The Capital City

A sudden travel plan took me to Delhi and back in a day! The National Disaster Management Authority has formed a Core Committee to prepare a Guidelines on the Role of Non-Governmental Humanitarian organizations in Emergency Preparedness and Response. I am asked to be part of it. It was nice to be in Delhi, though just for a day, because I could catch up in the meeting with some of the seniors in disaster risk reduction and response programs. It was also a good opportunity to see how Delhi is developing under the leadership of that great old lady, Sheila Dixit.

I admire her for her political will, for her commitment to task, and her “say-no, hear-no” attitude towards her detractors, and setting her goals always high. In contrast to the elected government that we have in West Bengal, the problems in Delhi are a lot more complex, and difficult to control, because of the huge floating population it has. But, if we count in terms of performance, West Bengal is lagging behind. Our goals are short. Our dreams are just vanity. Our political will is anything but corrupt or inept. And our commitment to tasks is in returning hundreds of millions of rupees unutilized year after year. One good thing about this however is, it has clearly safeguarded the state from communal elements. Long live Bengal !

Stones and Stony People

The week had some memorable moments: the arrival of a friend, Christine, a cousin of Regina Lyschik, and visit to some of the stone quarries in the farthest corners on the border of West Bengal and Jharkhand in Birbhum district of West Bengal, India. The area has hundreds of stone quarries stretching into two districts in Jharkhand and one district in West Bengal. The stone quarries are like huge open wells, running into 100 - 500 feet deep, where the black granite stones are blasted and then carried up by trucks that can go into these huge wells, and they are brought up to for breaking by hammer wielding men, and women and children carrying them into machines that break the boulders into small pieces. The visit to the places included two of my U.S. friends, students from Seattle University, Jeff and Loren joining me in the adventure. Although I have visited these places, some of the problems these people are into, came to light very strongly: a) There is obviously huge lack of access to health services, and the people certainly suffer from silicosis and tuberculosis; (b) The drop-out among children from schools to work in the quarries or to take care of the siblings so that the parents can go to work, is not as significant as one might think of. (c) The female workers are all young tribal girls; insiders say that older tribal women are not taken as they are not "sexually" attractive, and the young girls serve the sexual needs of men who control the quarries, and the thousands of truck drivers who come there, raising issues of sexual exploitation.

Someone must speak up. We shall speak up. Soon....with your help.

The Pilot and the Surgeon

Weekend went off with Robert and Dan, friends of Jeff, a student who is interning with me from the Seattle University. Both Rob and Dan are friendly, out-going, serious in approach, and persons of strong character. Rob is a surgeon in Washington State, and was on a tour to India to see some of the medical practices here and to give a few lectures. My search for him in the internet showed that he is pretty famous in WA. Dan is his son, pilot by profession. As we traveled together through the length and breadth of West Bengal, I could get a lot of thing cleared on planes and how planes work. I never knew they had to work their hands and legs to turn a plane! Ha...ha...ha... We also had some good meals in the three days. A bit of site seeing, lot of talks and visits to some of the poorest villages that still need to see light of development.

Thank yo Rob and Dan for the wonderful memories you have left behind! God Bless!

Live with Liver

For those who are interested in saving their liver, there is some more health capsule....

Liver Damaging Habits:

1. Sleeping too late and waking up too late are main cause.
2. Not urinating in the morning.
3 . Too much eating.
4. Skipping breakfast.
5. Consuming too much medication.
6. Consuming too much preservatives, additives, food coloring, and artificial sweetener.
7. Consuming unhealthy cooking oil.
As much as possible reduce cooking oil use when frying, which includes even the best cooking oils like olive oil. Do not consume fried foods when you are tired, except if the body is very fit..
8. Consuming raw (overly done) foods also add to the burden of liver.
Veggies should be eaten raw or cooked 3-5 parts. Fried veggies should be finished in one sitting, do not store.

We should prevent this without necessarily spending more. We just have to adopt a good daily lifestyle and eating habits. Maintaining good eating habits and time condition are very important for our bodies to absorb and get rid of unnecessary chemicals according to 'schedule' of our bodies.

Brain Damaging Habits

A group of friends from the U.S. sent me some information on good habits that can save your head and bad habits that can damage your brains. I thought of sharing it with you....

1. No Breakfast: People who do not take breakfast are going to have a lower blood sugar level. This leads to an insufficient supply of nutrients to the brain causing brain degeneration.

2 . Overeating: It causes hardening of the brain arteries, leading to a decrease in mental power.

3. Smoking: It causes multiple brain shrinkage and may lead to Alzheimer disease.

4.. High Sugar consumption:Too much sugar will interrupt the absorption of proteins and nutrients causing malnutrition and may interfere with brain development.

5. Air Pollution:The brain is the largest oxygen consumer in our 20 body. Inhaling polluted air decreases the supply of oxygen to the brain, bringing about a decrease in brain efficiency.

6 . Sleep Deprivation:Sleep allows our brain to rest.. Long term deprivation from sleep will accelerate the death of brain cells.

7. Head covered while sleeping:Sleeping with the head covered increases the concentration of carbon dioxide and decrease concentration of oxygen that may lead to brain damaging effects.

8. Working your brain during illness:Working hard or studying with sickness may lead to a decrease in effectiveness of the brain as well as damage the brain.

9. Lacking in stimulating thoughts:Thinking is the best way to train our brain, lacking in brain stimulation thoughts may cause brain shrinkage.

10. Talking Rarely:Intellectual conversations will promote the efficiency of the brain

And if you really think that you need to show that you have brains, start using it!

Elephants...

Recently newspapers are full of news about elephants invading into the commoners' land in northern districts of Jalpaiguri and Coochbehar and in Purulia and West Medinipur in southern Bengal. The shrinking of forest cover, lack of food, human settlements deep into the forests and poor being pushing to the periphery of the wild--all compounded together have left both animals and humans vulnerable to the vagaries of nature. My friends in WWF have been working in southern districts of Bengal, mainly in the Sunderbans where they are concerned about the declining number of tigers, and tiger invasion into human settlements.

I have no answers to problems like these. I am not sure if even the poor are looking for solutions. They have just no other go. They have submitted themselves to fate and poverty. Will someone speak up for them? Will it be you? Or, may be, me?

PACS - Poverty Alienated Community Sucks!

Since the second week into the new year, most voluntary organizations and non-profits in West Bengal and Orissa have been busy preparing Concept Notes for applying to DFID (Department for International Development of U.K.) under the Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) Program. The idea is to give lots of money to non-profits, strengthen their capacities in order to help them work with the poorest communities, so that the poor, specially women and other socially excluded communities can have non-discriminated access to livelihood and basic services of education, health and nutrition.

But how poor are some these districts... I was wondering. I looked into the education index for the State, and the districts within the state. Birbhum district takes pride in proclaiming that among the tribal communities living in that district, females have 5.63 % of basic education! Oops! If this is what independence and development have done to the country, this is time to re-think on our approaches to development. It can not be reasons of high cost, because primary education is free. Then what? Sheer social exclusion of vulnerable communities, tribals, poor, and women. Shame! These communities alienated by poverty, ill-health and exploitation by the moneyed and powerful in society, is sucking! A society built on principles of violence and basic inequality, injustice and corruption cannot aim high. We need change.

National Parade

India has been having several parades... Most reported on the media are the forced naked parade of women, and sometimes men, in far off villages due to caste differences, internal quarrels, alleged prostitution or even for personal enmity--just to name a few. The most watched parade is however the parade on the national television on the Independence Day (August 15) and Republic Day (January 26). A friend has sent his reflections on these parades, which he contrasts with the "parade of poverty" in India. Just couple of days ago newspapers in India mentioned that Channel 4 in the UK has been charged with "porn poverty" for showing the poorest areas of Mumbai, and not its wealth!

Here follows part of his reflections:

Every third person in India lives Below Poverty Line. An average of 6000 children die every day due to malnutrition. But the way our country equips herself with arms and weapons is shocking. India is the fourth largest importer of arms in the world.

Every Republic Day speaks of the new weapons made or bought in the name of natonial security. There is no report of where and when these arms were or are being used is another question. The money of the poor man's taxes are spent enormously on warfare and not on welfare.

Gandhi said that India lives in Villages. Most of the Indians are in villages.

But our villagers live without social security; there is no electricity, no road facilities and no rural medical and educatoinal facilities.

There is no list of how many new villages got electricity. How many new villages got rural dispensaries in the last one year. How many tribal or dalit villages got rural schools or water facilities etc etc But under the name of border security and national defence, billions of rupees

that are meant for the basic rights of people are spent on arms.

India has amassed so much of the tax payers money to focus on unwanted threats.

There is no budget for settling disputes, no money for peace negotiation. We are still viewing the shamful parade of how the common people's money has been misused.... Until we, as citizens exercise our right to know and right over national spending,we may have to continue to view such ... parades in future. Vivekananda told: Arise, Awake and Sleep not.... When shall we wake up?When will we ever learn?

End of a Saga

The State of West Bengal is mourning the death of the eldest statesman of the country--Comrade Jyoti Basu who led the state for 23 years, and paved for the state to be ruled for continuous 32 years by the Communist Party. This is the only state in the world where communists have ruled over 100 million people through a democratically elected process. There is so much said and read about this man. Hated, feared, revered and loved. I thought of picking somethings that had been said about him today's newspapers, and present it for the view of my readers:

Gopal Krishna Gandhi, the former Governor of West Bengal: "Over my last two visits to him, when he received me in his bedroom, I noticed that on a dressing table at the far end of the room, stood three framed pictures. One was of Kamaldi, one of his grandchildren and the third one, smaller than the other two, of Venkateswara, the deity worshipped in Tirupati. I did not ask about it and assumed that it had been placed there by some devout person and that Jyotibabu had not interfered with that gesture. I do not know about its provenance, but it said a great deal to me, that little picture there.

For Jyoti Basu to be ideologically committed was not the same thing as being intellectually closed, to be doctrinally connected was not the same as becoming an island of received wisdoms. Consistency was not coextensive with conceptual stagnation, nor loyalty the same as mental slavery. He knew in the core of his being that vitally important as an ideology is, there is such a thing as the web of Life which has its dividing lines but also interconnections. When he strove it was for the success of his beliefs, not for the defeat of others’.

On the militant trade unionism that led to the closure of thousands of companies in the state, The Telegraph newspaper published from Kolkata writes: "Chief minister Jyoti Basu clucked his tongue over these incidents but did little to restrain the marauding mobs. With their top managers beaten, intimidated and humiliated, companies that had established their headquarters in Bengal would have no choice but to scurry out of the state.

This is the most enduring bit of Basu’s chequered legacy: by failing to rein in the belligerent trade union leaders early in his reign, he found that he couldn’t exercise control over the anarchy that inevitably followed. Bengal soon sank into a morass, turning into an industrial wasteland of lost opportunities with an ever-shrinking pool of jobs. It coloured perceptions about Bengal and created deep-seated prejudices against the state that it is still fighting against."


Finally, the mortal remains of the leader will be donated to a medical college for research after homage is paid to him on 19 January 2010. Jyoti Basu RIP.

Rich Gods of the Poorer People

The Tirupati temple in Andhra Pradesh state of India is competing with Vatican, (some say it has already overtaken) for the amount of wealth it generates each day. Its annual budget is nearly 10 billion rupees, and almost all of it coming from donations! With a golden tower and hundreds of kilos of gold poured into the hundy every year, no one exactly knows how many tonnes of gold the Tirupati Venkateswara temple has. Himachal’s rich temples are too poor to afford security; so, the Himachal Pradesh government is finding it a real burden to manage the hundreds of kilos (above 4 quintals as per official confession) of gold besides tonnes of other precious metals lying in its treasuries. Why, when I was a child, there was the murder of an auditor of the Murugan Temple in Tiruchendur, Tamil Nadu state, which evoked so much of political heat, as the auditor was supposed to have found that a diamond spear that had been donated was stolen by the temple authorities, and the entire case was highly followed up in the media.

Of course the treasure belongs to the gods and therefore it is certainly even more burdening to be custodian for the All Powerful. And what bright idea it is to bank on bullion reserves temple shrines across the states have – perhaps a godly stimulus for a growing economy that is yet to fully integrate itself with the larger speculative world capital market.

But money being money, the state governments are justified in feeling the heat of the gold lying unused with them. Perhaps not a great amount to catapult the state's economy into a thriving one, nevertheless a decent amount to do the cleaning job in at least the shrines to which the treasure belongs. To arrange proper water and sanitary facilities for those who visit the temples; to have proper announcement systems, emergency exits, and crowd control measures to avoid stampedes that kill tens of people across the country each year, and to serve the poor! Even the interest from the earnings of the gold could bring cheers to the lives of many.

It is rather a great irony that in a country where half of the population still lives a poverty-stricken life, religious institutions are ‘filthy rich’, making them power centres. Another noteworthy fact is that most of this money comes from the not-so-privileged class that is made to believe in the supremacy of their faith. The problem is more visible in the Hindu society with the Brahaminical order making sure that the caste divide remains visible enough. Perhaps, that’s the reason cleanliness in a Hindu temple stops beyond the sanctum santorum. Can we change this? Perhaps yes. The last heard news: A catholic cathedral church in a northern diocese of West Bengal is being constructed at a cost of about 60 million rupees, where the tribal Christians live from hand to mouth, and teachers of the schools run by the same church are paid barely rupees one thousand each month. Oh Father, forgive them!