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Thursday, July 16, 2009

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!

Sunday, July 5, 2009

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!

Thursday, July 2, 2009

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!