Rumble of Thoughts

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

All about Norway

Norway has once again grabbed the headlines! This time an Indian couple was arrested in Norway after scolding their child for wetting his pants! Earlier another Indian couple Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya lost custody of their two children, Abhigyan, 3, and Aishwarya, 1, in May of last year.

But the fact of the matter is that if India was Norway even for a day, every Indian parent would be in jail!

Short of strangling, "normal" Indian parent would have committed every other offense that may put them in jail if they were in Norway. We scold, threaten, pinch and many even use the cane to put our children on track. What track, only God knows! If you look at my blog and the most popular post, it is about me punishing our son for lying. I have always wondered if some Child Authority in the world is monitoring this blog to one day arrest me and put me in jail! Yes, I did beat him that day! Of course not severely. Luckily our children have not given us much chance to exercise our parental authority. They have been well behaved and now that they are old, I have realized that it is no longer necessary. But for most Indian parent, the crimes that put you in jail in Norway are a part of their own growing up. There is no way they will change overnight! Anyway this post is not about parenting but about Norway so let me get on with it.

The Nordic country as you know tops in the happiness index.

To the surprise of absolutely no one, Norway has been declared the world's happiest country. Just as unsurprising, the Democratic Republic of Congo came last.

The United Nations Human Development Index 2011 measures happiness in different countries based on factors such as income, education, health, life expectancy, economy, gender equality and sustainability.

So when I mentioned this during a discussion on FB regarding the arrest, a friend pointed out the following as a reason for the same:

As per United Nations, Monthly Bulletin of Statistics, April 2001, the Number of marriages per 1,000 people per year in Norway is only 5.1 :)

So marriage seems to be the culprit. But it is true that most children in Norway are born out of wedlock and there is no stigma attached with it. Most couples are like Brad and Angelina! If Bragelina started thinking about marriage after their kids (six of them) started bugging them, Nordic couples too think of marriage only after a couple of children.

The willingness to accept so-called “open unions” or “uncertified marriages” in the Nordic countries has been under way for a very long time, many decades before the term “same-sex marriage” was even coined. In Finland, for example, attitudes to marriage started to change substantially after World War II. During the period 1950 to 1984, there was a sharp increase in the number of unmarried couples.

“Since the late 1960s, the practice of cohabitation had become increasingly common, so much so that by the late 1970s most marriages in urban areas grew out of what Finns called ‘open unions,’ according to the Encyclopedia of Women’s History.

But there are various reasons why they opt for such a union.

But there are various reasons Scandinavian couples decide to wait. Putting a priority on education, career, or buying an apartment are some of the reasons. The high cost of a traditional wedding is another. “If you have children you may not be able to afford to get married. A wedding can be very expensive,” observes soon-to-be-married Malin Larsson of Sweden, currently on paid parental leave to take care of her young daughter.

If an expensive wedding is one reason then India has every reason to follow the Scandinavian formula!

As for government:

Norway is a unitary parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with King Harald V as its head of state and Jens Stoltenberg as its prime minister.

India too can follow the same. Declare the Gandhi family as the reigning King or Queen and get on with governance!

Norwegians have done pretty well in governance and statistics proves so.

Norwegians enjoy the second highest GDP per-capita (after Luxembourg) and fourth highest GDP (PPP) per-capita in the world. Today, Norway ranks as the second wealthiest country in the world in monetary value, with the largest capital reserve per capita of any nation.

Now I read that the Indian couples are indeed in trouble since they burned and belted their child!

Parenting can be stressful and one can lose sanity very easily but it is always good to remember that it is your own genes that is inside them and there are many things that just cannot be corrected by being cruel to them. You may watch your own shortcomings in them and would badly want to correct it but it is always better to do it in a gentler manner.

http://www.nordicreach.com/its_about/lifestyle/135/
http://travel.cnn.com/explorations/life/united-nations-announces-world%E2%80%99s-happiest-country-247768
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_mar_rat-people-marriage-rate&int=-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway

Thursday, November 29, 2012

BP pays for it's negligence...

So the British giant BP has been suspended from US for 1 year and this is after paying millions in compensation.

2:47PM EST November 28. 2012 -
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is suspending British oil giant BP Exploration and Production Inc. and affiliated companies from further federal contracts, the Environmental Protection Agency announced Wednesday.
The total cost of the spill response has hit $9.5 billion, Europe's second-largest oil company by market value

BP pleaded guilty Nov. 15 to numerous criminal charges related to the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster that killed 11 people and caused the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The charges included 11 counts of misconduct or neglect of ship officers, one count of obstruction of Congress, one misdemeanor count of a violation of the Clean Water Act, and one misdemeanor count of a violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act.

Compare this to Bhopal Gas Tragedy and one should cry! More than 30,000 have been killed and the agreed compensation was a mere 750 crore IRS. If one thinks that the entire amount reached the victims and their kins then we are not talking about India. Dow was asked to increase the compensation since the number of deaths had increased but they refused to do so.

In an affidavit, Dow Chemicals has said it will not pay more compensation for Bhopal victims as the settlement reached in 1989 for USD 470 million was more than adequate and fair.

Not only did people die, but an entire generation faced deformities and the ground water in many areas are still contaminated. But why should we blame the foreign company when it is our own government and judiciary who is at fault. Anderson was given a safe exit from India by our own government.

Seven of the eight Indian company officials have now been sentenced to two years in jail by a court in Bhopal. The eighth has since died.

Anderson was briefly detained immediately after the disaster, but he quickly left the country and now lives in New York.

Last July, the court issued a warrant for Anderson's arrest and ordered the Indian government to press Washington for the American's extradition.

This was in 2010 and has the government done anything to seek Anderson’s extradition? The government will wait until he dies. Dow still operates in India under various guises. Where is our government and judiciary?

On the basis of the bench's ruling, a Bhopal court had last year awarded two years to UCC (India) chairman Keshub Mahindra and other officials.

The apex court had sought responses from UCC, Dow Chemicals Company (which owns UCC since 2001), Mcleod Russel (India) Private Limited which holds 50.9 percent stake in Union Carbide India Limited) and UCIL (currently known as Eveready Industries Limited).

The latest fire disaster from Bangladesh is another example of how multinational firms lower their standards while operating out of a third world country. These giant brand owners make huge profit but fails to compensate or make their suppliers follow basic norms. Why should they when none complains! If their own citizens exploit them then do they have a right to expect a fair treatment from a foreigner?

NGOs slammed Walmart over a fire that killed at least 112 workers at a Bangladesh factory that supplied apparel for the retail giant. While Walmart says it has not confirmed that it has any relationship to the factory, photos provided to The Nation show piles of clothes made for one of its exclusive brands.