Water Water Everywhere... Is it?

One of my neighbors had a tough morning today. He got up to realize that his submersible pump was no longer throwing water. And it is not something new. It has been a long time now that everybody has been crying about the level of water going down and rivers, lakes, ponds, wells dying a slow death. How exactly do we feel when we keep the tap running while brushing our teeth, when we throw away half a glass of water which either we were unable to drink or which was kept for sometime, while washing our vehicles? Or should I ask, do we feel anything at all?
For those of us residing in the gifted cities or localities might not even know what water shortage means. Out of a world population of roughly 6.1 billion, more than 1 billion lack access to portable water. According to World Health Organization, half of the entire world population has one of the following six diseases – diarrhea, schistosomiasis, trachoma, infestation with ascaris, guinea worm or hookworm – associated with poor drinking water and inadequate sanitation. About 5 million people die every year due to poor drinking water, poor sanitation or a dirty home environment.
While Shiela Dixit seems to be filing a petition to Lord Vishnu for providing another river for Delhi, queues continue to get longer for residents who struggle hard for a few buckets of water every morning. The river levels have been going down day by day and it is not just another Indian government problem. We very well walk into a mall, buy our food grains and walk out with heavy bags. It really doesn’t matter how we get the stuff to fill those bags. Lesser water, more of Vidarbha-like suicidal cases of farmers, lesser agricultural land, lesser cattle, lesser eatables…. And the chain finally hits you, doesn’t it? Now you want to import eatables, of course, for those of you who can afford. But is it really an Indian problem?

China, with 1.26 billion people, is an area where water table is dropping one meter per year due to overpumping and the Chinese admit that 300 cities are running short. They are diverting water from agriculture and farmers are going out of business. Some Chinese rivers are so polluted with heavy metals that they can’t be used for irrigation. As farmers go out of business, China will have to import more food. In India, with 1.003 billion people, key sources of water are being over pumped and the soil is growing saltier through contamination with irrigation water.
The regular fights over river water in the states of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Punjab, Haryana are not merely a local phenomena. International Water politics play a role in Southwestern United States, where Colorado River is shared by many states before its dregs trickle into Mexico. All along the river, water is diverted for irrigation and urban water – with Arizona and California being the biggest users. The dribble of water that finally reaches Mexico is used mainly for irrigation; hence virtually nothing reaches the river’s parched and polluted delta on the Sea of Cortez. The Colorado may be completely allocated, but the Southwest continues booming. According to one estimate, five of the ten fastest-growing U.S. States are in the river’s drainage. The water the newcomers drink is likely to come from farmers who now receive subsidized river water.
Egypt, which might touch population of 97 million by 2025, essentially gets no rainfall. All agriculture is irrigated by seasonal floods from the Nile River, and from water stored behind the Aswan High Dam. Any interference with water flow by Sudan or Ethiopia could starve Egypt.
It is a serious issue but how many of us are even thinking about it, let alone doing something. A guy has set up a rain harvesting and purification system in Portland, Oregon, USA. He set up the entire system at an expense of USD 1500. He now captures an average 27000 gallons of water per year. Although it is true that Portland receives 3 to 4 feet of annual rainfall, but it is a possible way of at least elongating the process of getting completely drained out. ( http://www.rwh.in/ )
The big question is what should we do… or may be what can we do? Will it be our mere dependence upon Lord Vishnu for providing us an alternative or is there something which our law makers, researchers and scientists are going to wake up to? Should we be proactively concerned about it or shall we let ourselves become the generation which saw the transition of rivers into parched lands into large multiplexes? I heard someone saying that the fourth World War would be fought with bows and arrows… I wonder if Third World War is going to be fought for water.

Our Pay-rents...oops, I mean Our Parents

The pace of progress has been rampant over the past few years in the “not-so-big” cities of India. With the way development crept into the smaller cities, the price has been paid by the soul of the city. Every step closer to the development has been at the cost of our environment, culture, peace, and most important of all, humanity.
I came across several youngsters who have created a world of their own, outside their families. Parents don’t even seem to know where their kids are. Freedom, space, independence, call it what you may, I believe it is the modernization, or should I say Americanization of Indians. Rate with which old age homes have sprung up in country may be good news for some youngsters, but I would call it alarming. Probably there were parents who packed their love and affection and handed it over their kids on their birthdays. But what about those parents who spent and even sacrificed their happiness, and some even their careers to give a better future to their children. I have come across so many of them who have restricted themselves to the same field, same location, same position, just so that it may not hamper their kids future.
This is the time where I am forced to think what is it that guides or motivates the parents to work so hard for their kids? Everyday we hear cases where the parents are turned out from their homes to old age homes, sometimes even killed by their own people for property. So many times the kid turns out to be a shame for the parents. In spite of knowing all that, what makes the parents so selflessly dedicated to the child. For the mother to take so much pain to bring the kid into this world, for the father to take an extra shift so that he can send the child to a better school, for the mother to keep up the entire night while the child sleeps suffering through fever. There is so much done by them during the age when a child can’t even realize what their parents have done for them. I swear I have not seen any mother or father maintaining an excel file to let their kids know what all they have done for them, and I am not talking about just monetary acts.
We work so hard for our qualifications, for our jobs, and one fine day, we leave for an outstation job, leaving our parents back at home. Is it enough to hand over our salary to them? Money is really everything, isn't it? That is how we would evaluate our parents, would we? Our parents never really threw us out of our house simply because we failed in the exam or had bad handwriting. They accepted us as we were, no adjustments, they were happy to have us as we were, did everything to make us a better person. One of my neighbours had three sons, two of them in US and one in Canada, none is able to adjust with their parents at their home. Hence their father still lives alone in Lucknow so that their children can live happily, ever after. It so seems that all the love and affection we have for our parents is wrapped up and handed over to our mother on a Mother’s day or to our father on Father’s Day, and consider our liabilities fulfilled. They spent on us, so we spent on them, deal is square.
I wouldn’t stretch it too far but just like to end it with a note. I was very young, can’t be very specific about the age but I can say it is something which I clearly remember. My father used to drive a Bajaj Ltd. 150. I used to stand in front of the driver’s seat while he drove. Whenever there was a lot of dust on the road, he would ask me to close my eyes until he said to open them back. I used to follow orders. Once I just thought, “What if I didn’t close my eyes?”. So once on our way to some place, my father asked me to close my eyes. I closed my eyes, but to peek, I just opened one of my eyes, and I saw my father had his palm over my eyes, and was driving with one hand. After some time he removed his hand and said, “Now you can open your eyes”.
Do I really need a “Father’s Day” to love him or say thanks to him?

Press Conscience

Press Conscience

Over past many years the daring form of investigative reporting has always been appreciated by the social structure and awarded by anyone possible. The likes of Goenka and Mark Tully are now a rare species. What is left of the press now is “News in the fast food” fashion, presented in the best possible packaging available, and dramatized to the extent of putting the movies of 1960s to shame. The news channels are now probably seeking actors and greenhorn graduates rather than actual graduates with some sense of repsonsibility and knowledge. The reporters are now merely doing the job of selling the news rather than reporting the news. It is too great a responsibility to keep the people informed. But I believe the press and the news channels are probably missing the point totally. For them, it is just what sells.

When a Uma Khurana is dragged on to the road and beaten up by the mob, only to be vindicated later on after enough hullabaloo, when a news channel shows or should I say “covers” and “exclusive” report of a father being beaten up in his house, I am compelled to think that once you wear a “PRESS” tag on your chest, are you no longer a citizen? Are you no longer a human being? Do you no longer have a conscience of your own? If an innocent person is being beaten up in public, is there no signal or response that your brains sends you that you should somehow be protecting the person?

All that is left at the end of all this fury is the dust which takes little time to settle down. 12 hours of prime time, mud-slinging amongst politicians, but what about the reporter and the camera man who saw it all happenning in front of their eyes and stood like heartless piece of flesh? Is this not the responsibility of the reporter to take measures to stop such an anti-social act from happenning? Is it only the task of the common citizens?

One of the news channels recently showed that a man was dragged after being tied to the rear of a motorcycle by a policeman. The host of the show kept on saying “Aur log chupchaap khade tamasha dekhte rahe. Koi is aadmi ki madad ko aage nahin aaya”. Has he forgotten that there were people from his own news channel who were standing there and getting an exclusive coverage of the entire mishap? Does he think that by simply covering the event, his responsibility to protect ends? If the channel feels so sympathetic towards the poor soul, why doesn't he go up and stop the mob or the miscreant from doing any such act? Do they not have enough balls? If they don't, they have no right to say that the people kept standing there as mute spectators, because so were they.

Why is so that everybody is put under scanner for their wrong deeds, but never the media? Why is it so that whenever a finger is raised over the media, it doesn't even attain much heights to bring about the change. Have we handed over the entire onus of reporting and reforming into the hands of the media who are now showing us a world which they want to show. Is there something, someone, who can come up to unravel this face of the modern Indian press and media? Probably, your conscience should now “Press” hard.

Justice - Fast Food Way...?

“A mob of villagers from Daridag and Kodi localities in Ramgarh district attacked a gang suspected to be involved in a number of thefts and lynched three of them on Thursday.”
“10 people, suspected to be thieves, were lynched by a mob in Vaishali”
“Ranchi witnessed a gruesome incident of mob violence in Tupudana in which three people were done to death.”
The above mentioned lines have become a news, which does not sound like news anymore. The news which has traveled from the front page to the fifth and disappeared, from the breaking news to just another incident. What I would like to bring up to your active think machine is the fact that can you see some pattern? Is it just an unruly, anti-social mob which is craving for some publicity? Or is it a herald to a pattern in the Indian society? A little thing, very famous in past century in America, called Civil War.
Over the past few months we have seen several deaths of accused-turned-culprits who have not seen the inside of a court room but have received a verdict. Such incidents have not remained limited to the infamous states of U.P. and Bihar alone, but have spread across the entire nation. Cry as much as they may, the human rights activists dare not enter those territories. They seem to have guts only enough to file suits in the courts to save a rapist or a murderer, but no cases against a mob. Why?
I am willing to believe that due to the indefinite delay in the rendering of justice has probably driven the citizens to the edge where they are willing to even face the wrath of a police activity which involves no more than filing the case against suspected. And by the time the suspected are brought to justice, their souls would have long departed.
A man, so far unidentified, was lynched by an angry crowd in the central Mozambican city of Chimoio on Monday, as local people continued to take the law into their own hands and meted out summary justice to alleged thieves.
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/200802260757.html
It may sound rhyming to Indian situations, but only if you were to know that Mozambique is going through a phase which is far different from the well framed, socialist government, it should sound a little weird to you.
“Irate villagers in Narauni village of Kakori on the outskirts of the state capital took law into their own hands and lynched a man for allegedly stealing a submersible pump from a farmer's house. The incident took place on Sunday.”
Source: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2008/February/subcontinent_February836.xml&section=subcontinent&col=
This is an excerpt from web edition of Khaleej Times, UAE based news paper.
The intention of preparing the above background is only to stress upon the fact that it is not just the patience level of the Indians that is tumbling down, but also a failure of government machinery. The verdicts given by the mass or public has either not been proven yet or have been proven wrong. So even if the public thinks that they have the right to render justice, we stand at the same question once again – how justified is the justice?
The courts have always been submerged under the cases and have not been able to give hope to a mass chunk of public. The faith of millions is no longer on the judicial system which gets bought and sold inside and outside courtrooms and police stations. So far the Indians had got inured to this treatment meted out to them. But this new ugly face of the public should ring the bells in the judicial arena as well as the executive machinery. The stick has somehow reached into the hands of the uneducated and the illiterate. The literate are too busy to care. Are we?
It is time everybody understands that “Justice delayed… would not longer be justice denied” even if it is unjust.

“North-Indians and dogs not allowed”
Does that sound familiar? Alright now listen to this – “North Indians and dogs not allowed”. No that is not yet up on any of the stores or pubs in Mumbai but with the way things are moving in Mumbai right now, that day may not be too far off. “Freedom of speech”. When a Praveen Togadia speaks against muslims, when a Abdulla Bukhari speaks against non-muslims, it is termed as raising mutiny or “hurting” sentiments. But for Mr. Raj Thakerey, it is Right of Expression. News channels and research agencies have even gone on to prove that 54% mumbaikars support Raj Thakerey’s stand. North Indians are eating into the jobs of Marathis. When I heard that for the first time, I had a similar feeling when the Americans started crying foul when the software engineers from India had started eating into their jobs. It was a time when the Indians wanted to stand up to the fact that the number of visas to America should be increased. It was a totally different country.
What we are facing now is something which might see the marginalization of people all across the country where favoritism, regional discrimination might touch a new high. It might see India entering an era where every citizen of India would start feeling insecure as soon as he steps out of his own state. And who knows? May be in the time to come, this discrimination on the basis of state might reach a micro level reaching upto the districts and cities may be colonies.
As an Indian, when Atal Bihari Vajpayee renders a speech in hindi in a UN Convention, when Bangalore and Hyderabad are talked about, around the globe for being the pool of software engineers, when Sania Mirza and Sachin Tendulkar show on field miracles, I feel proud to be an Indian. We have never asked a Mumbaikar or a marathi coming to the North Indian states where is he coming from. He is praised as much as any other North Indian if he does a good job. India is as much our country and we all must have equal rights to practice a profession in any part of the country that we want. We all need to stand up for it. If we don’t, be prepared for something like this:
You drive into Cannaught Place inner circle and they ask for your area of residence. If you belong to anywhere in Chanakyapuri, you may park your car in the authorized parking or else you need to find another place.
If you are a non-delhiite:
· Deposit all metallic substances (knives, steplars, pins, metallic pens, nail cutter, etc.) at the toll plaza
· Mobile should be switched off during your stay in Delhi
· Get your identity card checked at the check post
· Don’t drive your vehicle beyond 20kmph
· Always allow a vehicle with Delhi number plate to overtake you
· Carry a copy of your family tree to prove your city of origin approved by the mayor of your city
· Use the compartment in the Metro train which is specifically meant for Non-Delhiites
· Non-Delhiites should not use the underpass
· Not using underpass will attract a challan for Non-Delhiite pedestrians
· Non-Delhiites would be allowed to occupy an apartment only above the 7th floor in a complex

The argument continues...