Gender.. cont

Let me continue my previous post on Gender Equality since KK thinks I have been unfair in my opinion. But before that let me state that I am not an FCP and I do enjoy being a mother, a wife and whatever role this world has bestowed upon the female population. It is just that sometimes it is a thankless job and then where else but my blog can I rumble.

As for the mention of religion, your observation is correct but I was under the impression that at least Hinduism with numerous female Goddesses is not thus. But upon reading about Female Foeticide and exploring further: thanks to links provided by and gathered through my blog friends, every religion including Hinduism does play a role in gender discrimination. Now I have no idea about the Hindu scriptures although I did try to read Bhagawad Gita but couldn’t continue for some reasons. I personally have not taken my religion very seriously and hate to be tied down to religious orders and rituals. I may do so just to appease those whom I care for. But I do hope I will be given a fair chance to work this one out with the Almighty when I meet him (?) personally!

The Indian Homemaker writes thus under Simple Patriarchy or Religion in Unchaahi. I love reading her since she makes every subject interesting.

Our dislike of daughters is deep rooted. It's in our culture. Next time you attend a traditional kua poojana (ceremony on birth of a baby boy); see someone fasting for their son's long life; next time you see a woman being blessed to 'doodho nahao, pooto phalo';..Next time you read/watch in our popular epics, how all powerful women are mothers' of sons (anywhere from one to about a hundred sons); next time you read/hear bhajans of baby hood of our popular male gods ask yourself; when did we ever, EVER want daughters? It's in our roots. Women in India had just one purpose, to give birth to sons! Many of them think they still have just that one use.

Check this article out on Female Foeticide in India

Our society is a complex of thousands of years of religious, cultural and circumstantial history. The freedom and respect for women in the vedic and post vedic periods has been eroded by successive waves of invasion and occupation, when victors treated the women of India as spoils of victory. The reaction was to put women behind ‘purdah’ by creating social norms which took away their freedom, rights and liberties, thus putting them at the mercy of men. Their visibility as intellectuals, artists, leaders and fighters disappeared. Thus, while Hindu men continued with their Devi or Goddess worship, the living devi was buried deep by these very same men.

Then here is a link provided by my blog friend Maddy:

Religion, Literacy, and the Female-to-Male Ratio in India
Vani K. Borooah and Sriya Iyer*

Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to propose a new idea: to show that, far from being independent of each other, the sex ratio and family size by
religion are highly related. At its plainest, girls in India may be least at risk with Muslim parents and most at risk with parents who are caste Hindus.

We can brush all these ideas away but as Maddy commented, gender bias is here to stay for a long time and we can continue analysing the reasons for the same. It could be because of various cultural invasions or religious orders and we cannot blame a particular religion for what is happening within that religion too.

Oh.. it is a very complex subject but we need a change.

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

Charles Kettering

Mother's day and Gender unpacked

The other day our daughter studying in Class 7, asked me the following question. “Traditionally a girl child is preferred over a boy”. She was answering the True or False questions at the end of her Social Studies Lesson and she did not know the answer. She also may have been shocked to know that such issues existed in her world.

I was curious to know more about the lesson and the way it was taught. It is called “Unpacking Gender – Social Aspects” and there are two chapters devoted to this subject. This book approved by the NCERT Syllabus 2005 is one from “Milestones” which is a series of Social Studies text books for Classes 6, 7 & 8 It is by an author named Joyita Chakrabharti, Social Science Coordinator, Delhi Public School – Noida.

So finally we do have a mention of Gender inequality in our text books. At least there are attempts to bring this issue to light and create awareness. It also talks about female foeticide.

The following are some excerpts:






It concludes by saying that there is a solution with the following text:

The Indian Constitution guarantees equal rights to men and women. The Direct Principles of State Policies are aiming in ensuring equal pay for men as well as women for equal work. The new Inheritance law ensures that sons, daughters and their mother get an equal share in the property. The right to Education ensures education for every boy and girl below the age of 14 years. Government is making efforts to promote education among girls so that they are aware of their rights and are given equal opportunities for progress.

I asked my daughter how this lesson was taught and she said that the male teacher just read it through and his explanation for that was that it is a general subject! Of course it is a tricky subject to be taught by a male from a male oriented society that is in India. He sure must be thinking like the rest of his counter parts:
What is wrong if women are treated second to the men? Haven’t we done it since ages? Doesn’t our religion teach us to do so? He must be also remembering his female colleagues who are teaching alongside him and wondering why they should be complaining. I think for most this subject is totally out of context and doesn’t need to be given much thought. Mainly because he is not seeing the effects personally. The same holds for a part of the female population too.

This also reminds me that today is Mother’s day and I read this article from “The Times of India” that India is a bad place to be a mum.

According to a global survey that looked at where mothers fare best and where they face the greatest hardships, India is ranked a dismal 66th among 71 "less developed countries" — only slightly better than countries like Swaziland, Papua New Guinea and Nigeria.

Is this really true or is it another of those reports to be brushed away?

And a reader comments thus: Madhavi , U.S.A , says: Indian mother is the epitome of love and sacrifice! No mother anywhere in the world can beat the love of an Indian mother. She gives and gives and expects nothing in return. She will forgo food to feed her young. She will go to any length to educate her child even if she is an illiterate. LONG LIVE INDIAN MOTHER!

Isnt this true and isnt this what the majority of Indian mothers are doing. Although I do believe Mother’s all around the globe are no different. They do a lot of sacrifice in these difficult times.

Talking about Indian mothers, she may be educated or uneducated, she may be working or not working, but she has always given the first priority to her family.

With priority comes a sacrifice too. And for working women, it becomes even more difficult since she is expected to work inside her house too. Compared to the mothers working from home (even if she is doing housework she is working since if you had hired a maid you would be paying her), those working outside may have more freedom since she is also earning. But the burden each carries is the same. I can speak for the working since I am working too. Cooking and caring for the children is expected of the mothers since most men don’t know it otherwise. Every women does it, so it why is one person complaining and getting a good maid to help around is not easy for all. But when this burden becomes too high it can lead to serious problems within the family for some.

I am not implying that all men are cruel and offer no help. There are Fathers especially in the Gulf who shares equal or more burden with the mother if the working hours of the wife are erratic. But generally speaking, I would like to agree with the Times of India report.

I guess it would take a while to get things in the right track and for a mother to be truly appreciated in this mad world of ours.

And to end this, I am sure there are many like our own son, who while reading with me the topic on Gender equality, commented thus “Umph – I think the girls are treated better than the boys in the classes” and he gave me examples too. So I should say that things are changing for the better!

Mynamar

What is happening in Mynamar or old Burma is sad. International aid agencies have been stopped at the borders while the country desperately needs help. The present military junta is wary of any foreign intervention. I pray that this event changes the hardened heart of the authorities and there is a change for the better.

The following main site was last updated on May 2.




Reading about Mynamar brought to my mind its similarities to India. Burma was also under the British rule. On 4 January 1948, the nation became an independent republic, named the Union of Burma, with Sao Shwe Thaik as its first President and U Nu as its first Prime Minister. Democratic rule ended in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup d'état. He ruled for nearly 26 years and pursued policies under the rubric of the Burmese Way to Socialism. Fight for democracy is still being suppressed and has been very violent too.

I wonder how India withstood similar problems while most of her neighbours are yet to reach stability.

Sriram Savarkar getting a few facts right

I dont know who Sriram Savarkar is.. but I have been getting many forwarded emails and I have found them to be balanced and appropriate. Today I wanted to post this in reply to a comment on my blog. I believe Bush and Rice have not been fair in their judgements.

With thanks to Sriram Savarkar..

George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice are not exactly renowned for their understanding and knowledge of economics.

They do not also have a reputation of being overly sensitive to the needs and aspirations of the world's two most populous countries that together account for 40 per cent of the planet's population.

In terms of sheer crassness, however, the recent pronouncements of the two most powerful individuals in the economically most powerful nation on why food prices are rising all over the world, are difficult to beat. Bush has achieved what would seem impossible to many — he has united India's fractious political class that has, with one voice, condemned what he and his deputy have claimed.

Irrefutable facts from a wide range of sources convincingly contradict the argument that high demand for food in China and India is responsible for the recent surge in international prices of wheat, rice, corn and a range of other foods.

Data released by the Food and Agricultural Organization indicate that consumption of cereals in India and China has grown by an average of between 1.8 per cent and 2.2 per cent each year over the last two years whereas the corresponding proportion for the US is nearly 12 per cent.

There is no dearth of information to indicate that huge swathes of cultivable land in America that grows cereals — eaten by animals if not by human beings — have been diverted to produce bio-fuels.

The rise in demand for biofuels is a direct result of the rise in world prices of crude oil that are (at least, in part) a consequence of the US intervention in Iraq and before that, in Afghanistan.
Who remembers that the world price of crude oil was less than $ 25 a barrel in March 2003 when US troops entered Baghdad, against $ 115 a barrel today?

Never before in the history of mankind has the planet's energy security been so closely linked with its food security.

Inequalities in consumption levels are stark.

Pets in America receive more nutrition than a sixth of humankind.
Each cow in Europe receives more government subsidy than what at least a billion people each live on.
The difference between the US and India is that while in India one out of four people don't get enough to eat, in America, two out of three are overweight.

Bush's views could have been not just dismissed contemptuously but ignored altogether — if only he was not the President of the US.

Insolence or Indolence? but lessons to be learned.....

The comments of Bush or Rice on the increased food consumption of developing world deserves no further comments. It is not worth it. America still remains locked within its four walls but a little shocked though. It is only slowly emerging from its insolence.

When a country is progressing it is only natural that the food consumption increases and there is no way we can ask its citizens to stop or curb their craving for food so that developed nations can continue to indulge and find new means to tackle obesity. But if developed nations are using their precious grains to create fuel to maintain their SUV’s then it needs to be checked immediately. There is no use turning a blind eye to obvious facts. It is time the world leaders told their citizens in plain language to take care. Yet the fact is that developed nations still stand to gain from exports of their food grains.

As for India, it is time we took our bread more seriously. We are lacking in basic infrastructure, food being the main one. The farmers need to be treated more kindly.
Even India needs bio-fuels to meet the ever increasing price of oil but the government needs to bring strict measures so that no cultivable land meant for food grains are converted for bio-fuel needs.



In India we have the best candidate, the Jatropha tree. Goldman Sachs recently cited Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. I believe the best way would be to continue using the vast stretch of land by the side of our railway lines and also our national highways. I am sure this would be enough to meet a part of our energy demands. But the cultivation of such bio-fuel sources should be under the strict government supervision that will ensure that no agricultural land is converted.

If only.....

Man dies bleeding on road but busy city doesn't care

Yet again a precious life lost due to untimely help. His dear ones must be saying over and over.. “If only..”

I am not sure why we behave thus? Lack of sensitivity or is it fear of the law? The doctor who wanted to help the victim was faced with people who were more bothered with their car seats getting dirty. Have we become so high and mighty?

Here in Kuwait, the expatriates bring over the same attitude but more because of the fear of law and its complications. Not so the Kuwaitees. The police do reach the spot fast but if there are residents they do whatever they can. Maybe because they don’t have to fear the law but then once on the road they are the fastest and would love to go uninterrupted but yet stops to help victims.

I am tagged

Roop tagged me so here I go.. but before that..

My leave is approved. I was bit apprehensive since I joined this company only recently.

So monsoon.. here I come.. let me also contribute my bit towards the Indian Economy.

As usual there are many plans.. a round trip Blore-Mysore-Ooty.. some friends expected to join us etc...for the time being let me dream kingsize of good times....

Eight things I am passionate about:
1. My family
2. My blog
3. Unchaahi
4. Eating
5. Cooking
6. Finding new friends
7. Knowing about people who makes a difference in this world
8. Knowing about technology (sophisticated or simple) that makes life easier for the common man

Eight things I want to do before I die:
1. Be a better wife and mother
2. Travel to at least a few places that I want to
3. Read the 100 must read books
4. Sit by a big library at home with lots of books
5. Settle down to a life with at least one dog and a few cats
6. Get my Husband stop smoking :-
7. Get my mother back to her good old self
8. Have a long chat with my school mate Elsy

Eight things I say often:
1. Amme (mother in Mallu language)
2. Our children’s names
3. My hubby’s name
4. Wake up
5. Didnt you finish yet? (if the kids are at the dining table or in the bathroom)
6. Go and study (to the kids) LOL
7. Inshallah
8. Stop that.. (to my ever romantic hubby)


Eight books I have read recently:
1. The Kite Runner
2. God’s Debris
3. World Without End - Pillars of the Earth
4. Not a penny more not a penny less
5. The rest will have to wait.....



Eight songs I could listen to over and over:
1. Phil Collins – She walked down...
2. Sean Kingston – Beautiful girl
3. Abba – almost all
4. Air Supply – Almost all
5. Kris Kristoffersen
6. Adnan Sami (Dil Kya kare)
7. There are plenty more


I was tagged earlier by chitchat but could never complete it due to lack of time....

Now I would like to tag Kallu, chitchat, and also Indrani and Maddy, if the ycan take up one more tag!

Taming technology

"You always hope that your work will eventually be used do some good in the world, and this was an amazing chance to make that hope real by creating tools that have the potential to aid investigations of child predators, find child victims and reduce the flow of child pornography on the Internet."


Kudos to Shumeet Baluja, Research Scientist and their team at Google. They are taming the technology to work for humanity and not against it. I have always believed that every technology was developed with all good intentions until it got into the wrong hands. The internet is an ocean of knowledge for many but for some it is a means seeking sadistic, inhumane pleasure knowing well that it is killing their own souls and also that of the innocent child. Many are minting money out of this appalling business and the world stands by, having lost all sensitivity.

Now the team at Google are building softwares to find child victims. This would also deter these criminals from posting pornographic material online so blatantly.

Since it was founded in 1984, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) has reported more than 570,000 child exploitation leads to law enforcement agencies and assisted with more than 140,900 missing child cases, resulting in the recovery of more than 124,500 children.

The advent of the Internet has unfortunately provided child predators with a new avenue to exploit children. In August 2006, we joined NCMEC's Technology Coalition Against Child Pornography, teaming up with other tech industry companies to develop solutions that hinder predators' ability to use the Internet to exploit children or traffic in child pornography.

Shumeet Baluja, Ph.D., is currently a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google, where he works on a broad set of topics ranging from image processing and machine learning to wireless application development and user interaction measurement. Shumeet was formerly the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of JAMDAT Mobile, Inc., where he oversaw all aspects of technology initiation, development and deployment.

Olympics

KK’s comment made me take a look into the Olympics Committee to see how a city is selected. As you can see boycotting of Olympics is nothing new and it was first done by US against Moscow in year 1980 and retaliated by the Moscovites in year 1984.

Tibet has every right to protest and I am with them. But why was Beijing selected in the first place when Tibet’s fight is nothing new to the whole world? And why is that certain countries other than Tibet take the Olympics as their arena when they feel agitated against certain “Occupations” that irks them while they themselves are freely doing it?


NATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEES
The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) propagate the fundamental principles of Olympism at a national level within the framework of sports activity

ORGANISATION OF THE NOCs

There are currently 205 National Olympic Committees over five continents.

ASSOCIATION OF NATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEES

The NOCs come together at least once every two years in the form of the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) to exchange information and experiences in order to consolidate their role within the Olympic Movement. In this way the ANOC helps the NOCs to prepare for their meetings with the IOC Executive Board and Olympic Congresses.

The ANOC also makes recommendations to the IOC regarding the use of funds deriving from the television rights intended for the NOCs. These recommendations focus on the implementation of the Olympic Solidarity programmes in particular.

The ANOC is currently made up of the 205 NOCs and is split among five continental associations:

AFRICA: ANOCA (Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa)
AMERICA: PASO (Pan American Sports Organisation)
ASIA: OCA (Olympic Council of Asia)
EUROPE: EOC (European Olympic Committees)
OCEANIA: ONOC (Oceania National Olympic Committees)

MISSIONS OF THE NOCs

The National Olympic Committees (NOCs) promote the fundamental principles of Olympism at a national level within the framework of sports. NOCs are committed to the development of athletes and support the development of sport for all programs and high performance sport in their countries. They also participate in the training of sports administrators by organising educational programs.

Another objective of the National Olympic Committees is to ensure that athletes from their respective nations attend the Olympic Games. Only a NOC is able to select and send teams and competitors for participation in the Olympic Games.

National Olympic Committees also supervise the preliminary selection of potential bid cities. Before a candidate city can compete against those in other countries, it first must win the selection process by the NOC in its own country. The National Olympic Committee can then name that city to the IOC as a candidate to host the Olympic Games.

Although most NOCs are from nations, the IOC also recognises independent territories, commonwealths, protectorates and geographical areas. There are currently 205 NOCs, ranging from Albania to Zimbabwe.

MOSCOW 1980


THE AMERICAN BOYCOTT

The Olympics were disrupted by another, even larger boycott, this one led by U.S. president Jimmy Carter, part of a package of actions to protest the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Carter engaged in extensive arm-twisting to gain support from other nations. Some governments, like those of Great Britain and Australia, supported the boycott but allowed the athletes to decide for themselves whether to go to Moscow. No such freedom of choice was allowed U.S. athletes, as Carter threatened to revoke the passport of any athlete who tried to travel to the USSR. In the end, 65 nations turned down their invitations to the Olympics; probably 45 to 50 did so because of the U.S.-led boycott. Eighty nations did participate - the lowest number since 1956.

LOS ANGELES 1984

THE FINANCING

After the terrorist attack in 1972 and the financial disaster of 1976, only Los Angeles bid for the right to host the 1984 Olympic Games. As the Los Angeles Games were the first since 1896 to be staged without government financing, the organisers depended heavily on existing facilities and corporate sponsors. Although criticised at the time, the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games became the model for future Games, particularly after it was revealed that they had produced a profit of US$ 223 million.

THE SOVIET BOYCOTT

With the Olympics being held in the United States only four years after the U.S.- led boycott of the Moscow Games, it was not surprising that the Soviet Union organised a revenge boycott in 1984. This time only 14 nations stayed away - but those nations accounted for 58% of the gold medals at the 1976 Olympics.

INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC TRUCE FOUNDATION

OBJECTIVES

Kofi Annan during the presentation of the Olympic Truce sculpture
In the framework of promoting peace through sport and the Olympic ideal, the IOC established an International Olympic Truce Foundation (IOTF) in July 2000.
As a non-governmental organisation belonging to the Olympic Movement, the IOTF defines its actions around the following objectives:

- To promote the Olympic ideals to serve peace, friendship and understanding in the world, and in particular, to promote the ancient Greek tradition of the Olympic Truce;

- To initiate conflict prevention and resolution through sport, culture and the Olympic ideals, by cooperating with all inter and non-governmental organisations specialised in this field, by developing educational and research programmes, and by launching communications campaigns to promote the Olympic Truce.

INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC TRUCE CENTRE
To meet these objectives, the IOTF established an International Olympic Truce Centre (IOTC), which is responsible for the implementation of projects related to the global promotion of a culture of peace through sport and the Olympic ideal, in accordance with the principles and policies established by the Foundation. The Centre's main headquarters are located in Athens, Greece, with a liaison office in Lausanne, Switzerland, and a symbolic office in Olympia, Greece.

The IOTF is administered by a Board composed of personalities from the world of sports and politics, and meets once a year.

Source

To boycott or not?

Boycott : to cease or refuse to deal with something such as an organization, a company, or a process, as a protest against it or as an effort to force it to become more acceptable.

This question is being tossed around and every world leader and even local politicians are now forced to voice their opinion. Oh what a dilemma! Tibet has taken the right opportunity to voice their frustrations; no doubt.

In GOC the communist leaders had standard replies; if the world has no problem with those suffering in occupied Palestine or occupied Iraq what is the problem they have with China? Has any country boycotted the goods they have been mass producing? Have they shifted their manufacturing units from China? In Kuwait, when the common man shops he does not have to check the country of origin – it is China. During these times of ever increasing prices we are now forced to compromise and buy cheaper products. Maybe they are being produced in sweat shops condemned by the so called developed nations. But are there any protests?

One question that keep coming to my mind is does any of these country have a right to protest against China when they are doing nothing effective for Palestine or Iraq or even other countries? Does “Human right violation” take different meaning for some countries?

So what is the real motive behind these protests? What is the level of acceptability that they are seeking from China? What is that really irks them? Beats me...

Youngest CEO...

Meet the youngest CEO of the world as the media calls him.... Suhas Gopinath.. Born 1986) is an Indian enterprenuer. He is the founder, CEO, and President of Globals Inc, an IT company.

In 2005, Suhas Gopinath was one of the finalists of the Infosys Education World Young Achievers Award. In 2005, he was also the youngest among the 175 recipients of the Karnataka State Government's Rajyotsava Award. Suhas Gopinath is also a brand ambassador for PETA.

This year on December 2, 2007, The European Parliament and International Association for Human Values conferred “Young Achiever Award” to Mr. Suhas Gopinath at the European Parliament, Brussels, and he was also invited to address the European Parliament and other Business dignitaries assembled in the EU Parliament.[11].
Mr. Suhas Gopinath was recently announced as one of the “Young Global Leaders” for 2008-2009 by the prestigious World Economic Forum, Davos.

But he could not become a CEO in India since our country does not allow it. So in 2000, at the age of 14 years, Suhas Gopinath founded Globals Inc in San Jose, California, US.

Are our laws deterring our young entrepreneurs? If so, isn’t it time we changed it? I see Rahul Gandhi trying the same stunts his father tried (BTW, I liked his father), like bringing the youth to the front etc. I think it is time they looked into these outdated laws too. US had (forgive the past tense) a thriving economy since the country treated the enterpreneurs very well.

Charlton Heston

Wanted to pen at least one line yesterday....

I first saw him in Ben Hur during my college days. To me he was the most handsome man on earth and one look at his Ben Hur character tells me that he still is. Don’t know what makes him thus and dont know how many times I have watched that movie.. it is still a favourite of mine..


A Man Without Creases
The crucial insight I gleaned from Charlton Heston's pants.
By John Barry | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Apr 7, 2008 | Updated: 11:53 a.m. ET Apr 7, 2008

The never ending tragedy...

Who says we are a democratically elected country, when Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Sunday admitted that she would have liked to have her son Rahul Gandhi enter the Union Council of Ministers. But he opted out, preferring to concentrate on party work. And he and some other newly inducted ministers have no other qualification other than being born to influential politicians.

Oh yet another sacrifice from the Nehru family to be eulogised. But don’t we all know that this is only the beginning. Soon we will hear the name of Rahul Gandhi as the Prime Ministerial candidate and come elections the Congress by default will have none other than him to offer to the voting idiots (not me since I have no voting rights LOL!)

Fight for water..

CHENNAI: Following escalating protests in Tamil Nadu over Karnataka’s opposition to the Hogenakkal drinking water supply project, bus services were suspended on the Udhagamandalam-Mysore route on Wednesday.
KSRTC buses were blocked in Sathyamangalam, Erode, and a restaurant was ransacked in Chennai. Panic gripped the busy commercial hub near the Madras High Court in the city after a group of persons, condemning outfits in Karnataka opposed to the water supply project, ransacked a restaurant on Armenian Street.


Although water is the commonest stuff on earth, only 2.53 per cent of it is fresh, while the rest is salt. And of the freshwater, two thirds is locked up in glaciers and permanent snow cover. What is available, in lakes, rivers, aquifers (ground water) and rainfall run-off, is now increasingly coming under pressure from several directions at once.



So when shall we start waging wars for this precious commodity? I hear that there are MNC’s buying lakes so that they can use it for bottling water. I don’t know if lakes and rivers can be owned. But all I know is that we are not giving water its due respect.

Less than 3% of water is freshwater (much of it groundwater that has accumulated over time and is virtually nonrenewable. Rainwater is thus critical; the "global water cycle accounts for the only naturally renewable source of fresh water, that is, precipitation that occurs over land."12 Aquifer pumping is reducing our water resources. People living in arid regions, and even some not so arid regions, have been relying heavily on groundwater resources that accumulated over thousands of years. Removing this water at such rapid rates spends this resource many times faster than it can be replaced, leads to the deterioration of what water is left, and also can cause collapse of aquifers.

And in many states of India we have enough and more rain but yet we do nothing. We have filled up all the streams and paddies so that the water gets no chance to seep into the ground. Instead all those precious water is wasted in the vast oceans.
Rain water harvesting is the only remedy and it has to done urgently since we cannot reclaim all those lost ponds, streams and fields. Every house and commercial buildings need to have a rain water harvesting system built. The state needs to look into low cost options for the same.


WHO gives the following 10 facts on water:

Fact 1
World Water Day is celebrated every year on 22 March. The theme for 2007 is ‘water scarcity’. Even in areas with plenty of rainfall or freshwater, water scarcity occurs. Because of the ways in which water is used and distributed, there is not always enough water to fully meet the demands of households, farms, industry, and the environment.
Fact 2
Water scarcity already affects every continent and four of every ten people in the world. The situation is getting worse due to population growth, urbanization and the increase in domestic and industrial water use.
Fact 3
By 2025, nearly 2 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water shortage, where water resources per person fall below the recommended level of 500 cubic metres per year. This is the amount of water a person needs for a healthy and hygienic living.
Fact 4
Water scarcity forces people to rely on unsafe sources of drinking water. It also means they cannot bathe or clean their clothes or homes properly.
Fact 5
Poor water quality can increase the risk of diarrhoeal diseases including cholera, typhoid fever, salmonellosis, other gastrointestinal viruses, and dysentery. Water scarcity may also lead to diseases such as trachoma, plague and typhus. Trachoma, for example, is strongly related to a lack of water for regular face washing.
Fact 6
Water scarcity encourages people to store water in their homes. This can increase the risk of household water contamination and provide breeding grounds for mosquitoes - which are vectors for dengue, dengue haemorrhagic fever, and malaria and other diseases.
Fact 7
Water scarcity underscores the need for better water management. Good water management reduces breeding sites for disease vectors, which leads to reduced transmission of malaria, lymphatic filariasis, schistosomiasis and Japanese encephalitis.
Fact 8
Millennium Development Goal number 7, target 10 aims "to halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation". The world is still on track to reach the drinking water target, but increasing water scarcity may seriously undermine progress towards achieving this goal
Fact 9
Everyone needs water and everyone needs to take responsibility. Actively support governments, non-governmental organizations and private foundations which are making it a priority to deliver affordable good quality water to people.
Fact 10
Do your part by conserving, recycling and protecting water more efficiently.

Kerala and its ratio

Maddy's comments set me thinking why Kerala has a better ratio though I have no answer as to why the development of the state is not in par. Of course we end up with the answer: because it has high literacy. So is education the key? But then selective abortion has started among the educated Keralites too as per reports.

But yet Kerala is still ahead of the rest of the states. Maybe because of the Marumakkathayam system which was prevalent ealier? According to Wikipedia “Marumakkathayam" is a matrilinear system of inheritance followed by castes of Kerala like some Brahmin families (Payanoor Nambootiris)[citation needed] , Ambalavasis, Royal /Nair families, some Ezhavas, upper class Mappilas in Kerala state, south India. It is exceptional in the sense that it was one of the few traditional systems that gave women liberty, and right to property. Under this system, women enjoyed respect, prestige and power. In the matrilinear system, the family lived together in a tharavadu which comprised of a mother, her brothers and younger sisters, and her children. The oldest male member was known as the karanavar and was the head of the household and managed the family estate. Lineage was traced through the mother, and the children "belonged" to the mother's family. All family property was jointly owned. In the event of a partition, the shares of the children were clubbed with that of the mother. The karanavar's property was inherited by his nephews and not his sons.

Here the most important aspect to be noted is that a woman was given liberty and right to property. She enjoyed respect, prestige and power while at the same time the oldest male member was the head of the household.

Then again another point is that due to the education imparted , the Kerala girls are able to earn for themselves. They were ready to go beyond their own states and even to other coutries (Gulf, US etc) to support their families. I guess this made them an asset rather than a liablity and hence they were let to live!

Warren Buffett on investing.....

Each year, Warren Buffett writes a letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, a letter that has become as famous for his wit and wisdom about the markets and the follies he sees in the financial world as it has for his report on Berkshire's year. Here follows selected excerpts of his comments this year about investing, the stock market and the economy.

On Investment Expectations:
"During the 20th century, the Dow advanced from 66 to 11,497. This gain, though it appears huge, shrinks to 5.3% when compounded annually ... For investors to merely match that 5.3% market-value gain, the Dow--recently below 13,000--would need to close at about 2,000,000 on Dec. 31, 2099."


On Financial Advisers:
"People who expect to earn 10% annually from equities during this century are implicitly forecasting a level of about 24,000,000 on the Dow by 2100. If your adviser talks to you about double-digit returns from equities, explain this math to him ... Many helpers are apparently direct descendants of the queen in Alice in Wonderland, who said: 'Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.'"

On Capital Investment:
"A company that needs large increases in capital to engender its growth may well prove to be a satisfactory investment. ... It's far better to have an ever-increasing stream of earnings with virtually no major capital requirements. Ask Microsoft or Google."

On The U.S. Dollar:
"The U.S. dollar weakened further in 2007 against major currencies, and it's no mystery why: Americans like buying products made elsewhere more than the rest of the world likes buying products made in the U.S. Inevitably, that causes America to ship about $2 billion of IOUs and assets daily to the rest of the world. And over time, that puts pressure on the dollar."

On The U.S. Economy:
"Our country's weakening currency is not the fault of OPEC, China, etc. ... In developing a sensible trade policy, the U.S. should not single out countries to punish or industries to protect. Nor should we take actions likely to evoke retaliatory behavior that will reduce America's exports, true trade that benefits both our country and the rest of the world."

On The U.S. Deficits:
"Our legislators should recognize ... that the current imbalances are unsustainable and should therefore adopt policies that will materially reduce them sooner rather than later. Otherwise our $2 billion daily of force-fed dollars to the rest of the world may produce global indigestion of an unpleasant sort."

On Sovereign Wealth Funds:
"There's been much talk recently of sovereign wealth funds and how they are buying large pieces of American businesses. This is our doing, not some nefarious plot by foreign governments. Our trade equation guarantees massive foreign investment in the U.S. When we force-feed $2 billion daily to the rest of the world, they must invest in something here. Why should we complain when they choose stocks over bonds?"

On Lending Standards:
"John Stumpf, CEO of Wells Fargo, aptly dissected the recent behavior of many lenders: 'It is interesting that the industry has invented new ways to lose money when the old ways seemed to work just fine.'"

On Bank Write-Downs:
"As house prices fall, a huge amount of financial folly is being exposed. You only learn who has been swimming naked when the tide goes out--and what we are witnessing at some of our largest financial institutions is an ugly sight."

On Selling His PetroChina Stake:
"In 2002 and 2003, Berkshire bought 1.3% of PetroChina for $488 million, a price that valued the entire business at about $37 billion ... Last year, the market value of the company rose to $275 billion, about what we thought it was worth compared with other giant oil companies. So we sold our holdings for $4 billion.
"We paid the IRS tax of $1.2 billion on our PetroChina gain. This sum paid all costs of the U.S. government-- defense, social security, you name it--for about four hours."

On His Worst Investment Mistake:
"When I said 'yes' to Dexter, a shoe business I bought in 1993 for $433 million ... What I had assessed as durable competitive advantage vanished within a few years. By using Berkshire stock, I compounded this error hugely. That move made the cost to Berkshire shareholders not $400 million, but rather $3.5 billion. In essence, I gave away 1.6% of a wonderful business--one now valued at $220 billion--to buy a worthless business."

Courtesy: Forbes.com

The ratio tells it all..

Some still dont believe that India has a skewed sex ratio.. so please check it out officially

Does it matter?

Spitzer fall renews prostitution debate says MSNBC

I guess now they want to legalize prostitution so that one can hang on to their political careers. Sex Scandals brought even a President down on his knees. A President who was getting to be liked by one and all. They feel legalizing it may reduce these acts? Isn’t that absurd? Let them legalize but for not this reason.

I do believe it is a personal thing after all. If your wife doesn’t have a problem then who should care? But I still don’t understand why they want their wives to whom they have been lying all those years to be at their side just for the sake of the public. Does she really have to go through the shame for her husband’s sake? Is there a law demanding her presence?

But then looking at the moral and ethical side, if he couldn’t be faithful to his wife of so many years, can one really accept him to be faithful to the public in his dealings?

Sponsoring a girl child

I am sure we can do much for the girl child and it costs us not much as detailed by Roop Rai in her post that I copied below:

Nanhi Kali: Sponsor education of a little girl


Nanhi Kali (loosely translated as little girl) is a project jointly managed by K C Mahindra Education Trust and Naandi Foundation in India to promote and finance education for under-privileged girl children. For as little as Rs. 1800 per year, you can sponsor education for one of the girls studying between Grade 1 and Grade 7, and for Rs. 2700 per yer, education of a girl studying between Grade 8 and Grade 12 can be financed.

Rs. 1800 a year = only 22 GBP/year, 44 CAD/year, and 45 USD/year
Rs. 2700 a year = just 34 GBP/year, 66 CAD/year, and 67 USD/year
Please visit XE.com for updated conversion rates.

I was sent a brief by Nanhi Kali yesterday when I rang them for information. The brief is as follows:


Shreya's parents can't send her to school.
Can you?


If you can’t, the chances are she will end up housebound, exploited as a maid or a child prostitute, be married off early and could even die during childbirth!

We write on behalf of thousands of girls who like Shreya, are forced to dropout of schools because their families cannot afford to keep them there. It is official knowledge that out of every 10 girls who enrol in Std I, only 3 complete Std X. Education for a girl child born to a poor family is still a pipe dream.

The Nanhi Kali project intends to make this appalling fact, history. With your help we can make it sooner.

How you can help:

Sponsor a Nanhi Kali. Be her guardian. Give her the assurance that no matter what trials her family faces she will never have to drop out of school. Your sponsorship will provide her with study material, uniforms and learning support. It will also be used to work with her teachers to create a learning-friendly environment in the government school she goes to.
− To keep a girl in school from Std I - VII, the per annum cost is Rs 1800
− To ensure an older girl continues her schooling from Std VIII - X the per annum cost is Rs 2500

As a guardian:

You will receive a profile of your Nanhi Kali with a photograph. You will also receive half yearly updates about her, so you can track her progress.

To Sponsor a Nanhi Kali you can donate online through www.nanhikali.org

For more information, please contact me at unchaahiATgmailDOTcom or Gauri at r.gauriATmahindraDOTcom.

Me and husband will be sponsoring two girls (one each from both groups) and I'll share my story here as it unfolds. I look forward to hear from more sponsors.

Let there be blood....

Let there be blood..

No I am not talking about the Oscar winning movie which I did not watch yet. I am talking about Kannur and the dirty politics that seems to have adopted this place like a curse.

Kannur is the fourth largest urban agglomeration in Kerala after Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode with a population of 498,175. According to data compiled by economics research firm Indicus Analytics on residences, earnings and investments, Kannur is one of the best ten cities in India to reside. Indicus considered six parameters — health, education, environment, safety, public facilities and entertainment — for preparing the 'reside-in' index.[1] It is popularly known as the city of Looms and Lores.

The ships of Solomon, they say anchored along its coasts to collect timber for building the ‘Temple of the Lord’. Kannur finds mention as NAURA in the ‘Periplus of the Erithrean Sea’ a Greek work of great antiquity.

Kannur has always been a favourite destination of the intrepid foreign traveller. Europeans, Chinese and Arabs have visited our coasts. In his book of travels Marco Polo recounts his visit to the area circa 1250 A.D. Other visitors included Fahian, the Buddhist pilgrim and Ibn Batuta, writer and historian of Tangiers.
The term Kannur is the compound of two words Kannan (Lord Krishna) Ur (Place). This will make it the place of Lord Krishna.

Well, now Kannur is synonymous with violence. The recent one has claimed 7 lives and there is still tension.

I still don’t understand why we Indians take politics so seriously. If you look at a country like US, even they have political parties and elections but I have never heard of people killing each other in the name of a party. (or do they?)

I guess we have no stringent rule where the political leader is made responsible for the party that he leads. For now, he sits on his throne and directs the whole movie but takes no responsibility for the consequences. If we could only gather all those leaders, barring a very few, send them to a remote island and let them fend for themselves, we shall have peace everywhere. Let them play politics or even kill each other, we don’t care. Just leave those poor folks alone.

The poor Girl child...

We had an interesting discussion on the government incentive for “Girl child”. This scheme looks like a good step but then there always the other side of it..and though it sounds brash, don’t we all feel like doing what Raj is suggesting?

“
Of course, it would be nice if some (real) effort was made in educating the population about these issues. I just think it is sad to have to bribe the parents for letting a girl child live.
If I could have it my way, I would wait till the parents apply for the REWARD (sheesh) gather them all together, take the kids from them and shoot these bloody pathetic pricks.


and this was the comment from KK

“
stupid concepts we have in our country.

For every damn thing in our country we need to give soaps, subsidies or bribes..whatever you call it...

for farmers, you waive 60,000 crore worth of loans...you could keep aside at least one crore to educate farmers on better farming techniques, for creating new markets....

for the girl child, you want to pay for every child leading to crores and crores of rupees to swindle for this government and many more to come...you could try getting tough on dowry seekers....you could instead get the females more secured high paying jobs which will show the society even women can be better bread earners. You could try educating the new generation youth of the villages that women are progressing...

You could do a million things to secure a better future...

you know what Jayalalitha did for the girl child?
I think it was a novel idea...she launched a scheme to place a cradle in every district, town and village of Tamil Nadu and told the people..don't kill the child..leave her in the cradle and the government will take care of it......

Let us hope for the best...

It is happy news indeed.

In an effort to set right the country’s skewed gender ratio, Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhary today launched a ‘Conditional cash Transfer for Girl Child with Insurance Cover (CCT)’ scheme here

I really pray that the government machinery will perform without any hitch to get this through.

India will pay families to have girls to end foeticide

Highlights:

Families in seven states are set to benefit from a series of cash payments amounting to 15,500 rupees (£193) to poor families to keep their girl children.

As an extra incentive any girl who reaches 18 will get a further 100,000 rupees (£1,200) provided she has completed her school education and is not married.

Of course this will not solve all the problems since as reported, in states like Punjab, it is the rich who selectively abort female fetus and the poor are just copying them. So for this, the government is considering giving life sentences to doctors convicted of the offence.

Wolves and she wolves

Manoranjan's comment prompted me to continue my previous post.

I agree this is a man’s world, but then I don’t blame just the man alone for all the troubles in this world! At least among the educated, when it becomes to abortion the woman has every say in it and if she refuses to agree, I am sure the man will leave her alone. I believe there may be no say for the women in case she is entirely dependent on the man and she is forced to undergo abortion. And this could be in majority. And then there could be cases where the woman herself wants an abortion even if the man does not agree to it.

And in case of dowry in some households it is the mother who is after it more than the father.

So education should be for one and all irrespective of the gender.

As for wolves, well.. I myself don’t have such a bleak view of this world and its inhabitants – mainly men. There are wolves and she wolves but at the same time there are “real men” who are strong enough to accept and appreciate the strength in a woman. It is only when men hopes to become the “man of the house” by default that trouble sets in a marriage. It is not as though women hate to be under her man but he should earn it as well. The adaptation that is being talked is just that and one can have a happy marriage instead of moments of happiness. And since we don’t have perfect men and women and since most of us don’t care to acknowledge our own weakness, one can’t blame the institution of marriage.

As for husbands protecting his wife from other wolves, I think we wives are quite capable of protecting ourselves, unless you want us to take a stroll all alone through the deadliest neighborhood.

This and that..

Indrani Ghose commented that we are back to slave trade and that brought to my mind the human trading that still exists in our modern civilization. The trading of grooms. Earlier it was the beauty of the girl that set the price but now the credentials of the bride doesn’t matter at all. Let her be beautiful, educated or whatever, only the groom matters. In Kerala, I think a Doctor (with specialization and not MBBS) still fetches the highest price. The only reason why some are willing to spend half a crore or more to secure admission to a medical college. But in the Middle East it works the other way round. The groom needs to pay for the bride which should bring solace to those in India!



The dowry system in India still remains the greatest evil to marriage. As it is, there is a growing hatred towards marriage from the current generation and some of them prefer to have live-in relationships instead. With the increase in income, they can afford to move out from their own family and live a life they deem is comfortable. I am not saying that marriage is all roses and honey, not when I sometimes feel like Jack the Ripper in my mind, ripping the head of you know who? But it is the best one for now, unless one believes that a planet like K-Pax really exists. I am sure some of you remember the movie starred by Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges. Prot, the man who claims to have come from K-Pax says that they don’t have marriages in K-Pax. They all belong to one big society or planet. One may father a child but it does not belong to him since the child will be brought up by everyone. It may sound great, but Prot himself points out that at K-Pax no one misses anyone. I guess marriage and later a family is all about looking out for each other. A baby sitting facility can never do the same job of a parent, how much strong the commitment is. In a family, you have your parents and your siblings to look out for you and care for you. You have that unique sense of belonging which only a family set up can give you. To get this and more if it requires a license from the society, then it is worth it. But the current society which includes me doesn’t have the patience to try out this system which has survived for centuries.

This also brings to my mind the growing impatience with child rearing. I know of many couples who have aborted their babies since they were either not ready or they have a first one and the second came sooner. They don’t mind spending their money on themselves but spending on their child becomes a burden.

Talking of abortion takes me yet again to female foeticide and I appreciate the effort done by Roop Rai at Unchaahi: the Unwanted .

Education is what we need against this evil.

Going.. Going.. GONE

Auctioning can be traced as far back as 500 B.C.[1] According to ancient Greek scribes, the more generally accepted auction occurred first in Babylon in 500 B.C. During this period, auctions were held annually, and women were sold on the condition of marriage. It was considered illegal to allow a daughter to be sold outside the auction method. Women with “beauty” engendered higher bidding, women without “beauty” had to pay a dowry to be accepted into the auction, and thus the price would be negative.

That was long way back and now instead of women we have the Cricketers!

MUMBAI: India's charismatic one-day captain Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Wednesday emerged as the hottest property in world cricket after being sold out for a staggering USD 1.5 million dollars (Rs 6 crore) in a landmark auction which marked the beginning of a lucrative new era in cricket.

Who is in whose kitty

MUMBAI: The Indian Premier League auction that was held in Mumbai on Wednesday had its list of surprises with the Chennai Superkings looking the most formidable team. The following is the list of players that have been selected by the different franchisees

Jaipur: Shane Warne (US$ 450,000), Graeme Smith (US$ 475,000), Younis Khan (US$ 225,000), Kamran Akmal (US$ 150,000), Yusuf Pathan (US$ 475,000), Mohammad Kaif (US$ 675,000), Munaf Patel (US$ 275,000)

Chennai: MS Dhoni (US$ 1.5 million), Muttiah Muralitharan (US$ 600,00), Matthew Hayden (US$ 375,000), Jacob Oram (US$ 675,000), Stephen Fleming (US$ 350,000), Parthiv Patel (US$ 325,000), Joginder Sharma (US$ 225,000), Albie Morkel (US$ 675,000), Suresh Raina (US$ 650,000), Makhaya Ntini (US$ 200,000)

Talk about being global! Now who do the viewers support? Well.. we have only taken away the countries, but we still have the States don’t we? If our own State is not there, maybe we shall settle for a particular player. So now my friend Raj cannot be happy as yet. He is against citizenships and dreams of a borderless world.


Maybe we have roped in players from all around the world but we shall still shackle them. After all, is there any fun if we don’t?

Our health....

“But it also makes sense. If you live longer, then you cost the health system more.”

Read this news a few days ago and ever since I have been thinking....

This reporter seems to be disturbed / frustrated that people are living longer. So now what? Will they let them smoke and do all those things as per research one was not supposed to do? One day it is drink coffee, the next day the research says don’t. And then back to tea and tomatoes while now it is all organic and Soya. But it seems to be costing someone dearly so I guess now a long life is only for the rich who can afford it.

This reminded me that our Grandparents did live a long and healthy life though I did not find them popping pills to keep that way. The only demand (occasionally) for both my grand mothers were the Kottakkal Aryavaidyashala products “Lehyam”, “Kashayam” and their favourite hair oil which makes them smell so heavenly. Wonder why I never used it though my mother does. I guess people may not come near me!

Arya Vaidya Sala uses more than 4000 tons of raw material (about 600 items) in a year to produce 530 formulations for the market. A rough estimate of annual consumption by Arya Vaidya Sala:

1. Milk - 13 lakh litre
2. Oil - 5 lakh litre
3. Ghee - 180 ton
4. Honey - 290 ton
5. Jaggery - 750 ton
6. Saffron - 856 kg
7. Cardamom - 14 ton
8. Tippali - 30 ton
9. Ativitayam - 12 ton
10. Kurumtotti - 480 ton

As for my Grand father (maternal) he ate whatever he liked until his death at 89. His favourite desert was curd with plantain and sugar! It tastes great but the minute I try to enjoy it, I keep thinking of the calories in the sugar and curd! I have already cut down on my sugar intake.. just for precaution sake. Sigh...

My grand mother (paternal) lived to 90 and lived all alone with just a lady to cook and keep her company at night. She refused to move in with any of her children. I think the secret of her health was her bath. She used to sit on a stool and rub “Taila / Kuzhampu (Oil based)” all over her and then stay thus while separating the “Incha”. Then a long warm bath followed.

Hubby’s grandma lived 100 years! She never took any medicines either and loved sweets until her death. She could do all her bodily needs all alone until her death. So what are we up to?

Whatever they did, none of them depended on medicines. But my father was diagnosed with BP and cholesterol in his early 40’s. He loved good food and he was big built so I guess he settled for the medicines instead of diet. But still mother banished poor coconut oil for gingelly oil and sometimes instead of meat she used to cook soya chunks. Ugh! As for my mother, she still refuses to take medicines. I think once you start taking medicines for BP, you are doomed to continue it, while one can still control it with diet and exercise.

As for our children, if any of them falls sick we are too quick to start antibiotics while many doctors advice us not to do so, but manage the fever for at least 3 days and then start antibiotics if still needed. But we don’t have the patience to do so. We need to send them to school and can’t take a day off too. One of our cousin’s son developed grey hair when he was in 2nd standard. The doctor said it was due t over usage of antibiotics. I have tried my best too, to keep myself away from this, whenever I can and my kids too.

Do we really need all these medicines?

Do we really need to listen all those research findings?

Our grandparents never did and they lived a long and healthy life.

And today I read this..

Israeli Arab says she's world's oldest person
Mariam Amash, who applied for a new identity card, says she's 120

Wow.. nd did the Israel government keep her that way or did she do it all alone. Beats me. and we have the Bible which tells us that people did live long... with no medicinces or modern hospitals.

I am not saying we dont need them but we should not depend upon them completely.

Anyway I hope now the researchers won’t find means to let us poor folks die early so that we are not a burden to the state. Or have they already?

I wish..

Let me believe in re-birth. Only this will comfort me at the moment. What else can I say after reading the headlines of today's newspapers..

Saudi woman strip-searched for having coffee with a man.. and she was stripped by men!

My only wish is that all those men are soon reborn as women. Let them enjoy the delights of being a woman.

What a mess!

I think I am close to the plan.. LOL.




The authorities have managed to transform a peaceful, smoothly running traffic to the worst traffic nightmares one can ever conjure.

It all started with the construction of a roundabout on the Airport road. There was never a need for one since there was never a problem, but then we thought they had conjured up something good! Little did we realize how it could affect our whole to and fro trip to our work place! Luckily there is a vast no man’s land which is now used by almost all the vehicles to avoid this wondrous creation. It is a ride through the sands but it is much better than the present chaos.

But I would like to see the Engineer who drew the plan for this motorway...(very close to what I did, I am sure!) I mean people have quietly accepted this road and he is getting away with it. But does anyone benefit from traffic jams? Beats me!

The barking dog...

Read that the CBI team has finally packed up their bags and gone, after spending the tax payer’s money and giving high hopes to those who were looking forward to justice.

Their last bark was to convey the imminent arrest of a priest and a nun after their narco-analysis test. The CBI team reminds me of dogs with their tails between their legs. Isn’t it time this whole rubbish team is scrapped away? If they cannot perform independently but be at the whims and fancies of the government then the public does not need them. At least those hard working CBI officers will not be mocked and made into puppets.

And putting two and two together wasn’t it all staged by the ruling party and the church, just to distract the followers? The spat between them were staged and the public has yet again become donkeys!

Anyway “Vengeance is mine saith the Lord”, so let me hope that justice prevails.

A never ending story...

Kidney scams are nothing new in India. In January 1995 a kidney scandal came up and there was tremendous public and media outcry causing the Indian Congress to pass a legislation banning kidney trade. On January 15, 1995 Customs officers in Delhi uncovered a “Kidney tour” racket in which donors were enticed to go abroad for removal and subsequent transplant of their kidneys. Hundreds of donors were believed to have gone on such tours. Then a series of other such scams were discovered, one of which was in a rehabilitation colony (Villivakkam) for leprosy patients near Madras and then one in Bangalore which the kidneys of nearly 1,000 unsuspecting people had been removed in a leading city hospital by prominent doctors.

I believe one cannot run such a smooth operation without the knowledge of the higher ups. Right now the king pin of the current operation has vanished from India. A person who is operating 5 different accounts with 2 major hospitals in his name can provide a way out of India very easily. And yes he will return once the media and the public have something more juicier to chew upon. The laws we have established is not for the unsuspecting poor, who will be cheated again and most of them even without their knowledge. After all, living with one kidney is much easier than living on an empty stomach.

I am not sure how this can ever be stopped with rising kidney demands from all over the world. Even in Kuwait one constantly sees requests for kidneys in the daily’s. For the kidney patient, if he is rich enough, getting a kidney will be the best he can do with his money. He may not think twice about the poor donor.

As for India, our cultural and religious beliefs still prevent us from letting us donate our kidneys upon death. This itself can take care of a part of the demand for those kidney patients from India.

Cuba Mukundan

While we were in Kerala, we tried our best to watch the movie, “Arabi Katha” but couldn’t catch it in any of the nearest theatres. Well Kuwait will definitely bring it we thought. We waited patiently without succumbing to the CD guys’s endless offers of good print etc, etc. but to our disappointment due to some dispute going on, no more Malayalam movies are being shown in the Kuwait Cinema halls. Finally we bought a pirated CD (forgive us!) and a worthless camera print too.

Nevertheless the movie is too good. Srinivas can really bring any character to the screen. I am sure there is no living communist similar to the one portrayed by Srinivas as Cuba Mukundan. There are many touching moments too. It is hilarious when Mukundan refuses to serve a bottle of Cococola while remembering the strike that he made back in GOC, refusing to work on a LAPTOP for the same reason etc. And when he is harassed by the Paki Supervisor he raises his fist on reflex but suddenly realizes that he is not in Kerala but in Dubai and instead runs to the toilet and completes his protest in style “Inquilab Sindabad”! Srinivas also reminds those "ever ready to strike at the drop of a hat" comrades back in GOC that there is more to life, specially when one is forced to work in a place like Dubai. Life in the Gulf for the majority is potrayed with no exaggeration.

I guess one may find the likes of Cuba Mukundan among those communist that still work among the lower cadres but once they taste power and money, they lose their will power. But it is surprising to note that people still support those leaders. I guess it is because of their undying love for the party and not wanting to smear the party image. The crooks are still surviving for this reason alone. And those who protest openly are banished from the parties for one reason or the other. If you take a look at the current communist party in Kerala, one can find only Achumama who can come at least a bit close to Cuba Mukundan.

Ken Follet

Finished reading The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follet. It is many years since I read the “Eye of the needle” by the same author. But Ken can really get one glued on to the book until it is finished. I like this too. And now I am onto his book “Jackdaws”.


Actually I came across this author once again when I read “The Pillars of Earth” but unfortunately it was an e-book and was only the first volume. I tried my best to find the second one but couldn’t. It left me real frustrated since it was too good. It felt like someone taking away half a cup of the tea that you were enjoying. I will surely look for this title the next time I am in India. But if any of my readers can give me an e-version... that would be like winning a lottery!

Guillain-Barre Syndrome

FIL can now walk much better. Acutally he is very lucky that he was diagnosed quickly. As I wrote earlier it all started with tingling sensation on his legs and later general weakness in his legs. This is when the doctor told him that it was due to lack of calcium. His blood was gven for testing and he started using the walker to walk around. It was only when he fell down even with the walker that the seriousness of the situation was realized. He was immediately hospitalised and was in the ICU, under observation. Dr. Madhusudan was not available but the junior doctors were able to have consultations over the phone. They decided not to wait but go ahead with the treatment and this was the best decision. By then he was losing the sensation on his hands too.

Now we hear from many regarding this syndrome and there were unlucky ones who were not diagnosed soon enough. There was one person (50 yrs old) who was supposed to leave Kuwait for good to enjoy his retired life. It started with his hands and he did the usual treatments available but soon he was confined to the wheel chair and he left Kuwait in a wheel chair. By the time he was diagnosed the disease had taken its toll and he died.

This illness can occur at any age and it usually starts of with a normal cold or fever.

Nano

The whole world is talking about Tata and the cheapest car.

Below is an excerpt from an interview with the man behind all this rufus..

What do you think this will signal within the country and what is the confidence that it will give others, like what happened with acquisitions. Once you acquired Corus, everybody thought they could go out and do the same. Do you think in terms of innovation this will mark a watershed in India?

I don't want to in any way sound professorial, but what I think this does indicate is that when you set a bunch of young Indian engineers a goal that most people around the world think is not possible, it is significant that they are able to achieve it. One of the things I would like to say on record is that people may well criticise Tata Motors, or me, for adding congestion, but how about giving recognition to the bunch of young engineers who did something everyone thought was not possible?

Why not accept that India did something and young Indian engineers have done something that even people elsewhere in the world thought could not be done? So if there is a lesson from this it is that we can do other things also that the world thinks can't be done. And why don't we stand up and applaud those young guys who did it? I did not do it, Ravi did not do it, these young guys did it!


He does deserve the applause from one and all. It all started with his desire to provide an affordable car to the Indian masses, although he doesnt deny his business objective too. But his concern is genuine. It is no wonder that millions trust this business house and will continue doing so.

50 people who could save the planet

Stranded polar bears, melting glaciers, dried-out rivers and flooding on a horrific scale - these were the iconic images of 2007. So who is most able to stop this destruction to our world? A Guardian panel, taking nominations from key environmental figures, met to compile a list of our ultimate green heroes
You can see the full list of people and their activities in ...

I picked up the 5 Indians who are in the list and they are;

Madhav Subrmanian
Schoolboy
Madhav Subrmanian is the next generation's face of conservation, a 12-year-old Indian boy who goes round Mumbai collecting money for tiger conservation. With his friends Kirat Singh, Sahir Doshi and Suraj Bishnoi, he set up Kids For Tigers which works in hundreds of schools. He writes poems, sings on the streets, sells merchandise and has collected Rs500,000 (£6,500) in two years. Conservation awareness is growing in middle-class India, largely through young activists like him.

Rajendra Singh
Water conservationist
In 1984 Dr Rajendra Singh, now 49, was working in the semi-desert Indian state of Rajastan. He planned to set up health clinics in the rural villages, but was shocked when he went to a place called Gopalpura. "This area was devastated and people were fleeing, leaving their children, women and older people behind," Singh says. "It was then an old man told me that they needed neither medicines nor food. He said all they needed was water.
"It moved me so much and I started finding out ways to help. But the region was arid, all the rivers were dry and the land was parched. The only source of water was rainwater, but that was scarce and there was not nearly enough for all the needs of the region."
A mix of modern technology and villagers simply neglecting traditional ways of conserving water had led to an ecological disaster. Singh found that the villages no longer used small earth dams - or johads - to collect surface water but instead now relied on "modern" tube wells. As they bored their wells deeper and deeper into the ground and sucked out ever more underground water, so the water table had dropped alarmingly and ever deeper wells were required.
Lower water levels meant that the wells were not full, the forests and trees were dying off, and erosion was worsening. It was a vicious circle. With less irrigation water, farming declined and men migrated to cities for work. Women and children then had to spend up to 10 hours a day fetching firewood and water, and the shrinking labour force sapped people's will to maintain the old johads. The whole region faced disaster.
Singh and his colleagues began digging out an old johad pond in Gopalpura. Seven months later, it was, almost miraculously, nearly five feet full of water. And once the rains eventually came, not only did it fill to the brim, but a nearby long-dry well began flowing again. The following year, the village joined in to rebuild a second dam, and by 1996 Gopalpurans had recreated nine johads that between them held millions of litres of water. Meanwhile, the groundwater level had risen to 6.7m, up from an average of 14m below the ground. The village wells were full again.
"It was only due to political reasons that the [johad] system fell apart," Singh says. "We worked for four years in Gopalpura and slowly a huge area turned green. People came back, they started farming again and the visual impact was so impressive that people from adjoining areas started calling us for help."
Singh is now known as the Rain Man of Rajastan, having brought water back to more than 1,000 villages and got water to flow again in all five major rivers in Rajastan. He has so far helped to build more than 8,600 johads and other structures to collect water for the dry seasons. The forest cover has increased by a third because the water table has risen, and antelope and leopard have returned to the region. It has also been one of the cheapest regenerations of a region ever known - in Rajastan, villages have been brought back to life sometimes for just a few hundred pounds, far less than the cost of the single borehole that almost destroyed them.
"See the earth like a bank," Singh says. "If you make regular deposits of water, you'll always have some to withdraw. If you are just taking, you will have nothing in your account."
Erratic rains and longer droughts are becoming more frequent around the world with changing weather patterns and climate change, and the lessons taught by Singh in Rajastan are now being applied all over India and Africa. In the next 30 years, water "harvesting" is expected to become an essential way to save water everywhere from England to Uganda and Arizona. In south-east England, there is barely enough rainfall now, let alone for the expected population within 20 years. Procedures likely to be introduced will include gadgets that ensure you can't leave a running tap, baths that hold less water, gutters that collect water, systems for using waste water for gardens. "It's the same principle everywhere, but we all have to learn it," Singh says.

Jockin Arputham
Urban activist
Jockin Arputham, 60, has lived in a slum outside Mumbai since 1963. As president of the National Slum Dwellers Association and Slum Dwellers International, he is rallying the world's poorest city dwellers to improve their environment. Urban squalor is one of the biggest problems of the age, and by 2030 the number of slum dwellers is projected to reach two billion - a recipe for poverty, disease and political instability. Arputham has pioneered a way to help the poor negotiate with city authorities to secure land ownership - the greatest barrier to improving slums. Dozens of other new urban groups are working in 70 countries and hundreds of thousands of people have benefited. Global urbanisation is inevitable, and these new federations will have more and more ecological influence.

Bija Devi
Farm manager
Bija Devi saves seeds for future generations. She already has in her "bank" 1,342 types of cereals, pulses, fruits and vegetables, though she has no idea of their scientific names. She has worked as a farmer since the age of seven, never went to school and has never heard the words "wheat" or "turnip". Yet she now heads a worldwide movement of women trying to rescue and conserve crops and plants that are being pushed to extinction in the rush to modernise farming. And in so doing she is helping rejuvenate Indian culture.
Apart from collecting and storing seeds from all over the country, Devi is teaching farmers, distributing seeds and experimenting with them. It's called the Navdanya (Nine Seeds) movement because it was inspired by a southern Indian custom of planting nine seeds in a pot on the first day of the year. Women would take the pots to the river nine days later to compare and exchange seeds so that each family could plant the best seeds, thus optimising food supplies.
Today, Devi has farmers queueing up for seeds at her project's base, a 40-acre farm in the foothills of the Himalayas in Dehradun. When she started 14 years ago, with ecologist Vandana Shiva, she had to plead with the farmers to accept that ecological security was of fundamental importance, and that there were advantages to sowing older, indigenous seeds rather than the newer, high-yielding "hybrid" or GM seeds. These give larger crops but require considerable input of pesticides and fertilisers, and more water.
Women are responsible for sowing, harvesting and storing food, while it is up to the men to prepare the soil. "There was no tangible benefit for them in using our seeds," Devi says. "But over time they realised how the soil was retaining its fertility, how the crop was free from diseases and pests. Now they come to us on their own."
She now has 380 varieties of rice seeds alone. There are something like 200,000 people benefiting from 34 similar community seed banks set up in 13 states across the country. The banks are seen as an insurance against changing conditions, such as climate, new pests or consumer demand. People who receive the seeds pay nothing for them, and in return pledge to continue to save and share them. "Indiscriminate use of chemicals has harmed the soil to an enormous extent," Devi says, "but we can still restore fertility and conserve water if we act now."
The work is backed by Dr Debal Deb, an ecologist who has established the only gene bank of indigenous rice in India. The Green Revolution was environmentally disastrous in India, he says: "In the 80s, the drastic erosion of the genetic diversity of rice and other crops was irreversible. Thousands of rice varieties no longer exist in the farms where they evolved over centuries. They are extinct for good and not even accessed in the national and international gene banks." This, he says, translates into a threat to the country's food security.
Collecting seeds from a large and diverse country such as India is no easy task. "I depend on the traditional knowledge of the farmers and go to different corners in the region in search of new varieties," Devi says. "The farmers explain the qualities of a particular strain and how to cultivate them. We then collect the seed, cultivate it on an experimental basis and note down the results. If it is satisfactory, we distribute it among the other farmers. We also need to sow the seeds regularly to continue with the strain. Today, traditional knowledge is almost lost in the euphoria over new varieties."

Bunker Roy
Educationalist
Bunker Roy, 62, set up the Barefoot College in India, the only school in the world known to be open only to people without any formal education. Roy's idea is that India and Africa are full of people with skills, traditional knowledge and practical resourcefulness who are not recognised as engineers, architects or water experts but who can bring more to communities than governments or big businesses. The college trains the poor to combine local knowledge with new green technologies : 15,000 people have learned to become "barefoot" water and solar engineers, architects and teachers. It has helped hundreds of communities across India - and now in seven other countries - install water supplies and solar voltaic lighting systems, develop bicycles that can cross rivers and design buildings that collect every drop of water.

Rise up Pakistan

Suddenly we see it everywhere. In the various editorials, in blogs, during discussions. The care and concern for our neighbouring country. 50 and more years have widened the gap between the two countries specially in the economic front. But the culture and the mentality of its people have not changed. They still treat each other as the long lost brother separated by a fence which they would love to tear down if it was possible. Though their ego sometimes does not let them admit freely, they still care for each other.

But for some Indians is this show of concern out of their selfishness? After all, a stable Pakistan will do only good to India. Trouble with them will spell only trouble in many ways to India too.

It is not as though democracy is the best weapon, but it is the only good one for the moment. The Pakistani’s need to strive towards achieving a democratic government which can keep the army and the extremists bridled. It should also show the world that it can manage its affairs without outside interference. But for this to happen they better start finding a good leader to start with.

"Love your Christian neighbor as yourself."

The latest from the distressed community really shows that there are some in urgent need of counselling.

But if this remains as just a wish it is fine but if they are planning for an “edayalekanam” and instructions to strictly abide then it is time they had a thorough check up.

Now let me examine myself as a parent. Will I choose a school of my own community or does it matter at all. I think personally for me and hubby the first priority would be quality education at affordable price no matter who runs the school. Now if I studied in a school run by the minority community, it was because it was the only one around the place I grew up. But then I cannot speak for my parents but I don’t think it ever mattered to them. After all, a school is a place where you acquire knowledge and learn to live with the rest of the world, irrespective of their caste, creed, colour and above all RELIGION. The devil sent manna for our politicians and some religious leaders. If one needs to teach them religion, one has special schools and your own home too. This responsibility should not rest with the schools.
I can very well relate with the SFI activist who changed the well known verse thus...
"Love your Christian neighbor as yourself."
Anyway I can never understand some religious leaders who seem to have lost it all. But I would be happy if the faithful doesn’t follow suit but show some sense.

Guillain-Barre syndrome

My FIL was suffering from Guillain-Barre syndrome which is an uncommon inflammatory disorder in which your body's immune system attacks your nerves, typically causing severe weakness and numbness that usually starts in your extremities and quickly worsens. Eventually your whole body can become paralyzed, even the muscles used for breathing.
There's no cure for Guillain-Barre syndrome. But two treatments have been shown to speed the recovery from and reduce the severity of the disorder:

 Plasmapheresis. This treatment — also known as plasma exchange — is a type of "blood cleansing" in which damaging antibodies are removed from your blood. Plasmapheresis consists of removing the liquid portion of your blood (plasma) and separating it from the actual blood cells. The blood cells are then put back into your body, which manufactures more plasma to make up for what was removed. It's not clear why this treatment works, but scientists believe that plasmapheresis rids plasma of certain antibodies that contribute to the immune system attack on the peripheral nerves.

 Intravenous immunoglobulin. Immunoglobulin contains healthy antibodies from blood donors. High doses of immunoglobulin can block the damaging antibodies that may contribute to Guillain-Barre syndrome.

FIL was given the second one and it brought back the use of his hands and the sensation to his legs. He was discharged on 1st December and by God’s grace was able to greet the new year from his home. Hubby and his brother took turns to look after him but his brother had to leave early. A wheel chair, a walker etc has been purchased and we were lucky to get a good home nurse too.

Pray that his recovery is complete by the physiotherapy.