Government’s Austerity Drive

The UPA government announced an austerity drive in September this year, with all overseas travel on hold, five star bookings a strict no-no and local travel only by economy class.

One should realize that the politician is in a class of his own – no morals, no ethics just pure thick skin – hence it wasn’t long before it was noticed that travel used to happen economy class with a compulsory upgrade to business class, five star bookings continuing but in proxy names and so on.

There is always a slip between the cup and the lip - for our home grown politicians hypocrisy is a way of life – how many people do you know who can lie with a straight face and also think that they do so for the greater public good! Very few I am sure, unless of course you are fortunate enough to have politicians amongst your social circle!

Not content to make a mockery of the so called austerity drive, the UPA government has surpassed itself by passing the air travel bill for Ministers. This bill was probably one of the fastest bills ever passed in India’s parliamentary history by both Houses giving their accent without any debate. The bill allows Ministers to take along any number of their relatives and companions to avail free air travel at the same rates at which traveling allowances were payable to them and their family. This bill has apparently been passed so that the Ministers can be brought on par with MP’s who are allowed to travel with their spouse or legitimate children (the implication in the statement is significant!) or step-children, as also the Minister’s companions or relatives to travel on their own or with the Minister. This is a carte blanche given by the Ministers to themselves for unlimited air travel which in theory could mean an entire flight being booked by a Minister for free for travel with his/her coterie. I really won’t be surprised if this actually happens! These are the guys who want CEO’s to cut their salaries or for a cap to brought on their salaries – guys who actually contribute to the growth of the nation and also pay taxes which in turn go into paying for the freebies being enjoyed by our super bunch of 544 citizens representatives!

With such freebies being enjoyed by our elected representatives are you really surprised that the common citizen ends up bearing the cross with higher taxes – the latest being the tax on perquisites. If you ask me the tax on perquisites is akin to the freebies on air travel – don’t you think these bozos too should be taxed? As it is, their wealth increases on an average more than a 100 fold every five years with no one asking questions as to how they have become so prosperous in such a short time. Just imagine an ordinary citizen amassing wealth in this fashion – you will have the revenue authorities coming down on him/her like a ton of bricks to extract their pound of flesh and a token amount for the government!

Even at the level of local government we see sheer wastage, inefficiency, bogged down infrastructure projects with cost escalation and the common man bearing the burden!! With money going down the drain (usually the drain is lined with politicians and bureaucrats), it is always the common man who faces hardships in the form of lack of water, electricity, roads, decent housing and also the happy job of paying more and more every passing year in the form of higher taxes which they pay for the inefficiency and greed of our elected representatives and lethargic bureaucracy!

Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2010

The countdown to the SCMM is under way with just 24 days to go. The biggest and most loved sporting event in Mumbai’s sporting calendar is just round the corner with an expected participation of more than 30000 people from all over the world.

I am sure all the amateur participants for the half and full marathon have been training very hard these past four months or so. The idea of participating in this grand event is two fold – to find out one’s own endurance level and to see how much one can help the under-privileged by raising money for their welfare.

There will be a lot of celebrity participants adding glamour to the event along with pageants and fun-loving peopke in the Dream Run category adding color and joy to the event.

This year the half marathon and the full marathon will start at the same time – 6.45 am on January 17, 2010. The full marathon will commence from CST and terminate at CST and will go over the newly constructed sea link from Worli to Bandra and back. The half marathon will start from Bandra and terminate at CST and go over the sea link. As far as I am concerned what really excites me is the chance to finish my half marathon amongst the front runners of the full marathon. It has actually set my blood racing with the thought of completing the run with some of the top athletes of the world. I have been training pretty hard and have targeted a time of 2 hours 15 to 20 minutes for completing my run. If that happens then I should definitely be part of the lead pack of the full marathon.

Apart from the sporting angle to the marathon, the “giving” angle is far more important as this tests the heart of the participants when it comes to helping the less fortunate living amongst us. I am confident that my colleagues have been doing their bit in raising money for the charity of their choice. It is important to learn the art of giving very early in life, as the more you give the more you get – whether in the form of more income or more blessings. Ultimately all good acts end up benefiting the giver in more ways than one. I pray that all amongst us are generous enough to do their bit for making the Charity Event as big a success as the actual sporting event.

Illegal construction and its consequences

It is a well known fact – though spoken in hushed tones – that illegal construction in Mumbai goes on with the complete blessings of the political class and the underworld financiers. The need to post this blog has arisen with the Honorable Bombay High Court ordering the demolition of 17 illegal floors of a twenty four storey structure built at Kandivali. This building had the BMC approval for only seven floors but went on to construct seventeen additional floors. This raises a lot of questions which need to be answered and which I feel the Honorable High Court should also take into account for passing strictures against those responsible for whatever has transpired.

I am sure that the BMC, the ward officer, the executive engineer at the ward were fully aware that illegal construction activity was going on – why was it not stopped at the stage when the 8th floor was being constructed? Why did the concerned officials wait till seventeen more floors were built – I am sure they were not built in a day! The BMC staff keep visiting construction and building repair sites to check on water consumption so that water charges can be levied – if that is the case then why allow construction at all? The BMC will levy its taxes while illegal construction goes on and also collect graft for allowing the construction to happen. The BMC in the past has condoned illegal construction as a norm rather than as an exception – so in this instance why would buyers think that the construction would not get regularized? What has happened to the Hiranandani’s case at Powai – talks of levying a Rs. 2000 crore penalty for violation of land development agreement for 92.2 hectares in February 2009 was reduced to Rs. 218 crore – and that too has not been paid and collected!

All this begs the question – why should the buyers only be punished? – they have probably lost their lives savings! Don’t you think that the amount paid by the buyers to the builder should be recovered from the BMC officials if not the BMC for allowing the rampant illegal construction to continue under their benign blind eye for at least two years! The Municipal commissioner probably woke up because he may not have been offered adequate compensation for regularizing the illegal construction.

I am not saying that illegal construction should be regularized – but just look at the state of the city – everything gets regularized – with slums being regularized with the cut off date being pushed further down with each passing election – so that illegal vote banks can be nurtured. The BMC has officially admitted that there are 26 lakh bogus ration cards and they are still counting. That means 26 lakh bogus citizens demanding free houses in lieu of slums. Who pays? The honest tax payer of course – so does it pay to be honest in this country? Ask any right thinking citizen and you will probably hear a vociferous “No” for an answer. But like everything else in this country – the attitude remains “chalta hai” and life goes on as usual.

Traffic Incident

This post will probably highlight the state of our roads, the apathy of the BMC, the quality of drivers to whom driving licenses are given, all of which leads to traffic congestion and in many cases road rage.

This morning the traffic was particularly bad on the way to office, and the car had not moved from 9.05am to 9.20am on the road approaching the traffic signal on the Andheri Kurla Road near Hotel Kohinoor International, so I decided to walk the half a kilometer or so to office. As I weaved my way through the cars and motorbikes zigzagging between cars and the pedestrians, I realized the reason for the massive traffic jam. There was a huge depression on the Andheri-Kurla road at the traffic junction with water seeping out of some damaged underground pipeline. The Versova-Ghatkopar metro is being constructed on this stretch which may have contributed to the damage.

The BMC “constructs” roads to perpetuate their right to make money through contractors for road repairs, hence shoddy work gets rewarded – and we think we are going to be a Shanghai or the new International Finance Center to replace Dubai! The traffic cops at the junction are over burdened in trying to control traffic which has burgeoned beyond imagination with more than 300 new vehicles being registered every day in the city – wish the roads could keep pace!

As I passed the stretch on to the lane leading to MIDC, I was careful enough to use the narrow footpath so that traffic flow would not be affected by my jay walking! I had crossed Elegant Business Park and was proceeding at a brisk space towards my office when ahead of me I saw that the footpath was occupied by a huge garbage bin – I had no choice but to walk on the road to circumvent the bin – the sad part was the garbage had not been cleared by the BMC conservancy staff and it had overflowed from the bin on to the road. As I moved from the footpath onto the road, a Maruti Swift decided that I must be a part of the road and thought it fit to run into me – he actually hit me from behind on my right leg, bringing me down on my knees and helping me slightly twist my left ankle in the bargain! (this with the SCMM marathon round the corner!) I was fuming by then, because another 5 seconds and I would have circumvented the garbage bin and would have been on the footpath, I asked the joker to open the passenger side door. He was arguing with me that I was on the road, I asked him did I have a choice – please look at the garbage and the bin occupying the footpath. The guy says he did not see the garbage bin – a 6 foot high 5 feet wide garbage bin was somehow invisible to the guy, like maybe I too was invisible and maybe that’s why he managed to bump into me! I looked down and saw my shoe was soiled with garbage and I got still more bugged, I saw a box of tissues in his car, and demanded some from him to clean my soiled shoes – by that time he had a pretty scared look on his face as I was giving him a lot of “English” and he had decided that silence was the better option to verbosity! This guy was probably in his late thirties – early forties, executive types with a tie and all – and he did not have the judgment to steer his car past me nor the patience to wait for five seconds till I passed the garbage bin! This raises the question - on what basis are driving licenses issued by the RTO! By the way my car reached the office at 10am - a good half an hour after me - a distance of only 500 metres!

With the cities infrastructure at a virtual breakdown stage is it any surprise that traffic incidents and far more serious traffic accidents take place? Road rage is common – as every minute counts while one has to reach the office on time for fear of late marks, loss of pay etc. Does the Government ever think of cutting the salary of ward officers and engineers who perpetuate a system where apathy, indifference and a skin thickened by graft is the norm? Some day – hopefully in my lifetime – I may get to see the city of my birth as a world class city worth living in. Hopefully…..

CLIMATE CHANGE IS NATURAL: 100 REASONS WHY

Friends -this is one article which I wish to share. We have the developed countries trying to arm twist the rest of the world for economic benefits without any scientific backing. Makes interesting reading...enjoy...

Climate change campaigners: 100 reasons why climate change is natural and not man-made - UK Express, Tuesday December 15,2009

HERE are the 100 reasons, released in a dossier issued by the European Foundation, why climate change is natural and not man-made:

1) There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

5) Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than ten times as high.

6) Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.

7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

8) The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers not the 4,000 usually cited.

9) Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “Climate-gate” - suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming

10) A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

11) Politicians and activiists claim rising sea levels are a direct cause of global warming but sea levels rates have been increasing steadily since the last ice age 10,000 ago

12) Philip Stott, Emeritus Professor of Biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London says climate change is too complicated to be caused by just one factor, whether CO2 or clouds

13) Peter Lilley MP said last month that “fewer people in Britain than in any other country believe in the importance of global warming. That is despite the fact that our Government and our political class—predominantly—are more committed to it than their counterparts in any other country in the world”.

14) In pursuit of the global warming rhetoric, wind farms will do very little to nothing to reduce CO2 emissions

15) Professor Plimer, Professor of Geology and Earth Sciences at the University of Adelaide, stated that the idea of taking a single trace gas in the atmosphere, accusing it and finding it guilty of total responsibility for climate change, is an “absurdity”

16) A Harvard University astrophysicist and geophysicist, Willie Soon, said he is “embarrassed and puzzled” by the shallow science in papers that support the proposition that the earth faces a climate crisis caused by global warming.

17) The science of what determines the earth’s temperature is in fact far from settled or understood.

18) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, CO2 is a minor greenhouse gas, unlike water vapour which is tied to climate concerns, and which we can’t even pretend to control

19) A petition by scientists trying to tell the world that the political and media portrayal of global warming is false was put forward in the Heidelberg Appeal in 1992. Today, more than 4,000 signatories, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, from 106 countries have signed it.

20) It is claimed the average global temperature increased at a dangerously fast rate in the 20th century but the recent rate of average global temperature rise has been between 1 and 2 degrees C per century - within natural rates

21) Professor Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Scientific Council of the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw, Poland says the earth’s temperature has more to do with cloud cover and water vapor than CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

22) There is strong evidence from solar studies which suggests that the Earth’s current temperature stasis will be followed by climatic cooling over the next few decades

23) It is myth that receding glaciers are proof of global warming as glaciers have been receding and growing cyclically for many centuries

24) It is a falsehood that the earth’s poles are warming because that is natural variation and while the western Arctic may be getting somewhat warmer we also see that the Eastern Arctic and Greenland are getting colder

25) The IPCC claims climate driven “impacts on biodiversity are significant and of key relevance” but those claims are simply not supported by scientific research

26) The IPCC threat of climate change to the world’s species does not make sense as wild species are at least one million years old, which means they have all been through hundreds of climate cycles

27) Research goes strongly against claims that CO2-induced global warming would cause catastrophic disintegration of the Greenland and Antarctic Ice Sheets.

28) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels are our best hope of raising crop yields to feed an ever-growing population

29) The biggest climate change ever experienced on earth took place around 700 million years ago

30) The slight increase in temperature which has been observed since 1900 is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term natural climate cycles

31) Despite activist concerns over CO2 levels, rising CO2 levels of some so-called “greenhouse gases” may be contributing to higher oxygen levels and global cooling, not warming

32) Accurate satellite, balloon and mountain top observations made over the last three decades have not shown any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures

33) Today’s CO2 concentration of around 385 ppm is very low compared to most of the earth’s history – we actually live in a carbon-deficient atmosphere

34) It is a myth that CO2 is the most common greenhouse gas because greenhouse gases form about 3% of the atmosphere by volume, and CO2 constitutes about 0.037% of the atmosphere

35) It is a myth that computer models verify that CO2 increases will cause significant global warming because computer models can be made to “verify” anything

36) There is no scientific or statistical evidence whatsoever that global warming will cause more storms and other weather extremes

37) One statement deleted from a UN report in 1996 stated that “none of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases”

38) The world “warmed” by 0.07 +/- 0.07 degrees C from 1999 to 2008, not the 0.20 degrees C expected by the IPCC

39) The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says “it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense” but there has been no increase in the intensity or frequency of tropical cyclones globally

40) Rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere can be shown not only to have a negligible effect on the Earth’s many ecosystems, but in some cases to be a positive help to many organisms

41) Researchers who compare and contrast climate change impact on civilizations found warm periods are beneficial to mankind and cold periods harmful

42) The Met Office asserts we are in the hottest decade since records began but this is precisely what the world should expect if the climate is cyclical

43) Rising CO2 levels increase plant growth and make plants more resistant to drought and pests

44) The historical increase in the air’s CO2 content has improved human nutrition by raising crop yields during the past 150 years

45) The increase of the air’s CO2 content has probably helped lengthen human lifespans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution

46) The IPCC alleges that “climate change currently contributes to the global burden of disease and premature deaths” but the evidence shows that higher temperatures and rising CO2 levels has helped global populations

47) In May of 2004, the Russian Academy of Sciences published a report concluding that the Kyoto Protocol has no scientific grounding at all.

48) The “Climate-gate” scandal pointed to a expensive public campaign of disinformation and the denigration of scientists who opposed the belief that CO2 emissions were causing climate change

49) The head of Britain’s climate change watchdog has predicted households will need to spend up to £15,000 on a full energy efficiency makeover if the Government is to meet its ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions.

50) Wind power is unlikely to be the answer to our energy needs. The wind power industry argues that there are “no direct subsidies” but it involves a total subsidy of as much as £60 per MWh which falls directly on electricity consumers. This burden will grow in line with attempts to achieve Wind power targets, according to a recent OFGEM report.

51) Wind farms are not an efficient way to produce energy. The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) accepts a figure of 75 per cent back-up power is required.

52) Global temperatures are below the low end of IPCC predictions not at “at the top end of IPCC estimates”

53) Climate alarmists have raised the concern over acidification of the oceans but Tom Segalstad from Oslo University in Norway , and others, have noted that the composition of ocean water – including CO2, calcium, and water – can act as a buffering agent in the acidification of the oceans.

54) The UN’s IPCC computer models of human-caused global warming predict the emergence of a “hotspot” in the upper troposphere over the tropics. Former researcher in the Australian Department of Climate Change, David Evans, said there is no evidence of such a hotspot

55) The argument that climate change is a of result of global warming caused by human activity is the argument of flat Earthers.

56) The manner in which US President Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to order emission cuts shows how undemocratic and irrational the entire international decision-making process has become with regards to emission-target setting.

57) William Kininmonth, a former head of the National Climate Centre and a consultant to the World Meteorological Organisation, wrote “the likely extent of global temperature rise from a doubling of CO2 is less than 1C. Such warming is well within the envelope of variation experienced during the past 10,000 years and insignificant in the context of glacial cycles during the past million years, when Earth has been predominantly very cold and covered by extensive ice sheets.”

58) Canada has shown the world targets derived from the existing Kyoto commitments were always unrealistic and did not work for the country.

59) In the lead up to the Copenhagen summit, David Davis MP said of previous climate summits, at Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and Kyoto in 1997 that many had promised greater cuts, but “neither happened”, but we are continuing along the same lines.

60) The UK ’s environmental policy has a long-term price tag of about £55 billion, before taking into account the impact on its economic growth.

61) The UN’s panel on climate change warned that Himalayan glaciers could melt to a fifth of current levels by 2035. J. Graham Cogley a professor at Ontario Trent University, claims this inaccurate stating the UN authors got the date from an earlier report wrong by more than 300 years.

62) Under existing Kyoto obligations the EU has attempted to claim success, while actually increasing emissions by 13 per cent, according to Lord Lawson. In addition the EU has pursued this scheme by purchasing “offsets” from countries such as China paying them billions of dollars to destroy atmospheric pollutants, such as CFC-23, which were manufactured purely in order to be destroyed.

63) It is claimed that the average global temperature was relatively unchanging in pre-industrial times but sky-rocketed since 1900, and will increase by several degrees more over the next 100 years according to Penn State University researcher Michael Mann. There is no convincing empirical evidence that past climate was unchanging, nor that 20th century changes in average global temperature were unusual or unnatural.

64) Michael Mann of Penn State University has actually shown that the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age did in fact exist, which contrasts with his earlier work which produced the “hockey stick graph” which showed a constant temperature over the past thousand years or so followed by a recent dramatic upturn.

65) The globe’s current approach to climate change in which major industrialised countries agree to nonsensical targets for their CO2 emissions by a given date, as it has been under the Kyoto system, is very expensive.

66) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had emailed one another about using a “trick” for the sake of concealing a “decline” in temperatures when looking at the history of the Earth’s temperature.

67) Global temperatures have not risen in any statistically-significant sense for 15 years and have actually been falling for nine years. The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed a scientific team had expressed dismay at the fact global warming was contrary to their predictions and admitted their inability to explain it was “a travesty”.

68) The IPCC predicts that a warmer planet will lead to more extreme weather, including drought, flooding, storms, snow, and wildfires. But over the last century, during which the IPCC claims the world experienced more rapid warming than any time in the past two millennia, the world did not experience significantly greater trends in any of these extreme weather events.

69) In explaining the average temperature standstill we are currently experiencing, the Met Office Hadley Centre ran a series of computer climate predictions and found in many of the computer runs there were decade-long standstills but none for 15 years – so it expects global warming to resume swiftly.

70) Richard Lindzen, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: “The notion of a static, unchanging climate is foreign to the history of the Earth or any other planet with a fluid envelope. Such hysteria (over global warming) simply represents the scientific illiteracy of much of the public, the susceptibility of the public to the substitution of repetition for truth.”

71) Despite the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’s status as the flagship of the fight against climate change it has been a failure.

72) The first phase of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), which ran from 2005 to 2007 was a failure. Huge over-allocation of permits to pollute led to a collapse in the price of carbon from €33 to just €0.20 per tonne meaning the system did not reduce emissions at all.

73) The EU trading scheme, to manage carbon emissions has completely failed and actually allows European businesses to duck out of making their emissions reductions at home by offsetting, which means paying for cuts to be made overseas instead.

74) To date “cap and trade” carbon markets have done almost nothing to reduce emissions.

75) In the United States , the cap-and-trade is an approach designed to control carbon emissions and will impose huge costs upon American citizens via a carbon tax on all goods and services produced in the United States. The average family of four can expect to pay an additional $1700, or £1,043, more each year. It is predicted that the United States will lose more than 2 million jobs as the result of cap-and-trade schemes.

76) Dr Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has indicated that out of the 21 climate models tracked by the IPCC the differences in warming exhibited by those models is mostly the result of different strengths of positive cloud feedback – and that increasing CO2 is insufficient to explain global-average warming in the last 50 to 100 years.

77) Why should politicians devote our scarce resources in a globally competitive world to a false and ill-defined problem, while ignoring the real problems the entire planet faces, such as: poverty, hunger, disease or terrorism.

78) A proper analysis of ice core records from the past 650,000 years demonstrates that temperature increases have come before, and not resulted from, increases in CO2 by hundreds of years.

79) Since the cause of global warming is mostly natural, then there is in actual fact very little we can do about it. (We are still not able to control the sun).

80) A substantial number of the panel of 2,500 climate scientists on the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change, which created a statement on scientific unanimity on climate change and man-made global warming, were found to have serious concerns.

81) The UK’s Met Office has been forced this year to re-examine 160 years of temperature data after admitting that public confidence in the science on man-made global warming has been shattered by revelations about the data.

82) Politicians and activists push for renewable energy sources such as wind turbines under the rhetoric of climate change, but it is essentially about money – under the system of Renewable Obligations. Much of the money is paid for by consumers in electricity bills. It amounts to £1 billion a year.

83) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had tampered with their own data so as to conceal inconsistencies and errors.

84) The “Climate-gate” scandal revealed that a scientific team had campaigned for the removal of a learned journal’s editor, solely because he did not share their willingness to debase science for political purposes.

85) Ice-core data clearly show that temperatures change centuries before concentrations of atmospheric CO2 change. Thus, there appears to be little evidence for insisting that changes in concentrations of CO2 are the cause of past temperature and climate change.

86) There are no experimentally verified processes explaining how CO2 concentrations can fall in a few centuries without falling temperatures – in fact it is changing temperatures which cause changes in CO2 concentrations, which is consistent with experiments that show CO2 is the atmospheric gas most readily absorbed by water.

87) The Government’s Renewable Energy Strategy contains a massive increase in electricity generation by wind power costing around £4 billion a year over the next twenty years. The benefits will be only £4 to £5 billion overall (not per annum). So costs will outnumber benefits by a range of between eleven and seventeen times.

88) Whilst CO2 levels have indeed changed for various reasons, human and otherwise, just as they have throughout history, the CO2 content of the atmosphere has increased since the beginning of the industrial revolution, and the growth rate has now been constant for the past 25 years.

89) It is a myth that CO2 is a pollutant, because nitrogen forms 80% of our atmosphere and human beings could not live in 100% nitrogen either: CO2 is no more a pollutant than nitrogen is and CO2 is essential to life.

90) Politicians and climate activists make claims to rising sea levels but certain members in the IPCC chose an area to measure in Hong Kong that is subsiding. They used the record reading of 2.3 mm per year rise of sea level.

91) The accepted global average temperature statistics used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that no ground-based warming has occurred since 1998.

92) If one factors in non-greenhouse influences such as El Nino events and large volcanic eruptions, lower atmosphere satellite-based temperature measurements show little, if any, global warming since 1979, a period over which atmospheric CO2 has increased by 55 ppm (17 per cent).

93) US President Barack Obama pledged to cut emissions by 2050 to equal those of 1910 when there were 92 million Americans. In 2050, there will be 420 million Americans, so Obama’s promise means that emissions per head will be approximately what they were in 1875. It simply will not happen.

94) The European Union has already agreed to cut emissions by 20 percent to 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and is willing to increase the target to 30 percent. However, these are unachievable and the EU has already massively failed with its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), as EU emissions actually rose by 0.8 percent from 2005 to 2006 and are known to be well above the Kyoto goal.

95) Australia has stated it wants to slash greenhouse emissions by up to 25 percent below 2000 levels by 2020, but the pledges were so unpopular that the country’s Senate has voted against the carbon trading Bill, and the Opposition’s Party leader has now been ousted by a climate change sceptic.

96) Canada plans to reduce emissions by 20 percent compared with 2006 levels by 2020, representing approximately a 3 percent cut from 1990 levels but it simultaneously defends its Alberta tar sands emissions and its record as one of the world’s highest per-capita emissions setters.

97) India plans to reduce the ratio of emissions to production by 20-25 percent compared with 2005 levels by 2020, but all Government officials insist that since India has to grow for its development and poverty alleviation, it has to emit, because the economy is driven by carbon.

98) The Leipzig Declaration in 1996, was signed by 110 scientists who said: “We – along with many of our fellow citizens – are apprehensive about the climate treaty conference scheduled for Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997” and “based on all the evidence available to us, we cannot subscribe to the politically inspired world view that envisages climate catastrophes and calls for hasty actions.”

99) A US Oregon Petition Project stated “We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of CO2, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

100) A report by the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change concluded “We find no support for the IPCC’s claim that climate observations during the twentieth century are either unprecedented or provide evidence of an anthropogenic effect on climate.”

My tryst with Samarpan Meditation

From my college days I had a curiosity and a bent of mind towards the spiritual. I did not have even a foggy idea of the meaning of spirituality, but I used to go and attend Swami Chinmayanand’s discourses on the Bhagwad Geeta, and because of my uncle being a Secretray to the Tribal Ministry, we got to travel with him and meet a lot of Saints. I had the fortune of being blessed by Gagangiri Maharaj at his Khopoli Ashram, had met whom we knew only as Navsari ke Baba who was a devotee of the Sun God and Swami Pranavanand at Chaalisgaon in Maharashtra. I guess I was blessed to meet these holy souls. I have always had a very powerful inner voice which I ignored in my youth and which always ended in my being a loser for not listening to the inner voice. Whatever trials and tribulations I have faced in life, I think were just preparation for me to be introduced to Samarpan Meditation as taught by Parampujya Swamiji.

A friend of mine and an ex-colleague, Mr. Ramnath Kamath came to my office at the instance of another friend to talk on meditation sometime in December 2008. I actually met Ramnath after almost twenty years. We talked and discussed meditation and other matters of the soul for an hour or so. He handed over CD’s of the Surat Shibir and a couple of other CD’s along with the introductory booklet on Samarpan Meditation. I took those CD’s and went home. The CD’s were just lying in the house for a month or so – sometime in January this year I reached home early and as only my mother was at home, I decided to listen to the CD on the home theatre system. The moment I started playing the CD, I was hooked, my eyes did not open for two hours, the duration of part 1 of the CD. The next day I came home early just to listen to the next part – on Muladhar chakra and again my eyes did not open for the entire duration of two hours. This time my family members, I sensed, were becoming uncomfortable, and I did not have the portable MP3 player, hence I stopped listening to the CD so as not disturb the balance at home. On February 1 my friend called me at around 4pm and asked me if I would like to attend the eight day camp on meditation which was being held at CIFE new campus at Versova. I work in Andheri East and at such short notice there was no way I could leave office and go, so I told him that I would come from the next day. So from February 2 I continuously attended the shibir along with my friend and my driver, Raju, – coincidentally it was a video shibir of Surat, the one I had already started listening to. The camp was from 6.30 to 8.30 which was a comfortable timing to leave office and reach CIFE.

On the fifth day, that is the day when Swamiji introduces the sadhaks to meditation and asks them to sit in the lotus position in the dhyan mudra with eyes shut and says that now you will experience something, cold waves on the hand, vibration, heat or nothing. My hands for five seconds or so went ice cold – like a block of ice was floating above them – after that I was hooked. The next day when I went to office I told my boss, that I had at last found my Gurudev. The next day during the course of the discourse, Swamiji mentioned that all you have to do is pray to Him for anything which is self less, not material and to alleviate the pain of someone else. Incidentally one of my office colleagues uncle was missing for the last four days or so and the uncle had a son who was to appear for his SSC examinations this year. The girl used to be very worried as the son had gone into depression and had stopped studying. That morning during my prayers, I prayed from the bottom of my heart to Parampujya Swamiji for this family to get news of the missing gentleman. I reached office at nine in the morning and was going through my e-mails, when at around 9.30 this girl comes online and informs me on Instant Messenger that they had just located her uncle somewhere in Nasik. I told myself that was really fast for a prayer to be answered – there are those who told me that this was just a coincidence but I choose to believe that it was through the power of prayer that this happened. If one does not have belief then I personally think it would be very difficult to progress spiritually. When at the end of the eight day camp I was asked to speak about my experience this is what I had cited.

After the eight day camp, we were told that we needed to do a follow up of 45 days of meditation to be eligible to be admitted to the Samarpan family. The timings were 5.30pm to 6pm at CIFE, my first reaction was that this won’t be possible and I asked our Acharya, rather naively, whether the timing could be changed, and he said no. I decided to leave early for office everyday so that I completed my due time in office. I decided to leave office everyday at 4.45 pm so as to reach by 5.30 pm and informed my boss accordingly. In normal days it takes about an hour to travel from Andheri East to Versova with all the construction activity of the Mumbai metro in progress – but you will not believe for those 45 days it took us (Raju and me) only 20 minutes to reach CIFE for meditation – it looked like the roads were kept free and signals open for us to reach well in time! I just missed two days – the first Sunday, when dhyan took place at 6.30 am and on another day I could not go because government officials were at the office and did not allow me to leave.

In these 45 days my entire demeanor changed, I became more calm, irritability stopped, temper disappeared, in fact my entire approach to life underwent a transformation. Raju also had a wonderful experience – he had a daughter who had not commenced walking even after eighteen months. Doctors had tried everything, and said she was normal, but they did not have a clue as to why she had not started walking. During the 45 day period she started walking – both of us are of the opinion that it is with Parampujya Swamiji’s blessings that she started walking.

Egotism and Humbleness

This is one story which needs to be read and the message therein absorbed. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I did – it has been modified slightly to read better.

Once a King called upon all of his wise men and asked them, "Is there a mantra or suggestion which works in every situation, in every circumstance, in every place and in every time. Something which can help me when none of you is available to advise me. Tell me is there any such mantra?" All the wise men got puzzled by the King’s question. One answer for all the questions? Something that works everywhere, in every situation?
In every joy, every sorrow, every defeat and every victory? These were some of the questions which cropped up into the minds of the King’s advisors. They thought and thought.

After a lengthy discussion, an old man suggested something which appealed to all of them. They went to the King and gave him something written on paper. But the condition was that King was not to see it out of curiosity. Only in extreme danger, when the King finds himself alone and there seems to be no way out, only then he’ll have to see it. The King agreed and put the papers under his Diamond ring.

After a few days, the neighbors attacked the Kingdom. It was a collective surprise attack by the King’s enemies. The King and his army fought bravely but lost the battle. King had to flee on his horse. The enemies were following him. His horse took him far away into the Jungle. He could hear the enemy troops and sound of galloping horses following him and the noise was coming closer and closer. Suddenly the King found himself standing at the end of the road - that road was not going anywhere. Underneath, there was a rocky valley – a thousand feet deep. If he jumped into it, he would be finished and he could not return because it was a small road. The sound of the enemy’s horses was approaching fast. The King became restless. There seemed to be no way.

Then suddenly he saw the Diamond in his ring shining in the sun, and he remembered the message hidden in the ring. He opened the diamond and read the message. The message was very small but very great. The message was – "This too will pass."

The King read it. He then read it again. Suddenly something struck him- Yes! It too will pass. Only a few days ago, I was enjoying my kingdom. I was the mightiest of all the Kings. Yet today, the Kingdom and all its pleasures have gone. I am here trying to escape from my enemies. However when those days of luxuries have gone, this day of danger too will pass. Calm came on his face. He kept standing there. The place where he was standing was full of natural beauty. He had never known that such a beautiful place was also a part of his Kingdom. The revelation of the message had a great effect on him. He relaxed and forgot about the enemy soldiers following him.

After a few minutes he realized that the noise of the horses and the enemy was receding. They moved into some other part of the mountains and were not on that path. The King was very brave. He reorganized his army and fought again. He defeated the enemy and regained his lost empire. When he returned to his empire after victory, he was received with much fanfare at the door. The whole capital was rejoicing in the victory. Everyone was in a festive mood. Flowers were being thrown on the King from every house, from every corner. People were dancing and singing. For a moment King said to himself," I am one of the bravest and greatest King’s. It is not easy to defeat me..:

With all the reception and celebration he saw an ego emerging in him. Suddenly the Diamond of his ring flashed in the sunlight and reminded him of the message. He opened it and read it again: "This too will pass" He became silent. His face went through a total change -from the egoist he moved to a state of utter humbleness.

If this too is going to pass, it is not yours. The defeat was not yours, the victory is not yours. You are just a watcher. Everything passes by. We are witness of all this. We are only the perceiver. Life comes and goes. Happiness comes and goes. Sorrow comes and goes.

Now as you have read this story, just sit silently and evaluate your own life. Think of the moments of joy and victory in your life. Think of the moment of sorrow and defeat. Are they permanent? They all come and pass away. Life just passes away. There were friends in the past. They have gone. There are friends today. They too will go. There will be new friends tomorrow. They too will go. There were enemies in the past. They have gone. There may be enemies in the present. They too will go. There will be new enemies tomorrow and they too will go.

There is nothing permanent in this world. Every thing changes except the law of change. Think over it from your own perspective. You have seen all the changes. You have survived all setbacks, all defeats and all sorrows. All have passed away. If there are problems in the present, they too will pass away, because nothing remains forever. Joy and sorrow are the two faces of the same coin. They both will pass away.

Who are you in reality? Know your real face. Your face is not your true face. It will change with the passage of time. However, there is something in you, which will not change. It will remain unchanged. What is that unchangeable? It is nothing but your true self. You are just a witness of change.

Pretend that every single person you meet has a sign around his or her neck that says, “Make Me Feel Important/good.” Not only will you succeed in sales, you will succeed in life……!

Meditation, Positivism and Productivity

It has been a long time since my last post – the reason for not writing was there was nothing positive to write home about! Whatever I have written in the past has been a critique on current events of the day. It was just a criticism of the system and what needs to be done to try and set things right.

The trouble with life today is that the news on offer in the visual as well as the print media is news that sells, not necessarily news that is good, in fact, it can be safely said that good news does not sell. Today news is run as a business model – wherein TRP’s and eyeballs dictate the ad revenue for the media house. Who the hell would be interested in reading good news – people today are interested in news which titillates, excites, disgusts and which leads to gossip – good news does not set the blood racing you see. So what one reads and absorbs is all kinds of negative news which in turn adversely affects the thought processes of the person reading/watching the news. The programs on TV are also not ones which encourage positivism – there are a surfeit of programs that deal with the “Saas-Bahu” syndrome, adventure, action, violence, infidelity, etc.

Over the last several months I have been practicing samarpan meditation and realized that the collection of negativity which used to move around my surroundings has slowly but surely disappeared. The purpose of this post is to highlight the connection between meditation, positivism and productivity. Meditation helps you to focus on the NOW, it turns your attention inwards as opposed to outwards. Once you start moving inwards, what happens outside stops affecting you and your soul starts protecting you from negative forces. It is important to forget your past and forgive all those who may or may not have hurt you or affected you through the passage of time. This is important for you to progress through meditation. Meditation regulates and slows your breathing which helps the mind to refrain from wandering. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika states “When the breath wanders, the mind also is unsteady. But when the breath is calmed the mind too will be still, and the yogi achieves long life. Therefore one should learn to control the breath”.

The human thought process moves back and forth like a pendulum – from the past to the future and so on and so forth – it never stabilizes and focuses on the “NOW”, as a result the mind is always in tumult. Human tendency is towards remembering events which are negative, with the mind trying to extract revenge for such events in the future. The entire thought process thus tends to be negative - from a negative past into doing something negative tomorrow as a reaction to the past.

As you meditate your personality starts becoming positive as negative thoughts stop coming to your mind – this helps calm the nerves bestowing a feeling of goodness and oneness with the Universal Consciousness. Once negative thoughts stop coming to your mind, you do not tend to think about the future – this managing to concentrate on the “NOW”. Once you start living for the moment your entire mind and body is focused on doing the current activity – as a result, if you are a student your concentration on your studies improves getting you better grades, your productivity in the office improves as your thought processes are totally focused on the work at hand. All this helps you save time and money for your employer as without too much of an effort your productivity goes up. This will have a positive spin off effect on your co-workers (not always – negative forces exist all over the world) as they too would be affected by your calming and productive influence. You would find yourself leaving office on time and getting to devote more quality time for yourself and for your family.

I would definitely recommend devoting half an hour of your time towards meditation to help you get rid of negativity, increase focus and concentration, and become a positive force by yourself resulting in spreading positivism to all those who connect with you.

What kind of children do we raise?

I distinctly remember the case of two Mira Road residents accusing their father of rape – on reading the article then I had a feeling of revulsion as to how a father could do what he was accused of doing. This case I had discussed with friends and the general feeling was one of abhorrence at the act. The mother was also made a party to the case and was a co-accused for abetting the crime. At that time the two girls were just 15 and 12 years old. The father, Manoj Patel, spent more than a year in jail!

The girls were apparently tired of their father putting restrictions on going out in the evening with friends and the final straw came on 31st December 2007, when their father told them they could not go out for a New Year bash. That is when they decided to “teach their father a lesson”. The sad part is the case was converted from molestation to rape at the instigation of a local NGO who convinced the girls to file rape charges against their own father. It has now been proven in court that the girls had falsely filed a complaint of molestation against their father because he was strict with them and did not allow them the freedom to go out and have a blast with friends. The court acquitted the parents when it was medically proved that there was no rape and the timing suggested by the NGO along with the girls coincided with the time recorded at the Greater Grace Fellowship Center at Kurla, which showed that the entire family was present there from 9pm to midnight on December 31, 2007 – the exact time ehn the girls had claimed they were attacked!

This behavior raises several questions on parenting and the relation between parents and their children. Considering the age of the children and the area in which they were living – Mira Road, which has a lot of night life – I feel that the father was well within his rights on controlling their activities. It just takes one small mistake for a girls’ life to change completely – but in this case they ensured that it did for them as well as for their parents! Should children question their parents on behavioral norms - especially when the parents and elders have seen far more of the world than they have? One’s choice of friends is very important in this day and age – as the right friends guide you and the wrong ones take you down the path of perdition. Teens are a delicate age when hormonal changes are happening in a girl which can cloud the mind into doing things which should not be done.

What was the role of the local NGO – why did they interfere and ruin the life of a family without trying to get to the truth? Were they in it for cheap publicity so that they could gather funds? The courts should ask the police to verify the antecedents of the NGO – and get the person responsible in asking the girls to file a false rape case convicted. The human rights of the parents have been grossly violated – their dignity has been ravaged and their place in society has been blackened forever – especially as they live in India -because of the way we think!

The father has forgiven the daughters for they did something without realizing the implication of their acts. The father now lives in seclusion – though he speaks to his daughters every day. The daughters will have to live with the guilt of their actions for the rest of their lives – a very heavy burden indeed. But what about the NGO – should the NGO not be shut down and action taken against the instigators of the rape complaint. Will the Human Rights watch wake up and take action – or is this too trivial a case for the Human Right watch as no famous person or politician has got tagged on to it?

Media hype on Swine Flu

I have been reading with concern the extended print media coverage on swine flu. I am sure the visual media will be milking this for all it is worth asking inane and heartless questions to victims families such as how do you feel, was the treatment right, etc. Instead of being responsible and presenting a balanced and rational view on H1N1 – we have all kinds of negative publicity doing the rounds. Politicians have now stepped in and are using the SMS service to give their two bits on how to avoid getting the flu!

Questions asked by the visual media just help in fanning already insecure minds into rushing for H1N1 testing to already over crowded and inadequately manned testing centers. Our population is such that only large numbers will be generated – more people die on the roads than of swine flu. Out of a populace of nearly 1.25 billion people just a thousand odd have got the flu – and a few have unfortunately died – this does not mean the whole nation goes into a panic and states like Tamil Nadu giving travel advisories to its citizens not to travel to other states – now it is learnt Tamil Nadu also has claimed its first swine flu victim! Now what – does this mean no one should travel to Tamil Nadu? Everybody seems to be going off at the deep end. It looks more like a “panicdemic” than a potential pandemic! It is so funny and at the same time sad to see people behaving in a herd mentality and wearing face masks while walking on the roads, riding bikes, sitting inside air conditioned cars, hanging out of running trains etc. It has been mentioned that it is people who have a slight cold who need to cover their faces and not perfectly normal people – unaffected people while wearing the masks have apparently a greater chance of becoming infected!

At the same time the commercial sharks are out – the pharmacies are doing roaring business in face masks – the much touted N-95 (no no not nokia’s high end mobile) masks are being sold at ridiculous prices – Rs. 500 - because the masses have been told through the media that this mask can protect you from the big bad germ. Nothing like a good public scare to send the masses into a frenzy while rationality goes for a toss.

St. Peters School, Panchgani, should be the perfect example for those who need to know how such situations should be tackled. 17 students were diagnosed with the infection and the school acted coolly and calmly while isolating those who tested positive and keeping 15 other students with similar symptoms but with a negative test result in another room – these students were treated and are back to normal without any panic either amongst the students, parents or teachers. Some lessons need to learnt and imbibed by the media – I think they should go to this school to learn to behave rationally!

Is a ration card valid proof of identity or residence in Mumbai

The expose carried out by the MNS showing how easily a bogus ration card can be obtained nails the lie of proponents who insist that the ration card is a valid document for proving residence and identity. It is a known fact that politicians and builders connive with the rationing officer and the collector’s office for issuing of bogus ration cards. Every election sees a spurt in the issue of fake ration cards for obtaining voter identity cards. Builders connive to get bogus people into the list of people entitled for flats under the SRA scheme by using fake ration cards. Since 2001 the RBI and the central consumer affairs ministry have discouraged the use of ration cards as documents to prove residence or identity due to its easy procurement by paying a price.

The Chief Justice of the High Court in Mumbai, Mr. Swatanter Kumar was shown a ration card issued in his name with a Shivaji Park address by the MNS representative! This was genuinely issued by the rationing officer for a price, thereby emphasizing to the Court that it is easy to obtain a fake ration card. This dramatic course was taken up to emphasise that the ration card should not be used as an identity/residence proof document for registering new voters for the forthcoming state elections.

In the past, it has been reported that in Andhra Pradesh fake ration cards were issued in the names of Sachin Tendulkar and Sania Mirza. In 2005, during local elections in Navi Mumbai more than 80000 bogus ration cards were seized. This is a nation wide problem which needs to be tackled on a war footing. The proposed National Identity Card and Mr. Nandan Nilekani’s plan to generate a unique national citizens identity number should ensure that all parameters are checked to prove the identity of the individual before allotting the number. This has national security implications and the people responsible for allotting this number should have integrity of the highest standard and should be above reproach – no political interference should be tolerated. If identities cannot be proved, then such cases should be given to a special task force to see whether such people are illegal immigrants who have come for economic reasons, whether such people are here to do political or economic mischief, terrorists for carrying out their plans, etc. People who have come for economic reasons may be given an identity number which could be something like a green card given in the US – a permanent residency but not citizenship – on humanitarian grounds, if and only if, they can prove they have been staying in that locality for say five years or more and can get at least five citizens of standing to vouch for them.

If identity/residence cannot be proven, then the government needs to take appropriate steps as per the law of the land for illegal citizens. For citizens of India who migrate from one city to another in search of jobs, the national identity card should be his proof of identity and permanent residence. Tax payers in Mumbai, should stop having to bear the burden of providing free residence for people staying illegally on land grabbed for hutments. The Maharashtra government is planning to extend the cut-off to the year 2000, in light of the forthcoming elections. This is political expediency at its worst – hopefully better sense will prevail and the High Courts order will be followed with regard to not extending the cut off date from 1995. There will be no end to this – as this is a vicious cycle – date extensions, will require residence proof, more bogus ration cards to accommodate more voters, more money exchanging hands all round for this, and the saga of the politico-builder nexus taking money from the poor with the promise of free housing will continue. Somewhere this nonsense has to stop.

It is the citizens who should intervene and stop Mumbai going down the drain due to the selfish motives of retarded politicians. Maharashtra is already losing its premium ranking as a place to do business, with inadequate power, water and horrible roads to Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, etc. Mumbai is an ordeal to stay and work in – roads are in a perpetual state of dis-repair, housing is unaffordable, train/bus travel is stressful, there are no green open spaces, people are arrested for spitting – people spit to clear throats which are infected by the polluted air – people shitting on the roads is allowed but spitting is a crime. I do not deny it is unhygienic – but have the authorities created an atmosphere which is hygienic – that is the question. I guess I have digressed from the original theme – but I think in Mumbai at least – everything is interlinked!

India's first Swine Flu Death

The flu Pandemic officially named “new H1N1" was first identified in India in April 2009. In simple terms it is called “Swine Flu”. It is a global outbreak of new strain of influenza virus. It covers many areas of India and many people suffered from swine flu. The areas which are mostly affected by swine flu include New Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad. The swine flu showed its virulent effect and a small innocent 14 years old girl died because of swine flu. A Pune girl Rida Shaikh died on Monday August 3, 2009 because of swine flu. She was the first victim who died because of swine flu in India as a result of multiple organ failure. Rida first consulted a local doctor when she reported symptoms of swine flu on July 21, 2009. After two days she recovered and again joined the school on July 23, 2009. But again on July 25, 2009 she felt fever and was admitted to a private hospital – namely Jehangir Hospital - on July 27, 2009. After admitting when her condition worsened she was shifted to the ICU and put on a ventilator. To get clarification about swine flu her sample was sent to National Institute of Virology where it was confirmed that she was suffering from swine flu. After that she was put on Oseltamivir and finally died on Monday August 3, 2009. Her death was the first death in India because of the H1N1 virus.
The upset family of Rida has decided to sue the hospital for negligence. Rida’s father said that if they had sent the samples to NIV at the right time then his daughter would be alive today. I can sympathise with the parents who want to sue the hospital for perceived negligence – but is that the right course to take? In Pune only NIV has the wherewithal to test for swine flu and Kasturba Hosital is the only hospital which has been designated a quarantine center. Mumbai still does not have a testing center for swine flu, with the Haffkine’s Institute now being prepared to do the testing. All swabs have to be sent to NIV from Mumbai, and with Pune reporting so many instances of swine flu, it is going to be a challenge to keep things under control.
The challenge is to get the infrastructure in place, quarantine centers, testing laboratories, information dissemination on symptoms, all doctors should be told to mandatorily have the H1N1 test done in cases where even some of the symptoms are on display. Only with a completely holistic approach will we be in a position to contain the outbreak of a real pandemic. With India’s size and population it is a miracle that we have had just one death (which is one too many) so far. If we compare India with rest of the world, there are more than 160 counties to have been affected with lakhs of cases. Over thousands have been affected and have lost their lives globally. Till date over 40 lakh people have been screened at various entry points in India as claimed by the Health Minister. India must be the first country to have screened so many people in almost 20 odd international airports. Over 45,000 people are screened on a daily basis. The ones who tested positive were isolated and treated. We had almost 558 cases out of which 470 cases have been treated effectively. This virus is treatable and the medicine is available. It is not made available over the counter because of the fear that it would be prescribed indiscriminately. As a result the human body could form a resistance to the drug and with the virus mutating rapidly, we could face greater risk from the virus.
The Health Ministry should come out very quickly with guidelines on treatment, it should set up testing laboratories in all major cities and have designated hospitals as quarantine centers stocked with tamiflu tablets and nurses trained to tackle the influx of patients. The sooner this is done the safer we will be.

Should cricketers be subjected to dope tests

There is a raging controversy going on with regards to subjecting our cricketers to dope tests. Doping is the bane of all competitive sports and the world sports bodies have agreed to accept the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) compliance requirements. The question is whether cricket is a competitive sport or it is a game played by a few select nations. It is a pretence at competition because large amounts of money involved because of the clout of the BCCI and the cricket fanatics in India. The money drives the so called spirit of competition – ask any cricketer who stands at third man or long leg all day long with the ball coming to him maybe once or twice in an entire innings whether he was physically stressed!

If the cricketing community thinks theirs is a competitive sport then there should be no objections to be tested for drug abuse. The only reason these guys may be objecting is because they may be taking life style drugs for stress relief – who knows! There are enough cases of drug abuse by cricketers – not performance enhancing drugs but the other kind – which give people a high - on record for the cricketers to adopt an holier than thou attitude. For once, I am in sync M.S. Gill’s view that there should be no exception to the rule and all sportspersons, regardless of the sport / game should be tested for doping.

Clauses like the whereabouts clause can always be negotiated with WADA, there is no reason for BCCI to use its financial clout to completely by-pass something which is good for sport internationally. The BCCI’s demand for an independent anti-doping code lacks credibility – it looks like the BCCI is aware of the skeletons in its cricketer cup-board, hence would prefer to bully its way out of a sticky situation.

It would be best if cricket is de-recognized if cricketers as an international sport if the players or their parent bodies refuse to submit to such tests.

Television’s two controversial programs

I have been asked by quite a few friends as to why I have stopped writing – apparently they are missing their daily fix from reading the blog – this is quite encouraging, hence I have decided to write again, but try and give a positive spin to whatever I write. This is because whatever I wrote ended up in criticism of the system with my thoughts for improvement thrown in. The first thought which came to my mind was to write about the current two controversial shows on TV – “Sach ka Saamna” and “Rakhee ka Swayamwar”. I have not watched either of these shows, but I have my views on them, for better or for worse.

At the outset let me say that the program “Sach Ka Saamna” attracts people who derive vicarious pleasure in seeing strangers squirm in the hot seat. My view is that this copy of the American show “The Moment of Truth” is nothing but a crude attempt at buying participants with titillating or sensationalistic question-answer sessions by awarding prize money to the participants. I am sure the participants – whether male or female – discuss amongst themselves the likely questions and answers and decide to participate – even though it brings shame to the family (in the Indian context) because along with the shame comes oodles of money – and time will take care of the shame. Out of sight is always out of mind – and money buys everything anyways in today’s society – one mans meat is another mans poison as the saying goes. The moot question is whether people will be willing to share their peccadilloes if the money offered was piffling – or this was a cultural show where truth must prevail has any social bearing or impact. In fact, if such a show needs to be aired, then the target participants should be industrialists, film star, bureaucrats, politicians, sportspersons, etc who have influence and an impact on society. Exposing such people on the program could possibly help in improving governance and exposing hidden scams – but I am sure this will be too hot for the media channels to handle. Everything is business – and what sells is what people want to see.

The other show which is making waves and attracting eyeballs is “Rakhi ka Swayamwar” – this is another show in which viewers get to see some kind of titillation with the effervescent Rakhi interviewing and rejecting various participants and then sort listing the one she would get engaged to! Well, if people get excited by watching such drivel, then I guess the media channels are dishing out programs which carry the flavor of the day. Today, it is Rakhi’s engagement, tomorrow it could be her “wedding”, then God knows what, finally culminating in a “divorce”. I personally do not think a “marriage” carried out in full view of the public is going to last – if it does I will be very happy. This is a “marriage” made for the moolah it is dishing out – it is money for making a spectacle out of one’s self – so if there is any sanctity in the institution of this marriage I have yet to see it.

The noise the public (so called social workers) and Parliament have made over these programs is something which I have failed to understand. By giving unwanted publicity to the shows, these guys have actually pushed people who would normally not watch these shows into watching them. What I fail to understand is that these shows are on pay channels, which you are free not to subscribe to and if you have subscribed to it you are free to not watch these particular programs. I fail to see why our august Parliamentarians should get all excited and talk about self-regulation for the media or talk about setting up a media regulatory authority! In a democracy – especially in a mature one (I personally think we have matured) – I do not see any reason why the government should interfere as long as the content is not downright degrading or morally perverse. The concept of freedom of choice should prevail – freedom to the media to telecast what they think would attract the relevant eyeballs and freedom to the viewer to decide whether he/she wants to watch the programs which are dished out. Ultimately, if the viewers decide that the content is not good, the programs won’t go on air as they won’t attract the kind of viewer ship which will give the media channels the TRPs to pull in the ad revenue. My view is it is a free country and the good and bad can easily be decided by the paying public, as long as the programs do not become downright vulgar!

Cell phone tower radiation and small birds

For the last five years or so we had Airtel cell towers installed on our building terrace. Our backyard is Ruparel College’s botanical garden, which is verdant green with mango, jam, jambul, jackfruit, coconut and various assorted fruit bearing and flower bearing trees. Before the installation of the cell towers one would wake up in the early mornings to the musical cacophony of sounds emitting from sparrows, mynas, pigeons, kites, bulbuls, aureoles etc.

After about a year, I used to wonder where all the small birds disappeared to as the early morning sounds had stopped and all you heard was the raucous cry of the crow! It is now almost six months since we dismantled the cell towers and guess what? – the small variety of birds are back with all their noise. Just goes to show that cell phone tower’s emitting electro-magnetic radiation does affect the smaller variety of birds.

Studies in Spain and Belgium have established the ill effects of electromagnetic radiation emitted by cell phone masts on birds, whereas a study carried out by a team in Panjab University has found that such radiation can damage bird eggs and embryos!

The cell phones have become an inseparable part of humans’ gadgets, with the convergence of technology, making the cell phone a information-communication-entertainment device – but one must sit back and think at what cost? The small birds have virtually disappeared from the cities. It would be great if technology could look at reduced radiation levels so that the life of flora and fauna are not affected to the extent they are today.

I for one am glad that we removed the cell phone towers from our terrace – at least I can now sit in peace on the verandah and watch the birds and listen to their music again!

Manic Monsoon Madness

My May 19 post had talked about Mumbai’s roads crumbling and flooding at different points in the city due to the shoddy and lethargic work being carried out by the BMC through its gravy train contractors. Well, yesterday was the first day of continuous rains, from light to heavy and guess what we had to go through the agony of bad and terribly congested roads due to water logging and potholes.

Potholes have already started developing on the western express highway from Bandra onwards, the paver blocks have sunk and in places have come out leaving gaping holes which when underwater could cause serious damage to two wheelers and their riders. The tragedy of all this is we know it is going to happen, but we have BMC officials mouthing age old platitudes while twiddling their thumbs. We have a Municipal Commissioner who is more keen on trying to control the media rather than controlling and putting in line a system which rewards performance rather than corruption – I mean the Rs. 1000 crore gravy train which is being ridden by the BMC officials through its road repair contract. The real question to be addressed is why have road repairs – can decent roads not be built in Mumbai – just travel across to Gujarat and see the quality of roads – not concrete mind you just plain macadam (tar) roads. Smooth and a total pleasure to drive on!

Yesterday, it took me two hours to drive from Worli to Andheri, just 18 km. When I run from my home to office in Andheri MIDC, a distance of 14 kms it takes me and hour and a half. Traffic had completely stopped moving, can you imagine, and no floods mind you. Probably the fear of getting stuck in a 26/7 like situation got everybody out of their offices early to flood the roads. We spend crores on infrastructure and a few more crores in wasted fuel and maintenance costs because the crores spent earlier were not well spent. This happens year after year.

Just pray that we get some decent people to run our city rather than corrupt bureaucrats and politicians so that Mumbai could become what it should have long ago – a world class city with infrastructure to match!

Muscle Politician or Member of Parliament – MP

Two incidents in the recent past have re-confirmed my belief that most Indian Parliamentarians are Muscle showing Politicians (MP’s) rather than Members of Parliament who should be behaving with dignity given the august history of the Indian Parliament since independence. The first involved Justice Regupathi, who had stunned everyone on Monday by announcing in the open court that a Union minister had called him and tried to influence him to grant anticipatory bail to father-son duo, C Krishnamurthy and S Kiruba Shridhar, both of whom were booked by the CBI for allegedly using the services of a Pondicherry University official and a middle man to inflate the marks of the latter. The second involves M Jagannath representing Nagarkurnool constituency of Andhra Pradesh in the Lok Sabha, who was caught on camera slapping the manager of rural bank in Uppunu-tala in the limits of his constituency.

Both the incidents show gross disregard for norms of decency - forget the norms of democracy. It is a well established fact that there is a politician-bureaucrat-criminal nexus – if the judiciary starts getting influenced and coerced then we will be nothing more than a banana republic who the world admires for holding the largest “democratic” elections in the world. What use these elections if we have our elected leaders displaying muscle power instead of mental power and trying to influence the course of justice or honest discharge of one’s duties!

It is a gross impropriety for a politician or anyone to call up the judge regarding a pending case. It is interference in the course of justice and the Congress government should annul the MP’s election and send him to jail. The Parliamentary Privilege should be reviewed and no protection should be forthcoming from the Privilege’s Committee and the politician concerned – Jayalalitha has named telecom-scam tainted A Raja as the Union Cabinet Minister who made the call. Manmohan Singh, should show the same gumption he showed Zardari recently, and have Raja removed from his Ministry if it is proved that he made the call. When there was a threat to the judiciary, one of the pillars of democracy, why is the government silent? If judges are threatened, then there would be a serious law and order situation in the States.

M Jagannath, the MP from Andhra Pradesh was caught man-handling the Manager of a rural bank for allegedly not considering loan application from backward castes! I saw the pathetic sight of the manager being slapped during the news telecast last night and the Minister saying that he slapped the manager because the manager was drunk – the only person who was drunk was the Minister – drunk with power that is! I do not think we elect people for displaying such gross abuse of power. Just shows that the adage power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely holds true for our muscle politicians (MP’s)! The MP probably did not realize he was live on camera and tried to brazen his way out by stating that he intended to catch the shoulder of manager – what I saw on TV was a manager whose shirt buttons had been broken open and a tight slap given on the managers’ face. This guy should not be shown any mercy – he should be stripped of his seat in Parliament and sent to jail – no place for elected hooligans – at least after being elected they should display some decorum!

The banks staff had gone on strike and upon the Congress high command calling for details the parliamentarian has chickened out and apologized to the bank manager. Where is the need to apologize when as he claimed “he was only trying to put his arms around the managers’ shoulder?” The police have booked a case against the MP which should be taken to its logical conclusion – but I bet it will not be pursued and be allowed to drop, in which case the High Court of Andhra Pradesh should take suo motu cognizance of the case and take it up for hearing in the public interest!

Why are Women sportspersons given shoddy treatment?

On 28th June, the Indian women’s hockey team became the first winners of the Women’s Champions Challenge II Cup when they beat Belgium 6-3 in the finals. With the kind of coverage given to the win, you know how high the national game played by women is in the Indian sports psyche. I did not read about it in the newspapers – I came to know about the fact in a negative display on one of the “entertainment news” channels – namely IndiaTV. The news was being portrayed in their typical loud style – stating that nobody was there to receive the winning Indian hockey team at the airport on their return! Such a tragedy, you have someone bring laurels to the nation and the visual and print media is going gaga over what Dhoni said after India LOST to West Indies in the second cricket one day international!

The women’s hockey team has won in spite of the shoddy treatment throughout – which began even before leaving Indian shores for Kazan in Russia. The Indian women's hockey team was unable to board a flight from Delhi airport to Russia on Wednesday night because officials forgot to organise a transit visa for the team members. As always the blame game has begun following the fiasco after the transit visa could not be organised for the team that was to fly to the Russian city Kazan via Frankfurt in Germany to play in the Champions Challenge. The team members flew to Russia a day later and had one less day for acclimatisation and training. After the flight a minimum of two days are required for recovery from jet lag and to get acclimatized and physically and mentally fit for a tough international tournament. The blame game began with Hockey India putting the blame squarely on their travel agents and the airlines. Of course the hockey officials do not have the knowledge or do not bother to find out for themselves the basic requirements of travel – they are there for the free trip! In spite of the demotivating manner in which they have been treated the team rose above all officially created problems to WIN the tournament.

Two Indian players got individual awards – Surinder Kaur got Player of the Tournament and Rani Rampal got Young Player of the Tournament as well as Tournaments Top Scorer award!

What a waste – we have winners having to travel home in taxi’s and rich non-performing, highly paid cricketers being put on a pedestal. Legislation should be passed to encourage sports having a global presence rather than encouraging a game played in a handful of nations even though it rakes in the moolah. In the alternative a percentage of the profits of the BCCI should be applied for funding and popularizing other widely played sports like, hockey, badminton, table tennis, basketball, etc.

Similarly, Saina Nehwal at the age of 19 has achieved far more than any of the cricketers or tennis players the nation has produced. But does she have any recognition – no. The girl is singularly dedicated to her sport and has a personal coach who encourages and goads her on to greater heights – but STATE SPONSORSHIP – that is a BIG NO! After winning the Indonesian Open, the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh congratulated her, then it was Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) president Chiranjeevi who took out time to congratulate the Hyderabadi girl Saina Nehwal for bringing home the Indonesian Open title. Praising the shuttler for becoming the first Indian to win the Super series title; the actor turned politician said that immense talent and her victory was a morale booster for all the Indians. In a press released issued on Tuesday, Jun 23, Chiranjeevi hoped that the youngster would win more titles for the country. After Nehwal won the title for India, there were reports that the Badminton Association would be rewarding her with a cash price of 2 Lakhs. However there is no mention of this award after the initial stir.

The tragedy with our Nation, is we are too biased against women per se, else the Women’s Reservation Bill would have been passed – the attitude is women are good for the Home and Hearth but not elsewhere – the males fear giving too much leeway as they may be left far behind due to the dedication, perseverance and hard work that women today display. Our males – specially in government have become far too sycophantic, corrupt with lethargy having set in for them to change their way of life!

US to tax carbon-rich Indian goods

Can you imagine a green house gas guzzler proposing to tax “carbon-rich” Indian goods – just proves that recession has not only hit the US economy but also the brains of the US House of Representatives! The US ranks 10th in the per capita carbon dioxide emission stakes with 22.2 metric tons per person per year whereas India ranks low down at 133 with just 1.2 metric tons per person per year. By putting in provisions to tax goods from countries that do not impose curbs on green house gas emissions, the intent of the US legislation is to target India and China whose economies do not seem to have been so badly hit by the recession. India is saying that there can be no linkage between trade and environment and that the US move smacks of protectionism which is true – as the US is trying to extract a dollar from developing countries for having over the years degraded the environment willfully. It is the classic US strategy to first take advantage and then cry foul once they realize that such issues can no longer be used to their advantage.

The biggest gas guzzlers are the record number of gas guzzling SUV’s which ply the US roads, why not stop them from running for starters. Most houses in the west and mid west of the US have been built with wood imported from the Far East by degrading the forests in those poor countries for which today a carbon tax will be levied! The maximum wasteful consumption of power is in the US, just take a look at the photograph which shows the global carbon footprint based on data collected, collated and calculated by the US Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), mostly based on data collected from country agencies by the United Nations Statistics Division.

The logic for imposing the tax is also a bit weird – apparently caps will be imposed on emissions from different sectors, which would result in increasing the cost of products emerging from such sectors. Similarly if other countries do not impose such caps their products will be cheaper and hence US products will not be able to compete on an equal footing! This is probably one of the biggest con being sold to the world – what does the US manufacture today apart from military goods (basically destructive), large cars, outer space machines etc – the goods used by the average Joe are all imported – just go to any store in the US and you will see what I mean. Clothes, jewelry, chocolates, food stuffs are all imported – why are they imported? Because they are way cheaper than what the US can produce them for. These guys have probably not read Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” and why the global economy cannot but be integrated with countries having certain skills supplying their products to others and buying from other countries what they themselves cannot produce. There is no reason for the US to import goods from developing countries if they have the wherewithal to manufacture goods in adequate quantities economically enough to satisfy the demand of their own population. The US economy is a wasteful consumption based, litigious economy with companies unwilling to manufacture retail products for the fear of being sued for frivolous reasons, hence the dependence on imports. All products come with a shelf life, hence unsold products are scrapped after the sell by date, thus resulting in more waste in material as well as green house gases due to the wasteful consumption pattern.

The very idea of taxing other countries indicates that the US is probably going bankrupt financially as well as intellectually!

Shiney Ahuja and his Bail Application

I have been consciously avoiding this topic as it has been milked dry by both the visual and written media due to the perpetrator being an upcoming movie star. With the DNA forensic results out in the open, it will be very difficult to get bail as the results have conclusively proved that Shiney Ahuja’s stars and a lot else are not shining any more. Kudos to his wife for standing up for him unflinchingly, showing faith in her “Man” – but a lot of introspection would probably be required on her part to realize for herself why her “Man” has done what he did.

The bail petition which has been put up by Shiney’s lawyer talks of four grounds on which he should be granted bail – a) he has no criminal antecedents, b) hails from a good family, c) his career is at stake and he has two upcoming film shoots next month, d) consensual act cannot be termed rape. After the DNA test reports are out, there is no reason why he should be granted bail as the law should be equally applicable to all (I know it is wishful thinking in India, but still…) – the test reports conclusively prove that the act was indulged in, the injuries on both the persons prove that it was not consensual as claimed by Shiney.

Let us go through each ground for bail – no criminal antecedent – yes it is a ground for bail but not in a violent crime like rape – a first time offence indulged in violence which included violation of the victims’ human rights, specially of a person who is a domestic worker and a teenager to boot with her whole life ahead of her. This was a pre-meditated act of a person who has probably been frustrated over time – so even a first time offence should be looked at severely due to the nature of the crime. The second reason cited does not hold any legal grounds for granting bail – it is a tragedy that a good family has given birth to a person who could carry out such a bestial act! I feel sorry for the guys parents, wife and kids. The third reason granted is the most arrogant of them all – his fledgling career could suffer and he needed to complete his films. The films can go for a toss if you ask me – the producers can surely find a replacement for him – I do not know which heroine would want to act opposite such a guy knowing that the guy had recently raped a helpless domestic. The last reason has been proved invalid with the forensic report on the DNA analysis!

The arrogance of people with money and some kind of clout was on display all along, with his wife claiming that her husband was a good guy and was lured into a honey trap and raped by the domestic! This was the most ridiculous reason given – she most likely was in denial – and wanted to show public support – this I can understand but in doing so she was painting her husband as the victim and the helpless violated victim as the criminal. Earlier, during interrogation in police custody, the actor allegedly broke down after the medical reports confirmed that the maid has been raped. “The maid resisted but I forced her into it. I told her that she should stay mum. I was confident that she would not tell anyone of the incident and I was ready to give her whatever she wanted to make sure that she would keep quite. I have made a grave mistake," Shiney had confessed.

In my opinion this sorry episode should be got done and over with as soon as possible with justice seen to be done and the victim compensated. This should be made a fit case for the rights of women in India – and justice should be seen to be delivered. I cannot imagine the plight of the girl – knowing India and the society we live in she will most likely be ostracized by her own people instead of being supported. Being from a poor family, it is most likely that she may be asked to withdraw her complaint for adequate monetary compensation which will be taken away by parasitic members of her family. She will most likely end up being further abused and violated by male members in the vicinity of her residence as they would probably think that she is easy taking. I am sorry if I am saying this, but it is the truth, the convoluted male mind thinks like this. Nobody talks about the rights of the victim, unless the victim comes from a good family and has the clout to demand justice – let the courts make this a show piece event and ensure that the girl gets justice and the perpetrator is punished in a way which will deter people contemplating such crimes to desist from going ahead! This could be a REAL – “reality show” with serious issues at stake

Business of Education

It is that time of the year when children are deciding and fretting over which college to join, which course to take up, which profession should they opt for and such career deciding choices. We have probably the worlds’ largest educated population which is the envy of the world as the population is young and considered to be productive, thus supposedly giving an edge to the country. One needs to go slightly deeper into the system to find out the quality of education which is being dumped on the masses. It is a fact that the country has undergone a change from agrarian economy to a State supported manufacturing economy to the current services economy – and we have reached that stage in a very short span of 62 years post independence.

Our leaders have tinkered around with education without understanding the concept of good, productive education – rules are made and overturned time and again ad infinitum ad nauseum without having any regard to the effect of those decisions on the vast majority of students. Today there are private universities which are given deemed (or is doomed a better word) university status, completely by-passing the norms laid down by the Government for giving recognition to such Universities! With blanket approvals given for recognizing deemed universities, it appears that the Government is giving the quality of education a complete go by! The last Congress Government has given recognition to 55% of the total deemed Universities in the country! A huge number to have been accorded recognition in the past five years – was the Congress raking in money for the elections which have just taken place putting them in power? Is this the price we have paid for this government?

World over higher education has been the forte of the state not of private universities. Globally too, the private sector has seen opportunities in higher education, but there have been fewer takers in comparison to India. In the US private Universities constitute 59.4% of higher education, but only 23.2% students choose to study in these Universities. In a study by Ved Prakash, vice chancellor of the National University of Education Planning and Administration he has noted that between 2002 and 2006, deemed universities grew by a whopping 96%, in the same time span, central and state universities grew by a modest 11% and 22% respectively.

As in everything else education is also seeing a major mushrooming of corruption taking place – seats can be bought for a price – is it the cost we are having to pay for giving more disposable income in the hands of the people. India’s economic condition may be improving but its adherence to norms of acceptable social behavior seems to be going down. We have people with money sending their wards to Australia for an education, because they can afford it and their wards cannot compete in India – they get bashed up for it – and we raise a hue and a cry. Private engineering colleges which used to constitute 15% of seats in 1960, now account for over 85% according to the data furnished by All India Council for Technical Education. From a miniscule base in 1970, medical colleges in the private sector have grown by an eye-popping 900%, the private sector today accounts for more than 45% of medical colleges in the country.

A majority of these colleges are owned by politicians – with one well known politician running more than a 100 educational institutions, as per a study by Sanat Kaul in 2006. It is an open secret that the politicians allot public land to Trusts owned by them at a fraction of the land cost, build colleges and run them as commercial business enterprises – wherein the caliber of the student does not matter but the weight of his parents wallet does! The rapid growth of this sector has seen unabated increase in capitation fees – this is not because of a rise in middle class pressure or demand, but rather to the entrepreneurial activities of politicians. Unfortunately, even the Supreme Court has commented on the extent of corruption which is rampant in private universities dishing out professional courses.

I have written earlier about how policemen/municipal workers have to bribe their way into getting a job – they borrow heavily at usurious interest rates and have no choice but to be corrupt to pay off their loans thereby perpetuating a vicious circle. The same scenario exists in higher education but with a slightly dangerous twist. Let me explain – imagine a person who obtains 40% marks in his graduation but pays his way to a medical seat in a private University – the private University is taking a minimum of Rs. 25 lacs as capitation fees and between Rs. 2.5 to Rs. 10 lacs towards the complete course fees. After taking so much money they end up giving the student a medical degree, what happens when this “doctor” gets a job, he probably ends up operating on a kidney instead of a liver! There are enough such cases which today are seeing an increasing trend. Similarly engineering degrees can be bought for a price – so we could have bridge collapses and building collapses which could be the end result. The point I am trying to make is the poor cop or municipal worker pays his way into a job and becomes corrupt to repay his loan, but in higher education we have the corrupt getting a higher education and then coming out as a threat to society – such doctors and engineers will affect the health and lives of others! If we do not bring in control now, it will be too late. Are we becoming a nation of qualified quality professionals offering topnotch services or are we destined to be a nation of mediocre professionals offering death services instead of health services and collapsible structures instead of long lasting ones! You tell me!