number of stories and the number of readers. As such, it isn't going to challenge the New York Times anytime soon. There are cheaper and less sophisticated ways to customize news. Electronic services such as Dow Jones News Retrieval and CompuServe allow users to set up an automatic search for keywords.

"The first hurdle to overcome is pricing," says Chris Elwell, an analyst with SIMBA Information, Inc., a Wilton, Connecticut, information company for

Paper is just one way to transport the idea of a newspaper. Decouple the idea from its physical medium and all sorts of possibilities emerge. the publishing business. Newspapers get most of their revenues from advertising-which First! does not carry.

The second hurdle is that much of the "news" on the wires involves only the things that a company wants said rather than the whole picture, Elwell says.

"This thing's going to have limitations," adds George Harmon, chairman of the newspaper program at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois. "You would never think in a million years to program in all the oddities that are happening even as we speak. We rely on a battery of editors to do that and give us the prod uct."

Eventually, Bender says, a newspaper will incorporate both kinds of news-the mass-media type filtered by human and computer "editors" and personalized news, such as "Your flight to Chicago is delayed." He foresees a time when there will be some kind of dial that will allow readers to get a conservative, middle-ofthe-road, or liberal slant on the news.

But don't throw out the newspaper model, these experts warn. It is a highly organized way of presenting the news that will have a long life in electronic form.

"One of the things the newspaper does so well is it makes it easy to disregard 90 percent of the information," Bender says.

Readers can scan headlines without reading stories that don't interest them. If there's a fascinating story on page one, there's often a related article conveniently placed on the jump page.

Fidler's system would give readers a newspaper-like page displayed on a computer screen the size of a magazine page.

The headlines, graphics, and abstracts of the stories would be readable. If readers wanted to see the complete story, they could call up the full text.

"When you pick up a newspaper, you don't really know what you want," Fidler says. "What I'm trying to re-create is this browsing medium." The machine would have certain advantages over paper and ink. Instead of photographs, it will give the reader a video clip with sound. It will be able to tell readers either that nothing important happened or that there's 30 minutes of important reading.

There is a danger in all this customization. Mass media provide the grist for a national conversation.

With everyone getting different news, that commonality will erode. It already is eroding, thanks to the declining appeal of newspapers, news experts say.

"They [newspapers] are in fact becoming a niche medi um, catering to more and more of the intelligentsia," says Stephen Isaacs, associate dean for academic affairs at Columbia University's journalism school in New York City. "When you have the ability to pick and choose ..,that commonality goes away," he says.

Other news experts are a little more sanguine. "Information is not really the most important thing to a general audience," Fidler says. "What they're really looking for is a way to relate to other people. It's hard for me to imagine that those of us in a society don't have shared interests."

0 About the Author: Laurent Belsie is a staff writerfor The Christian Science Monitor.

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Š FarWorks, Inc.lDist., Universal Press Syndicate. Reprinted by permission Editors Press Service. Inc.

ON THE LIGHTER

SIDE

"... so she tried to break in 10 the Father Bear's computer, but itlVas 100 hard. Then she tried to break into the Mother Bear's computer, butthatlVas too easy. "

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I To work in the world's most celebrated financial district requires a rare combination of intelligence, ambition, and energy to a degree that few possess. But among the few, Indians are a prominent presence.

verything about Wall Street is disproportionate.

The street itself seems too narrow to support the weighty financial transactions that take place there every day. Spindly, chromeand-glass buildings tower above older architecture, with its cement carvings and stucco walls. The tall buildings create a merciless environment in every kind of weather. On winter days they funnel in chilling gusts of wind from the East River that whip up the naps and collars of the designer suits that Wall Streeters wear like a uniform. On sweltering summer afternoons, they trap the heat and humidity, turning the street into a veritable pressure cooker.

Pressure-cooker conditions and occasionally chilling winds characterize as well the environment inside the New York Stock Exchange and numerous other trading and financial institutions that line the street. Working on Wall Street is not for everyone. It requires energy, stamina, intelligence, and ambition to a degree that few possess, but among the few, Indians are a prominent presence.

The internationally renowned financial firm of Morgan Stanley alone employs some 140 Indians in its various divisions in New York, according to Business Week. In an article last year headlined "Suddenly, Indians are hot properties on the Street," Business Week

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said that '"Indians have cracked Wall Street's performance-based world." It also quoted Joan C. Zimmerman of G.Z. Stephens Inc .. an executive-recruitment firm specializing in Wall Street, who says: "What is interesting is not only their penetration at the managing director and partner level but also the breadth of their capabilities in asset management. sales and trading. research, and investment banking." arayan Mani, an analyst at Kidder Peabody, a large investment bank. says, '"While the Indians are only about 0.3 percent of [America's population). about five percent of Wall Street is already Indian." If they haven't gotten much press, it's because reticence and secrecy shroud America's corporate finance departments. This phenomenon, called the '"golden muzzle," is dictated by the corporations' loyalty to clients, the sensitive nature of information that Wall Streeters handle, and the astronomical sums of money that pass through their hands everyday.

Among the reasons often cited for the success of Indians on the trading floors and in the boardrooms of America's financial capital are their capacity for hard work, ambition, fluency in English, and ability to operate in Western-style bureaucracies.

Says Ann La Rue, an immigration attorney at the Manhattan law firm of Zurhellen and La Rue, "They are very bright and sophisticated and cosmopolitan ... educated in England or here in the United States." Another reason is the Indians' natural flair for numbers. As Business Week noted: "With many of the Street's newest niches-such as derivatives and mortgage-backed securitiesdepending heavily on mathematical formulas and computer knowhow, Indians have carved out roles for themselves .... " Barton M. Biggs, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asset Managemen 1, calls Indians "real powerhouse people."

An equally important, though not very often articulated, reason is the fact that most Indians in America, many of whom

N

go there to pursue higher studies, are acutely conscious of the high price of failure in an alien land. They develop resilence, tenacity, and initiative to survive. . . Ramachandran is a case in point. As a foreign MBA student at the niversity of Michigan in Ann Arbor a few years ago, he was unable to schedule an interview with a recruiter from Goldman Sachs in New York who had come to the school to scout talent in that year's MBA class. (Ordinarily, corporations don't call foreign students for job interviews because they need to have a work permit, and the companies often don't want to go through the hassle of dealing with visas and documents.)

Undeterred, Ramachandran, braving a cold Michigan evening, stood outside the campus recruitment office. When the Goldman Sachs recruiter came out, Ramachandran req uested an interview.

"Sorry, the schedule's full," the recruiter said and walked on. Ramachandran persisted: "Let me drive you to the airport tonight. Perhaps we can talk then."

The man paused. With a slight smile, he agreed. After all, one trait he was looking for was initiative. A thrilled Ramachandran spent most of the remaining money in his pocket to have his battered old Mazda washed. He picked the recruiter up at the appointed hour and drove him to the airport. And on the way, they talked.

A few weeks later, Ramachandran received a letter from Goldman Sachs inviting him to New York. He endured 20 interviews-all with different peopleand was hired. "It was a coup of sorts," 32-year-old Ramachandran recalled. "I was the only student that year to be hired

by Goldman Sachs."

Subjecting candidates to dozens of grueling interviews is part of the job selection process. Wall Street companies want only the best, and they're willing to pay for it. Trainees, who are in their early twenties, for instance, can average $100,000 in salary and bonus in their first full year. As Ramachandran says, "Money attracts the best and the brigh test."

Money is usually the prime motivator for ambitious young people to join Wall Street, says Mani. The second is the prestige that comes with working there. But there is a price to pay. Sixteen-hour or more workdays, for one thing, that can begin with a predawn conference call to Japan, a round of trades and meetings, an evening Concorde flight to London to finalize a deal, then on to India to assist in a financial agreement. It is common to see investment bankers carrying beepers and on call 24 hours a day.

Mani, 25, who joined Kidder Peabody about a year and a half ago, expected his job to be "interesting, fun, and a learning experience," but the deadline pressure and stress were a lot more than he had bargained for. "You hear about the stress and pressure before you join, but unless you experience it, it is hard to relate to the unrelenting tension that is inherent on Wall Street," he says. Mani believes that the key characteristics to success on Wall Street are "ambition, resilience, and hard work-in that order."

Deepa A., who is loathe to disclose either her own full name or that of her company, echoes similar thoughts: "Working on Wall Street is not just glamour and money. It is also long hours, lots of stamina, not being able to attend your sister's wedding in India because a deal hotted up at the last minute, eating a stale pizza at midnight in some nameless ai rport." owever, a contrary view is offered by Vijay Sharma, 30, who is the assistant vice president in the marketing division of Deutsche Bank. He feels that his job is no more stressful than are other jobs. "The exciting part is pushing the deal through and making money on it," he says. "The whole business is driven by money. Unless you're interested in money, there's no great compelling reason to be on Wall Street. I work well under pressure, I like the tension. Now, some people don't and they experience burnout."

If burnout doesn't get you, a market crash might. When the stock market plummeted in 1987, thousands of Wall

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When the Dutch occupied the ,island of Manhattan, they built a wall around its southern tip. In 1699, an attacking British fleet destroyed the barricade and constructed a thoroughfare.

The British named it Wall Street. When America gained independence, New York City became the country's capital and its first President, George Washington, took his oath of office on the balcony of the Federal Hall constructed on this narrow street. President Thomas Jefferson subsequently shifted the nation's seat of power to a temporary home in Philadelphia, but the country's financial-capital remained firmly rooted on Wall Street where merchants would meet regularly under a sycamore tree to buy and sell securities issued by state governments that made up the new United States of America.

Streeters were laid off. Ramachandran was among them. He is now managing director of Rogers Casey, a small consulting firm in Darien, Connecticut. He says the job offers a diversity that wasn't there at Goldman Sachs and also offers more time with his family. Would he return to Wall Street? Ramachandran was doubtful. "I don't know if I could do the same thing day in, day out again."

Other causes for uncertainty are the mergers and acq uisitions that prune or enlarge Wall Street and the rest of corporate America.

For example, after General Electric sold its investment bank, Kidder Peabody, to PaineWebber for $670 million last year, Mani described the mood there as "snowballing anxiety.

Unfortunately, experience counts for little in this type of situation.

PaineWebber will decide which divisions it wants. Everyone from the other divisions will be laid off." ndians are also becoming more visible on the other side of the streetin the offices of the Wall Street Journal, often called the Bible of Wall Street. About 20 Indians, several of them women, work on the Journal. One of them, Neela Banerjee, says that working

I

These enterprising merchants profited from regulated speculation in government bonds-loans to the government that pay interest-and in the stocks of new banks that opened every month. In May 1792, they recognized the need for self-discipline in their fledgling business, so they established an organized market in financial securities and fixed the commissions they charged to trade stocks.

These merchants were visionaries, but they could never have foreseen that their little outdoor trading club would evolve into today's New York Stock Exchange-the heart of America's financial marketplace handling trillions of dollars in transactions annually, involving millions of investors worldwide, and providing capital for thousands of businesses, not to mention coveted jobs for ambitious university graduates.

conditions at the Journal are very "relaxed" when contrasted with those of stock traders and deal makers. But then, she notes that most reporters start at about $35,000 a year, which is a pittance when measured against what fresh MBAsget.

"People on Wall Street have an ambivalent respect for the press," says Banerjee. "In social gatherings, for instance, people always perk up when they hear that I work for the Journal. After that it is an intricate dance where they try to manipulate you [to get good press] and you try to fend them off. It's very subtle but it's there."

The Journal, which alsoJhas an Asian edition, observes a strict code of ethics. o staffer is allowed to buy stock based on "inside information" available to the Journal. A reporter who covers a tobacco company, for instance, is not allowed to own stock of that company. Gifts are also a strict no-no. When Banerjee attended a press conference given by the CEO of Canon, the Japanese electronics giant, all the reporters were given a tie and a calculator. "I think they thought that only men reporters covered business.

So they gave us all ties," she says with a giggle.

Back at her office, the calculator was mailed back to Canon and the tie went to a pile of lesser unsolicited materialbooks, food baskets, restaurant coupons, company memorabilia, and other items.

Members of the cleaning staff who work through the night are allowed to take whatever they want from the pile.

"Wall Street is becoming more respectable," says Banerjee, a first-generation American who has witnessed the explosion of Indian talent there.

"Compared with our parents' generation when everyone became doctors, engineers, or scientists, now you have more and more young Indians drawn to Wall Street. " amachandran has left the street, Mani is trying to hang on to his job, Sharma is sailing along smoothly, and Banerjee is writing about the world's most celebrated stock exchange, stories about which have become the stuff of popular Hollywood movies like Working Girl, Wall Street, Bonfire of the Vanities, and Barbarians at the Gate.

Four different people with a common ancestry and part of an influential and growing fraternity that includes Rupinder Puri, senior vice president at Chase Manhattan; Vikram Pandit, managing director at Morgan Stanley; Karan Trehan, senior vice president of Alliance; Swapan Bhattacharya, senior vice president at PaineWebber Group Inc.; and Madhav Dhar, manager of billions of dollars in emerging-market funds for Morgan Stanley.

With globalization and the importance of emerging markets, one of the most prominent of which, of course, is India, Wall Street firms can expect more bright, ambitious, and "street-smart" Indians to search for gold here. Many of them will succeed. Many may also decide to return to India to use their knowledge and expertise to make megabucks and spur development in the country of their birth.

0

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About the Author: Shoba Narayan, who lives in Stamford, Connecticut, is working on a master's degree in journalism at Columbia University in New York.

S II The Bombay Stock Exchange recently installed powerful state-of-the-art computers to improve its services to clients, handle ever-increasing trading operations more efficiently, and compete with the leading stock exchanges around the world.

The 119-year-old Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), Asia's oldest, handles billions of rupees in transactions annually for millions of investors and helps in mobilizing capital for thousands of businesses.

The BSE accounts for more than 70 percent of the . listed capital and 90 percent of market capitalization in India. At the end of the fiscal year 1993-94, it listed 7,306 stock issues of 3,585 companies, which had a total paidup capital of Rs. 756,350 million. The total market capitalization was Rs. 3,984,320 million. In the same year, 7,583.38 million shares worth Rs. 845,360 million were traded on Dalal Street, as the BSE is popularly called. The average number of shares handled per day was 34.78 million.

In the coming years, these already mind-boggling figures are bound to increase. For one thing, according to Bhagirath B. Merchant, the 1994-95 The trading ring (left) of the Bombay Stock Exchange (right).

president of the BSE, "The current 20 million investors in India are growing at the rate of 20 percent per annum."

For another, as India accelerates its program of economic and financial liberalization and increasingly integrates into the global marketplace, more and more of the world's multinational corporations and foreign investment institutions (FIls) are finding the country an attractive place in which to invest.

In the year 1993-94 alone, FIls invested $1,000 million-and the potential, according to experts, is stupendous. For instance, even though the U.S. investment bank and brokerage firm of Merrill Lynch continues to remain "underweight" in India, it recently issued a detailed report, "India Market Strategy," in which it advised clients to consider selectively upgrading investment portfolios in Indian stocks.

But there is the other reality. Today multinational companies compete for capital on stock exchanges around the

globe-and around the clock. Globalization of markets means 24-hour trading. For instance, when frenetic activity grips the trading floor of the BSE or, say, that of the Tokyo stock exchange, the United States sleeps-but not its money. It goes almost anywhere at almost anytime in pursuit of the highest return for the appropriate risk.

Stock markets must be open and competitive and accessible "24 hours a day if there is a demand for it,"New York Stock Exchange Chairman William Donaldson once said.

To attract and retain this globalized business; to better cope with its ever-increasing trading operations; and to provide efficient, streamlined, transparent service, the BSE has implemented an ambitious three-phase, Rs. 600 million computerization program.

The first phase, developed and implemented by the Indian firm of CMC Limited, is called the Display Information Driver System. Installed in the trading ring, this computerized system flashes bid, offer, and transaction rates on electronic boards, television monitors, and ticker tapes for the top scrips (financial instruments) traded at the BSE. Personal computers-PCs-called trader workstations and set up in the stock market's members' offices, can also receive this up-to-date information. The second phase, also developed by CMC, uploads and downloads from the members' workstations data files for the day's trading. This is for settlement purposes.

However, the most complex and ambitious component of the computerization program is the third phase, which is bringing screen-based trading to the BSE. This will eventually eliminate the conventional, century-old prac-

tice of brokers crowding together on the trading floor, shouting and waving slips of paper, in what appears to be utter chaos to the uninitiated. To implement this phase, the BSE, in consultation with CMC, selected Tandem Computers Incorporated, a $2,000 million U.S. company that has computerized 40 of the world's biggest stock exchanges, including the largest, the New York Stock Exchange, with its annual trading volume of $1.5 trillion, and the third largest, the National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (NASDAQ), also in New York. Tandem has also computerized 250 brokerage and security firms and 25 financial information service providers.

Phase three began on March 14 when BSE's On-Line Trading System moved 818 scrips off the trading floor and on to the computer. Five hundred brokers used the system that day.

Tandem is introducing several innovations on the BSE. One is the installation of two separate but duplicate Tandem Himalaya K 10000 systems in different locations-one on the "S" floor of the BSE building at Phiroze Jeejeebhoy Towers and the other to be located at the Machinery House, about half a kilometer away. This will ensure the safety of data in case a catastrophic failure befalls one of the sites. The trader workstations and network will be connected to both systems. The New York Stock Exchange recently implemented a similar setup.

To satisfy the needs of diverse groups-such as investors, member brokers, the exchange administration, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, companies Client

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listed on the exchange-Tandem will ensure that the computer system operates without interruption through the trading hours; maintains data integrity and is secure from unauthorized access; enhances transparency in trading so investors get the best price available at the time of trade; and is capable of upgradation and expansion to meet future increases in the volume of trading.

Tandem has provided training to CMC and BSE officials here in India as well as overseas in maintaining and operating the system.

As a result of computerization, BSE members can enter quotes, orders, and negotiated deals from their workstations. They can place buy or sell orders that are executed at the touch and place limit orders that wait in the system until the desired market price is reached, or until the deadline for reaching it passes.

The application software in the central trading Tandem Himalaya computer matches the entered quotes and orders and instantly communicates trades to the members involved in each transaction. Trade data also flows automatically into the computerized settlement system.

Trader workstations continuously receive and display the latest market picture from the central trading computer.

This includes the best bids and offers for selected stocks as well as the latest trade details for each.

The Tandem system is also capable of ushering in an era of scripless trading, which eliminates the need to physically transfer paper documents between parties to a transaction. Although this situation exists at several of the world's stock markets, in India it will have to wait until the government amends some of the country's security and banking laws and regulations.

Apart from the myriad advantages in day-to-day exchange operations, computerization has readied Dalal Street to compete with the leading stock exchanges around the world for global investment funds. And, of course, the BSE has provided the lead to stock exchanges around the country to computerize.

0 About the Author: Dan Milton (thirdfrom

left in photo below) is the senior project manager for Tandem Computers at the Bombay Stock Exchange. He is also president of the IndoAmerican Society, Bombay.

During his January 1995 India visit.

U. S. Secretary of Commerce Ronald H. Brown (above, secondfrom right) formally inaugurated the BSE's computerized trading system.

A t left is the stock market's computer operation center.

An exhibit of early works from the controversial school of painting that glorified American popular culture offers insights into its roots and meanings.

1. JIM

3.

DINE

The Checkerboard, 1959 011 and collage on checkerboard 46x46cm.

2. EDWARD

4.

RUSCHA

School Assignment, Tempera on board 19 x 24cm.

1957

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

The Grip, 1962 Olloncanvas 76x 77cm.

WAYNE THIEBAUD

Candy Counter, 1969 011 on can vas 120x92cm.

nthe early 1950s the abstract ex pressionism of such painters as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock dominated modern art in America, but change was in the air. A startling new art form, one which unabashedly embraced advertising and mass-media images, had begun to emerge, Soon everyone would be talking about a huge canvas depicting only a Campbell's Soup can-an example of what critics were calling "pop art."

"A new, cool generation appearing in the early 1960s declared the fervor of abstract expressionism to be irrelevant," writes art critic Robert Hughes. "Instead of 'authentic art,' there was kitsch".in place of the 'deep' image, there was the smiling and banal glare of American commercial culture."

Roy Lichtenstein, Edward Ruscha, and Andy Warhol were among the leadingexponentsof pop. Their subjects were icons of popular culture: Popeye, Dick Tracy, Superman, and other comic-book characters; school supplies, household appliances, milk bottles, and processedfood items. Warhol, perhaps the bestknown of the new generation, described pop art as "a way of liking things." He celebrated the products of industry in his paintings of soup cans, Brillo pads, storm doors, and refrigerators-all things that evoked fond memories from his childhood in Pittsburgh.

Many observers, among them leftist philosopher Herbert Marcuse, condemned the new movemen t as reinforcing bourgeois values instead of criticizing them. In their minds this was clearly not what modern artists should be doing.

Some found the paintings devoid of meaning. "The reason these works leave us thoroughly dissatisfied," wrote art critic Peter Selz, "lies not in their means, butin their end; most of them have nothing at all to say."

Other critics found fewer problems with content than with form. Although the new generation of modern artists painted on huge canvases with bold colors and forceful images, art critics often considered their work to be detached and mechanically produced.

Missing were plainly visible brush strokes; gone was the preoc-

I

CY TWOMBLY

The Geeks, 1955 Oil, crayon, and pencil on canvas 108x 127em.

WAY,

E THIEBAUD

Sixteen Pies, 1961 Oil on canvas

56x 71 em.

MEL RAMOS

Tourist, 1960 Oil on canvas

l27x 112cm.

ROBERT RAUSCH ENBERG

Octave, 1960 Combinepainting 198x 109cm.

Facing page: JASPER JOHNS

Fool's House, 1962 Oil on canvas with objects 183x91cm.

cupation with the arrangement of space, surfaces, and shapes that had characterized the work of the abstract expressionists. Instead of conveying the artist's emotion, pop art was likened to "industrial production." A debate ensued over avant-garde art versus "kitsch": Where did one place a painting of a candy counter or a piece of pie') How did one definepopart?

The debate had a lot to do with new ideas replacing old concepts: tradition giving way to an even more modern form of modern art. And indeed, art historians at the time supported the idea of a major break between abstract expressionism and pop art. Today, however, thanks to a thought-provoking exhibition and accompanying catalog of more than 200 works of early pop, scholars of modern American art are reexamining their assumptions, The exhibit, titled "Hand-Painted Pop: American Art In Transition, 1955-62," toured Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York's Whitney Museum of American Art in 1993. It demonstrated that 1955 to 1962 was a transitional period in which the links between the two schools of art were strong.

"Pop art didn't just appear: in a clean break with the immediate American past, it grew," Hughes writes. "It grew partly from the mass media but also, and just as importantly, from an art world saturated with abstract expressionist devices, many of which pop used. The sons cleaved to the fathers, even when dreaming of killing or at least superseding them." Even though a pivotal departure came about when pop artists began to paint commonplace objects, adding a humorous touch to what had been up till then a serious school of art, their work contained traces of abstract expressionist technique and form.

This can be seen in works which show expressive paintbrush, for example.

Michael Duncan, art critic for Art in America, writes of "the sensitive brushstrokes and seductive colors" of Warhol's Peach Halves (1960) in which a can of Del Monte peaches becomes "a mystical apparition."

Similarly, Duncan says,

Yo

speaking," she says. "Muddy paint was being slung, de Kooning-style, from coast-to-coast.

Abstract expressionism was ... tottering on legs of lofty rhetoric.

The whole country was in transition: Eisenhower was handing the Oval Office to Kennedy. Space had yet to be 'conquered.' Vietnam was a blip on somebody else's map. Even rock and roll was still just a sneer on Elvis's lips."

In the midst of all this seeming confusion, pop art was born. It was a period, art historian Linda Norden observes, in which Americans were preoccupied with what it meant to be an American, and indeed, "the quest for signs of an authentic American culture took place on more than one front." It included artists as different as Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Mel Ramos, Roy Lichtenstein, Grace Hartigan, and Jasper Johns. It reflected, at times, the 1950s American dream of not only a chicken in every pot, but a Chevy or a Ford in every garage. In a now-famous quote, Warhol relates how he felt about the availability of certain desirable, if common, things to both rich and poor: "What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.

You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you can know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and you just think, you can drink Coke too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum around the corner is drinking."

ANDYWARHOL

Where Is Your Rupture?, 1960 Synthetic polymer paint on canvas 178x 137cm.

"Wayne Thiebaud's thick, yummylooking brushstrokes in Bakery Counter (1961-62) and Desserts (1961) make painting seem an activity joyfully stuck in the oral phase. In paintings that look 'good enough to eat,' Thiebaud likens the thick, gooey paint to cake frosting."

Aesthetic ambitions-not the desire to idolize kitsch-lay at the heart of at least some pop art.

The hatching years of pop art took place at a time when, according to New York art critic Kay Larson, America itself was in transition. "The late 1950s and early 1960s were a mess, stylistically

Hartigan turned to her own neighborhood in New York City, and to material from the popular and commercial media, to create her work in the mid-1950s.

Biilboard (1957) is a collage based on a collection of photographs drawn from Life magazine advertisements, and is one of the best examples of the "transition" between the schools of abstract expressionism and pop art.

Jasper Johns painted Fool's House in 1962. A still life from the artist's studio, it has the words "broom," "stretcher," "towel,"and "cup"next to those objects in the picture. The title of the painting, sajd Johns, came about after a friend looked at it and stated, "Any fool knows it's a

GRACE

HARTIGAI

Billboard,

1957

Oi!oncanvas 199x221 em.

broom."But critic Harold Rosenberg has another interpretation.

The broom, he points out, could be a comment on the need to "sweep out" the excesses of the abstract expressionists, even though Johns himself uses many of their devices in the painting-broad paint strokes, streaks, smears and drips, and scraps of newspaper mixed into the pigment.

"The main pleasures of pop come out of an immersion in life as it was lived then," says Hughes.

"Hand-Painted

Pop"-the exhibit and the book of essays and photographs that accompany itprovides thought-provoking insights into the origins of the bold, effusive movement that first captured our fancy some 40 years ago and has since claimed its place in modern art history.

0 Sandra Maxwell, a freelance IVriter living in Nell' Delhi, is a former videotapeeditorfor the neil's division of a major Washington, D. c., television station.

About the Author:

Milch Ryerson 01 Camhridge, Massachusetts, updated the solemn 17thcemur)' Boslon "Creal Chair" toapla)1ully colored hench~lor-three, a commentary onlhe al'list's viell' ofaulhorilY in our times, Paul Sasso of A Imo, Kentucky, used Ihis circa 1820 game-and-lVork tahle (heloll') as the model for his acrylic-painted table (right), ll'hich he crea Ied in 1989.

Inspired by an 1860 high chest (beloll'), John Cederquistfashioned the version al righI, Il'hich suggests one of the ,;wjeslic old pieces cratedfor shipping,

Artists Who Make Furniture Studio furniture is in for exciting times, if the traveling exhibition of "New American Furniture," recently on view at the Renwick Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., is any indication. Marrying art and utility, a new generation of craftspersons has emerged whose watchword is eclecticism. Their revolutionary furniture lampoons the workmanship of furniture-makers of the 1940s and 1950s, whose preoccupation with orthodoxy often inhibited innovation. Thus chiseled wood-once the final word in studio work--has given way to extraordinary medleys of metal, glass, stone. plastic, cloth, and even auto body paint. According to Edward S. Cooke, Jr., who organized the exhibition, these unusual pieces are the result of a convergence in "art, design, and craft." Wendy Maruyama, noted for her elegant cabinetry, proudly says, "I consider myself an artist who happens to make furniture."

And like all art, personal experiences greatly infl uence these creations. Michael Pierschalla's table with its irregular legs stems from his experience of being overwhelmed by a cacophony of sounds when he regained hearing after being deaf for over a decade. And Timothy Philbrick's recasting of historic American furniture reflects his growing up surrounded by fine an tiq ues.

The artists often convey subtle messages through their work.

Mitch Ryerson highlights the growing irrelevance of authority today with his colorful and capricious bench-for-three; John Dunnigan revamped 19th-century worktables that had cloth bags to hold ladies' crochet materials; the new version renders these '-bags nonfunctional because most women today no longer do this work. "Mystery Robots Rip Off the Rain Forest" is the catchy name for a table by Edward Zucca that features a massive piece of Honduran mahogany with black human-like legs to decry wanton tropical deforestation.

Peter Dean crafted his enigmatic "Canyon Table," with its split top resembling a deep crevice in the Earth's surface, to remind us that nature is fragile.

Art furniture buffs are disappointed with the short supply of the new furniture. Each piece can take hundreds of hours to produce, and price tags can be in the tens of thousands of dollars. Since collectors acquire them directly from the work-_ shop, the public seldom gets to see them--all the more reason 0 to commend an exhibition such as this one.

Otis India's parent company, is an ardent supporter of the disabled around the world, and is one of the major sponsors of the 1995 Special Olympics World Games, to be held this July in New Haven, Connecticut.

Otis India was closely involved with helping 30,000 mentally disabled citizens participate in Special Olympics meets around the country last year, and is currently raising funds to send winners to the World Games thissummer.

Gift of 0 lift

As part of its ongoing commitment to help disabled people throughout the country, the Otis Elevator Company (India) Ltd., recently donated an elevator to the Tamana Special School for the mentally impaired, located in the Vasant Vihar neighborhood of New Delhi. The gift, which was formally handed over by V. Stait (left in photo), president of Otis Pacific Asia

Operations, will be used as part of a rehabilitation program aimed at training the mentally disabled on how to use an elevator.

"Stairs in large buildings are a major hindrance to the multiply-disabled person; knowing how to use an elevator can reduce this person's handicap in society,"says Mehreen Khosla, director of the school.

The Otis Elevator Company,

SUBCOMMITTEE Business leaders and top government officials appeared before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on the Near East and South Asia last month to testify on growing economic and political ties between India and the United States. Among those who testified were Jeffrey E. Garten, Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade; Hazel O'Leary, Secretary of Energy; Rebecca P. Mark, Chairman and CEO of Enron Development Corporation; and H. Laird Walker, Senior Vice President in charge of Federal Relations at U S WEST. e find ourselves at a historic moment with regard to India," said Garten, "one in which the impediments of the past may be set aside and the great promise that has been frustrated for so long may finally be realized."

Acknowledging that there are hurdles to overcome both in improving India's infrastructure and in finding models for financing the country's needs, Garten said that by the turn of the century, he believes India will be "one of the most vibrant, important, and powerful of all the big emerging markets." He told the committee that "working together on the challenges will provide distinct benefits for India, for U.S. firms and workers, and for the broader U.S.Indian relationship."

Secretary O'Leary discussed broadening the cooperative relationship between the United States and South Asian countries to include "sustainable energy" initiatives-a package of economic, energy, and environmental benefits. "The

TESTIMONY

economies of South Asian nations are expected to grow at an annual rate of five to seven percent for the foreseeable future .... The environmental implications of this rate of industrial growth are staggering: As India's industrial growth expanded at a rate roughly between five and six percent between 1970 and 1990, its carbon emissions tripled, with similar growth in other emissions."

Unless cleaner, more efficient technologies are introduced, she said, urban smog and acid rain will increasingly affect the lives of people. She testified that over $1,400 million worth of new projects have recently been negotiated between the United States and India, and that she is encouraged by "the exchange of ideas about innovative policies required to spur the use of advanced technologies and better practices which result in trade and investment partnerships that deliver clean, affordable energy to fuel the economic growth of South Asia with U.S. technology, capital, and expertise."

One U.S. company with the expertise to develop, finance, construct, and operate power-supplying projects in India is the Enron Development Corporation. Enron is currently developing India's largest power project at a site south of Bombay, complete with port facilities to bring in imported fuel, gas turbine technology, and storage and treatment facilities. But getting to this point wasn't easy, according to the testimony of Rebecca Mark, the company's CEO. It took two-and-a-half years of negotiating contracts, waiting for permits, and working with people at all levels of government before an agreement was signed. "Our faith in India's future has paid off," said Mark. "We believe our hard work and that of our Indian counterparts in the Maharashtra State Electricity Board and the government has paved the way for well-structured, financially sound investments in the energy

~Winlling Nunlber Theoreticiall Samit Dasgupta is among the most mathematically gifted students in the United States. As one of the top ten finalists in the nationwide Westinghouse Science Talent Search, the extraordinary 16-year old recently received a $15,000 scholarship for a paper on number theory which took him five months to write.

Samit, who lives in Silver

sector. ...We believe our experiences are making it easier for other U.S. investors to see that India is a successful environment for investment."

Back from a visit to India only a week earlier, Laird Walker of US WEST told the subcommittee that this was "an exciting time to be in the communications industry, and an exciting time to be a citizen of the world.With the rapid growth and modernization of communications systems around the globe, a new era of opportunity is evolving for developing countries. India is one such country." Based on his experience, Walker believes that a good telecommunications infrastructure is closely linked to economic growth.Therefore, he says, "the Indian government's decision to privatize the telecommunications market and participate in a global network is well-founded and should be applauded." n addition to both wireless and fiber optic networks that will provide telephones, US WEST expects to offer a host of other services to residential and business customers, rural as well as urban. The company estimates that its partnership in India will create 4,000 jobs for Indian citizens. Walker pointed out, however, that the Department of Telecommunications is currently the monopoly provider of service in India and also serves in a regulatory capacity. "Despite all good intentions," he said, "it is unfair to ask the entity that provides telecommunications service to set the rules for new entrants. It is our belief that a stand-alone regulatory body must be established ...." In light of the enormous potential of the Indian economy, he said, the committee should do whatever it can "to encourage trade discussions that promote robust telecommunications infrastructure investment in India and that ensure a clear distinction between telecommunications operating and regulatory entities."

Spring, Maryland, with his parents Ranjit and Arati, both physicists, is a senior at Montgomery Blair High School.

He has applied to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in hopes of pursuing a career in math, physics, or computer sciences. In accepting the award, he acknowledged the help of his parents and several teachers, but his mother says Samit de-

serves full credit for his achievements. "We gave him the right atmosphere perhaps," she says, "but he is the one who developed the joy you need to do the type of things he has done."

Westinghouse has been presenting its prestigious awards for the past 54 years.

Five former Talent Search winners have gone on to win a Nobel Prize.

The Art of Architecture

Architect-cum-artist Michael Jansen spent three years in China researching Chinese painting, calligraphy, and classical Chinese architecture. Now he is in India as a Fulbright scholar studying Indian architecture. He has put together an exhibition of his paintings and drawings titled "India's Sky Windows: An Exhibition of Mixed Media Works on the Subject of Encountering Architectu re."

Says Jansen of his paintings, "The Hindu craftspeople

and artists of the past made full use of the sun's radiance from Jaipur in the north to Kanchipuram in the south. My colors ...are metaphors for the shocking, brilliant hues that can be experienced everywhere in India."

The exhibition will be on view at the Katayun Gallery in Calcutta April 14-25, at the India International Centre in New Delhi May 1-4, and then will be shown in Bombay before going to the United States later this year.

The End of

eria IS The former U.S. Ambassador to India celebrates the demise of imperialist rule in virtually every corner of the world in the 20th century. But self-rule and independence don't always lead to political stability and economic well-being, he warns, and we must continue to address the problems that remain.

There can be little doubt: The oldest and certainly the most contentious of human efforts is the will of some peoples to rule over others. It is a matter on which history does not comment; it is assumed. The origins of what today we call imperialism are lost in the deeper shadows of antiquity.

That there is a different view of this exercise of power and influence between rulers and the ruled is also broadly assumed. The first oppressors, the second the oppressed. The first had intense self-approval of their power and influence; the second were constant in resentment, leading to subdued or open revolt.

It is not certain that the resentment and accompanying reaction were quite as constant as is commonly assumed. There is a view that the empire of Rome, still the most compelling example of imperial power and authority, was accepted by many of its subject people. For many it may have been thought better to be within than without. And we cannot doubt that Rome, as Greece before it, was a great civilizing influence in the ancient world.

In the years following World War II, there came the greatest change-revolution is not too strong a word-in a thousand and more years. Imperialism came abruptly to an end.

Suddenly in Asia, Africa, the South Pacific states, and elsewhere, colonial rule was a thing of the past. The right of some to govern others was no longer accepted either in reality orin law.

Self-government, respect for sovereign power, became the accepted rule. Looking back, it is still hard to imagine so great a change in so little time. The very term imperialism acquired a strong overtone of condemnation.

So did colonialism. This was true not alone in the former colonial world; these were terms of disrepute in the former imperial or colonial powers as well. The whole world celebrated a new enlightenment.

In these last years since 1989, there has been a new burst of celebration as the nations of Eastern Europe have been released from Soviet influence and power along with the dissolu-

tion of the former Soviet Union itself. A further and final act of decolonization.

All this, to repeat, has been greatly welcomed.

Nothing has been thought more in keeping with humane and civil good than the right of people to rule themselves.

Not always, and notably not in Africa, has independence brought political stability and economic well-being. Often the contrary. Nonetheless the release from imperial power, the reality of political independence, are universally seen, accepted, celebrated, as a social and political good. Imperial power, the millennia Iexperience notwithstanding, is without defenders.

It is my purpose here to see why, in its established form, imperial power so suddenly, so dramatically came to an end. And to see if, as many have supposed, it continues in a more subtle but not necessarily less effective form. Are there aspects of the current reality that call for our attention? Is sovereign power an absolute good even when it presides over massive hardship and suffering and. more than occasionally, forthright human slaughter?

That the people of the former colonial regimes sought their independence and, in many cases, organized and fought successfully to the end, cannot be questioned. They ceased to be governed because they became ungovernable by outside authority. Self-assertion, self-determination, were too strong.

This was especially the case where, as under the leadership of Mohandas [Karamchand] Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, dissent had a sophistication and a resulting force far in excess of what could be mobilized in opposition. In Indochina and Algeria against the French, and in Angola and Mozambique against the Portuguese, there was political and military resistance.

Remarkably, however, in much of the colonial world the erring brothers were allowed to go in peace. In the United States there was no thought of keeping the Philippines by force.

And in most of Africa, and much of Asia, there was no effective resistance to, or by, the colonial power. Colonial rule came peacefully, inevitably to an end. The colonial people celebrated their new freedom. The former colonial powers celebrated their acceptance of the new and enlightened reality. But was the decolonization by the colonial powers quite the act of social perception and political generosity commonly celebrated? Did imperialism continue in a different and disguised form? What were the social and economic costs in the new independence?

In Britain, the United States, France, Holland, Belgium, the

imperial powers great and small, there was general political support and applause; decolonization was seen as a triumph of good over evil, a defeat for the forces of obsolescence and reaction.

The self-approval may, however, have been excessive. There was another and perhaps controlling fact. Colonialism no longer served any important economic interest. Perhaps it was now at some net cost. Idealism was in close step with economic advantage; it is a combination that is a vital force for social change.

Once, in the days of landlords and landed interest and merchants and merchant interest, colonialism had a powerful economic base. The extension of contiguous or even distant landed territory brought revenues and exploitable peasant manpower.

Merchant capitalism centered on the procurement of raw materials, tropical products, exotic handicrafts and elementary manufactures from the colonial lands and the return of industrial products thereto. With colonial possession went a national monopoly or near monopoly of this trade.

And in the colonial powers the traders spoke with strong political voice for their own interest.

Frequently this voice and that of the government were identical.

By the end of World War II, and indeed for some time earlier, the merchant interest had diminished to a negligible, even archaic role. Economic development in the developed lands was now centered internally, not externally; it was from domestic economic growth that nations now prospered, were rewarded. Trade between the industrial countries was also dominant; economic relations with the colonial world were marginalized. Lenin said that the workers of the advanced industrial lands lived on the backs of the colonial masses. No one could imagine this any longer to be even remotely true.

It was estimated that the loss by the Netherlands of its great Indonesian possessions was compensated for by a mere year or two of domestic economic growth.

Thus the colonies could go in peace, without economic cost. Certainly not many in the United States lost much from the liberation of the Philippines. Had there been a strong economic interest and a powerful lobby expressing that interest, the result might have been quite different. It remains to ask: Did a new, more subtle, more sophisticated form of imperialism now emerge to rule?

In my years in India, now a third of a century back, the thought that an old imperialism might give way to a new form of external control was much in mind. It was a thought to which I was much

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exposed and which I did not wholly reject. Instead of government-sponsored imperialism, there would be privately sponsored imperialism-capitalist power. The visible instrument would be the transnational corporation. To this end, a former colony should, as a very practical matter, keep a close eye on foreign corporate investment. Here was the new threat.

This danger, however plausible in the past, I think we now reject. The political power and influence of the transnational corporation and that associated generally with foreign investment were not the threat once imagined. A serious interference in local politics would be too obvious, too likely to be counterproductive.

More important, there has been a changed view of the great business enterprise.

Once the manifestation of capitalist power, it has emerged in modern times as a massive, sometimes immobile bureaucracy. The concern for its power has given way in the frequent case to fear of its bureaucratic ineptitude.

Are there aspects of the current reality that call for our attention? Is sovereign power an absolute good even when it presides over massive hardship and suffering and, more than occasionally, forthright human slaughter?

So it is with General Motors and with IBM, two of the world's greatest corporations.

They are not a force capable of intruding seriously on the political life of a subject country. Once, indeed, there was the United Fruit Company in the banana republics of Central America. And the great oil companies dominant in the Middle East. Now no longer. And this is recognized. Developing countries welcome foreign investors and investment and do so without fear. This reflects the modern reality. Foreign investment, to repeat, is something to be sought, not something to be feared. This is now true in India, perhaps the most sensitive of the new nation states. Corporate power, economic power, is not the basis of a new imperialism.

In the years following World War II, until very recent times there was, however, a more compelling neoimperialist form.

What emanated from the Soviet Union, and in some measure China, and from the United States, and in lesser measure Western Europe, was the counterpart of the Cold War. There was the strong Soviet influence and control in Eastern Europe already mentioned.

There was the hope by the Soviet Union and the strong fear by the United States that the less developed lands would make communism, not capitalism, their approved choice. Thus the extension of superpower influence to the new and poorer nations. This was an indirect form of imperialism which took on a forthright aspect in Afghanistan and seemingly in Indochina, notably in Vietnam.

It was not a concern that I much supported at the time. In 1961, I was sent to Vietnam by President Kennedy, where I was

struck by the difficulty in distinguishing a communist jungle from a democratic and free-enterprise jungle. I was more influenced by the fact, strongly urged by Marx himself, that before you can have comprehensive socialism, you must have capitalism. This the breakdown of comprehensive socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has affirmed.

But, in any case, this is now history. The breakup of the Soviet Union, the end of communism, and the end of the Cold War brought this so-called pseudo-imperialism to an end.

The effort to extend communist influence has gone. So also the effort to counter it. In the decade of the 1990s, for the first time in history recent and far, there is no tangible manifestation of imperialism readily to be seen. There are great economic powers and lesser ones. There is varying military strength, much of it of uncertain purpose. There is no clearly defined expression of imperial power. No country, not, I venture, even Haiti, lives in fear of rule by another. We speak sometimes of the end of history; here, indeed, history has come to an end.

We cannot take total satisfaction from this great change, although certainly there is much to celebrate. In some, alas too many, of the new, fully independent states, sovereignty protects a sadly inhuman situation. So it has or does at the expense of tens of thousands of lives in Liberia, Somalia, Rwanda. So it did in Haiti, where, with great political reluctance, the United States moved to restore to power a duly elected leader who had been thrown out of office by armed thugs. The only question there, I might note, is how soon we can leave. Human suffering caused by internal conflict must be on the conscience of the world community; men and women facing death, starving parents and children, are human beings wherever they are. It does not lessen their suffering that they are in politically independent lands.

I do not wish to see anyone country take responsibility for countering such death and suffering. I certainly do not see it as the special mission of the United States. I do feel that there must be an international response. We are already seeing emergency reaction by the United Nations. This must be extended and regularized. It must call on the participation of ,!he great nations and the small, both the former colonial powers and the former colonial wards. We now accept that it is not within the sovereign right of one country to attack another.

Nor can we believe that it is the sovereign right of any country to preside over the death and destruction of the masses of its own people.

That imperialism has come to an end we cannot doubt.

This is a remarkable step in world history. Now we must deal with the imperial legacy-the human suffering left in the wake of its retreat. But let us not be in doubt as to the change we have seen in one lifetime. This we justly celebrate.

0 About the Author: John Kenneth Galbraith, professor emeritus at Harvard University, was U. S. Ambassador to Indiafrom 1961 to 1963.

This article is based on the Rajiv Gandhi Golden Jubilee lecture he delivered in New Delhi late last year.

Mi e Isnt so Ba

e

ter

by WINIFRED GALLAGHER

In fact, studies show that middle age, far from being the slough of despond it is considered to be, is the very best time of life.

According to the picture of human development drawn by traditional scientific literature, after a busy childhood and adolescence young adults launch their careers and social lives and then stride into a black box, from which they hobble some 40 years later to face a darkly eventful senescence. According to popular literature, what takes place inside the box is an anticlimactic, unsatisfying, and even traumatic march over the hill and toward the grave-or, worse, the nursing home. This scenario complements the anecdotes that often figure in conversations about middle age: That friend of a friend whose lifetime investment in career and family went up in the flames of a passion for the au pair, or that second cousin rumored to have gone off the deep end during the "change of life" when the kids left for college.

In the 1960s the new discipline of gerontology revealed that as people ( lived much further into old age, a reverse \) ~ synchrony obtained toward life's end.

Looking back from studies of the el- -U--- _ ~:v-\, derly and: to a lesser extent, forward ~ 1from studies of the young, researchers -. -~_'\; began to suspect that middle age might be not simply a long interval during which things are worse tharr---they are in youth and better than they are in old age but a developmental process in its own right-albeit one not particularly tied to changes in the body. Common perceptions of middle age are that it occurs from roughly 40 to 60; in the future, increased longevity and better health may push back the period of middle age even further. Scientists and scholars exploring this part of life, which is probably better described experientially than chronologically-the very concept of middle age itself is some-

thing of a cultural artifact, with social and economic components-range from the medically, sociologically, and psychologically oriented John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Midlife Development (MID MAC), administered from Vero Beach, Florida, to the psychoanalytically and spiritually grounded CG. Jung Foundation's Center for Midlife Development in New York City.

Although there are plenty of exceptions, "the data show that middle age is the very best time in life," ... says Ronald Kessler, a sociologist and .

MIDMAC fellow who is a program director in the survey research center of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research. "When looking at the total U.S. population, the bestyearis You ARE HERE. 50. You don't have to deal with the aches HAVE. FU N J and pains of old age or the anxieties of youth: Is anyone going to love me? WillI ever get my career off the ground? Rates 'of general distress are low-the incidences of depression and anxiety fall at abou~ 3~ and don't climb again ~ntil the ---4-tf'r late ~lxtIes. You're healthy. You re productIve. You have enough money to do ~ _ -pF (;~iJANr some of the things you like to do. You've come to terms with your relationships, and the chance of divorce is very low. Midlife is the 'it' you've been working toward. You can turn your attention toward being rather than becoming."

Whereas Kessler's picture of middle age is drawn from facts and figures, the image in most Americans' minds is based on myths, derived not from the ordinary experiences of most peopIe but from the unusual experiences of a few. Although these make for livelier reading and conversation, they generate an unnecessarily gloomy attitude about the middle years which limits people's horizons, according to Margie Lachman, a psychologist, a MID MAC fellow, and the director of the Life-

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From The A/lan/ic.

Copyright 1993 Winifred Gallagher. Abridged with permission.

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span Developmental Psychology Laboratory at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. When Lachman asked young adults what it means to be middle-aged, they gave such answers as "You think more about the past than the future" and "You worry about money for health care." They also assumed that the stress experienced in middle age came from the desire to be young again. Older subjects Lachman surveyed, who knew better, attributed stress to coping with the many demands of the busiest time in life. And whereas the older group saw their lives as generally stable, the younger expected to experience a lot of change-and a crisis-in midlife. "The images and beliefs we have about middle age are guideposts for our planning, evaluation, and goal-setting," Lachman says. "Are they accurate? Or negative self-fulfilling prophesies?"

Gilbert Brim, a pioneer in the study of social development through the life-span and the director of MIDMAC, agrees.

"Passed on from generation to generation," he says, "widely shared cultural beliefs and untested theories about middle age put forward in the media continue to be played out in society.

But they're likely to be wrong. There are probably as many myths about midlife now as there were about aging 30 years ago, before the advent of gerontology. The time has come to rid ourselves of these obsolete ideas."

Most younger adults anticipate that between their late thirties and their early fifties a day will come when they suddenly realize that they have squandered their lives and betrayed their dreams.

They will collapse into a poorly defined state that used to be called a nervous breakdown. Escape from this black hole will mean either embracing an un-American philosophy of eschatological resignation or starting over-jaded stockbrokers off to help Mother Teresa, phlegmatic spouses off to the Stair Master and the singles scene.

In short, they will have a midlife crisis.

If youth's theme is potential, midlife's is reality: Childhood fantasies are past, the fond remembrances of age are yet to be, and the focus is on coming to terms with the finite resources of the here and now.

The overwhelming majority of people, surveys show, accomplish this developmental task, as psychologists put it, through a long, gentle process-not an acute, painful crisis. Over time the college belle or the high school athlete leans less on physical assets, the middle manager's horizons broaden beyond the corner office, and men and women fortunate enough to have significant others regard the rigors of courtship with indulgent smiles. In relying on brains and skill more than beauty and brawn, diffusing competitive urges to in-

elude the tennis court or a community fund-raising project, and valuing long-term friendship and domestic pleasures over iffy ecstasies, these people have not betrayed their youthful goals but traded them in for more practical ones that bring previously unsuspected satisfaction. Kessler says, "The question to ask the middle-aged person isn't just What has happened to you? but also How has your experience changed your thinking?"

The middle-aged tend to be guided not by blinding revelations associated with emotional crisis but by slowly dawning adaptive insights into the self and others, which Kessler calls "psychological turning points." Early in midlife these usually involve a recognition of limitations: The local politician realizes that she'll never make it to the U.S. Senate, and the high school English teacher accepts that he's not going to be a famous man of letters. In the middle period of middle age the transitions usually concern what Kessler calls a redirection of goals: "You say to yourself, 'I'm killing myself at work, but the thing that really satisfies me is my family. I'm not going to change jo bs, but from now on I'm going to focus more on home, and career will mean something different to me.'" In later middle age, turning points, especially for women, often involve a recognition of strength- "just the opposite of what you'd suppose," Kessler says. "The shy violet, for example, finds herself chairing a committee." These soundings taken and adjustments made prompt not dramatic departures from one's life course but gentle twists and curves.

"Mastery experiences," the more robust versions of which figure in Outward Bound-type adventure vacations, can be catalysts for middle-aged people in their ordinary settings as well.

One of Kessler's subjects finally got his college diploma at 58, observing that he had thereby "resolved a lot of things and completed something important"; in almost the same language, a man of 50 said that he had "done something important" when he became proficient enough in his hobby of electronics to tutor others. Overcoming her lifelong fear of water, one woman learned to swim at the age of 45. "One day her family went to the pool, and she just jumped in," Kessler says. "This was a very powerful experience for her, not because she wanted to be a lifeguard but because she had mastered her anxiety as well as a new skill."

Even an apparently negative turning point can have benefits. Quite a few of Kessler's subjects, when asked if they had realized a dream in the past year, said yes, "but quite a few said they had given up on one," he says. "When the folks who have dreamed for years about a big summer house where all the kids would flock finally accept that they don't have the money and the kids have other plans, they release a lot

of tension. This kind of surrender is very productive, because dreams that run counter to reality waste a lot of energy."

Although all people make psychological transitions and adjustments in the course of middle age, relatively few experience these as catastrophic. In surveys ten to 12 percent of respondents report that they have had a midlife crisis, Kessler says.

"What they often mean is that the kind of disaster that can happen at other times in life-divorce, or being fired, or a serious illness-happened to them during their middle years." An unusual convergence of such unhappy events can push even a hardy middle-aged person into a state of emotional emergency.

"First you notice that your hair is falling out,"Brim says. "Then you go to the office and learn you didn't get that raise, and when you get home, your wife says she's leaving." But most of those who have a true psychological crisis in middle age-according to MIDMAC, about five percent of the population-have in fact experienced internal upheavals throughout their lives.

"They see the world in those terms," says David Featherman, a MIDMAC fellow and the president of the Social Science Research Council in New York City. "They aren't particularly good at absorbing or rebounding from life's shocks."

People prone to midlife crisis score low on tests of introspection, or reflecting on one's self and on life, and high in denial, or coping with trouble by not thinking about it. "Take the guy who still thinks he's a great athlete," Kessler says. "Somehow he hasn't let reality intrude on his boyhood fantasy. But one day something forces him to wake up. Maybe he's at a family reunion playing ball with his 12-year-old nephew and he can't make his shots. Suddenly he's an old man, a failure. "Heading for the same kind of shock are the people banking on the big promotion that their colleagues know will never happen, along with those who believe that hair transplants and breast implants mean eternal youth. "Such individuals have to work hard to maintain their illusions," Kessler says. "They spend a lot of energy on the cognitive effort of self-delusion, until reality finally intervenes."

Because most middle-aged people have grown skilled at monitoring changes in reality-the jump shot isn't what it used to be, the figure has changed for good-they are spared the abrupt, traumatic run- ins with reali ty that resul t in a psychic emergency.

Midlife crises are an affiiction of the relatively affiuent: Rosy illusions are easier to maintain when a person is already somewhat shielded from reality. Just as childhood is often constricted among the poor, who early in life face adult realities and burdens, so middle age may be eclipsed by a premature old age brought on by poverty and poor health. Among workingclass people, for whom strength and stamina mean earning power, middle age may begin at 35 rather than the 45 often cited in studies by respondents drawn from the sedentary middle class. Because any fanciful notions that poor and blue-collar people might have are rigorously tested by daily life, Kessler says, they rarely dwell in fantasy. "In terms of career, factory workers are likelier to be wherever they're going to be at 30 than executives," he says. "In terms of mental health, being disappointed at what is is a better kind of problem to have than being

anxious about what will be. Once you know the reality, you can say, 'I can't afford to buy a boat, so I'll rent one for vacations.'

Being up in the air is the big problem."

Despite the lurid tales of 50-year-olds who run off with their 25-year-old secretaries, such events are relatively rare in reallife midlife. Most couples who divorce break up in the first six or eight years of matrimony, and by midlife the majority report being more or less content. "The family-demography side of the midlife crisis just isn't there," says Larry Bumpass, a MIDMAC fellow and a professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, who directs the federally funded National Survey of Families and Households, the largest demographic study of its kind in the United States. "After ten or 15years together, the probability that a couple will split up is low. I've looked at the data every way possible to see if there's even a blip in the divorce rate when the children leave home, but that's just folklore too."

Carl Jung divided life into halves-the first devoted to form-

The overwhelming majority of people, studies indicate, accomplish the task of coming to terms with the realities of middle age through a long, gentle process-not an acute, painful crisis. ing the ego and getting established in the world, the second to finding a larger meaning for all that effort. He then took the unorthodox step of paying more attention to the second. When shifting from one stage to the other, Jung observed, people experience an external loss of some kind-physical prowess or upward mobility or a relationship. When they treat this loss as a signal that it's time to develop new dimensions, Jung thought, transformation is in store. However, he predicted stagnation or even a breakdown if the loss is met with denial, fear, or a sense of defeat. Aryeh Maidenbaum, the executive director of the e.G. Jung Foundation's Center for Midlife Development, offers'the Jungian rule of thumb of mid life crises: "The greater the disparity between the outer and inner person, the greater the chance for trouble. The most important inner need people have is to be seen for who they are. If that's what's happening at midlife, there's no crisis."

Change for the Worse?

If there's one issue regarding which misinformation feeds mounting hysteria about middle age, it's menopause. After finishing any of a number of recent books and articles, a reader might conclude that for a fewyears a middle-aged woman might as well choose between sobbing alone and riding around on a broom. One of the few people who have gleaned their own hard data on the subject is Karen Matthews, a professor of psychiatry, epidemiology, and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh

foundation for deciding if it's appropriSchool of Medicine in Pennsylvania, ate for women to take hormones for who has conducted a longitudinal Studies show that a vital decades.

At this point there's no strong survey of the psychological and if unrecognized element in evidence for a pro or anti position." physical changes experienced by 500 Although the process of weighing women passing through menopause. middle-aged well-being HRT's effects on physical health "The fact is that most women do very is knowing that grown-up continues, Matthews has determined well in the menopausal transition," that as far as behavioral effects are children have fared well she says, refuting the popular image concerned, HRT is "not the most of women who are invariably dein their lives. important factor in most wopressed, extremely unpleasant, or men's psychological well-being during both. "There are some common menopause." For that matter, she says, physical symptoms that aren't fun, women who do and don't use HRT may report differing experinotably hot flashes, but only a minority of women-about ten ences because they are different types of people to begin percent-have a tough time psychologically." with. In Matthews' study the typical user was not only better Matthews has identified the characteristics of those who exeducated and healthier but also likely to be a hard-driving perience few problems in menopause and those who experience "Type A" person, less content with the status quo. "These many. "The women who do well respond to the menopause women are up on the literature," Matthews says, "more aware with action,"she says. "That may not be their direct intention, of HRT, and more interested in seeking treatment." but they end up coping with the stressor by making positive If active copers, whether or not they take hormones, fare best changes. Those who, say, step up their exercise regimen don't during menopause, Matthews says, the women likely to have the even show the biological changes, such as the adverse shifts in worst time have two disparate things in common: HRT and a lipids implicated in coronary disease, that others do. These 'aclow regard for themselves. "Women who have poor self-esteem tive copers' say, 'Hey, I look a little different, feel a little less energetic. Why don't 1...''' but don't use hormones don't have a hard time," she says. One hypothesis is that reproductive hormones, particularly progesTry hormone-replacement therapy (HRT)? In evaluating its terone, ca use some women to become dysphoric, or moody; if a effects on physical health, women and doctors must juggle eviwoman who has this adverse reaction to HRT also has a poor dence suggesting that while HRT cuts the number of hot flashes self-image, she is likely to be more upset by a stressor such as a by about half and reduces vulnerability to osteoporosis and permenopausal symptom than a woman with a sturdier ego. haps coronary disease, it may raise the risk of breast cancer and, if "The idea that most women have a hard time psychologically estrogen is taken without progestin, uterine cancer. The National is the major myth our data have dispelled," Matthews says.

Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, is now conducting a "Eighty percent of our subjects thought they were going to bebadly needed controlled long-term clinical trial of large numbers come depressed and irritable at menopause, but only ten perof women on HRT which should provide some answers. cent did. Those who had a rough time had showed signs long Meanwhile, some doctors, confronted with incomplete data, tell before of being anxious, depressed, or pessimistic. Menopause women that the decision is up to them. Considering the threat of makes women with that preexisting set of characteristics, osteoporosis and of coronary disease, which is the leading cause which are not age-related, more emotionally vulnerable." of death for women over 50 in America, many other doctors recommend HRT to those whose risk of breast cancer is low. Still Much of the dark mythology of menopause derives not from others regard its widespread use with dismay. Their concerns the thing itself but from simultaneous aspects of the aging pr~cess. "It's the physical manifestation of aging-and a range from the fact that only one in three women is vulnerable to woman's reaction to it-that's critical in predicting whether the osteoporosis to a flaw in the argument that hormones can prevent years from 45 to 55 will be difficult or not,"Rossi says. "Society's heart disease. In part because doctors are cautious about prescribing HRT for women with illnesses such as hypertension and image of an attractive woman is ten years younger than that of an attractive man. Graying at the temples and filling out a bit can be diabetes, the population that takes it is healthier to begin with-a attractive in a man-look at Clinton and Gore. But their wives built-in selection bias that skews studies of the therapy's effects. are still trying to look 28." Rossi isn't necessarily advocating the Among HRT's vocal critics are the doctors Sonja and John grin-and-bear-it attitude toward aging favored by Barbara Bush.

McKinlay, epidemiologists at the New England Research Seeming ten years younger than you are can be a good thing, she Institute in Watertown, Massachusetts. "HRT is inappropriate says, if it means a concern for good health and well-being, rather for the vast majority of women, who shouldn't use it," McKinlay says. "Yet the pharmaceutical industry's goal is to have every than obsession with youth. postmenopausal woman on it until death." Having surveyed the literature on menopause and HRT, Alice Rossi, a MIDMAC felIf middle age is seen as a dull business, its relationships are low and an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of imagined to be the dreariest part. In the course of studying beMassachusetts in Amherst, says, "I wish we had a better scientific

liefs about and images of midlife, Lachman compared the experiences of a group of Boston-area people aged 18 to 85, and found no evidence that the middle-aged are less loving. In fact, steady levels of intimacy and affection were two of the few constants she tracked. Largely because married people make up the majority of the middle-aged-about 75 percent-most of the data about life relationships concern them. Then too, less is known about other bonds because until the mid-1970s studies of midlife in the United States focused on the experience of white middle-class heterosexual men. Although there is still very little information about gay midlife, some data are emerging about how single people in general fare socially during middle age.

It's about time, according to Rossi. "Considering the longer life span, a person may be without a partner at many points in life," she points out. "We not only marry later today but often have intervals between relationships, and perhaps lengthy spells as widows and widowers." She thinks that the stereotype

Seeming ten years younger than you are can be a good thing, ifit means a concern for good health and well-being, rather than an obsession with youth. of the aging spinster who is unfulfilled without a man is heading into the realm of midlife mythology. "There's recent evidence that single women have better mental and physical health and social lives than single men," she says. "Rather than being all alone, they have friends and close family ties, not only with parents but also with young nieces and nephews, with whom they may enjoy special relationships."

As for the married, many studies show that satisfaction with the relationship is lower throughout the child-rearing years, but that it climbs again after couples weather the labor-intensive period of launching careers and babies. In Laehman's Boston survey, reports of stress related to marriage decreased steadily from youth through old age. Although divorce and death may account for some of that decline, she says, "people may in fact grow more skllled in handling their relationships."

Observing that by midlife couples have fewer fights and more closeness, Kessler says, "Once they get the little kids out of their hair, husbands and wives catch their breath, look at each other, and ask, "What are we going to talk about now? What was it all about 20 years ago?"

In his study of sexuality John McKinlay found that only two percent of the 1,700 middle-aged and older men reported having more than one current sexual partner. This figure, vastly lower than the usual guesstimates, challenges the stereotype of the bored middle-aged philanderer. Moreover, although McKinlay recorded steady declines in the men's sexual activity, from lusty thoughts to erections, he found no decrease in their sexual satisfaction-a phenomenon Brim calls "a triumph of

the adaptation of aspirations to realities." Equivalent data about women have not been gathered, but McKinlay's findings complement other surveys that show that aging has little impact on people's enjoyment of sex.

People and their doctors, McKinlay says, should distinguish between sexual problems caused by aging and those caused by things that often get lumped with it, such as poor health, weight gain, lack of exercise, and the use of nicotine or too much alcohol. Compared with a healthy nonsmoking peer, for example, a smoker who has heart disease has a sevenfold greater risk of impotence. Psychological fitness, too, plays a vital role. A man may think his primary problem is impotence caused by age when in fact his sexual trouble is a symptom of a very treatable depression. "We must not resort to biological reductionism, which is what women have been struggling against,"McKinlay says.

Widely publicized conclusions drawn from the sex lives of the ill-that a vigorous sex life is not a reasonable expectation in middle age, for instance-may cast their pall on the well. "When I hear a healthy 50-year-old man say, 'That sexy stuff is for kids,' I feel sorry for him," McKinlay says. "Only five percent of the women in our institute's long-term study of menopause reported suffering from vaginal dryness, but women are told it's a very common problem after a certain age." Contrary to the stereotype of the asexual older woman, he says, some women feel liberated by menopause and the end of birth control. If older women have a problem with their sex lives, according to McKinlay, it may be that their husbands aren't in good health.

His prescription for a vital midiife: "If I were feeling troubled about aging, I'd look first at the behavioral modifications I could make-diet, exercise, alcohol-monitoring, and so on. If they didn't work, then I'd think about treatments."

Having edited a book about sexuality through the course of life, Rossi observes that although the mature expression of eroticism remains poorly understood by science, let alone by our youth-oriented culture, middle-aged people are likely to expand their definition of sex to include sensual, not just reproductive, acts. "If the message we get from society is that we have to keep on acting as we did at 30," she says, "a lot of us are going to feel that we have a sexual disorder at some poin t."

J

The Empty Nest and the Sandwich Generation When the role of family in the experience of middle age is mentioned, one of two scenarios usually comes to mind. In the better established, the abandoned mother waves a tearful good-bye to her last chick and dully goes through the motions of life in the "empty nest." According to Larry Bumpass's demographic survey, however, the nest may be anything but empty: Expensive housing and a weak economy and job market mean that the young delay their own marriages and are likelier to return home after a brief foray outside.

The more contemporary midlife family myth concerns the plight of the "sandwich generation": In a recent Doonesbury cartoon starring a professional couple, the 40-something husband tells his wife, busy juggling the needs of her children and

their grandmother, "Don't die. Everyone's counting on you."

Women's entry into the job market has focused much attention on a purported host of adults who make the circuit from the day-care center to Gramps's place to the office with nary a moment for themselves. "It's true that there's a lot going on in your life in middle age and you have little time for leisure," Lachman says. "Fortunately, you're also at your peak in terms of competence, control, the ability to handle stress, and sense of responsibility. You're equipped for overload." According to Carol Ryff, people busy with both careers and relationships enjoy not only greater financial security and intellectual and social stimulation but also a psychological benefit. The eminent behavioral scientist Bernice Neugarten thinks that the hallmark of healthy middle age is "complexity," or a feeling of being in control of a crowded life and involved in the world at the same time.

Ryff found in the course of one of her studies that this quality was most marked among the first generation to combine family and career. "It seems," she says, "that all the role-juggling that

Many studies show that satisfaction with the marital relationship climbs again after couples weather the labor-intensive period oflaunching careers and babies. middle-aged people complain about actually makes them feel more engaged in life."

Rossi is dubious that the sandwich-generation problem is either new or widespread. "This phenomenon is a lot like the supposed midlife crisis," she says. "There are people who think that spending two hours a week with Mother is a big deal. But the fact is that very few men or women are caring both for little children and for elderly parents. "One reason for this is that the "old old" who need considerable care are still a small group, and few of them are a daily drain on their children. Then, too, as Bumpass says, "over the past several decades the elderly have increasingly lived independently. They're economically more able to do so, and both sides prefer things that way."According to research conducted by Glenna Spitze of the State University of New York at Albany, close involvement by the middle-aged with their parents-usually with a mother who has already cared for and buried her own husband-is likeliest to occur when the middle-aged person's children are older and need less attention. "For that matter," Rossi says, "rather than being a drain, the children are likely to be a comfort and help. It's important to remember that intimacy with children, which bottoms out from ages 15 to 19, climbs steeply through the twenties and thirties. One of the things to look forward to in midlife is the continuity and shared interests that will come as your children in turn become parents."

To the list of underestimated family pleasures Ryff adds the satisfaction that parents take in knowing that grown-up children have turned out all right. She found that adult offspring

are a vital if under-recognized element in middle-aged well-being, and that adjusting to how well or poorly they have matured is another of midlife's important developmental tasks. After studying 215 parents, Ryff found that their adult children's level of psychological adjustment was a major predictor for almost all aspects of both fathers' and mothers' mental healthalthough mothers took more credit for it. "The literature on parenting includes very little on what parents get out of it,"she says, "or on how it affects their self-image, especially when the kids are older. Parenting never ends."

At Last, the Reward: Wisdom When asked the way to Rome, the young trace the most direct route very quickly, while their elders ponder: "Why Rome? Is this trip really a good idea? At what time of year? For business or pleasure? Alone or with others?"

While intelligence is essential to wisdom, certain personal qualities predict with greater accuracy who will be wise.

Thoreau observed, "It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things,"and Baltes agrees. "Modulation and balance are crucial elements," he says, "because wisdom has no extremes. You can't be passionate or dogmatic and wise at the same time." Just as the Lao~tzus and Lincolns among us are likely to be reasonable and open-minded, they are not likely to be motivated by selfish concerns, at least not markedly so: Machiavelli was clever but not wise.

"At some point in middle age," says David Featherman of the Social Science Research Council, "we're inclined to become more tolerant of the uncertain, the complex, and the impossible, and even to learn to dismiss some problems as unsolvable or not worth our effort. Perhaps most important, we grow more interested in how our solutions affect others.

Along with being good at figuring out what to do in real-life situations themselves, the wise are skilled in advising others-in sharing their wisdom. Unfortunately, Americans' Lone Ranger mentality about solving everything on our own means we don't always profit from this resource. "The concern for others that is a hallmark of wisdom seems to augur well for those who have it as well as for its beneficiaries. The evolutionary nJeurobiologist Paul D. MacLean once observed, "We become nicer mammals as we age." Featherman points out that the benignity integral to wisdom seems characteristic of people who enjoy a happy, healthy-old age.

In a youth-obsessed culture the suggestion that at least one element of character emerges only in middle age is both appealing and iconoclastic. "Wisdom doesn't happen at the age of six, or 18,"Featherman says. "It may take a long time for all of its components to be in place. The timing of its emergence means that in maturity we get a new start-a new way of understanding life that's more apt to benefit others. It may turn out that caring about people is the capstone of the process of living."

0 About the Author: Winifred Gallagher is a senior editor of American

Health magazine.

REFLECTIONS FROM MIDDLE AGE

]Romance and 1fJoise I remember, as a first-year undergrad, meeting this absolutely stunning creature who joined our table at the coffee house. Her profile was nawless perfection. She was a rhapsody of raven hair and magnolia bloom, a ravishing symphony of lilting in the curves. Her name, even when pronounced adenoidal accents of her male escort, sounded like the sighing of the breeze in the morning treesYasmin! Entranced, I was ready to do anything for her-scale soaring peaks, battle monstrous foes, write her a paean with the living ruby of my blood, and even pay for her double Coke. And then she opened her mouth to say something and thwacked chewing gum in my face. The lofty minarets of fantasy came crashing down and the pavilions of poesy went up in smoke. It was as though Helen of Troy had suddenly reached up and picked her Grecian nose or Cleopatra, reclining 10

around her were as well, which is the essence of true poise.

A man I know, an inveterate bachelor, expresses it in his own way. The reason why he has never married, he says, is because he has never come across the ideal mate. And the ideal wife, as far as he is concerned, is "someone who can give away prizes at a function."

Good looks, intelligence, even home-making abilities are all of secondary consideration to him. The woman he marries must be able to lend her gracious presence and preside over a prize-giving ceremony. That he feels is the ultimate cachet. "Many people have beautiful wives, or rich wives, or wives who are good cooks. But how many wives do you know who are invited to give out prizes? you tell me that." And I have to admit that the species in question is a rare one indeed.

There is a lot to be said in praise of mature

voluptuous splendor on her golden barge, had let forth a resounding belch. I learnt my lesson then-put not your faith, or even your fancy, in teenyboppers.

They say Romeo's Juliet was only 14whenhewooedher.

We know about that particular mesalliance.

If only \\11 the fellow had had the good sense to get himself a sober, responsible matron instead of a giddy nibbertigibbet, he would not only have reaped a rich dowry but probably lived to become a prosperous, well-tended patriarch, dandling a coupie of grandchildren on either knee.

What separates the women from the girls-is poise. Like most things that are worthwhile and difficult to get, poise is not a commodity you can put a label on or buy over a counter. The gift of poise can't be got by walking around balancing an encyclopedia on your head, or going to a swank finishing school in Switzerland, or lifting your littie finger while sipping a cocktail or dropping names of darling little bistros in the Latin Quarter in a fake French accent. Poise is not just an attitude but an act of living, a graceful inner balance between experience and elan.

One of the most poised and attractive women I met was a 40-year-old Tyrolean gypsy, the wife of a German diplomat in Calcutta. Whether it was playing hostess at a champagne party, or rolling up her sleeves to ;;ive Mother Teresa a helping hand, or discussing a book or a film in highbrow circles, she did it with unaffected grace. Not only would she be at ease herself but would ensure that those

women. A woman is like vintage wine that improves with age. The acne and the awkwardness of adolescence are transformed by time in an unhurried alchemy that changes caprice into character and pertness into personality. The first bloom of the grape is often too tart, too fulsome with uncultivated navor. The slow, still secrecy of time brings out the mellow bouquet, the hidden nuances, the subtle sparkle of champagne in afternoon sunlight. A friend of mine who considers himself a connoisseur of these things put it well. "If what you want is gassy fizz, stick to soda pop-but don't complain, if all it gives you is natulence," he says. "If you would savor something more heady, you must have patience and an educated palate."

A woman is like a musi<;al instrument. From the juke-box stage of puberty, brassy and loud and stimulated by the small coin of the conventional, she evolves, with care, into a delicately stringed, finely toned creation, glowing with the patina of experience, a marvel and a delight for the appreciative ear.

A woman is like a passage of poetry. When first fashioned, she is clumsy and halting, ajangle with ingenuousness and tripping over her own prosodic feet. Gradually the rhythms alter, becoming nuent and lilting underthe muse of the Eternal Eve. Read her once then and she'll haunt you always, like the words of a strange yet familiar song.

An elderly American we called Uncle Joe would rail against the innate Peter Panism of his country-

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men and their frenzied pursuit of the youth cult, particularly as manifested by the sterile juvenility of their terms of endearment. " 'Baby" In America, that's what you call the person you love!" he would explode. "Everyone is 'baby. 'The girl you date in college, the woman you marry, the mother of your children.

She's still a 'baby'!"

American variations on this Barbie doll theme include "sugar," "honey," and "sweety pie," with their connotations of sticky-sweet confectionery-all right for an occasional nibble but of dubious nutritional qualityand over-indulgence in which may lead to bad teeth, pimples, and diverse metabolic disorders, not excluding alimony.

The chocolate-box analogy is particularly

ffi~

Oa:

a:o OLL.

In these days of marriage contracts and video-dating services, of AIDS-testing before commencement of a relationship, a story of impulsive, rash, head-over-heels love comes as a bit of a shock. But when I tell people how my husband and I met, they are delighted, for deep down, beneath our pragmatism, we human beings are a romantic lot. We love it when the heart triumphs over the head, when a woman and a man stake everything on each other, with no guarantees and with few questions asked.

I was 18 years old when my whole world changed. It was 1976, ann I had dropped out of college after just one year to become an activist in the peace movement. The first thing I did was to join a march for disarmament, from Boston to Washington, D.C. I started out in Massachusetts, certain that I was in the vanguard of a movement that would change the world. By the time we reil,ched New Jersey, my enthusiasm was even stronger.

In mid-September, as we neared New Brunswick, New Jersey, the march organizers announced that the local march committee in Trenton (a city about 65 kilometers south) needed help in organizing events for our arrival. They requested that someone from our group ride ahead to assist them, and I volunteered. Just before I left, we were told that a group called "Indians for Democracy"was on a march from Philadelphia to New York to protest the imposition of emergency rule in India, and that our paths would probably cross in the next few days.

On my second day in Trenton, I was driving with one of our march organizers, after hav-

apt in describing the immature female of our species. Little girls, we are told, are made of sugar and spice and all things nice. Well do I know it. I remember a memorable date when I was a college boy. She was a typical Loreto College product of the time: Beatles hairdo and boots and that long-nosed accent which is the peculiar leitmotiv of all true convent-ites. We went to Mags, the regular haunt of the college crowd and justly famed for its scrumptious sundaes and its enormous hamburgers. I proffered the menu and she seemed to be having difficulty in deciding what she wanted. She kept looking down at the card, then up at me, then down again. Feeling that she must be worried about whether I had enough money I reassured her

JRomancE

ing just arranged a radio talk show and two lectures at the local college to publicize our cause. As we were discussing the rally that would take place downtown on the day our marchers arrived, I suddenly saw the other march approaching.

"Stop the car!" I shouted. "Here come the Indians!"

My friend swerved to the side of the road and brought the car to a screeching halt. I leaped out, and without even a moment's pause for reflection, threw my arms around the one with the beard and kissed him. To this day I am unable to explain my behavior.

Although I am by nature affectionate, it was out of character even forme to hurl myself at a total stranger. When friends press me for an explanation, I might mention the incredibly blue sky or perhaps the fact that I was 18, but the truth seems to me to be nothing less than Divine Inspiration.

His name was Ravi, and he was stunned. To complicate matters, his guru was among the marchers and Ravi was certain that he would disapprove of such a wanton display of Western immorality. Two conflicting thoughts flashed through his mind in split-second time: "Oh, no, what will my guru think?"and almost simultaneously, "If someone is going to greet me with so much warmth and affection, why should I hold back?"The second thought won out, and Ravi kissed me back. He invited me to join the Indian march for a few miles the next

that I was fairly solvent. "Oh it's not that,"she said, and, suddenly making up her mind, added, "I'll have black coffee." I did a doubletake. This was no fey and fainting creature, but a bonny broth of a Punjabi lass who enjoyed her calories. "You mean a cold coffee with ice cream and a plate of pakoras on the side," I corrected. "No," she replied resolutely, "I mean a hot coffee.

Black. Without sugar." In helpless bafflement I placed the order.

The coffee arrived and she poured a cup, studiously avoiding milk and sugar. I watched her wince at the first sip. Defiantly she glugged half a cupful of the bitter brew and almost gagged. Discreetly, I edged the sugar bowl to-

ward her, and tactfully looked away while she sneaked a spoonful and then a couple more. I added milk and she thanked me with a wan smile. And then the story came out. An older, more sophisticated friend had given her strict advice that on no account was she to order great gobs of food, a sure deterrent to teenage romance, but stick to black coffee, which was considered tres chic and elegant. "But I hate the stuff," she confessed tearfully. I consoled her with a triple chocolate-nut sundae and watched her demolish it with gusto.

That was many years and changes ago. The girl I knew then has since grown into a woman.

Somewhere in that mysterious process the Beatie boots were jettisoned,

though the short crop and the zest for livingin which occasionally surfaces a secret but generally controlled yen for creamy confections, particularly when accompanied by hot chocolate sauce-have been retained. She has acquired a strand or so of gray, a line or two of what is mainly laughter, and a sympathetic but no-nonsense way with people, problems, and the assorted lame dogs who keep coming to her. Another addition, one can hardly u~e the term acquisition, is a husband-who, if you must know, is me.

0 About the Author: Jug editor of the Times of many books incfuding Stories, Homecoming, Delhi Belly, and A Taste

Suraiya is the senior India. He has writren Interview and Other Calcutta Medley, of the Jugular.

REFLECTIONS FROM MIDDLE AGE

on t11e ]Road day (in the wrong direction, of course, since his was going North and mine was headed South), and I promised to try.

That evening, after the radio talk show, I watched the Jimmy Carter-Gerald Ford presidential debate on television with the family with whom I was staying. We stayed up until after midnight discussing the prospects of both candidates. When I went to bed I decided not to set the alarm because I was so tired.

Those Indians won't miss me, I reasoned.

They probably just invited me to be polite.

Nevertheless, the next morning I woke up uncharacteristically early. (This is, to me, the most unlikely part of the whole story-I never wake early on my own, and certainly not to engage in unnecessary physical activity!) It was about a kilometer and a half from where I was staying to where the Indians were to meet, and I walked the distance at a quick clip, halfafraid they would leave without me, half berating myself for being silly enough to give up a day's break (it was a rest day for our group) for more marching.

As it happened, I was there before any of them, and when they arrived they seemed surprised and pleased to see me (at least Ravi did-his guru seemed a bit wary!). I walked with them for about eight kilometers, chatting with Ravi most of the time. Just before I turned to go back, he asked for my address and I wrote it down for him. Then I said

good-bye and headed South.

In the next two years, I became more deeply involved in the peace movement. I gave up any pretense of returning to college in favor of the life of a full-time activist. Ravi was occupied too-ostensibly working on his PhD in metallurgy, he was in fact devoting up to 14 hours a day to the struggle against emergency rule.

In 1978, two years after our first meeting, I was arrested at a demonstration outside the United Nations headquarters in New York during its special session on disarmament.

After being released from jail, I was interviewed by the New York Times and the story appeared on the front page. Ravi recognized my name, ferreted out his little notebook for my address, and wrote me a letter.

I responded enthusiastically (although, to be honest, I hadn't thought of him since our first meeting and couldn't even recall what he looked like), and we began a courtship by correspondence.

By the third set of letters, we had both decided independently that we would be married. How we came to this startling conclusion I cannot say: When I read those letters now I find nothing in them to support such an idea.

We decided to meet, and Ravi took a bus to my city. At the terminal, I nearly gave the bouquet of flowers to a Puerto Rican fellow who got off the bus first. He didn't look expectant enough, however, so I waited. When

Ravi finally stepped down from the bus, his face was alight with anticipation.

Two days later we were engaged, and eight months later married.

In 1981 we moved to India where we have lived ever since. We have three childrentwo homemade and one adopted-and we would like to adopt more if God chooses to send them down our road. We are great believers in welcoming whomever God sends down the road!

0 Jo McGowan is a Dehra Dun-based freelance writer. Here she is seen with her husband, Ravi Chopra, and their children.

SUNSET, SUNRISE A Neighborhood of Immigrants The two largest expanses in the Sunset Park neighborhood of the Brooklyn section of New York City are the sky and the cemetery, which the residents see as their natural limits. Since the early 17th century, when the Dutch sailed into the area, one immigrant group after another has either made it in Sunset Park or died trying, often violently. Even the earliest Anglo-Americans died violently here, in the Battle of Long Island, which was fought (and lost) in the summer of 1776 on the ridge at Sixth Avenue, on the site of the ten-hectare park after which the neighborhood is named. Nearby to the north lies Greenwood Cemetery, 193 hectares and one of the largest and oldest public burial grounds in the United States. In terms of valuable real estate, the dead of Sunset Park leave the living in the dust. Among the half million elegantly interred are lithographers Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives; painter and inventor Samuel FB. Morse; inventor and philanthropist Peter Cooper; minister Henry Ward Beecher; politician William Marcy ("Boss") Tweed; newspaper editor Horace Greeley; Pierre Lorillard, the tobacco man; and Charles Lewis Tiffany, the jew-

eler. It was once said that a New Yorker's ideal life consisted of a mansion on Fifth Avenue, an office on Wall Street, and a plot in Greenwood. But it was not said by people in Sunset Park.

Slightly more than one-and-a-half kilometers wide and four kilometers long, Sunset Park is bounded by 65th Street to the south, by 17th Street to the north, by Eighth Avenue to the east, and

by New York Bay to the west. The surrounding neighborhoods, notably gentrified Park Slope and middle-class Bay Ridge, are much better-off than Sunset Park. More than a quarter of its approximately 115,000 people live in households below the poverty line. The median income is $10,200. Large families crowd into two- and three-story houses. These low-built structures give scale to Sunset Park, and permit the sky to overwhelm one's view from the height of the ridge.

Below lies the rectangle of the neighborhood, a grid of wide avenues and narrow side streets. Beyond, across the water, are the financial towers of lower Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty.

The Irish were the first true immigrants to come to Sunset Park, in the 1850s. They were followed by the

Scandinavians, the Germans, the Italians, and the Poles, who found work on the waterfront. By 191 0, Norwegians and Finns dominated the area; the Finns, who were carpenters, colonized "Finn Town" and built their own houses. Other groups followed: Greeks and Russians, mostly Jews, who became store owners. The Puerto Ricans, who were not technically immigrants but who arrived with all the attributes, came in the 1950s.

New Arrivals Beginning in the 1970s, the people arrived who, along with Puerto Ricans, constitute Sunset Park's main population today: Dominicans, Mexicans, Ecuadoreans, Colombians, Cubans; Middle Easterners-Jordanians, Egyptians, and Lebanese; many Asians, mainly Chinese from Hong Kong, but also mainland Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Pakistanis, and East Indians.

The poorest of these live west of Third Avenue near the waterfront beneath the elevated Gowanus Expressway. The waterfront itself is part industrial park, part wasteland. The defunct piers, from which all of America's troops took off for Europe in World War II,jut into the wa-

ter in twisted metal heaps, resembling the skeletons of scorched animals.

Asians generally live in the farthest corner away from all that, on Eighth Avenue, where they established a Chinatown of shops in the 1950s and 1960s near stores whose signs still bear Norwegian, Irish, Jewish, and Italian names. Middle Easterners are scattered along Fourth Avenue. Hispanics are spread out everywhere. People live mainly on the side streets-in tenements; in brick-and-masonry houses with little gardens out front where they grow everything, including corn; and in still-attractive brownstones with.elaborate cornices, high stoops, and black iron banisters.

Like their predecessors, the new immigrants came to Sunset Park and to America to find work, though there was much less available; to establish and rear families; and, in some cases, to escape political oppression. Most of them fear crime and drugs, which are rife in Sunset Park, though they concede that many of their own have brought crime and drugs with them. Most, too, are strong advocates of family cohesion, though some have seen their own families disintegrate in America, and realize that they have entered a civilization where families have been coming apart for decades. Most have retained formal religion. Most are dismayed at the quality of the schools; and most have no use for bilingual education.

In other words, the new arrivals in Sunset Park, who represent the more than eight million new arrivals in America over the past three decades, are not terribly different from their 18th- and 19th-century counterparts. They are different in color. They are different in that they entered a welfare state. And they are different in that there are so many of them. Yet they have many of the same attitudes and racial prejudices of the earlier immigrants. And, as I found in speaking with them, they are no different in their ambitions. Most of them, like their predecessors, are for closing the golden door behind them.

Despite all this, they are accused by many observers, and, according to national polls, by most Americans, of being

go back. Everything's been colored by his The new immigrants came ...to find death."

"You mean that you would pack up work and to rear families; they are and leave the country because of that?" strong advocates of family Iask. cohesion. Despite this, they are "It isn't only that. Carlo [who is also accused by many of being bad for Dominican] would go. Even my father, the country .... I concluded that they who is as loyal to America as a man can get, says that he's planning to go back. are quite good for the country. I There's too much violence here. Look at was more often left wondering how Frankie. A boy killed because somegood the country is for them. body wanted a TV or a microwave.

And that's Florida. Heaven compared bad for the country. After spending a to Sunset Park. month last summer talking with them in "I know that my own countrymen are Sunset Park, I concluded that they are responsible for a lot of the crime around quite good for the country. I was more here," says Anna, "but they aren't the often left wondering how good the coun- majority of us. The other Dominicans I try is for them. work with are as afraid of the criminals as "When I was a girl in Dominican, the¡ anyone else. They don't think of them as dream I had of America was Bambi's for- Dominicans, just criminals." She chuckest. A little cottage, friendly people, and les. "My mother says, 'You know what's Bambi, of course, since I saw the moviewrong with this country? They let everyBambi my personal playmate. That all bodyin!' went away fast when I came to Sunset "Look. My parents came to work and Park. In Dominican we were poor, but we raise a family. I wanted the same things. lived in a big country house; we had land, Now I just want to feel safe. Forget fruit, and vegetables. When I joined my Bambi. Just safe." She thinks a moment, brothers and sisters here, the apartment then says, "Oh, I don't know. Maybe this was so small, we fought for space. So I is all about Frankie. There's a lot I love was never really close with them, or them about this country. And I definitely wit!} me. They felt I was here to take would have my child, or children, grow something away from them. Maybe I was. up here."

And then the dream was killed for good "Why is that?" [in 1993]-what happened to Frankie."

"Because they're exposed to so much. I She fights back tears. only wish there was less of a fight all the Anna, 33, a social worker in Sunset time. I know it sounds strange, but until Park, is married to Carlo, who works in a Frankie our family was never touched by violence. We lived in the middle of it in grocery store; they have a Baby daughter.

A small woman, more tan than dark, she Sunset Park, but we went about our busihas calm eyes and a mobile face. She ar- ness, went to church. We managed. Then rived here from the Dominican Republic this happened. When it did, I told my fawhen she was 13. Her parents had come ther: 'Now we're part of America.'" before her, in the mid-I 960s. Of their six Economic Refugee children, Anna is the third oldest. The Enrique is a 41-year-old math teacher. youngest, Frankie, was 22 when he was shot to death in July 1993 by a robber Like Anna, he is from the Dominican who broke into his apartment in Fort Republic, but he came to the United Lauderdale, Florida. We sit together at States only a few years ago, and he grew the top of a stoop on a late summer morn- up in Santo Domingo, not the countryside. An "economic refugee," as he calls ing, staring into the still haze.

"Until Frankie's murder I was begin- himself, he packed up with his wife and ning to think of myself as American, of three young sons, headed for New York, living here forever. Now, I'd just as soon and wound up in Sunset Park.

I ask him, "Are the students here better or worse than in the Dominican Republic?"

"There's a big difference. The kids here don't care. In Santo Domingo you have to be dedicated to come to school. I teach math, and nobody cares. It scares mefor the students, and formy own kids, too.

My boys are dedicated now, but in a few years, who knows?"

Enrique is especially concerned about

bilingualism, which is pushed not by immigrants but by local politicians seeking to build non-English-speaking constituencies.

"I want [my boys] to learn English. But here, in this area, they want them to learn Spanish. It's funny, really I, who know so little English, want my sons to learn English. And others, who speak English perfectly, want to keep them learning in Spanish. What's the point of learning in Spanish?" He

tenses up. "This is America."

The schools in Sunset Park are in bad shape, but not because of the new immigrants. In the school where Enrique teaches, there are but ISI immigrant students, representing 24 countries, out of a total school population of 1,200. The better neighborhood educators believe that the schools will only get better if more immigrants enroll. The immigrants themselves have improved the area's in-

George's Restaurant (above) and storefronts (left) along Fifth Avenue at 57th Street reflect the architectural character and cultural diversity of Sunset Park, the Brooklyn neighborhood that has been home to one immigrant group after another since the early 17th century.

tellectuallife. Until the Asians moved in, there was not a single bookstore; now there are two. The general level of education is so low that the immigrants are the last thing the schools should worry about.

Enrique's complaint goes wider than education.

New immigrants are astonished at the general absence of a work ethic. For anyone not an economist, it is hard to tell if the new immigrants have

hurt the labor market or not. And even the economists' arguments cancel out one another. But as far as attitudes toward work are concerned, most immigrants in Sunset Park border on the zealous.

Though it could never be considered anything but a very poor neighborhood, Sunset Park has actually improved economically since the arrival of the new immigrants. It had slumped to its postwar

nadir between 1960 and 1970, when nearly 60 percent of the families below the poverty line were headed by women with young children, and 22 percent of the households were on public assistance.

However, by the mid-1980s, reports Louis Winnick, an urban economist, in his book New People in Old Neighborhoods, "Sunset Park was nestled in the curl of a rebounding wave." The value of real estate rose, and dipped again with the recession of the early 1990s, but not to the earlier low levels. Houses were refurbished. No chic young middle-class businesses sprouted, but Asians, Hispanics, and Middle Easterners set up plenty of shops, like bakeries, electronics stores, and toy shops on Fifth Avenue.

An-mei, who is 36, came from Canton, China, two years ago, and has worked in a sewing factory ever since. Her apartment consists of a short, grim hallway and two average-size rooms at the top of a steep flight of stairs in a tenement on Fifth. She lives with her husband, who also works in a sewing factory, and their nine-year-old daughter.

"Do you like your work?" I ask this picturing sweatshops-airless, secret holes where pitiless bosses drive workers like slaves. Undoubtedly there are such places in Sunset Park. But there are also factories, like An-mei's, that appear no different from any well-kept, responsible business establishment. The women sit at sewing machines at comfortable distances from one another. The places are well-lit and well-ventilated. Nor are they hidden. I saw several factories, which I visited unannounced, with large working rooms visible from the street. An-mei works ten to 12 hours a day.

"I don't like my work,"she says. "I like the money. I pay my taxes, I pay my rent.

We don't take vacations. We save. And I'm not special. I'm typical."

Other Asians in the neighborhood sound no different discussing their work than any middle Europeans of the I 920s-the same mixture of purposefulness and humorless ambition. A Korean couple that runs a successful deli on Fourth Avenue; a Vietnamese family that opened a thriving restaurant on Fifth; a 66-year-old retired Chinese civil engineer whose three children are a teacher, a computer scientist, and a fast-food restaurant operator-they all say the same things about work and getting ahead.

The civil engineer, who has lived under several forms of government in China, tempers his enthusiasm with a wan observation: "The competitive system here is fine for the young but not for the old. The old are left behind. Everyone is too busy.

And they-the Chinese, I mean-they look down on you if you don't have money.

That would never happen in China."

"Know why I still sound Vietnamese, after all these years? Because I deliberately held on to that sound. I did not want to let go. It has less to do with the way others perceive me than with the way I see myself. I came here at the age of 13, in 1975, as a refugee, so [ had no choice about my country. But I always have the choice of how I feel inside, and inside I feel just as Asian as American, maybe more."

Trinh, who is a reporter for a Chineselanguage newspaper, and I walk on Eighth Avenue, past the sewing factories,

a Buddhist storefront temple, and the food shops, such as Yat Sing Take-Out, Young's Meat, and the Sam Wah market.

The grapefruit and oranges that spill out in wooden bins in front of the markets are so bright they seem lit from the inside.

"So now, after all these years, how do you think of yourself?"I ask her.

"I am one-third Vietnamese, one-third Chinese, one-third American. I actually know more about the Chinese culture than [about] the Vietnamese, because in the Asian community here it is more useful to speak Chinese. A few years ago, I

An-mei works ten to 12 hours a day. "I don't like my work," she says. "I like the money. 1 pay my taxes, 1 pay my rent. We don't take vacations. We save.

And I'm not special. I'm typical." felt so out of place in America that I went back to Vietnam. I stayed a year. I knew it was impossible to lead a life there. But I'm not sure that it's possible to lead a life here, either."

"Where, then, would you feel at home?" I ask her. She merely shrugs and bows her head.

A Significant Difference

ety. But in the past, most grou ps did make that choice. Yet they did so at a time when the idea of common purpose was promoted in the schools and mirrored in movies and institutions.

Today, when every major business enterprise is international, when money is international, when instant international experiences are pictured on television, more people think of themselves as world citizens.

Why should not immigran ts do likewise?

Taking advantage of both the sunset and the park one summer evening, I ask Anna to stand with me on its hill, the neighborhood's highest point, to look down over the roofs, chimneys, and TV antennas, then beyond to the statue in the water, and to tell me what she sees. It is one of those surrealistically beautiful New York nights-the pollution streaking the sky red and purple, the sun melting like an egg.

She surveys the neighborhood below us. "I've always liked Sunset Park," she says. "I grew up knowing everyone on the block. My boyfriend was from Ecuador, my best friend from Peru. Even if it's more dangerous now, it's still all right."

She pauses, looking around.

"I used to be afraid of the amount of choices Americans have," she says, "and I still am. It's overwhelming.

But look there." She indicates Sixth Avenue. "If I want to get to that bodega on the corner, I can walk straight down the hill. Or, if I choose, I can take anyone of those winding paths, to the right or to the left. And something terrible may happen to me if I take one route or the other. Or, something terrible may happen if I stand still, and I may wind up in Greenwood." She glances in the direction of the cemetery.

"But something wonderful may happen to me, too. In any event, it's my choice."

"Still thinking of going back?"I ask.

"Dominicans have a crazy superstition," she says. "I don't know where it came from. They say: 'If you fall in the snow in America, you'll never leave.' I probably fell in the snow."

0

That newcomers think of themselves as having a foot in two countries is different from the earlier waves of immigrants, and the difference is significant. One explanation for the thinking of many of them is that, since they ~ere not refugees seeking asylum, it makes perfect sense for them to act on longings for home whenever they are ready. A Russian Jew hounded out of his country at the turn of the century had no home to return to. A Mexican or a Dominican can easily fly home again.

The fact that a great many of the new immigrants do not assimilate is troubling.

One wonders, however, how much assimilation is possible in modern America. To be sure, certain groups, such as the About the Author: Roger Rosenblatt, wellChinese and the Hasidic Jews, have never known as an essayist, writes for The New chosen to fully blend into American soci- . Republic.

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