SUNDAY TIMES OF INDIA, PUNE AUGUST 2, 2015 17DEEP FOCUS

Anantha Subramanyam K & Vidya Iyengar

At the crack of dawn, a gang of around 100 boys and young men de-scends on the lanes and bylanes of Bengalurus

Chickpet area. They swiftly slip into the deep, murky pits that re-ceive the localitys sewage.

Inside, with brooms in hand, the youngsters start raking the thick, oily, grey-black sludge that shimmers in the morning light. They are looking for Element 79.

The, manholes with cov-ers removed and placed on the edge, on Avenue Road, Cub-bonpet, Nagarthpet, Anchep-et, Siddanna lane and Kilari Road are guarded by emaci-ated boys who warn vehicle drivers and passers-by to look out. You could mistake them, as we did, for manual scavengers hired by civic agencies to clean the sewers. This is, in fact, underground scav-

enging, but with a difference.Avenue Road and its adjoin-

ing lanes is a hub for goldsmiths and jewellers. There are more than 300 goldsmiths in this area who work for the citys top jewellers. The gold dust from these work-

shops/units often ends up in the drains, and that is the gossamer lode the young boys are purpose-fully hunting.

We scour the area from early morning till around 7:30 am to col-lect the sludge from the gutters. We then take it to be filtered, explains Karthik who makes the most of the golden hours in the gutters before he switches to his primary job as an

auto driver. Most times, however, he finds mud and nothing else,

complains Karthik, who joined the tribe of treasure-hunters three years ago.

The occasional extra buck and the hope of making it makes the task worth their while. Af-ter all, gold hovers around Rs 23,000 per 10 gm now.

At the filtering units ad-joining the railway tracks at

Okalipuram, we found around 20 people, mostly women, busy

silting the waste (brass often is a collateral find). They use mercury to draw out any accumulated gold.

Once it is collected, the gold is sold to dealers in the same area.

M Krishnachari, who has been a goldsmith for the past 45 years, explains how the gold specks land up on roads and in drains. When we melt gold, theres a small amount of wastage for every 10 gm, at least 1 gm is lost. This ends up on our hands and feet. We usu-ally rinse our hands and feet out-side the store which is how the gold

flows into the gutters, he says.Vishwanatha, of Vishwanatha

Antique Dye Works who special-izes in embossed work, says it is difficult to estimate how much gold the boys collect on a daily basis. It is really a question of luck. Some-times when we send our workers to get some polishing done, they put the gold in their pockets and lose it. So these boys may get entire nuggets of gold; at other times,

they have to separate the dirt from the gold powder, he says.

Collecting the muck and de-positing it at Okalipuram gets the boys Rs 400 a day. If we manage to get any gold or precious metal, we have regular buyers who pay us a little less than the market price. But its okay for a couple of hours job, says Santosh, a daily wager from Okalipuram.

The wiry Babu (24) doubles up

as filtering staff. He says business has been hit badly of late. The tribe (of collectors) has grown and everyone is looking in the same places, at the same time, he says. Babu earns an extra Rs 400 for la-bouring over mounds of sand, most of which contains human excreta, in search of the elusive micro particles.

The ramshackle filtering set-ups draw residents of the slum adjoin-ing the railway lines. After finish-ing household chores we spend time silting until sundown. We get paid Rs 250 per day for this work, says Priya, who lives nearby.

Isnt it revolting to search for gold amid human excreta? Saar, are people who live above these gut-ters as decent as they look? They do worse jobs than this to lead a luxurious life, Santosh retorts.

He then quietly shuts the lid of the manhole and walks away with a bag full of silt and muck, hoping he has struck gold.

Courtesy Bangalore Mirror

Arun.Ram@timesgroup.com

Sujan Sengupta, an associate professor at Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, is a much harassed man now-adays harassed by unsolic-ited callers. One wanted to

know if the scientist has come in con-tact with an alien. Another reported that he had found something that could be an alien signal. I am tired of these guys, says Sengupta.

The calls started on July 20, when Russian billionaire Yuri Milner an-nounced the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project to look for extraterres-trial intelligence. The money was big, but so were the men Milner got to rub shoulders with: Stephen Hawking, the worlds most famous theoretical physi-cist; Martin Reese, the British cosmolo-gist after whom an asteroid is named; Geoffrey Marcy, the American astrono-mer who discovered 70 of the first 100 extra-solar planets man could find; and Pete Worden, former Nasa Ames Re-search Centre director. The only Indian in the Breakthrough Listen team is Su-jan Sengupta.

If you forget the calls, says the scientist who has been studying extra-solar planets and brown dwarfs, I am quite excited. The search for extrater-restrial intelligence (SETI) dates back to the late 19th century when physicist Nikola Tesla suggested that humans could send electrical signals to Mar-tians. But SETI got its name only in 1960 when American astrophysicist Frank Drake launched Project Ozma that used a 26m radio telescope to lis-ten to signals from outer space, some of which he thought could be from al-iens. Breakthrough Listen will use the 100m telescope at the Green Bank Ob-servatory, West Virginia, and the 64m telescope at Parkes Observatory in Aus-tralia for hundreds of hours, for ten years. It will also search for optical sig-nals using the Automated Planet Find-

er of Lick Observatory in California.Breakthrough Listen spells out its

first two initiatives on its homepage. One: A complete survey of one million nearest stars, the plane and centre of our galaxy, and the 100 nearest galax-ies. All data will be open to the public. Two: A $1million competition to design a message representing Earth and hu-manity that could potentially be un-derstood by another civilization.

Its a funny project because we are looking for something which we know nothing about, says Sengupta. But then, there are 200 billion stars in our galaxy and there are some 200 billion galaxies in the visible universe, so there must be someone sending a sig-nal from somewhere, says Sengupta.

How do we know if some signals the radio telescopes receive are from ET, when celestial objects continu-ously send out radio pulses? The thumb rule has been that if a set of signals is systematic and regular, with-out the sidereal characters associated with celestial bodies, it should be from an intelligent source. In 1967, Antony Hewish and Jocelyn Bell Burnell were excited when they recorded pulses separated by 1.33 seconds emanating from the same location in the sky. They named them LGM (little green men). Soon they turned out to be coming from a hitherto unknown celestial source. And Hewish went on to get the Nobel Prize in 1974 for aiding the dis-covery of pulsars.

Breakthrough Listen, however, is not all about listening, it will also send out some radio signals for ET to detect. Astrophysicists remain sharply di-vided on the origin of the universe many hailing Hawkings Big Bang theory, and some others like Jayant Narlikar who flay it as pseudoscience but everyone agrees on the possibil-ity of existence of extraterrestrial intelligent life.

Hawking, who has been caution-ing against sending radio signals

since advanced extraterrestrials could ruin us, seems to have partial-ly come around with the Break-through project. Hawking, who said in 2010 that aliens would be looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they could reach, has now said: We are alive. We are intelli-gent. We must know.

To know, an array of radio tele-scopes at Tata Institute of Funda-

mental Research in Pune has been tuning in for alien signals, so far with no luck. However, Jayant Narlikar, founder of Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, went a different way. His team sent out balloons from Hyderabad in 2001, and collected microbes from an altitude of 41km, in sterilized cans. They didnt find much more than a few varieties which are unusually resistant to UV radiation. The team tried the experiment again with im-proved methods in 2005, and got three types of microbes which were so far not seen on Earth. Did they rise from Earth or were they falling to Earth? says Narlikar. And we dont have the answer yet. For this, he is planning another round of experi-ments including isotope analysis of

the microbes.The two missions are looking for

different ways to answer the same question is there life beyond Earth? Breakthrough, though, is looking at intelligent life. Former Indian Space Research Organization (Isro) chairman U R Rao, who was part of Narlikars experiments, says listening is the best thing to do now. As we send out radio signals for ETs,

they must be sending out signals to us. We are asking each other physi-cist Enrico Fermis famous question: Wheres everybody? One day we hope to find a watering hole where buffa-loes from Earth and those from an-other planet can chill out, says Rao.

But, returning to Hawkings fear, what could happen when we finally communicate with the aliens? A ra-dio signal from a probable intelligent civilization takes light years to reach Earth, which means that civilization is light years ahead of us in terms of prowess. If they decide to check out the source of our signals and set out on their spaceships earthwards, what would they do? Holler what on earth are you doing here? or croon honey, Im home?

Nobody knows.

Amulya.Gopalakrishnan@timesgroup.com

In recent months, racial violence has been foregrounded in the US, with the Charles-ton incident in which nine black church-goers were gunned down and other inci-

dents of police brutality that are no longer possible to deny. And all of a sudden, Black Twitter has become a preoccupation with the US media, reminding it of its own evasions.

Hashtags around race like #icant-breathe #Blacklivesmatter found their way into many feeds, pushed themselves into wider view, and forced a reckoning. The LA Times recently even assigned a reporter to cover Black Twitter, while ac-knowledging that it is so much more compli-cated than that.

African-American struggles have in-spired and tactically informed anti-caste activism. But could Dalit-Bahujan Twit-ter exert a similar force, in India?

Take Round Ta-ble India, a forum of writers that aims for an informed Ambed-kar age and sees caste as the primary fissure in Indian society. They aggregate news on politics, society and culture, they comment and critique, and try to be a hub for Dalit-Bahujan voices. Un-like mainstream me-dia, we arent casteist we have many upper castes writing, at least as much as their share in the population, says Naren Bedide, one of the founders.

Its only half a joke. The media is scandal-ously unrepresentative in 1996, Pioneer jour-nalist B N Uniyal found that he hadnt met a single Dalit journalist in his entire working life. In 2006, a Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) study found that 90% of the decision-makers at English newspapers and 79% of TV journalists were upper-caste.

In other words, the media frames national events, but does not include most of the nation. It speaks with near-unanimity on IITs stand-ards when it pushes out Dalit students; it mis-reports caste-based violence as farmers clash-es or lovers quarrels when it reports them at all; and it often misses the real import of events.

When others interpret the world for you,

can you change it? is the question that drives Round Table India. We dont have, and dont expect access in the media. Its a conscious deci-sion to build spaces of our own, says Bedide. As he sees it, it is a structural conflict, and one cant use the tools of savarnas, like mainstream media, to dismantle their edifice of hierarchy.

There are blogs like Atrocities News that wrenched attention to the Khairlanji killings and continue to document caste-based attacks. But there are also blogs with entirely different missions, Facebook and Twitter accounts, mail-ing lists and Whatsapp groups and to club them all together as Dalit social media flattens their diversity. Shared Mirror, for instance, is a platform for Dalit poetry, translated and new.

Savari, a space by Adivasi, Bahujan and Dalit women, speaks with its own distinctive voice.

There are forums dedicated to history and to challenging narratives and erasures, like Dr Ambedkars Caravan, which has over 500 arti-cles so far. In April, activists across the board celebrated Dalit History Month, creatively re-sisting the attempt to reduce Dalit history solely to one of atrocity. This was, again, a nod

to Black History Month. Hashtags like #Dal-itlivesmatter are often used to

galvanize others.Twitter, though, is still a

hostile medium, say many of these writers. It is full of ei-ther Internet Hindus or Con-

gressis and left-liberals, there is no understand-ing of other issues, says Bedide. Facebook, which nurtures more like-mind-ed groups and longer con-versations, is more use-ful, says Ashok Bharti, chairman of the National Confederation of Dalit Organisations (NAC-DOR). If any incident happens anywhere, it is on my Facebook page in five minutes. Its better than a wire service, though the stories are of-ten raw, he says.

Dalits are still un-touchable on social me-dia; if I post anything about Dr Ambedkar or Dalit history in a general forum, I get blocked in a few minutes, says Par-deep Attri of Ambed-

kars Caravan.

Of course, there is no unified Dalit social media, any more than there is a single Dalit politics across the country, fragmented as it is by sub-caste, region, gender, class and ideological preference. And yet, social media offers some-thing new. Dalit Camera, a YouTube channel, records life from untouchable eyes. Bathran

Ravichandran, who founded it, says that social media, with the many perspectives it of-fers, has broadened the views and values of Dalit activists around the country. Social media only supple-ments, in a small way, the grassroots work that goes on around the country, he says.

Others are skeptical of the reach and representative-ness of social media Dalit voices. Political analyst and activist Anand Teltumbde describes them as a small fraction of Dalits, who just talk to each other. Accord-ing to him, a sharpened sense of caste and sub-caste iden-

tity makes it harder to make common cause with others, and only props up their elite adversaries.

Meanwhile, groups like NACDOR prefer to engage with mainstream media and institu-tions, and use social media for direct access and advocacy. So does the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle (APSC) at IIT Madras, which has a vocal social media presence. Akhil Bhar-athan of APSC thinks that caste, as an all-encompassing framework of oppression, also compels one outwards, to think of gender, class, and minority justice, and to form alli-ances. While these voices may now be a coun-terpublic, drowned out in the din of powerful interest groups, the ultimate aim is to be the public, says Bharathan.

they may not be, after all, little green men. As the $100m Breakthrough Listen opens doors for alien signals, Sunday Times talks to some Indians who have been trying to reach out to yonder skies

Twitter is still a hostile medium for Dalits, say writers. Posts on Dr Ambedkar or Dalit

history, for instance, get blocked quite fast on social

media, they point out

Anti-caste struggles are acquiring a new visibility on Twitter

TWEET POWER: Though they are clubbed together as Dalit social media, these forums deal with a range of diverse issues

Social justice on social media?

Getty Images

Bengalurus streets may not be paved with gold but its drains are specked with it. And a group of boys is turning the dust into their daily bread

GLITTER INTHE GUTTER

GOLD SLUSH: Youngsters who spend their mornings sifting sewage in Bengalurus drains to find gold dust often make around Rs 400 a day. The dust comes from the workshops of goldsmiths dotting the roads in Chickpet

The dust from jewellery workshops and units often ends up in the sewers, and that is the gossamer lode the young boys

are purposefully hunting

GUESS WHOS COMING TO DINNER...

Indias best-known alien seeker Jayant Narlikar and his team sent out balloons in

2001, and again in 2005. In the second experiment, they got three types of microbes which were so far not seen on Earth. Did they rise from Earth or were they falling to Earth? says Narlikar. We dont have the answer yet. For this, he is planning another round of experiments

Photos: Anantha Subramanyam K

HypothesisIn September 1959,an article in Nature magazine authored by two physicists at Cornell marked the beginning of our quest. It went on to speculate the frequen-cies of electromagnetic waves at which more advanced civilizations in the universe may at-

tempt to contact us. Their technological estimations paved the way for the functioning of SETI.

The Red PlanetIn 1965, Nasas Mari-ner 4 became the first spacecraft to make a flyby

of another planet, Mars,and send back pictures. Our fascination with the Red Planet continues with as many as five orbiters operating around it today and the Curiosity rover inspecting its surface.

New FrontiersPioneer 10 is the first probe to have left the solar system. Launched in 1972, it carries a plaque designed by Frank Drake and Carl Sagan that seeks to introduce Earth and

its inhabitants to any extraterrestrial life that may intercept it.

More lettersIn 1977, Voyagers 1 and 2left Earth with 115 videos,images and sounds that represented the diversity on this planet. Apart from telling any possible aliens in distant galaxies how birdsong, thunder and ocean waves sound on Earth, the Voyager Golden Record also carries de-tailed instructions on how

to access this information.

Seti@homeLaunched in May 1999,Seti@home lets research-ers piggyback on your computers processing power, if you sign up for it, to process parts of the astronomical amounts of data generated by listening for alien signals. It hasnt found any suc-cess yet.

Kepler MissionNasas Kepler Mission,launched in 2009, is a

space telescope that points to a field of stars for a period of four years. In the time, it monitors

1,00,000 stars to discover extrasolar planets like Earth by watching out for planet transits.

HUNTINGFOR ET

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