Passage to India

We have history of being spineless and servile. How many times have we been invaded in the past? Should I lend my fingers for you to count? It happens again….not a surprise huh?

In today’s world Money and power can erase sins, tears and blood. You can walk into India, kill people and walk away without being reprimanded. Well atleast that is the message we get from the letter sent by Dow Chemical chairman to Indian Ambassador.

Dow Chemicals has a history of killing people with their chemicals and silently filing for bankruptcy. It was asbestos poisoning, Union carbide tragedy, silicone breast implants – I just can’t imagine what more catastrophes are in the pipeline?

This is one of the obstacles that Dow Chemical wants removed before it re-enters India to do business, a move which the Indian government has been quietly encouraging.

When Jihadi’s and Ladens walked into US and brought the American economy on it knees Bush waged a war against them in the Middle East. Union Carbide tragedy killed 22,000 people but we let Dow walk away scotch free – Is it Gandhigiri?

Killing innocent Indians with Made in USA knives - Is it Gandhigiri?

Government of Gujarat signing a JV with Dow - Silently inviting Dow to start another disaster in India – Is it Gandhigiri?

The Chairman of Dow in his letter has shown no sense of shame or regret or commitment, but meekly seeking the Indian Government for a come back in the Indian soil?

Indian software companies take pride in announcing their client lists “45 of Fortune 500” aren’t these MNCs’ 45 of Evil 500? Should we maintain their IT system when they have killed 22,000 people and mutated innocent lives for life and paid no price to remediate? Should our IT engineers not exercise their social responsibility?

Where is social responsibility that our Corporations are talking about? Just lip service, huh?

Indian PM Manmohan Singh talks about social responsibility of corporations, where is the responsibility of Indian government?

America walked into Iraq on the pretext that Iraq had WMD and wiped peace and prosperity in their country. These MNCs are walking into Indian in a similar fashion to dump their waste and obliterate India.

The Capitalistic West is behaving like terrorist. When will India and Indians learn to stand up for their own safety and security?

Prudence or Providence – when will it work, when will we wake up?

Dow Chem tries to avoid paying Rs 100cr
By Olga Tellis
Mumbai, July 18: Dow Chemical chairman Andrew Liveris has in a letter to Indian ambassador to the United States Ronen Sen tried to enlist his support to get the Union ministry of chemicals and fertilisers to drop its demand for the payment of Rs 100 crores as a deposit for environmental remediation costs in Bhopal.

Dow Chemical plans India plant; ties up with India's GACL - report
MUMBAI (Thomson Financial) - Dow Chemical Co's European unit has signed a joint venture agreement with India's Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd to manufacture chlorine-based products at the latter's Dahej project site in the western state of Gujarat, local dailies Business Standard and The Economic Times reported.

Dow distances from Bhopal gas tragedy
Sunday, July 1, 2007 (New York):In 2001, Dow Chemical bought Union Carbide for $9.3 billion, despite this, Dow has refused to accept moral responsibility or be held accountable for the Bhopal gas tragedy.

Pamela Mountbatten on the Jawaharlal-Edwina relationship

It was very interesting to see the script of Karan Thapar’s interview with Pamela Mountbatten in today’s Hindu.

The read the following questions and interesting replies. It silenced by brain and emotions for a second. Never judge a book by its cover. It also needs guts and gumption to talk about ones’ family, especially a mother’s relationships in the public.

Love has no reasons or seasons!!

There was no tinge of jealousy or perhaps of hurt emotion?
No, because I think he trusted them both. And also, my mother was so happy with Jawaharlal, she knew she was helping him at a time when it’s very lonely at the pinnacle of power. It really is. And if she could help, and my father knew that it helped her, because a woman can, after a long marriage, and they’d been over twenty five years together, a woman can feel perhaps frustrated, and perhaps neglected if somebody’s working terribly hard. And so if a new affection comes into her life, a new admiration, she blossoms and she’s happy.

But Panditji was a widower, he needed female affection. Your mother was alluring and beautiful. They were so close to each other. It would be natural for the emotional to become sexual.
It could be, and maybe everybody will think I’m being very naive, but the fact that she had had lovers in the past, somehow this was so different, it really was. And the letters, I mean if you were deeply, physically in love, your whole letter would be about the other person and your need of them physically, and it would be that kind of love letter. These letters had an\nopening paragraph of tenderness, and the end would be also tender and romantic and nice like that, but three quarters of the letter was unburdening himself of all his worries and his disappointments or his hopes and all his idealism coming out for the extraordinary time of India at her rebirth in history and it is the history of India as an independent nation.

For more visit the website
http://www.hindu.com/2007/07/18/stories/2007071862131300.htm or scroll down.....

Never Insult Rats again - They are better than Humans

Have you watched the movie Ratatouille? You just can discount the animation movie to be a fiction anymore.In this world filled with voilence, hate, prejudice and lack of compassion, we have a lesson to be learnt from Rats. Ramayana talks about how squirells and monkey helped Lord Rama to lay the bridge to Lanka. For some this could be a myth, but when you read this article below you can extrapolate the same logic.

Scientist have discovered from experiments that the rats had developed what they call generalized reciprocity — that is, they were generous even with an unknown partner because another rat had just been kind to them.

Here is the extract from NY TIMES - http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/science/10rat.html

Swiss researchers put pairs of female rats — they were littermates — in a cage, separating them with a wire mesh. In one half of the cage, a rat could pull a lever attached to a baited tray that would deliver food to her sister, but not to herself. Each rat was trained in alternate sessions, first as a recipient of food, then as a provider. The sisters learned to cooperate, and they pulled significantly more often when their littermate was present than when the other half of the cage was empty.

Then the researchers put rats who had recently been assisted by their partners, and rats who had not recently been helped, in with unfamiliar and unrelated rats. Those who had recently been helped were about 21 percent more likely to pull the lever for the new partner.
This was not just ordinary operant conditioning or reinforcement, the researchers maintain, because the rats were never rewarded for their own behavior, only that of others. Because the rats were unfamiliar and unrelated, there was no family interaction involved. The only plausible explanation, they believe, is that the rats had developed what they call generalized reciprocity — that is, they were generous even with an unknown partner because another rat had just been kind to them.

The study’s lead author, Claudia Rutte, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Bern in Switzerland, warned against drawing conclusions about humans from work with rats. "We’re interested in the evolution of cooperation," she said, "but our research is about animals, really, not people."

Still, the paper, published in the July issue of PLoS Biology, cites previous research showing that humans act the same way — people who have been helped in some way are more likely to help others immediately afterward.

Incidentally, these rats were not the usual cute, pink-eyed white lab rats. They were bred from wild Rattus norvegicus — the brown or gray Norway rat depressingly familiar to residents of many American cities.

Is it time to stop using the word "rat" as an insult? Maybe. Apparently even a nasty-looking rat can be possessed of sterling character.