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.

Research exposes “Conservatives”

Here is the article reported by Deccan Chronicle – Jun 30, 2007

http://www.deccan.com/chennaichronicle/home/homedetails.asp#Net%20‘sexiest’%20in%20Delhi,%20Chennai


The so branded “conservative” ones in the society seem to be freaking out in the online world. Is it because there is no culture vulture or religious police patrolling the cyberspace? Chennai shrouded as a conservative city in the South tops the list in India. Other global cities that top the list always hide under the veil. Pakistan, Egypt and India – cradle of civilization tops the list when it comes to the three letter word.

Remember there is a human under every veil and they have a secret to share. Why masquerade human feelings and animal instincts?

One common observation is that people in oppressed and suppressed society have higher libidos. A clean society emerges after understanding and self-discovery and not from suppression and policing.

More Dharavis in the make

“Kettum Pattanam Serr” (Beg, borrow or steal, but some how make it to the city, because it is the land of opportunity) was a proverb that was born during my grandfather’s generation. When migration wave hit villages and people got educated and moved to cities rather than raising cattle and ploughing fields. This migration was at a slower rate. But UN report “State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth” says the rate of migration is picking up enormous steam. By 2008, 3.3 billion, more than half of the world population will live in cities and towns for the first time. Urban landscape will change considerably and the very city that once was a land of opportunity will turn into the land of poverty.

Read the article below from NY Times on U.N. prediction on population explosion.

What does it mean to people like us in the cities?
* Poverty, congestion and pollution will paint the city landscape
* More Dharavi’s will emerge – lack sanitation, proper living conditions, breeding ground for crime and violence
* Rich poor divide will be glaringly felt in the cities
* Poor quality of life
* Lack of area will push the city to develop along the Z-axis
* Lack of hygienic living conditions will increase vulnerability to germs and deadly diseases – life expectancy can come down
* Shortage of food - Food production will go down as a result of lack of labor in rural areas until we turn to mass scale mechanized farming. Remember we still need food to survive, because currency notes are not edible

The only people who benefit from this mass exodus from rural areas will be those holding real estate in Cities. Real estate in cities will be priceless – more than gold and diamond mines.

U.N. Predicts Urban Population Explosion
By CELIA W. DUGGER
Published: June 28, 2007
By next year, more than half the world’s population, 3.3 billion people, will for the first time live in towns and cities, and the number is expected to swell to almost five billion by 2030, according to a United Nations Population Fund report released yesterday.

The change is expected to be particularly swift in Africa and Asia, where between 2000 and 2030 “the accumulated urban growth of these two regions during the whole span of history will be duplicated in a single generation,” says the report, “State of World Population 2007: Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth.”

This surge in urban populations, fueled more by natural increase, or births, than the migration of people from the countryside, is unstoppable, George Martine, who wrote the report, said in an interview.

Cities are predicted to edge out rural areas in more than sheer numbers of people. Poverty is increasing more rapidly in urban areas, and governments need to plan for where the poor will live rather than leaving them to settle illegally in shanties without sewerage and other services.

“Now the levels of insecurity and violence are a product of this approach,” said Mr. Martine, a Canadian demographer and sociologist. “People have been left to fend for themselves and have created these enormous slums.”

Rather than just letting slums spring up, governments need to anticipate the expanding ranks of the urban poor and provide them with secure housing, water, sanitation and power, among other services, the report says. With decent housing and basic services, the poor can take advantage of the opportunities offered by city life, it says.

A billion people, about a sixth of the world’s population, already live in slums, 90 percent of them in developing countries. In sub-Saharan Cities are predicted to edge out rural areas in more than sheer numbers of people. Poverty is increasing more rapidly in urban areas, and governments need to plan for where the poor will live rather than leaving them to settle illegally in shanties without sewerage and other services, the United Nations report says.

In Latin America, where urbanization occurred earlier than in other developing regions, many countries and cities ignored or tried unsuccessfully to retard urban growth. “Now the levels of insecurity and violence are a product of this approach,” said Mr. Martine, a Canadian demographer and sociologist. “People have been left to fend for themselves and have created these enormous slums.”

Rather than just letting slums spring up, governments need to anticipate the expanding ranks of the urban poor and provide them with secure housing, water, sanitation and power, among other services, the report says. With decent housing and basic services, the poor can take advantage of the opportunities offered by city life, it says.

In China,the world’s most populous nation, urbanites are expected to outnumber people in rural areas within a decade. China would then have 83 cities with more than 750,000 residents, but only five with a population of more than five million, the report says.

In fact, it predicts that the bulk of the urban population growth will be in smaller cities and towns, not the 20 megacities that dominate the public imagination. The future lies in places like Gabarone, Botswana, where the population is projected to reach 500,000 in 2020, up from 18,000 in 1971, as much as it does in chaotic, sprawling metropolises like Lagos, Nigeria.

Among the megacities with populations of more than 10 million, only Lagos and Dhaka, Bangladesh, are expected to grow at rates exceeding 3 percent over the coming decade. Such supersize cities today contain 9 percent of all urban inhabitants, while cities and towns of fewer than 500,000 account for more than half.

“Many of the world’s largest cities — Buenos Aires, Calcutta, Mexico City, São Paulo and Seoul — actually have more people moving out than in, and few are close to the size that doomsayers predicted for them in the 1970s,”the report says.

The report notes that while rates of urban growth have slowed in most regions of the world, the story now lies in the expected growth in the sheer numbers of people through natural increases and migration from rural areas."Africa, more than 7 in 10 urban dwellers live in a slum, an area lacking services such as water, sanitation or legal rights to housing. The region’s slum population has almost doubled in just 15 years, reaching 200 million in 2005. Its urban population is already as large as North America’s.

The first great wave of urbanization unfurled overtwo centuries, from 1750 to 1950, in Europe and North America, with urban populations rising from 15 million to 423 million. The second wave is happening now in the developing world. There, thenumber of people living in urban areas will have grown from 309 million in 1950to an expected 3.9 billion in 2030. By 2030, developing nations are expected to have 80 percent of the world’s urban population.

If this population growth is helter-skelter, with inadequate services and sprawling slums, it could pollute urban watersheds with untreated sewage and contribute to increases in crime and violence, Mr. Martine said. The result of that approach is apparent in today’s slums.

“The poor settle in the worst living space, on steep hillsides or river banks that will be flooded, where nobody else wantsto live and speculators haven’t taken control of the land,” he said. “They have no water and sanitation, and the housing is terrible. And this situation threatens the environmental quality of the city.”

But cities are also engines of economic growth, the\nreport notes more optimistically. “Cities concentrate poverty,” it said, “but they also represent the best hope of escaping it.”

Will the buds flower?

An article in The Hindu today “HIV+ students’ future uncertain” triggered my thoughts.

For no fault of theirs the young generation suffers not just at home but even at school. At a tender age when they don’t even understand the condition of their disease the society has ostracized them and taken away the pleasure of youth and growing up. Even educated parents who are informed of HIV object their kids schooling with kids infected with HIV. For the Government to come up with a solution to address this issue is like asking for the Sun. Society and NGOs will have chart a solution amiable to both sides. Can we give an opportunity for these buds to flower rather than wither? Rather than asking NGOs to take care why not teachers pitch in?

What can be done?
Start evening school for kids infected with HIV – use the same infrastructure
Teachers spend their evening tutoring kids infected with HIV
Engage Retired teachers spend their time privately tutoring kids

Thought the above ideas can work in the short term, Government and NGOs must think about long-term solutions to address this issue.

Ponder and share your thoughts.

City Xposed

Many locals claim the Marina to be one the world's longest, but have we kept the beach and the shore line beautiful?

This picture was taken on June 9. 2007 at 6.15 am. I wasn’t prepared for this and I had to use my mobile to Xpose the city.

Look at all those guys squatting on the shoreline. What a shame! What an eyesore!

We immediately need a campaign to save the shore. Hope Culture vultures and Environmentalist will do something to stop the coast line defecation.