There is nothing like right or wrong but it is all context based. Well but if you want to know about the current development scenario in india here is a small disourse that am floating for my friends. Thanx swapnali for making me do this. My interest is basically on natural resource management ( a term that is used to cover the use and misuse of everything that nature has endowed man with. (forests, water and land resources). Read more
SAARC is the body with the full form - South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. But the body is anything but about cooperation. Cooperation cannot be brought about by formal bodies but bringing together hearts. Some wonder why the nations are not cooperating. Its a good question, but does the hurt of "My land for my God at all costs" inflicted on others ever go away? Is 60 years enough for that? What have we done to get away from that madness? The answer is very little. Anyways, the Secretary General now says that "nations in the region miss business opportunities worth $8 billion a year due to non-cooperation and could double the amount of investments they attract by checking corruption." Personally I feel, for India, there is a great opportunity in reducing corruption. But it cant be wished away. It will require change in attitudes and thinking. That has been the bane of many a generation for all these years in India... and a question that has stumped many intellectuals and thinkers. Read more
Growing up in India and Pakistan, I am sure most kids would have heard of Gama Pehlvaan - specifically in North India. Who was he? Have you wondered? I did. I finally got something about this guy from an interesting blog of a Zakintosh. He is known for a great fight with a Polish wrestler which ended in 42 seconds. Polish wrestler Stanisław Jan Cyganiewicz (aka Stanislaus Zbyszko), having had a dubious 'draw' in an earlier encounter, held a return bout in 1928 with the great Ghulam Mohammad, better remembered as Gama Pehlvaan, in Patiala. Zbyszko went down in 42 seconds (the earlier, 'drawn' bout had lasted 3 hours!) ... Gama chose to migrate to Pakistan in 1947 and trained his nephews in wrestling. When the freestyle wrestling took over the old akhaara style fights, then their influence and wealth withered away. Gama died without much fan-fare in his adopted country. The Great Gama died in the mid- or late 50s, uncelebrated in the country he chose, with little money for treatment. During his last days a small news item, buried in the pages of Dawn, informed us that Georg Zbyzsko, nephew of Gama's rival, had sent a donation towards his medical costs, having heard his uncle always praise Gama's strength and sportsman spirit. The greatness of Gama is difficult to comprehend now. But given his day and age and his confidence with which he challenged the best and the biggest from India and the world without formal training or diet - it is indeed amazing that he did so well through his life! Sadly his end was not deserving of this great man. Here are some of his exploits and fights - First Encounters with Raheem Sultani Wala Fame came to Gama at the age of 19 when he challenged the then Wrestling Champion of India, Raheem Baksh Sultani Wala. At 6'9" tall with an impressive record, Raheem was thought to easily defeat the 5'3" Gama, but the bout continued for hours and eventually ended in a draw. The contest with Raheem was the turning point in Gama's career. After that, he was looked upon as the next contender for the title Champion of India. In the first bout Gama remained defensive, but in a second match, Gama was more offensive. Gama was bleeding from his nose and ears but he managed to destroy the lungs and heart of Raheem Baksh. Winning the John Bull Belt By 1910, Gama had defeated all the prominent Indian wrestlers who faced him except the Champion Wala. At this time, he focused his attention to the rest of the world. Accompanied by his younger brother Imam Bukhsh, Gama sailed to England to compete with the Western Wrestlers. In London, Gama issued a challenge that he could throw any three wrestlers in thirty minutes of any weight class. This announcement however was seen as a bluff by the wrestlers and their promoter R.B. Benjamin. For a long time no one came forward to accept the challenge. In order to break the ice, Gama presented another challenge to specific heavy weight wrestlers. He challenged Stanislaus Zbyszko and Frank Gotch, either he would beat them or pay them the prize money and go home. The first professional wrestler to take his challenge was the American Benjamin Roller. In the bout, Gama pinned Roller in 1 minute 40 seconds the first time, and in 9 minutes 10 seconds the other. Read more
Kashmir is a strange place. It has seen unseen bloodshed. The Pandits were killed and thrown out of their houses and made refugees. It was a sad period for many. It showed the apathy of the rest of India and the shallow definition and scope of the Human Rights activists in India. Over the years, the Muslims suffered as well - sandwiched between Indian forces and the Pakistani machinery of ISI and Army. They had to also deal with the appeasement from the Indian Government but in the end at least they had the land to themselves although their lives were also torn apart. I came across a very sensitive article from Rahul Pandita - on his experiences in Kashmir growing up. One, in which he describes the time when Indira Gandhi died. Here is an excerpt: The time had come to act, I thought. As the family sat glued around the Bush radio set, I sneaked into the kitchen garden. In a polythene bag, I collected raw tomatoes. They were my hand grenades. Tying the bag around my waist, I waited for "them."Hilal, our neighbour's son and few years older to me, appeared on the wall dividing our house. He and his brothers would often sit on that wall, asking us to give them some apples from the tree in our garden. "Can you sing Jana Gana Mana…?" I shouted at him.He looked at me as if I had gone crazy. Then he spat at the flower bed beneath him, on our side. I don't know when my hand went to my waist and I began throwing a volley of tomatoes at him. One hit him in the eye and burst there. He was caught unawares. He let out a cry and fell backwards. Soon, we would see images of a young Rahul, who had lost his grandmother, his arms clutched around his father who wore dark glasses. In Delhi, meanwhile, a massacre had begun. Our old Sikh carpenter was devastated; his sister lived with her husband in a west Delhi colony. Later, we came to know that her husband was killed - a mob put a burning tyre, filled with petrol, around his neck like a garland. Three days after Indira Gandhi died, my mother's mother, who had turned senile in her old age, began to see visions of two men aiming at her with a gun. I had grown up hearing stories from her. There was a poster of Charlie Chaplin in my room, and, for many days after I had put it there, she would burn incense sticks in front of it, thinking Chaplin was Englishmen's God. On the fifth day, she passed away in her sleep. In another five years, I would have to leave Charlie Chaplin behind. In another five years, we would be queuing up to receive tomatoes in relief camps. Read more
In times when everyone wants to create the next search tool - this was one search functionality that was waiting to happen in India. I think the need for it is high and with most of the booking and check-in for trains and flights being online in India.. this was the next step. Of course, when you get on to the train you can never imagine that the information infrastructure behind it could be so sophisticated! In any case, Rediff has launched a Train Fare Search. Not only does it search the train fares but also many other things for example: 1. Checking seat availability across classes2. Getting fares between two stations3. Getting detailed schedule of trains with routes4. Checking PNR status of the tickets5. Getting a comparative view of the lowest air ticket available for the chosen rail route within the same query6. Realtime spotting of trains to get arrival and departure status for any station7. Booking tickets through contact details of tickets agents across cities Since I may not be able to use this search tool right away.. can any of the readers please look up the functionality and comment on its user friendliness and accuracy? Read more
I had put up these stats of utter neglect in India when it comes to basic commodities in a post in Feb 2006. The statistics from India Today had said that 40% of Indian grain rots every year. Now, comes the official word from the horse's mouth itself! A Delhi citizen using his Right to Information asked for the quantification of damage to the food grain. The reply is SHOCKING! The FCI* informed that 183,000 tonnes of wheat, 395,000 tonnes of rice, 22 thousand tonnes of paddy and 110 tonnes of maize were damaged between 1997 and 2007. The FCI said in the northern region -- UP, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi -- the damage incurred was 700,000 tonnes and the PSU spent Rs 87.15 crore (Rs 871 million) to prevent the loss besides spending over Rs 60 lakh (Rs 6 million) to dispose off the damaged food grain. Any idea on how many Indian kids go to bed without food? 63%. According to UN figures. The pain is even more acute when you consider that FCI spent Rs 242 crore (Rs 2.42 billion) to prevent such damage and then spent Rs 2.59 crore was spent just to dispose off the rotten food grains! I have no idea how much more worse it can possibly get? Here is an interesting paper from International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which argues for deregulation of the Food sector. In the past one decade, with emphasis on industry and almost negative view of growth from the agriculture sector perspective.. the time has been spent more on debates and useless arguments as opposed to constructive solutions. The future in India could be really bleak - India could become a chronic net importer of rice and wheat by 2020 if the trends are not reversed!! The per capita annual availability in India has retarded from 174.23 kg per person per year averaged over the '90s to 163.33 kg per person per year averaged over 2000-06. In an era where economic growth has, post-liberalisation, shown a quantum jump, the food availability has fallen to the level of the '60s when India had recorded serious famines.While a rising population has obviously been a major cause of such decline, the stagnation in yields and a halt in increase of acreage under rice particularly is as much to blame. The report points out that the yield of milled rice in the country increased from 863 kg per hectare in 1966-67 to 2,079 kg per hectare in 2001-02, growing at the compounded annual growth rate of 2.54%. But since then, the growth rate has come down to a mere 0.45%.In wheat too, the yields secured in 2001-02 of 2,778 kg per hectare have not been achieved since. It is provisionally estimated at 2,742 kg per hectare for 2007-08. The total production too in case of wheat remains at the levels achieve in 2001-02. Meanwhile along with retardation of food growth, another phenomenon is occuring in India - growth of non-vegetarian diet and consumerism. Like most countries as India becomes affluent - meat eaters also grow. Now here are some statistics that show why such trends are going to harm the future of food security (source: NY Times . Freep) Read more
We had read the story of an IIT grad and grandson of Indian freedom fighter, Veer Savarkar found begging on the streets.. and that IITs are not being able to pay their salaries now. Of course, there are enough success stories of the IIT-ians who are the brightest of the bright that India produces that fuels the competition to get that coveted degree on one's resume. The competition is so severe and the stakes so high that people can go to any length to get themseves past the finish line. Kota in Rajasthan has become the most important center for such training. Some of the teachers are paid as high as Rs. 50 lacs to Rs 1 crores. Quite obviously, it would seem that the establishments are making enough to pay that high sums as salaries! Now, comes the estimation of the bounty that is being made - Rs.100 billion ($2.30 billion) a year! By some estimation that is enough money to run 30 to 40 IITs in the country! So, instead of using that money to provide the education.. the society is spending that money just to compete for that education! When the existing IITs cannot even pay their professors the monthly salaries.. and small institutes preparing kids to study under those very professors are minting enough money to create 5-8 times more such institutes - salaries & infrastructure put together.... then quite obviously something is extremely wrong! Read more
PBS-TV recently carried two programs (can watch one online) reporting how the govt of Sudan is sponsoring horrific ethnic killings and rape-as-warfare in its Darfur region, shielded primarily from international sanctions by the Chinese government. China buys oil from Sudan in exchange for weapons and vetoes all U.N. resolutions demanding international supervision in Darfur. The U.S. govt (as India and others) has largely refused to intervene or pressure Sudan since it is perceived against Chinese interests, although the US govt now officially acknowledges the happenings in Darfur as genocide.Yesteryears' actress Mia Farrow has singlehandedly spearheaded a movement to spur action against the atrocities and it has had some effect with China yielding slightly to allow limited UN oversight in some parts of Darfur in late 2007 but 2008 has seen fresh deterioration with escalation brutality. Farrow has put pressure on China by calling the Beijing Olympics as the Genocide Olympics and urged people to dissuade its corporate sponsors from participating. If you care, you may want to consider visiting her site and pass this message along. Read more
Phony Feline (pertaining to a cat) Adventure (Part One) Settings - GIR NATIONAL PARK AND SANCTUARY. October 2004 Aap kya rechars(research) karne aye ho? asked. (Are u here for research work)? This was the first question asked of me by the big moustache bearing guard as I entered the Gir National park and Sanctuary. Nahin Ghumne (no for tourism). I answered warily having pushed all kinds of research out of my mind. Yahaan ek ladki aayi thi sher ki moos pe rechars karne ke liye. (A girl had come here to do research on the whiskers of the lions. ) Read more
I got this mail. I am sure these quotes have been shared by many about Bhagwad Gita. In my view, the commendations from these people, learned and great as they are, does nothing to take away or add to the value of Gita.. so high is it in Spiritual and the profound. Its greatest strength is NOT in its ideas - for they were known to the Vedic Rishis long back, as is evident from many Upanishads... its strength was to sythesize the many profound statements and philosophy to dovetail that into an actionable statement. For the first and ONLY time, here was a orator who called the bluff of Moralistic action and put the entire nonsense of what people go about preaching in the name of Morals. Morals are contextual and prisoners of time and space. There is no such thing as an absolute Moral. For example, if what the Great Teachers like Buddha and Jesus was "good" then how does one understand the many that have died due the ego that was created out of faith in those very teachings? Hence, I would like to state something that Vivekananda said and corerctly - that Krishna did not make Gita great. The message of Gita made Krishna great. The underlying components of Gita's message were already great.. they did not need a champion. What was required was a person to synthesize all that into ONE organic whole. Which is what Krishna did. Now, enjoy how Gita inspired these great minds. ============================== When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to Bhagavad-Gita and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. Those who meditate on the Gita will derive fresh joy and new meanings from it every day. - Mahatma Gandhi The Bhagavad-Gita calls on humanity to dedicate body, mind and soul to pure duty and not to become mental voluptuaries at the mercy of random desires and undisciplined impulses. - Mahatma Gandhi When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous. - Albert Einstein We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another. - Robert Oppenheimer The Bhagavad-Gita has a profound influence on the spirit of mankind by its devotion to God which is manifested by actions. - Dr. Albert Schweitzer Read more
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