Thoughtsfree

FDI in Retail: Neither Boon Nor Bane

2011-12-09T23:12:00.000-08:00

The deadlock in Parliament for a week over allowing 51% Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail was over, with Manmohan’s government withdrawing the proposal “ for now”. For the past week, we have heard and read Giga Bytes of information with Aye sayers proclaiming FDI will bring in better prices for farmers and increase employment and Nay sayers predicting it will wipe out the small kirana stores thereby increasing unemployment in the unorganized sector.

To me, both are wrong. For different reasons.

In the heat of arguments, everyone forgot that retail giants that will come in are giant transcontinental corporations which empathize only with one thing. Profits and more profits. It is a myth and naivety to even optimistically think these corporations will pay a better price for farmers than that is existent in the market. They will just replace the existing middlemen by they themselves becoming the middlemen and hoarders. Neither will they generate employment to the large extent being projected. In large retail chains, very few are employed in the store compared to the volumes. Even contract farming or captive farming where agreements are drawn beforehand by the retail chain with farmers for purchase of entire produce has not worked to the advantage of the farmers as is evident from the basmati growers of Punjab, potato framers in Northern India with Pepsi and Subabul, eucalyptus growers in Andhra Pradesh with ITC paper mills. On the other hand, they impose extra burden on the farmer to bring in gloss for the produce like wax coating for apples and protective sponge net for pears.

The argument that these retail conglomerates will wipe out the corner store Kirana Wala is also unfounded. Already, India has retail giants for the last several years like More, Reliance, Metro, Subhiksha and a host of others but the mom and pop kirana stores never perished. They have a unique business model of extending credit, home delivery and personal relationship with the consumer. It is a common practice for these stores to give goods on credit even when the order is placed through the house maid or on telephone. In fact, it was Subhiksha that got wiped out and not the kirana stores.

India Inc. too stepped in crying hoarse that withdrawal of the proposal will be a blow to economic reforms and a great loss to farmers. Obviously, the tycoons were salivating at the prospect of investing in the rest of the 49% equity and riding on the train of super profits. It was hilarious listening to these Armani suite wallahs glibly espousing the cause of farmers. None of the existing retail conglomerates paid a single rupee extra to the farmers than the market price. With their clout and money power, they have become the biggest hoarders buying up huge stocks at distress price, hoarding them against all laws and selling them for windfall profits.

Rotting Food Grains at Govt. Storage Depots

The government should have announced a slew of measures for the benefit of farmers before the decision to allow Foreign Investment or Indian Investment in retail. It should have come out with plans for massive network of storage houses for grains and cold storages for perishable produce across the country. All the produce should be bought by the government at a price fixed every two years giving farmers an opportunity to make a decent profit and impose a limit on the percentage of profit the retailers can sell the same. Also a pre-condition should have been imposed that 80% of all farm produce and manufactured goods that are displayed ( not sold ) in retail chains should be procured from within the country. This would have addressed the three most important issues that are plaguing the country, - rotting farm produce due to lack of storage facilities, distress sales by farmers leading to farmer suicides and dramatic rise in food inflation hitting hard the consumers. Instead of addressing the issue holistically, all the politicians without exception took hard stands benefitting none of the three stakeholders- producer, seller and consumer.
Alas, What a loss !!

Gen X to Gen Z: What a Difference !

2011-09-15T06:09:00.000-07:00

I have no idea about when demographers started classification of generations, but the classifications fit the majority. And vast differences exist between each generation, and from generation to generation the gap increases tremendously. First there were “veterans”, born prior to 1925 who have witnessed World War II and the tumultuous events of World history, next is “ babyboomers” born between 1940 and 1955 who would have come of age between 1960-1970. Rebellion against authority was part of their profile. They were the beneficiaries of economic boom of 60s. Then came Gen X, my generation, born in early 60s who were more rebellious against any type of authority and life was a constant struggle against every stereo type of authority. Usually they grew up with two or three more siblings in the house and had to share everything with the siblings from bedroom to bathroom, from soap to towel. In India, this generation like me stared at the colour TV first time when they were in budding twenties, lived with one Doordarshan channel for more than a decade and could relish the countless channels only after their forties. They stood in long lines in their 20s to book a trunk call at post offices to their homes and waited for hours to get connected. They have enjoyed the fruits of telecom revolution and the quintessential cell phone only when after their 40s. PCs and Internet were only newspaper stories and most would have touched a key board for the first time in their 40s. PCs storage capacity was talked in MBs.Porn was only in books and in their mid 20s VCR was the most sought after personal entertainment device. Rayban goggles was the ultimate fashion statement. Most of them would have started in their mid 20s with the prized possession of a Bajaj Scooter and caringly dusted it everyday without fail. One VIP suitcase was used for a life time without it ever getting even a scratch protected with an olive green military standard canvas cloth cover. Eating out in restaurants was rare and when happened it was a family event and talked for weeks. Owning a car was the biggest dream and owning a house was even a bigger dream. Mega schemes were laid out to own a house. First it would be acquiring a plot of land, somewhere on the far outskirts of the town or city and then planning a savings schedule for the next 10 years to construct the dream house. America was the ultimate dream and any one fortunate enough to settle there was a demi God.

Then came Gen Y, born in 80s and by the time they came of age the next century dawned and the Indian economy was in full swing. By the time they crossed teenage, mobile phone has become another organ of the body and internet was being used by millions. Even hick towns sprouted dozens of internet cafes. Porn has moved from books to PCs and computers capacity was talked in GBs.TVs straightened out and became flat. Jazzy bikes replaced the Bajaj scooter and owning a car by mid 20s did not even call for a comment. Signing up a 20- 30 year EMI housing loan did not raise any eye brows. America was still a dream but only for short term assignments or for a holiday. Cooking at home has become irregular. Curry points mushroomed everywhere. Number of siblings fell to just one. Use of branded goods has become the fashion statement, whose price made their parents miss a heart beat.

Then came Gen Z, born in 90s usually the children of Gen X. The decades of hard work and painful and planned accumulation of the wealth of Gen X has become the spring board for Gen Z. Nothing but the best is their motto and a thousand rupee note in their hands transforms into loose change in a jiffy. Authority is no problem for them because they have never encountered one. Friends are virtual and all talk happens only on the Face Book and any advice by teacher or parent is immediately put for validation with virtual friends. They are part of one or other virtual social groups with thousands as members. Google is THE only source of reliable information. Cell phone is no longer just a phone and does everything except cooking. Palm sized phones boast of GB capacities. Two continuous days of eating at home calls for by default home delivery pizza or KFC. Picking up goods without even looking at the price tag attracts no comment. All decisions are taken independently without parental intervention or advice. It is not uncommon to be the only child.

What a change!! And what a gulf of differences with in just one generation!!

AP Rice Mill Lobby Strangulating Farmers

2011-05-25T02:11:00.000-07:00

It is sad that neither media nor the government is concerned about the plight and suicides of paddy farmers in the state as they are about say weavers’ deaths. Not that the death of weavers should not be a matter of concern, but due attention should be paid to the paddy farmers suicides too. While clothes can be made by textile mills and weavers can choose other forms of work, it is the farmer who is stuck with his land and there is nobody on the earth to produce food grains except him. The reasons for the plight of farmers are two. One is the Central Government which fixes minimum support price arbitrarily without taking the actual input costs and refuses to increase it citing the fallacious reason that food prices will increase. It cites the same reason for refusing exports. Its arm, the Food Corporation of India ( FCI ), has grain stocks double the capacity of its godowns. Crop after crop and year after year, the FCI cites the reason of lack of storage space to avoid buying from the farmer directly.

In AP, kharif crop ( July- Dec ) on average yields 100 – 110 lakh tons of paddy. In Rabi ( Jan – April ) the yields are 110- 120 lakh tons. The just harvested rabi crop yielded an estimated 120 lakh tons. Of this, the FCI bought directly from farmers a meager 5 lakh tons and the state civil supplies department bought 1.5 lakh tons at the minimum support price of Rs 1000 a quintal. Once the FCI stopped purchasing, the rice millers started purchasing a quintal of paddy at Rs 800- 850. And they bought 98 lakh tons. At Rs 200 lesser price per quintal, the farmers lost a whopping sum of Rs 2000 crore. And this is just for one crop not including the profits earned by millers by exporting rice to other states and countries. The government in AP, whichever party is in power, dances to the tune of rice millers and so when almost all the farmers had made a distress sale of paddy, politicians are shedding crocodile tears now urging the central government to increase MSP and allow export of rice. And who will benefit from this. None except the rice millers. Each rice mill pays 30% of the milled paddy to FCI as levy and can sell the remaining stocks in the open market. The millers also get 12 kg of rice bran and 12 kg of broken rice for each quintal of paddy milled. The 4-5 kg of husk they get is used to generate power or used to generate steam to make paraboiled rice. The levy rice collected by the FCI is allocated to public distribution system for distribution to below poverty line people at a high subsidized rates. FCI has now 50 million tons in its warehouses, double the quantity required to meet the needs of subsidized rice distribution through PDS.

Paddy cultivation is highly labour intensive. The input costs have trebled in the last 5 years but the MSP for paddy has not increased by more than 40%. If we take 5 acres farmer, his input costs are Rs 90,000/- which includes from raising nursery, mechanized ploughing, plantation, weed removal, fertilizer, pesticide, reaping and to harvesting. At an average 25 quintals per acre, if he gets MSP, his net earnings are a meager Rs.35,000 for the entire crop from his 5 acres. If rabi crop is also cultivated and both the crops are not affected by any natural calamity, his earnings per year is Rs 70,000/-, which is less than Rs 6000 a month. It is a fact that once every 3 years, one crop at least is lost to nature’s fury. having thus lost a year of earnings and with no money for the input costs for the next crop, farmers have to go for loans either from banks or private money lenders. Both these institutes show no mercy on the hapless farmer while recovering the money. This is what makes the farmer take his life. Last quarter, State Bank of India wrote off Rs 41,500 crore as bad debts and not even a single rupee of this colossal amount would be from a farmer.

The AP government should exert pressure on the central government to allow exports of rice on a continuous basis and stop the practice of permitting millers to export after they buy at a lower price from the farmers. The FCI should be given procurement quota for each state depending on the extent of paddy cultivated. The practice of FCI procuring a lion’s share from only Northern states should stop.

Media Hyperbole & Free Speech

2010-02-18T00:12:00.000-08:00

The release of Shahrukh Khan’s latest film, My Name is Khan (MNIK) has become the biggest story in print and electronic media for the last one week. All the noise started when the self-declared Moses of Mumbai, the senile xenophobist, Bal Thackery has criticized Sharukh for saying that Pakistani cricketers should be taken into IPL teams. This statement, Thackery claimed, is anti-national and threatened to disrupt screening of Khan’s movie. Sharukh refused to budge and apologize. The media went hammer and tongs hailing Sharukh’s stand as heroic and went to the extent of equating watching the film to taking a stand for independence and free speech. What a comedy !! Indian media trivializes even the most critical and sensitive issues and waters down them, in its mad race to reach one slot higher than the competition to garner advertisement revenues. Unlike Sachin or Mukesh Ambani who have gone public saying Mumbai is for all Indians, Sharukh has never made public his stand on Shiva Sena’s jingoism. Sharukh, all said and done, is a matured businessman and his loss-making Kolkota Night Riders team in IPL needs players of caliber to notch up a few wins. So he might have wanted some Pakistani players to buttress his team, which the media has ignored and made him into a real life hero. While it is gratifying to note that Thackery’s calls to boycott the film have been defied by the public openly, it is sickening to watch and read the media catch on to it as if Freedom of Speech and democracy in India depends on this one issue and exhorting public to defy Shiva Sena by flocking to the theatres screening the movie. Putting Shiva Sena in its place requires not flocking to the theatres but media blackout. A party confined to small pockets in one state needs the media platform for survival. However, for the media, ratings was the primary interest, not freedom of speech or taking a collective stand against hooliganism and intimidation. There have been numerous other instances recently of clamps on freedom of speech and never the media had this kind of sustained coverage to drive public behavior. One of the world-renowned painter, the 94-year old F M Husain is in exile in Dubai. Why was he forced to leave his home country. Because right wing religious parties and groups could see nudity of a Goddess in a few lines he sketched on the canvas. Where was the media then. Taslima Nasrin was expelled from India in 2008. Deepa Mehta’s movies, Fire and Water both came under Sena’s ire. The poor taxi drivers of Mumbai who have migrated from all parts of India were vandalized by Sena activists on the urgings of Thackerys. Since these issues do not have the same easy marketability, they were just reported. And easy marketing is at the heart of this campaign. Issues connected with India’s two loves, cricket and Bollywood, a media savvy celebrity, a comic book goon and the perception of participation by painless flocking to movie halls has made this campaign an effort less marketing for the media.
The real fight for freedom of speech and democracy should be the fight against our desperate poverty. Yet there is frighteningly little focus and interest in transparent governance, the prioritization and allocation of the country’s resources for its people. And there are serious issues at stake. The Food Security Act (FSA) is on the cards. FSA says that there are people in our country who don’t even have enough food for basic sustenance. That their numbers are so large that the States and Central Government have been slugging out for months trying to figure out eligibility criteria and a sharing arrangement that they can afford. We also have the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which entitles each rural household hundred days of unskilled work at minimum wage. These Acts are a testimony to the fact that we have kept a large portion of our population out of the growing economy. However, not even a miniscule percentage of airtime and column space has been spared to discuss these issues. Even worse, there is no national passion for these issues. I shudder thinking of the future of this country, with two-thirds population being crushed under the burden of poverty and the apathy of the media towards critical issues.

Non-Veg Pickles ( Prawn, Chicken, Mutton )

2009-11-19T22:10:00.000-08:00

The process for chicken, mutton and Prawn pickles is the same. Ingredients and quantity are also the same. So if you know how to make one, you can make them all.
Prawn Pickle

Take good-sized prawns of one and half kilo. After de-shelling, prawns will weigh about one Kilo. Devine the prawns and rinse in water at least three times. Keep them aside for some time till water drains off. Add a tsp of turmeric powder, 2 tsp of crystal salt, 2 tsp of ginger garlic paste and mix well. Place the contents in a large dry pan and simmer till water is completely evaporated.
Take 100 gms of coriander seeds ( Dhania ) and fry them in a dry pan with a low flame for 2 to 3 minutes till the aroma reaches you. Put the fried seeds away to cool. Add a finger length cinnamon stick ( Dalchini) and a dozen cloves ( lavangalu) and grind them to fine powder . Add a cup( about 100 gms ) of powdered crystal salt and a cup of chilly powder ( 100 gms ) and mix well. Heat 500 gms of groundnut oil in a deep pan. After oil is heated well, deep fry the prawns for about 2 to 3 minutes till they become slightly brown. It is better to take small portions of the prawns and deep fry them so as not to have the oil overflow from the pan. Add the fried prawns to the container which has the mixed powders. Take 4 spoonfuls ( about your handful) of ginger garlic paste and drop it gently into the simmering oil. Put out the flame of the stove. Let the ginger and garlic paste remain in the hot oil for a few minutes. Add the oil along with the paste to the prawns. Mix thoroughly. Take about 12 average sized lemons and squeeze the juice ( 50 to 60 ml). Strain the juice to separate seeds. Add the juice to the prawns while the oil soaked paste is still hot. Mix well. Let it cool. Do not put a lid on the container as it will condense the vapour to water drops and the pickle will get spoilt. Transfer the pickle to glass jars. Shelf life is 4 to 6 months.
Chicken & Mutton pickle
Chicken or mutton should be boneless. They should be cut into one to one and a half inch pieces. Process is same as prawn pickle. Only more time is needed for deep frying. About 5 minutes.

Obama Disappoints

2009-10-08T00:29:00.001-07:00

What a disappointment Obama is !! Just a year ago the World watched every move of this man and prayed for his victory in the belief that he had the capacity to judge things from a global perspective and provide leadership to the World leaders. CHANGE and WE CAN were his slogans and like any other political slogans , they proved to be just that—a mere political catchy words that have no meaning once in power.
Nothing has changed, domestically or internationally. May be I should say no effort has been made to change anything even though circumstances provided the opportunity on a platter to Obama. The US banking and financial sector continues to rot in spite of gobbling up a trillion dollars of tax payers money, the greed of the CXOs continues to be obnoxious, yet nothing has changed. Except for sound bytes to the media on the salaries and bonuses of CXOs, nothing has changed. Even the much talked about health reforms seem to have taken a back seat. The Obama administration is clearly buckling under the pressure of these big corporations.
And now the last blow to all the believers in Obama. Obama has become the first US President in two decades not to welcome the Nobel peace prize winner to the White House since the Dalai Lama began visiting Washington. And this coming from the person who claims that Mahatma Gandhi and his non-violent approach has influenced him to a large extent. Yet he refuses to meet the Buddhist monk and the spiritual leader of Tibet whose only demand is greater autonomy ( not separation ) and preservation of Tibetan culture, which China is systematically destroying. And why this refusal. Because of the pressure from China. So economic considerations outweigh all other factors.
The US President will meet with corrupt, murderous dictators, military junta heads, even embrace them, laugh with them, accept gifts from them, but NOT meet the Dalai Lama? The ultimate failure in honoring human rights and international relationships. And the ultimate disappointment for people like me world over.
Just a year ago during the primaries, Obama urged George W Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony in protest against the bloody repression of a popular uprising in Tibet. “If the Chinese do not take steps to help stop the genocide in Darfur and to respect the dignity, security, and human rights of the Tibetan people, then the President should boycott the opening ceremonies,” Obama said.
What a CHANGE !!
What a fall !!
What a disappointment Obama has turned out to be !!

The Acid Test For Indian Society

2008-12-16T03:04:00.000-08:00

A week back three youngsters in their budding twenties poured acid on two unsuspecting girls causing serious third degree burns in Warangal in Andhra Pradesh, India. The reason for this heinous crime was one of the girls had spurned the overtures of one of the culprits. Both the girls are battling for life with one girl, doctors say may lose vision permanently and both the girls, if survive, will need multiple plastic surgeries. It is no wonder that the entire town came out in rallies and expressed sympathy for the girls. However, what was surprising was every section of the society, including the students, demanding the police to catch the suspects and encounter them which meant shooting them to death. Instant justice in this instant world ! A day later the three suspects were caught, interrogated, confession extracted, paraded before the media in the late evening and Lo and behold ! all the three suspects end up dead in the middle of the night on the outskirts of the town. The official version was police had taken them to a location where the suspects said they hid a stolen motorcycle but when they reached the spot, the suspects tried to attack the police and so were promptly shot to death. This usually is the standard official version for most of the deaths in the police shootouts. As news spread, there were celebrations in the town, people praising the police for swift action and awed college students pestering the police officers for autographs. Even in state capital, the educated elite were openly praising the police for this instant justice delivered. To my horror, even the state government released a statement that indirectly meant that any such acts will invite similar response. A few sane voices and their feeble protest at this form of delivering instant justice were drowned out in the cacophony of jubilation. We have been witnessing similar jubilation and approval across the country whenever such incidents take place. In the wake of sympathy on the plight of the girls and the hatred on the perpetrators of the crime, we seem to have forgotten that we are in a civil society governed by the laws of the land and judiciary. While it is true that many of our laws do not reflect the modern realities and need to be comprehensively changed, it is as reprehensible as the crime itself to eulogize custodial deaths. Instead of bringing pressure on the governments to amend the laws to make the punishments more stringent and revamp the judicial process for quick trials, we seem to have taken the easier option of condoning and even demanding instant justice. We should not for a moment forget that this makes every individual policeman, the investigator, the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner. Is any one person or a group capable of playing all these roles without bias.
Have we as a part of the civil society forgotten the brutal Bhagalpur blindings in 1980, where the police blinded about 30 undertrials with cycle spokes and then poured acid into the eyes. Most of them were petty thieves, waiting for the trial to commence. Can we condone the act in the name of instant justice since the case would have taken a long time to conclude in the usual process? Or for that matter, the police shooting of a business man to death last year in Delhi due to mistaken identity. It could be you and me tomorrow in the place of the businessman.
I ask those of you who have openly come out in support of the police shooting to death the three suspects, shall we as a society dispense with the judicial system altogether and give rights to the police to deliver instant justice. A thief can have his hands amputated, a person accused of murder can be hung to a lamp post and eve teasers stoned to death in public. There are societies where such forms of public punishments are in vogue. We call those states barbaric.
Despite the passing of the Protection of Human Rights Act in 1993 and establishing a National Human Rights Commission, incidents of police brutality continue to take place in various parts of the country. This is because of the silent approval of the public.
The acid test for the Indian society is whether in the near future it opts to pressurize governments to amend the laws and make punishments more stringent, revamp the judicial process for speedy trials, demand better policing methods and respect the Human Rights or continue to encourage models of instant justice. There will lie the answer to where as a nation we are headed.

The Vampire Companies In Drug Trials

2008-12-13T00:50:00.000-08:00

It was an innocuous small news item buried in the local pages of the Hyderabad based newspapers a few days back. The news was that a person undergoing drug trials complained of chest pain and died before he was shifted to a corporate hospital. Hardly any news, when in our country only double digit deaths find space on the front page. However, this is no ordinary death. The death is due to the plague that is the hallmark of a majority of Indian entrepreneurs. The plague of greed for money at any cost. At the cost of the lives of thousands of poor citizens of this country through clinical trials, which are outsourced by the giant global pharma and bio technology companies. A city based bio company has been conducting drug trials on this person, which the company spokesperson accepted and added he was a “Volunteer” who was administered a dose one day earlier, was put under observation for 24 hours and released. So he argued the reasons for the death of this “Volunteer” cannot be attributed to the drug trials. Shockingly, he also added that this “Volunteer” was also undergoing a drug trial for another company. As a spin doctor of the bio company, he should have known that the rules of the Central Drugs Standard Control Organization clearly forbid clinical trials of more than one drug in a span of 90 days on the same person. But that is only the Law and in this country it is the least respected, especially by the money-making class.

So what in essence are these drug trials, called as clinical trials? When a new drug is formulated in the research labs of the pharma companies, it needs to be extensively used on human beings to determine dosage, efficacy and after affects. In the US and Europe, trials for one drug costs anywhere from 100 to 150 million dollars because of the stringent conditions and high hospital costs. To save such a huge spending, these corporations have started outsourcing to Indian companies at one –tenth of the cost. Where on Earth can one find a nation with a deadly cocktail of half a billion people mired in rampant poverty and illiteracy, a plethora of diseases, two million private hospital beds , completely unethical and greedy entrepreneurs, lack of proper regulation, blatant corruption and a slipshod state machinery to enforce whatever little regulations are in force. So almost all the giant pharma . corporations have zeroed in on India. According to a Confederation of Indian Industry study, clinical trials in India in 2002 generated $70 million in revenues and reached $200 million by 2007. McKinsey estimates that by 2010, global pharma majors would spend around $1 billion for drug trials in the country.
How do the Indian clinical trial companies which grab the outsourcing deals conduct the clinical trials? The modus operandi is simple. Middle men sift through the records at the government hospitals to identify those with a particular disease or a combination of diseases. They are then filtered as per the need of the age / gender group. Since most of the visitors to the government hospitals are poorest of the poor, it becomes a cake walk for the middle men to cut a deal. For as little as 100 to 150 rupees a day!! The “Volunteers” are regularly monitored with changes in dosage. At prior defined periods, the “Volunteers” are examined for any symptoms of side effects and the progress of the disease. If there are indeed side effects, sometimes fatal, they are disposed off with a few thousand rupees. Since the law stipulates that drug trials can be conducted only on “Volunteers”, the illiterate “Volunteers” are made to sign /put thumb impressions on the declaration of volunteerism absolving the companies from any legal consequences. The poor “Volunteers” get a few thousand rupees each in a year and in most cases life time misery with side effects, the middlemen get a few lakhs each for supplying the “Volunteers” and the company profits by a few million dollars. The entire process or the findings need not be registered with or divulged to any regulatory body. Perfect, isn’t it?

What has happened as a stray incident in 2000 has become rampant today across India. In 2000, the use of a banned drug on unsuspecting poor cancer patients by the prestigious U.S. John Hopkins’ Hospital in collaboration with the Regional Cancer Treatment Centre in Kerala was exposed by the centre’s radiology head. Two patients died as a result of the drug trial. Bowing to the public demand, the Kerala Government requested Dr Parikh of the Tata Memorial Hospital in Mumbai to probe the incident. Dr Parikh collected documentary evidence of JHU releasing funds for the drug trials with the conscious knowledge of that drug having been banned by the US Food and Drug Administration. The drug was developed by a team of researchers of JHU's department of biology. This has forced the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) to inquire into the trials. As usual, the results are still not public and no action has been taken against those responsible, where as the Johns Hopkins University barred the principal investigator from heading future research with human subjects. NGOs estimate that at any given point of time, clinical trials are being conducted for more than 100 new drugs in India involving thousands of “Volunteers” across multiple cities. They fear several of these drugs are either banned in the developed countries or new experimental component mixtures derived from the banned drugs.
Recently, India has made some regulatory attempts, amending its Drugs and Cosmetics Act to require compliance by trial conductors with a set of good clinical practices / guidelines along with the ethics committee that the ICMR formulated. But this is clearly not enough. The government should make registration of every drug trial compulsory, the findings to be divulged, mandatory compensation payment for those affected and strong penalties against the defaulting companies.

Till then, like vampires sucking blood out of the living, companies will continue to suck out profits from the misery of the Poor.

Banner Anger

2008-12-07T21:27:00.000-08:00

The anger against politicians for not taking the November 26th terrorists attack on Mumbai seriously was uniform across the country. Here are some of the banners giving a glimpse of the anger, mailed to me by one of my friends, Kali Krishna.

India's Heart Broken, But Not The Spirit

2008-11-30T22:11:00.000-08:00

We Indians have faced several terrorist attacks in the past, some brutal as 1993 Mumbai blasts. We have had live coverage of the attack on our Parliament building itself. But the images of November 26th 2008 attack on Mumbai will stay etched in the memory of Indians for a long time. The images of indiscriminate firing from a van into thick crowds, the bodies strewn all over the street after an explosion, the injured at VT railway station dazed and bleeding profusely being helped by people, the funeral of the three top cops who were killed in action and the imposing red coloured dome of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel spewing out fire and smoke will stay with us for a long time. The terrorists have chosen the places of attack to have maximum death toll and coverage. While the taking over of Oberoi Trident Hotel and Nariman Point were to take hostage of maximum foreign nationals, it is evident that the taking over of Taj hotel and causing explosions in it, was no doubt to hurt the national pride of Indians.
It is now part of the Legend of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the patriarch of the Tata industrial Group, who has commissioned the Taj Palace Hotel building in 1900 after being refused entry to the now-defunct Apollo Hotel, which had a strict Europeans-only policy. The hotel was deliberately built with its rear to the harbour in an apparent snub to the British Monarchy, who entered through the harbor. Now the terrorists have snubbed all Indians by causing massive destruction to the hotel.

As the first pictures of the live coverage of events at Taj and Trident were beamed across a nation, it was a shock to watch the complete chaos. There was no unified command and policemen were simply running helter skelter, with everyone talking on mobile phones. On Mobile phones !! It was apparent that there was not even a unified communication system in place. As usual the combined forces of the Army and Navy along with NSG commandoes brought order to the chaos and fought hand to hand to kill the terrorists. But by then the damage was done. Over 200 dead and 500 injured.

As details emerged slowly, more shocks were in place. After getting information on a shootout at CST by terrorists, the top three cops of Mumbai together went in a van. Together !! And became sitting ducks. With all due respect to the dead, this singular act of travelling together to face the terrorists shows the lack of processes and professionalism. More shocking was the news that the NSG commandoes had flown all the way from Delhi but had to cool their heels at the airport for hours together as there were no further instructions. Detailed plans of the Trident and Taj hotels were found with the terrorists but the commandoes did not have one. We saw the Taj burning for hours on without any sight of a fire truck. One came in after three hours. It took our Prime Minister 20 hours after the attacks to convene a cabinet meeting. It took 60 hours to eliminate all the terrorists.

The worst shock was allowing the visual media to beam the live images of the commando action. Someone has forgotten that the terrorists too might be watching TV and alter their plans accordingly. Even the helicopter dropping off commandoes on the roof top of Nariman Point was also beamed live.

No sooner than the operation ended, the blame game started. The central intelligence agencies say they have forewarned the state which neglected the warning. The warnings usually are something like this, “ Terrorists belonging to X, Y or Z group are planning to launch an attack from land, sea or air on important landmarks and busy public places in the next three months.” Which state will heed to such warnings, when on an average, small or big, a dozen terrorist attacks take place every month in some state or the other in the country.

Revolting it was to watch the politicians give sound bytes, blaming the ruling party and the ruling party defending itself and pointing out similar attacks in previous government. With crass insensitivity, even before the dead were laid to rest, our politicians jumped in to take political advantage of the incident. We Indians act like Ostriches, burying our heads in the sand so as to not see the obvious. Ringed all around with six countries – Pakistan, China, Nepal, Myanmar, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka- whose animosity and in some cases blind hatred towards India is open and whose support to several terrorist groups in India is an established fact, terror is here to stay for a long time. What we need is not statistics to determine under which party’s rule more were dead. What India needs is a strategy at the highest level to tackle terrorism. It might evolve this time, because the attacks on 26th were also directed at the mighty and powerful, who have been insulated from terror all along, as the terrorists always hit only the general public travelling in suburban trains, or shopping in crowded bazaars. There will be enormous pressure from this group on the governments to act decisively and plan thoroughly for the future.

For the time being Indians are heart-broken but strong in spirit as evident from the reopening of the Leopold café as a defiance within two days after the deadly attack on it. As news of its reopening spread, thousands descended on the café to show solidarity. Unable to manage the crowds, it had to shut down after two hours. Incidentally, the café is owned by a Muslim.
I pray to God to give strength in their hour of grief to those families who have lost their near and dear in the carnage. I salute the armed forces for their bravery and sacrifice.

Gals, Guys, Gays, Biceps & Buttocks

2008-11-25T00:50:00.000-08:00

When does one realize that one has aged and out of touch with the world around. Well, when one doesn’t know how to react to a situation that appears normal to everyone around, but extra-ordinary to you, it is then you have aged. This revelation dawned upon me rather forcibly a couple of weeks back and reaffirmed a few days back. A couple of weeks back, I got into the office lift on a fine morning. A twenty-some girl also got into the lift and as the doors were about to close there was a flurry of activity outside and the door opened again. Another twenty-some girl came breezing in and in the same breath asked the other girl “ Did you get it done”. This girl started giggling and to my thorough panic and embarrassment lifted her shirt a few inches up to reveal a gold ring on the navel. Both of them immediately fell into an animated conversation and stepped out at their floor. I was completely flummoxed. Not with the act of showing off one’s navel’s accessory but for the fact that both these girls cared two hoots for my presence and didn’t even give a glance. I was thoroughly embarrassed for having invaded their private space—the office lift.
A couple of days back, another set of two girls and a guy in the twenties were having a chirpy conversation with a torrential non-stop flow with an equal mix of Hindi and English, which this younger generation seemed to have mastered. I was just a pace behind them waiting for the lift and tried to claw out some meaning. They were talking about a movie Dostana and “how John and Abhi pretended to be gays , locked their lips in a passionate kiss and how one of their mothers accepted it and John is sooooo cuuuute with his exposed butt”. What ? Butt ?!! Buttocks !! cannot be, I must have heard it wrong, I thought. At that moment, the guy turned his back to the girls, pulled the trouser down a good length to reveal his upper half of the butt. I was incredulous and could not grasp what he said and nearly got a fit when one of the girls gave a friendly whack at his butt and said, “ John’s is better.” As they were getting out of the lift, one girl turned halfway to me and gave that half smile may be indicating that all these Pats on Butts were common in their group and I was simply out of place. With an effort that would have got accolades from the very best poker players, with a dead pan face I smiled back in the same reassuring measure as if I witnessed these PoBs every day of my life. None of the others even glanced at me while walking out of the lift. I realized then that my aging was official.
As I mulled over this incident, I realized that the movie is the same whose poster I gawk at everyday while driving to the office to have my eyes full of the perfectly lipped ( no, no not a spelling mistake ) Oomph oozing, bikini clad Priyanka. My vision was so focused that I barely realized the two hunks on either side of her. I was in wonderment that two leading actors did not hesitate to act out as gays and even locked the lips. Amazing! More amazing is how causally these youngsters took to the movie and the concept. And above all butt bearing on the screen ! Over the years, I have watched the progression of the screen heroes move from biceps to triceps to six packs and flaunt the body sculpting in a song or a fight. But imagine someone going with a trouser half falling off, flaunting his butt. From now on, the screen hunks may also do all sorts of workouts to have a butt that is better shaped than his competitor. We may see a new breed of physical trainers and gyms with special equipment even for general Janatha. Anything is possible with these youngsters.
Same is the case with the latest Airtel mobile phone commercial with Sharukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan. With “I miss you so much”, groans by Saif boring deeply into the sockets of Shah Rukh’s eyes in the bath room and bed room, they give a gay touch. Actually, SRK is helping Saif to record a voice message to Kareena with a deep painful resonance , which he finally extracts from Saif with a blow at a strategic place. How times change ! And how much of change from Generation to Generation.
Sometime in mid 80’s, a Bombay Journalist has come out openly in an interview about his sexual preference which has created quite a stir. At that time even the elegant word Gay ( actual meaning is carefree / happy ) was not widely used and even the Press used to stick to the cruder version of Homosexual. Well, one evening I was nursing my drink in Hyderabad Press Club along with a friend when suddenly one of our common acquaintances walked to our table with a stranger. I got up, shook hands with the acquaintance and as he was introducing the stranger I began shaking hands with him. At the very moment his name and city were mentioned, I had this irrational urge to pull my hand back, rub the palm on to the trousers and just somehow not be there. However, with supreme effort and with a normal face, I completed the hand shake and indulged in polite conversation for a couple of minutes. Both of them noticed that they were not being invited to join the table even for a cursory drink and left. And that was me then, the liberal of the liberal belonging to Gen X. Any guy from this Gen Y would not have flinched and might have even hugged and kissed him.
I am astonished at this Gen Y gals, guys, gays for their obsession with biceps and buttocks and their amazing ability to convert instantaneously any space into their own private space.

Comedian-in-Chief of the USA

2008-11-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

Recently when I was talking to one of my friends Radhe, he mentioned that he watched a few days back the deadly one-liners of Bush on YouTube and he almost split into half laughing. While it is such a disgrace to America for having elected someone like Bush for two terms, on hind sight one may feel it is a historical necessity for future generations for centuries together to take this as an example of whom to never elect. Coming back to the one-liners, I just searched on the net and compiled a score of them to commemorate and commiserate his two terms. Here they are. Straight from the mouth of the Comedian-in-Chief of the United States of America

Health Hazard caution: Some may cause you to be sick to the last bone.

This is an impressive crowd—the haves and the have mores. Some people call you the elite, but I call you my base.

For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them.

I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.

I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right.

I think war is a dangerous place.

I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here.

If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier - so long as I'm the dictator.

It would be a mistake for the United States Senate to allow any kind of human cloning to come out of that chamber.

This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating.

I'm the commander - see, I don't need to explain - I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being President.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people and neither do we.

Do you have blacks, too? (To Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso)

When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible.

You're free. And freedom is beautiful. And, you know, it'll take time to restore chaos and order - order out of chaos. But we will.

It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas.

I think we agree, the past is over.

And there's no doubt in my mind, not one doubt in my mind, that we will fail.

We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease.

I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking about myself, about why I do things.

Obama Creates History In A Nation That May Soon be History

2008-11-06T02:45:00.000-08:00

My first reaction to the US presidential election results was “Thank God! McCain did not win”. This World is not ready to tolerate another uncouth, ill tempered person who is completely ignorant of world affairs a la George Bush. Neither were Americans. Barack Hussein Obama, whose Muslim father was from Kenya and mother from Kansas has assured himself a place in American history, by being the first non-white American winning the US Presidential election. By electing Obama, the New Age American people have proved that they have come of the age of racism. John F Kennedy during the last year of his life 40 years ago predicted that a black person could be the President of the US in 40 years. He was ridiculed then. He is proved right now. The reasons for Obama’s easy win are numerous. The US and the World has witnessed 8 years of unprecedented hypocrisy, blatant lies and the US administration acting like a subsidiary of big corporations. The poisonous foliage called Bush has brought down the prestige and credibility of America to abyss. The last straw was the implosion of economy. The American public has put behind them their color prejudices and voted decisively for the 46 year old Afro American.
U.S. politics has never seen anything like Obama. The 46-year-old senator from Illinois had a change-oriented message that resonated with voters and a personal history he calls a uniquely American story. In spite of initial media ridicule about his race, name and antecedents, Obama has surprised even his worst detractors with his tenacity and youth following. His emphasis on need to change has resonated well with the beleaguered America. Obama will be the first Black man to walk into the White House as its master.
So what will happen after Obama takes over on January 20th , 2009. Nothing drastic will happen. At least not in his term or terms. Why not, one may ask. Obama has played well to the gallery by emphasizing on need to change without specifying what and who needs to change. The public who have been sick for the last several years with the Bush administration and its policies and paranoid of their future after the unprecedented financial crisis assumed something else will change which would be for better. Very few of them have realized it is they who have to change. Let me list out a few items where change is necessary and see if this is possible in the near term of say 20 years from hence.
1. The US government living off its treasury bonds by selling them to foreign nations should change. Its current debt is close to 3 trillion dollars and a lion’s share of it is from dictatorial countries in Middle East and China. At any given point of time, these countries can bring down the dollar to such a hyper-inflation stage that the US will buckle on its Knees.
2. The Americans living off on debt with utter disdain for borrowed money just for a wee bit more materialistic comfortable life should change their life style in line with their actual incomes.
3. Americans constitute 5% of the world population but consume 25% of the total energy. This needs to change.
4. Americans consume 900 billion calories of food every day, some 200 billion more than needed. Enough to feed 100 million people. They need to change their eating habits.
5. Americans throw away 200,000 tons of edible food each day. Because the food industry provides umpteen varieties of the same food item in the name of consumer choice, which are thrown out when they near the expiry date.
6. About 80% of the corn and 90% of oats are fed to livestock. 60% of available land is used for beef production. About 100 liters of water is required to produce one KG wheat where as 10,000 liters of water is required to produce 1 KG of beef. Agricultural priorities need to change.
7. Americans are just 5% of the World population but own one-third of world cars and produce carbon emissions equal to the rest of the world. This needs to change.
Now we know why nothing will change in the near short term or near long term. For any drastic change to happen suddenly in societies, countries and the World a cataclysm of event or events should happen. It could be as simple as oil producing nations refusing to deal with dollars and insisting on a more stable currency like Euro. This will lead to demand for dollar collapsing and since the dollar doesn’t have the backing of Gold standard, it could simply turn into worthless paper.
when one reads world history what strikes forcibly is that the people living in those times could never believe that the end was near. No Roman had believed during the height or decline of the mighty Roman empire that it would cease to exist. No English man believed, even in modern times, that the mighty British Empire where the Sun never sets will be bankrupt and crunched to its original pea nut size in a matter of a couple of years. No country or power is an exception to this nature’s law.
I only hope that Obama will at least lay the foundation for this change and the future leaders and future American generations will change the destiny of this once great country for better. If that doesn't happen --------
Amen !

FIRE Vaporises Global Wealth

2008-10-13T01:38:00.000-07:00

I was never good with numbers in my school or college. Due to this drawback, I have never opted for any course in accounts or economics. So I just couldn’t understand in the beginning the recent global financial crisis and because of not having any knowledge on this matter, I stayed away from blogging. However, as reams and reams are being written daily, it slowly dawned on me that there is a close connection between these banks and myself. The connection is Fraud and Forgery. You see my father was an old fashioned parent who believed that making money freely available to children would spoil them. So he would give certain fixed pocket money monthly and insisted on proper accounts to be submitted during every semester holidays. That posed a huge problem to me as the 20 movies I used to watch on average a month and the 2 packs of cigarettes a day could not be accounted for as they were and also the pocket money was never sufficient. So I used to replace movies with masala dosa and cigarettes with chilli bhaja while accounting and show huge unexpected expenses for books and other study material, the money for which I used to claim was borrowed from friends. To receive a feel good fat cash bonus before returning to the college after holidays, I used to tamper the mark sheet from college. This is nothing but Fraud and Forgery for personal gains. I realized that these giant financial corporations have done the same. Fraud and Forgery for personal gains. So we have a common thread and I can now freely blog.
My Fraud and Forgery continued taking it to the next level as I moved up a year in the college the expenses too have increased. My father got suspicious and looked so close into the accounts as to find out in person the cost of masala dosa and chilli bhajja. He also approached the college office to compare the actual marks with the declared marks. The result. Severe financial restrictions were imposed and I had to qualify with concrete evidence to whatever I said from then on. I quickly fell in line.
It is sad to see that governments didn’t have same common sense as my father, a school drop out had. They have given away trillions of dollars of tax payers’ money as a bail out gift to these mega corporations instead of punishing them for their crimes. In the name of saving the economy, governments world over have pumped in trillions of dollars, in lieu of worthless paper. Even on the brink of bankruptcy, the power of these mega corporations to influence the decision making of governments is mind boggling.

All these years, these corporations pressurized government after government to deregulate and have little or no government intervention at any stage. This process, the banking gurus said, was essential and essence of capitalism and free markets. The result. The combined greed and fraud of Financial Institutes, Insurance sector and Real Estate ( FIRE) has vaporized wealth across the globe.

So what really happened. The Real Estate sector banked heavily on continuous price appreciations and built excess capacity. The people too banked heavily on continuous price rises and bought houses they could not afford because the banks were giving loans 100% of the cost. These banks then bundled up these mortgages as bonds and sold them to other banks all over the World. The Insurance companies guaranteed these mortgages as well as loan repayments for a commission. When people wanted to sell the houses for a profit after some time, they realized there were no takers in the market because every Tom, Dick and Harry had a house. Prices crashed, millions of people defaulted in EMI payments and the mortgages have suddenly become worthless papers. Not knowing which bank had how much of this toxic debt, banks refused to extend any credit to each other. Starved of liquidity, bank after bank went bankrupt. The infusion of trillions of dollars by governments will only act like a drip to a dehydrated patient and not as a fuel for a rebound. The Stock markets , as usual operate only on two factors. Fear and Greed. This time fear has set in and the market wealth of all the companies has just vaporized by more than half, thanks to FIRE.

The lesson we have to learn is that while the concept of free markets is good and that of government controls bad, the operation of free markets almost without any kind of oversight or control (which is what happened on Wall Street where government restrictions were over the years subverted by lobby-driven legislation) is doomed to lead to catastrophe. This is not the first time this has happened, and it will not be the last unless the governments take some tough measures. The governments at least now should ensure that the Financial Institutes come out clean and arrive at the truthful value of assets they hold. New mechanisms should be in place to ensure transparency in book keeping and severe punishments for those CEOs and Boards who inflate the profits for personal gains.
Meanwhile, let us all brace for a severe credit crunch and an economic slowdown, if not recession.

Fortune For 500, Misery For 5 Billion

2008-09-19T03:14:00.000-07:00

The global economic power of giant Trans Continental Corporations has grown to the point that they have become bigger than most of the countries where they do business.
Altogether, of the 100 biggest economies in the World, 40 are countries and 60 are corporations. The world's Fortune 500 companies last year earned one-third of the World GDP of 70 Trillion dollars.
Anyone would assume that with such a large revenues, these 500 companies would have employed a substantial portion of the world’s workforce. We will be shocked to know that all these companies together employ less than 20 million out of an available 3 billion workforce, according to the Washington based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). According to IPS, about 5 billion people, close to 80% of global population together earns less than half of the earnings of these companies.

If we look at the topmost 50 companies of these 500, it is evident why most of them are at the top. Their earnings are from natural resources. Oil, ore,minerals and metals and their by products like steel, aluminum, and power. These natural resources belong to the countries which means people, but these are given away for long term lease or sold at throwaway prices by the governments. For example, in 2004, oil was $ 25 and in 2008 over $100 a barrel. Was there any additional investment or additional employment generation between 2004 and 2008. Nil. Same is the case with iron ore, aluminum, coal, lime stone where prices have trebled. The iron ore mining companies in India used to sell the ore in 2004 at $35 a ton and pay 50 cents to the government as cess. In 2008 the ore is selling at $ 140 a ton but the companies continue to pay 50 cents only because of the long term lease contracts. If we look at the soaring profits of similar companies across the World, it is evident that the situation is same everywhere. And who bears the brunt. Billions of people suffer with rising costs and billions of windfall profits are pocketed by these companies.

Corporate globalization continues to increase at a hectic pace. The elixir of corporate is growth ... unquenchable growth. And profit. It’s imbedded in their genes. So these Trans Continental Corporations do everything in their power to grow and get profits. And power is one thing they have in abundance. Unlimited power with heads of governments wringing their hands at World Economic Forum and pleading for investments, offering huge tax breaks, huge tracts of land and a host of concessions. The Heads of State know clearly that while they govern a State, it is these Corporations that rule. In this process, these Trans Continental Corporations transcend responsibility to nations, people and employees. A Union Carbide can brush away with impunity the biggest and the most horrible industrial disaster with just $500 compensation to each of the surviving victims. And then one fine day it disappeared from the face of the earth. Just like that with a merger. A Dow Chemicals can refuse to clean up its shut down factory full of deadly chemicals , yet governments clamber over one another inviting it to set up business in their states. A Chiquita Brands International, the US company engaged in Banana business in Columbia , can get away with just a $ 25 million compensation to the hundreds of families of victims who have been killed by rebel forces in Columbia who were funded for a decade by the company to protect their business from disruptions. A Tata Motors can get away from moving a project to another place at a loss of 1500 crore rupees but consistently refuses to pay a few crores as additional compensation to 400 farmers whose land was acquired forcibly by the government for the project. That too after 40 people agitating for additional compensation were killed. The Sanlu group in China, biggest maker of milk powder can get away with mixing melamine in the milk powder resulting in 10,000 children becoming sick and 500 babies dying of acute kidney failure. After a mega merger, a giant corporation can get away with firing thousands of its employees by declaring “ these positions have become redundant”. Positions not people. These are not isolated incidents but regular happenings across the World. It is evident that these corporations transcend responsibility to nations, people and employees. So to whom are they responsible. The oft repeated remarks of the spin doctors of these corporations is that they are responsible to their investors is another sham. The investors are mega financial corporations who hold large chunk of stake in these companies. The retail investors are miniscule and a necessary evil who have little say or knowledge of their companies operations. In a recent AGM of Reliance, when one shareholder questioned Mukhesh Ambani how and why he is building a 27 floor billion dollar home for himself and how he could gift his wife a Jet with company money, he was asked to sell his shares and move on if he doesn’t like what the company is doing. Anyway, not even one per cent of the world population invest in companies. In effect, these corporations are responsible to no one. Trillions of dollars at their disposal and unbridled power derived through that money without responsibility to anyone. What a deadly cocktail !
And what do they do with this power. They use it to corner more profits. Take for example the carbon credit system. It was originally conceived to encourage the big corporations to be eco friendly by reducing pollution. How is the system in the current form. Carbon credits can be traded internationally, which means these big corporations continue to pollute but will buy the carbon credits from smaller companies. They have made a mockery of the system.
The most influential business group advising government on US-EU commercial relations', the Transatlantic Business Dialogue (TABD) consists of 100 CEOs of these most powerful corporations. When presidents, prime ministers and other heads of state meet at the World Trade Organization, this more permanent group provides its agenda. It is apparent that WTO is toying TABD agenda of watering down environment, consumer and worker protection laws in selected nations under the guise of binding free trade agreements that give them complete freedom to move their goods and capital across borders.
If WTO has its way, here's an example of how it works. Years ago a US Pharma giant has manufactured defective heart stunts which cracked, killing close to 200 patients in whom they had been implanted. However, they had been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration. So even though India has far superior heart stunts, we cannot stop these defective stunts from being dumped into our market . If we do WTO imposes trade sanctions on us. Neither can any nation stop Genetically Modified food products.
The most sinister thing is these Corporations control the media. Most of the television media ,movie industry and great part of print media are owned by these corporations either directly or through subsidiaries. About 80% of commercial television time , which actually sponsors TV programs is bought by them. The result -serious issues that affect these corporations are trivialized in TV media and buried deep inside newspapers. In affect, these corporations control our awareness of issues and influence the thought process. One of the best examples can be the Al Gore- Bush election. Major TV stations announced first of Al Gore win but within hours changed their stand and bombarded the viewers for weeks on Bush win. The reasons are fairly clear. Al Gore is eco friendly, is conscious of energy crisis which is unpalatable for big corporations. The fact that the perception of millions of people has been reversed or at worst confused at the bidding of these corporations to place oil friendly person to the highest of the office in itself tells the power and reach of these corporations.
The stark reality that Trans Continental Corporate rule has replaced democratic government rule is the single most important issue we now face. It will take great courage and common global action to challenge and overcome this monstrous threat to the well-being of the vast majority of humankind--and even to the planet itself.
It is predicted that by 2025 World will be full of robots. There is every possibility of this being a reality though not with the mechanical / electronic robots. But we the human beings will be robotized in our thought process and shepherded along the highway to an Orwellian night mare by these faceless Corporations for whom profits alone is reverent. Everything else is irrelevant.

Politics for Power on Power

2008-09-08T04:26:00.000-07:00

As expected the Opposition has continued to cry foul on the Nuclear Deal notwithstanding the 45 nation Nuclear Supply Group has given a green signal for nuclear trade with India. The main point for the Opposition is that India cannot conduct nuclear tests in future. But no one clarifies why there is a necessity for us to conduct tests in future, when we have already conducted two in the past and world wide a self moratorium on tests is on. The nuclear bomb technology is so perfected that more tests are simply not needed. This is nothing but politics for power on nuclear power.
India is in dire need of electricity and is currently has a shortfall of one lakh Mega Watts, almost 10% of the entire production. If the country has to grow at the current rate of 8 to 9 % year on year, experts estimate that it needs an additional million MW by 2020. And we have run out of options. Chances of increasing the hydel power are slim due to large scale submersion of fertile lands, displacement of people, and stiff opposition from environmental activists. Our coal reserves last just for another 50 years and most importantly coal based thermal power plants pollute. The carbon emissions from the coal based power plants are high. Currently, every new plant that is coming up is dependent on imported coal, a drain on the forex reserves. We have very few natural gas reserves and in Andhra Pradesh, 4 gas based power plants have not yet been commissioned for want of gas linkage even after a decade. The wind and solar power have its own limitations. We have no option except to go for nuclear power. The current Prime Minister had the courage to look beyond his term, into the future needs of this country. Bravo!
The USA gets 25% of its power from nuclear power plants. The French gets 80% of their electricity through nuclear. India gets just a meager 3% from its nuclear plants.
With a growing economy, a population explosion, increasing energy demand, limited availability of conventional sources, and a strong consensus for environmental protection, India is harnessing energy ranging from jatropha biodiesel to atomic power. This is the only country in the World to have a separate ministry for non-conventional energy sources.
Efficient, reliable and environmentally sustainable energy supplied to each household at the least possible cost is a dream of Indian government. While successive Central governments have been seeking energy security by 2012 for India, the current government went further to prescribe “Energy Independence” by 2030.
Though commercial primary energy consumption in India has grown by about 700 percent in the last four decades, India’s present level of energy consumption, by world standards, remains very low. The current per capita commercial primary energy consumption in India is about 350 Kilograms of Oil Equivalents per year (kgeo/yr) which is well below that of world average of 1,690 kgeo/yr. By 2010 per capita energy consumption is expected to increase around 450 kgoe/yr. Compared to this, the energy consumption in China is 1,200 kgeo/yr, Japan is over 4,050 kgeo/yr, South Korea is 4,275 kgeo/yr, and the US is 7,850.
We have a long way to go. And nuclear power is the only way.

There are 15 nuclear power reactors in operation in India. Most of them are operating at 30 to 40% of their capacity for lack of fuel. In addition eight more nuclear power reactors are currently under construction, and another 8 mega plants on the drawing board. We need equipment, fuel and other related things urgently. The urgency the government is showing to clinch the deal with the US and NSG is commendable.

Contrary to misconceptions, Nuclear energy is a clean energy with no emissions except water vapor. Nuclear technology has vastly improved over the years and another Chernobyl is not a distant reality. The nuclear waste that is generated over the years can easily be stored, buried deep in the desert. When we can conduct actual nuclear bomb tests deep down in the desert, we can easily store a few hundred drums of nuclear waste in the desert.

This government, especially the far sighted Prime Minister deserves kudos and the opposition all the boos.

What Will Happen on 21/12/2012

2008-07-13T23:22:00.000-07:00

I watch History Channel frequently. Recently a series of programs were shown on Mayan civilization. Mayan long calendar and Mayan prophecies were discussed at length. I was intrigued by the calendar which ends on 21/12/2012. The program has several renowned scientists, astronomers, historians giving their opinions on the Mayan calendar. What is Mayan calendar and what is the significance of 21/12/2012. One of the Ancient civilizations, the native Americans called Mayans, who had developed a celestial calendar ( similar to Indian Panchangam) to calculate precisely the planetary movements for thousands of years ahead ends at a certain point of time. The calendar was decoded about 50 years back and when the end date was correlated to the Gregorian calendar it corresponded to December, 21st, 2012. This gave rise to speculation that the World will end on 21/12/2012. The fact that Astronomy agencies like NASA confirmed that the once in a 26,000 years celestial event of the Sun aligning with the center of our galaxy, the Milky Way will take place on 21/12/2012 at 11.11 am GMT further fuelled the speculation of doomsday. December 21st is also the day of Winter Solstice ( shortest day of the year) when the Sun crosses the sky at its lowest point all year. According to astronomers, the year 2012 also corresponds to the 11-year Sunspot cycle maximum. So the day is certainly special. We have the Earth’s North pole aligning with the Sun, and the Sun aligning with the center of the Galaxy after 26,500 years makes it certainly special.

The Mayans prophesized that our Sun, every 25,600 years synchronized with the enormous central galaxy. And from this central galaxy receives a beam of light which causes the Sun to shine more intensely producing what our scientists call 'solar flares' as well as changes in the Sun's magnetic field. Mayans called it the pulse of the Universe. This causes a displacement in the Earth’s rotation, and because of this displacement great catastrophes would be produced.

Doomsdayers believe that Mayans have predicted the end of the World. They base their belief on Mayan’s prophecy and the fact that earth’s pole reversal is already overdue by more than 300,000 years. They say that when Sun aligns with the center of the Milky Way, it receives intense cosmic energy causing sun storms so huge that the Earth which on that day has its North Pole aligned to the Sun, will be doused by the energy resulting in pole reversal, the magnetic North becoming the magnetic South. This sudden reversal, they say will bring cataclysm of events wiping out life on Earth. NASA agrees that Pole reversals do happen in cycles of 300,000 to 500,00 years and the last Pole reversal has happened 800,000 yeasr ago. However, NASA pooh-poohs the idea of sudden reversal.
The naysayers say that the end of Mayan calendar denotes the end of this age and the beginning of a new golden age, ( Kali Yug to Satya Yug) where humanity will experience a new dimension and all the misery in the World will end. They base their arguments that when the previous alignment has happened 26,000 years ago humanity was not lost. In fact it progressed rapidly from Stone Age to Bronze Age.

The net is peppered with contrasting literature on the subject with apocalyptic visions of doom, special-interest theological interpretations and scholarly dissection. However, everyone agrees that on that day something will happen

I am of the view that for humanity to be wiped out, we do not need a once in a 26,000 years celestial event. A software glitch in the orbiting military satellites that carry deadly biological weapons or a nuclear button pushed by a senile head of a tiny republic can wipe out life on Earth a hundred times any day.

The Loot of Water

2008-06-11T00:57:00.001-07:00

Water, the most essential element to sustain life and the largest natural resource that regenerates every year without human intervention is being plundered for profit. It is the fundamental right of every citizen and communities to have access to clean drinking water. But where is clean drinking water. Unfortunately, it is bottled up by giant corporations who profit by it enormously. As local and state governments increasingly absolve themselves of their primary responsibility of providing potable water to its citizens, the big corporations have stepped in. With a media blitzkrieg of tap water denouncements, the bottled water industry in India has been growing at a phenomenal rate of 40% year on year. The packaged water business is worth Rs 2,000 crore, with over 1,200 bottling plants and 100 brands of packaged water battling it over for a larger piece of the 5 billion liter lucrative business across the country.

Bottled water is a business built on the foundation of bad governance, inequity and blatant exploitation by overdrawing groundwater, and robbing local communities of their water resources and livelihoods. The worst part is in several cities, the water board itself supplies lakhs of liters of water to the bottling companies at throwaway prices of one rupee per hundred liters, which the company treats, bottles and sells at a price 1000 times than it has cost it. At the same time, water boards fail to supply drinking water even in meager quantities to the citizens on a daily basis. In several places, the bottling companies pay a nominal cess of Rs 5000 per year to the government for the use of ground water. High powered pumps are used to draw the ground water 24 hours, 365 days depleting the ground water and leaving the nearby farmers high and dry.

Calls from Citizen groups and NGOs to regulate the bottled water industry from plundering the natural water sources have gone unheeded. Instead, the State too joined the bandwagon of the Corporates. Take for instance the Indian Railways which transports millions of passengers every day. Instead of focusing on providing clean drinking water at every railway station, it has started its own brand of bottled water. India's enormous water resources seem to be for the taking, by the State and the Private Corporations.

Ironically, for the rich and the middle class, especially in cities, bottled home packs have become part of household grocery bills. Neither these sections nor even judiciary is aggrieved at this usurping of peoples' rights. This has given enormous scope for the bottled water industry to come out with new marketing strategies such as 20-litre jumbo home packs. As the most influential sections of society unquestioningly consumes bottled water, the pressure on the local administrations is eased and they further neglect to supply clean drinking water to the rest of the populace.

Providing safe drinking water is the responsibility of the State. That they have failed miserably in doing so is evident from the fact that over 1,600 Indians reportedly die every day because of waterborne diseases. Despite this macabre scenario, the Central and State Governments have literally washed their hands of the responsibility of providing clean drinking water to its citizens denying them their fundamental right.

Apart from the fundamental rights issue, there are compelling reasons for the State to regularize public water distribution systems. If calculations by the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute are any indication, it takes about 300,000 barrels of oil to manufacture the water bottles Indians use each year. If we add the substantial amounts of fuel used in transporting water and the cost of recycling, the environmental costs of bottling water are substantial.

If affluent Indians are gravitating towards bottled water for obvious reasons, it is baffling to see Americans consuming bottled water when even water in their toilets is as clean as bottled water. The country has by far one of the best public water supplies in the World, yet Americans have consumed last year 25 billion liters of bottled water valued at $ 15 billion. A report by the Washington-based advocacy group, National Resource Defense Council, says one-fourth of all bottled water is just bottled tap water and another two-thirds is ground water-- sometimes with simple additional treatments. Thanks to a campaign by Corporate Accountability International, the dark secret of the bottled water is out in the open. However, unlike in India, the local governments in the US have started campaigns to educate the public on the cleanliness of the tap water.

In the absence of an effective nationwide policy and norms for groundwater use, it appears that the bottled water industry is getting away with making huge profits out of a resource that rightfully belongs to all citizens. India should revisit its policy on allowing Corporations to blatantly exploit this natural resource and strengthen its water distribution systems. Otherwise, soon the Corporate Companies will have a stranglehold on this most essential item, the elixir of life, WATER.

The Heady Cocktail called IPL

2008-05-30T02:27:00.000-07:00

Sixes galore, Sexy sirens oozing oomph, legends licking their wounds, rookies ruling the roost, celebrities hogging the cameras, corporate honchos cheering or sneering their teams, last ball defeats, one run margin victories, celebration kisses, frustration slaps, the glitz and the glamour have all made the first Indian Premier League tournament a heady cocktail. And everybody’s head turned.
IPL is not just cricket. It is much more than that. It is multi-billion dollar business doused with showbiz glamour and publicity. It has seeped into everything and it is everywhere. Newspapers write reams about it, TV commercials eulogize each team with song and dance, T-shirts, caps, mascots, fireworks and what not. Everyone is gripped by the massive fever of it.
Is it good for cricket. A tough question to answer but it has done a whale of good for cricketers. With one shot and with just one tournament every player has become a millionaire. With hitherto unknown names like Rohit Sharma, Venugopal, Amit Mishra, Sangwan, have overnight become heroes.
As for cricket is concerned, the game has been evolving over the years. From only leisurely 5-day test matches to 60 overs one days to 50 overs day night matches to Twenty20. All forms of game survived and prospering without any threat from one form of game to another. And the composition of international cricketers into different teams in IPL too is not new. It has happened 3 decades back thanks to Kerry Packer. Frustrated by the refusal of the establishment to allow his TV stations to have a slice of the cricket pie, media magnate Kerry Packer surreptitiously signed dozens of the world's leading players. The ICC and national boards spluttered and tried to ban players, but in the end were forced to cave in to Packer, whose deep pockets and slick marketing methods left them looking like past age dinosaurs. The legacy of World Series Cricket is felt to this day and as a result of the two-season venture, cricket was changed irreversibly.
Lalit Modi’s brain child, the IPL too is making the national cricket boards of different countries splutter. Lured by the big money, players are putting enormous pressure on their respective boards to influence ICC to draw up international cricket schedule keeping in view the dates of IPL. That is the power of money.
What has the common cricket fan has in all this. For an average Indian who wants to enjoy his evening with as much low cost as possible, the IPL has come as a boon. It is double edged with live entertainment of cheer leaders, cameras zooming on to the glitterati combined with cricket. Cricket in fact is a side-kick here. If IPL is glitzy why not add more glitter and glamour to it?
Three Cheers to IPL.

One Man's Vision- Life to Many

2008-05-12T06:09:00.000-07:00

It was 3 am sometime last year. I was waiting for my cousin at the Begumpet airport. The ambulance of the EMRI with lights flashing came in. Two young medical attendants stepped out. As the curious crowd looked on, they pulled out a stretcher and walked a few yards. An old woman with ragged clothes and unkempt hair was lying on the floor semi-conscious. She had no possessions with her except for a stained German silver plate, obviously used for begging. The medical attendants carefully laid her on the stretcher and pushed the stretcher into the ambulance. With its siren blaring and lights flashing it sped away to the nearest government hospital. The full impact of it struck me after a few minutes. In this country, where medical facilities for the Poor are nominal, a dying beggar was given emergency medical treatment and shifted to a hospital. And at no cost.

It was 3 years ago. Senior Executives trooped out of the meeting with a look of incredulity etched on their faces. They were coming out of the Founder Chairman of Satyam Computers, Ramalinga Raju’s office room where he unveiled that day his vision of an Emergency Management Research Institute ( EMRI) and a toll free number to call in emergencies similar to 911 in the US. In response to the emergency call, ambulances with ultra modern life saving equipment and trained personnel will rush in. All this service at no cost and all funding from his pocket. Without exception, all the executives were skeptical. He would not budge. Like a bull in a China shop, he smashed away at all objections and with a passion bordering obsession, he followed up his vision into action. The result. Raju brothers have spent over 50 million dollars from their pockets and the nation now has a single toll free number 108 for all emergencies and Andhra Pradesh and Gujarat have over more than 600 ambulances equipped with the state of the art life saving devices and thousands of trained personnel in emergency medicine. The movement of the ambulances is tracked through GPRS from a central station. Anyone with just access to a phone can utilize these services without spending a single rupee. Till date over 30,000 lives have been saved. Other states are now queuing up to enter into MoUs with EMRI to manage the emergencies. Latest is the Indian Government which is entering into an MoU with EMRI for a nation-wide emergency management.

In all these years, the governments in spite of having massive infrastructure and monies at their disposal could not even conceive let alone implement such an initiative. Now in a short span of less than 3 years, Raju has proved that a world class system is possible even in India that is accessible to all people at all times at no cost.

Raju brothers might have been poorer by a few hundred crore rupees, but they have earned the gratitude of a billion people. One man’s vision now saves lives of thousands. Raju deserves the Noble Peace Prize.

Airport is International but Standards are Indian

2008-05-05T21:27:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back the New Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad became operational. Lot of hype was created about the excellent infrastructure in the airport and the international standards it adopted. I happened to pass through the airport last weekend and I was shocked at the poor standards.
The airport has a three lane road leading to the single entrance gate. The passengers disembarking from vehicles take at least a minute to unload their luggage and lug it on to trolleys. Since there is only one entrance gate, vehicles get piled up one after the other in no time on all the three lanes. Since at the entrance security person must look at the tickets before allowing passengers entry, invariably a queue is formed. I have never heard let alone watch a queue to enter into an airport until this time. All this because of the single entrance gate. Only B-grade airports in small town have single entrance gates.
As you enter the airport, the high ceiling with glittering steel girders and dazzling lights greet you. You are impressed. You look down to the floor and you are greeted by a dull coloured one sq.foot granite slabs. Because of such small sized pieces the spaciousness of the lobbies does not get reflected. The chairs are comfortable. The washrooms are cramped. You will have to literally rub shoulders with your neighbor peeing along with you and if you venture a sideways glance you will be shocked to see the other man’s dick.
Aerobridges are in use. But when I returned the next day, the plane was not connected to the aerobridge. I could see passengers from several other aircraft being ferried by buses. As bus after bus discharged its cargo of passengers near the single escalator, again a queue is formed. You come out of the airport again through a single exit gate. There is only a three-lane road adjoining the kerb, which is hardly 100 meters long. The lane adjoining the kerb is occupied by the radio cabs, shuttle buses and only four car slots are left for the passengers. One lane is occupied by VIP cars with red bulbs on the roof. Since only four car slots are available for passengers, by the time they put the luggage in the boot the only lane available for traffic flow gets blocked. Passengers have to wait for at least 10 minutes for their cars to come, as drivers have to walk a long way to the parking and drive to the exit gate at a crawling speed . As passengers pour out from the exit gate, the kerb is jammed with people and trolleys. Chaos reigns supreme.
This is the most passenger unfriendly airport I have ever passed through.
If I rate Changi airport at 4.5 on a scale of 1 to 5 on passenger friendly amenities, I will hesitate even to rate this airport at 2.5.

The Mystical Dollar And The Number 13

2008-05-02T00:51:00.000-07:00

Of all the currencies I have held in my hands, the US one dollar bill is the most intriguing. There are more mystic symbols on the one dollar bill than on the walls of Greek temples. Even dollar symbol $ is intriguing. Remember not long back we used to draw two vertical lines on the alphabet S to denote dollar. It is believed that the dollar symbol is nothing but the abbreviation of the United States, the alphabets U & S super imposed on one another. The bottom of the 'U' disappears into the bottom curve of the 'S', leaving two vertical lines. Now only one line is drawn.

Coming back to the symbols on one dollar bill, I have always wondered what the symbols meant until recently when the meaning of the mystic symbols was revealed by Discovery Channel in a program “ uncovering the past”. The dollar bill was designed more than 200 years back. On one side of the bill, the portrait of George Washington is displayed in the center of the bill. To the left of George Washington is the Federal Reserve District Seal. The name of the Federal Reserve Bank that issued the note encircles a capital letter, (A-L), identifying it among the twelve Federal Reserve Banks. The sequential number of the bank, (1: A, 2: B, etc), is also displayed in the four corners of the open space on the bill. To the right of George Washington is the Treasury Department Seal. The balancing scales represent justice. The chevron with 13 stars represents the original 13 colonies. The key below the chevron represents authority and trust.

The Reverse:-

The reverse of the one dollar bill has an ornate design which incorporates the Seal of the United States. To the left is an unfinished pyramid with 13 steps. Pyramid is associated with Strength and Durability."The unfinished pyramid symbolizes a country which is strong and will last for ages but is in building stage. The separated cap of the pyramid, portrays the all-seeing eye, an ancient symbol for divinity. . The Latin phrase Annuit Cœptis, 13 alphabets, is located above the pyramid. It literally means "he/it favors the things having been begun." Another Latin phrase “Novus Ordo Seclorum” is shown on a ribbon below the pyramid and it roughly means "a new order of the ages". Written at the base of the pyramid in Roman Numerals is MDCCLXXVI or 1776, the year the United States Declaration of Independence was signed.

The eye above the pyramid is popular among conspiracy theorists, and alleged to have connections with the Free Mason cult. Several of the initial dollar bill designers including Thomas Jefferson was believed to be Free Masons. To the right is the Seal of the Unites States portraying its national bird, the Bald Eagle. In front of the eagle is an unsupported shield which symbolizes the fledgling country's ability to stand on its own. . Above the eagle's head is a glory with 13 stars, representing the original 13 colonies. Clutched in the eagle's beak is a ribbon with 13 alphabets which reads "E PLURIBUS UNUM" (From many, one) indicating a unified nation. It also holds an olive branch in one talon and arrows in another and the head always pointing to the olive branch symbolizing the inclination for peace but the readiness to fight.

Of all the countries superstitious about number 13, the US takes first place. We do not find 13th floor, room no 13 anywhere, yet look at the repeated appearance of 13 number on the dollar bill.

13 stars above the eagle
13 steps on the Pyramid
13 letters in ANNUIT COEPTIS
13 letters in E PLURIBUS UNUM
13 vertical bars on the shield
13 horizontal stripes at the top of the shield
13 leaves on the olive branch
13 berries on the olive branch
13 arrows

In several cultures the number 13 is powerful and represents the beginning. May be the bill designers added all the mystic symbols on the dollar bill to make the currency a formidable one.

Lesson From Nepal

2008-04-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

A stunned world blinked. The comprehensive victory in the recent polls in Nepal by the ultra radical Maoists has shaken democratic countries, especially India. Much has been said and written on the implications of this Maoist win to India but very few have tried to analyze why Nepalese preferred the Maoists over the mainstream political parties. Nepal being a land locked country depends on India for all commodities. And like India, Nepal has more than two-thirds of its population earning less than a dollar or two a day. When prices of grain and all other food items spiraled in India in the last two years, its affects were felt by the Nepalese. And so they chose the ultra left wing which promises to the population at least two meals a day. What is the lesson India needs to learn. That the vast majority of population on the brink of malnourishment and hunger will choose extreme radical political players. Witness the huge response the Communists got when they called upon the Poor to loot food godowns in Andhra Pradesh. When hunger gnaws in the belly and when parents watch their children eat only a morsel of food at each meal, rationality is replaced by blind hatred at society.

The rhetoric of the Harvard/Cambridge educated trio- the PM, FM and PC Vice Chairman- that globally food prices are on the rise and they are helpless in containing the prices might make an interesting reading for the Financial Rich and the Intellectual Rich savoring the newspaper along with their breakfast but will not cut any ice with the 800 million people whose previous night’s dinner consists only half of what they used to eat earlier. That is if they had dinner at all. Just a comparison of the prices of the 6 essential items two years back and now starkly gives the picture of the misery two-thirds of our population is facing.

Price of a KG Rice has risen from Rs 10 to 18, Dal from 20 to 45, cooking oil from 35 to 75, milk from 12 to 21, common vegetables from 5-7 to 15-18 range and cheap liquor from 25 to 55 rupees.

And what have gone down.

Prices of luxury cars, mobile phones, call charges, air conditioners, plasma tv sets, air fares, branded apparel, luxury watches, Imported liquor etc have gone down considerably as year after year the government reduces taxes on such items. To be “ fair” to the Poor, the government reduces for them too. Allocations in budget as a percentage are reduced year after year on education, public health and public distribution system.

The propagandists of "trickledown effect theory" should at least once try waiting for a few drops of water with their mouths open at the elbow of the person drinking water with cupped hands from a gushing tap. They will then understand better what it means to wait for the trickledown effect.

Unless these anomalies are corrected, India will be taking rapid strides towards Anarchy.

Shantaram- A Book Review

2008-04-01T04:09:00.001-07:00

Books have a profound affect on me. I mull over each of them for a long time after I finish reading savoring the way a story is told or at some things that are said. And I continuously read one after the other picking books intrigued by a review or the content in the blurb. Most of the books gifted to me are about dogs. So when this gift from a colleague reached me, I unwrapped the gift wrapper and looked at the bulky book with trepidation. The title Shantaram, very Indian in nature, also did not match with the Australian author’s name, Gregory David Roberts. The blurb was interesting talking about an escaped convict from Australia who had settled in Mumbai and among several other things he had done, being part of Mumbai mafia was one. I kind of guessed the story might be about the adventures of the author. But as I read this opening paragraph,

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life.”

I reeled under the impact of this profound statement. I plunged into the book. The book is autobiographical and unfolds the remarkable story of an Australian fugitive finding a new life in Mumbai. Gregory David Roberts , the author, was convicted in Australia for armed robberies that he had participated in order to feed his Heroin addiction. He breaks out of the highest security prison in Australia and escapes to India on a fake New Zealand Passport. He lands in Mumbai, becomes associated with local people and makes lot of friends. He goes with the name Lindsay. He meets a local tourist guide Prabakar, who finds him a place to live in a slum away from the eyes of the law. The slum people refer him as Linbaba. This slum is to be his home for the next few years where he runs a makeshift first-aid center in the slum. He also lives in Prabhakar’s village for six months and is rechristened as Shantaram by Prabhakar’s mother. Eventually, he engages in criminal activities like smuggling and counterfeiting, and even starts gun-running to Afghanistan. Going through a tough life is one thing, but putting it down as a book to which readers can relate to is another matter. The author’s writing career before his Heroin days in Australia comes to help. The book is also unique because it is one of the rare real stories in which a foreigner has taken a deep plunge into the deepest of Indian society’s complexities and also done a successful job of understanding the underlying unifying theme. Of course he admires Indians for what they are but never hesitates a moment before showing things that are obviously wrong.
Interspersed amid the numerous characters like Rukhmabai, Prabakar, Karla, Didier and Kader are the sweat and grime, dirt and squalor, disease and fire and extreme poverty - all narrated with genuine affection, passion and generosity. This love and generosity towards the characters and circumstances is what sets Robert’s work apart. What could have been a mere narrative of poor people’s lives is transformed into an extraordinary story.
The other aspect of this book is the details the readers get about the systems that operate in most of the world. The police, currency, gold, drugs, prostitution etc. At no point in the book they overwhelm the main story though. And the best of all are the one-liners from several characters in the book, especially from Karla and Didier, that leave you pondering over them for a long time.
Shantaram is not just a book about crime and criminals or about the slum life. It is a spiritual journey into life itself.

Headline Howlers

2008-03-02T19:38:00.000-08:00

Of all the varied professions I have been in, I find the print media job, especially editing, the most stressed out. Some days, news just pours in moments before the page sign offs and the editorial staff have to race against time. During the thick of the things, working under enormous pressure and constraints of font type and size, column lengths, single lines which limit the number of alphabets, the headlines given some times unwittingly create double meanings, different meanings and outright embarrassing howlers. And they pass through at least two levels of validation before they get printed. I too was guilty of such howlers during my stint. Here are a few that I remember to have caused me to smile and sometimes split with laughter.
A recent one on Delhi Police coming down heavily on jaywalkers:-

Police Begin Campaign To Run Down Jaywalkers

A not so recent one on Bush and Iraq

Bush Wins Vote On Iraq, But More Lies Ahead

Headline for a story on the Golf Champion, Tiger Woods using his own golf balls during practice sessions.

Tiger Woods Plays With His Own Balls, Says Nike

Headline for a news item on scraping the bottom of a ship, Queen Mary

Queen Mary Gets Her Bottom Scraped

After packs of dogs have created havoc by attacking students of a college in Hyderabad recently, one newspaper headline said

Squad Helps Dog Bite Victims

Some more gems from the memory lane

Clinton Lies on Lewinsky

Iraq Head Seeks More Arms

Panda Mating Fails - Vet Takes Over

Cold Wave Linked To Rising Temperatures

Two Ships Collide - One Dies

Miners Refuse To Work After Death

Eye Drops Off Shelf

New Vaccine May Contain Rabies

March Planned In May

Crash Courses For Pilots

Man Found Dead In Graveyard

Dead Man Returns

Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge

When some two decades back, after a gap of several years the endangered bird, The Great Indian Bustard was sighted, one newspaper headline screamed

The Great Indian Bastard Sighted

There are some great headlines too. There was this village in Kerala where the villagers unanimously resolved not go to movie theatres. The headline was

Hicks Nix Pix

There are some like this one passed on to me as legendary by a distinguished senior editor, now no more. In fact this gentleman had taunted me when I was a sub (cub) editor to give a catchy headline to the following one line story:-
“A lunatic has sex with a nurse and escapes from the asylum.”

I tried several but none could satisfy him. The catchy one, he said was

Nut Screws, Bolts.

It is a different matter though that one day, actually night, the same gentleman has put a file photograph of late Sanjay Gandhi on the front page instead of Rajiv Gandhi who was on a visit to the state. That too overruling the persistent objections of a junior on the same page duty. I can never forget the face of our executive editor and the chief editor the next morning.

Print Media can be not only informative but also entertaining at times.

Funny English

2008-02-27T22:03:00.000-08:00

When I was teaching English in various colleges during the most part of 90s, my introductory lecture for the fresh batch of students always was on the importance of learning correct English as well as the craziness of the language. As anecdotes on the pitfalls of incorrect English, I used to regale the students with examples of grammatically wrong and incorrect spellings on sign boards. The opening example of how even missing an apostrophe could be disastrous used to be “ A bread shop owner by name Anu had a sign on his shop--- Anus bakery- The best loafers in town.” My students never missed the apostrophe again and were always careful with verbs. Child beer for Rs 50 only, Trespassers will be Persecuted, Pubic Phone- call charge Rs1/-, are some of the other examples I used to repeat year after year.

I also used to entertain the students with examples of how crazy the language is in spellings and pronunciations. Over the years, I compiled several hundreds of such examples. Here are a few of them to tickle your funny bone.

• The rule is that the rule doesn't always rule.

• There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

• When the stars are out, they are visible, but
When the lights are out, they are invisible.

• If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught?

• Come on, let's polish the Polish furniture.

• The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

• Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

• How can 'A Slim Chance' and 'A Fat Chance' be the same?

• Why are 'A Wise man' and 'A Wise guy' opposites?

• The bandage was wound around the wound.

• She did not object to the object.

• The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

• Boxing rings are square.

• A guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor it is a pig.

• The traveler decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

• The farm was used to produce produce.

• If I speak of a foot and you show me your feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

• Although the masculine pronouns are he, his and him, we must be grateful that the feminine pronouns after 'She' don't become 'Shis' and 'Shim'.

• How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

• I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

• When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

• You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language
in which your house can burn up as it burns down,
in which you fill in a form by filling it out
and in which an alarm goes off by going on.

• No sooner had my eye fallen upon the tear in the painting, then this eye of mine began to shed many a tear.

• It's not ridiculous, but entirely sensible to ship by truck and send cargo by ship.

Some other day, I will share funny Newspaper headlines.

Rang De Basanti- Film review

2008-02-25T03:35:00.000-08:00

My two- week rest at home post hospitalization did some wonders to me. Though I have operated from home attending office work through Blackberry and Internet, it still gave me ample time to take care of the two German Shepherd pups that have just come to my home a week back and to watch movies in my home theatre. A friend of mine who dropped in left two dozen DVDs with me. I have watched a dozen, most of them the usual love triangles, separations and coming together at the end. But for one movie, Rang De Basanti. What a movie it is and how wonderfully it is told. Indian cinema has sure come of age.

Director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra brilliantly merges three plots in the movie. The first is about a group of friends from completely different backgrounds , their bonding and the carefree lifestyle they lead. This is the generation X. The second plot is about the past, when freedom fighters sacrificed their lives during the struggle for Independence.. The third plot is the parallel drawn between Indians ruled by the British and Indians ruled by corrupt politicians today. The message is subtle at first , but echoes piercingly before it reaches its finale. The parallel is drawn so brilliantly that it neatly fits into the story.

The film opens with Sue McKinley (English actress Alice Patten) quits her cushy job in London and comes to India to film a documentary based on the lives of freedom fighters- Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Raj Guru, Azad and others. Her Indian contact, Sonia (Soha Ali Khan), introduces her to her own group of friends. They are DJ (Aamir Khan), who, despite having completed his studies five years earlier, still hangs out on campus, Karan (Siddharth), the son of a corrupt industrialist,(Anupam Kher), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), who battles with his family which opposes his friendship with Hindus, and Sukhi (Sharman Joshi), a harmless half-wit who has everyone in stitches with his comical behaviour. Sue recognises something in the group that suggests they would make ideal participants in her documentary. Between them, four of the six roles are covered. For the fifth, Sue chooses a radical Hindu, Laxman (Atul Kulkarni), whose inclusion is not without tension, and Sonia takes the role of the only female revolutionary, Durga Vohra.

Initially the friends are indifferent to the subject, but along the way they are forced to confront their own attitudes, bringing about a remarkable metamorphosis. And when their common friend dies in MiG crash they are shattered. But more shattering was to come when the Defense Minister blames the pilot and defends the spare part suppliers. The friends plot and kill the defense minister. They then enter a radio station and confess their crime on radio and the reasons for doing it. The commandoes storm the building and kill all of them.

Without being in any way preachy or using worn out cliché dialogues, the director Raykesh Mehra turns the spotlight on the youth and exhorts it. Eventually, when we come out of the theatre , one message lingers. It is encapsulated in a line used by one of the characters in a moment of quiet contemplation and repeated in the climax. No country is perfect. It needs to be made perfect. The profound relevance of that line applies not only to India but to most of the world today. Be sure not to miss Rang De Basanti. It is a classic film without the pretensions of an art film.

Wounds can be healthy too !!

2008-02-16T05:29:00.000-08:00

“Wound kaffee Achcha hai”, remarked the assistant to the doctor as he was dressing the fist-size cavity created by surgical removal of an abscess a few days ago from my body. Even in that moment of excruciating pain, I could not burst out laughing at the way each one of us looks at things from a different perspective depending on which side of the line we are. The assistant was puzzled and elaborated this time in English, “ I mean it is a healthy wound”. Still seeing the remnant of laughter etched on my pain-contorted face, he added “ I mean it is not infected. But you have to be careful.”

I could not agree more with the doctor’s assistant, not so much about the post-operative care procedures but more so on being careful in avoiding getting admitted into a corporate hospital. The crass commercialization and complete lack of robust processes in patient care are frightening.

It all began a week back. The young, sweet and confident looking doctor had one look at my condition and recommended immediate surgery to remove the abscess. I agreed. Then he leaned back and with doleful eyes oozing pity, asked me if I had insurance. The look implied that if I didn’t have a policy, I would for sure lose my shirt. Little did I realize how true it was, until the insurance section chief of the hospital gave me a rough estimate of the total cost for the minor surgery and a 2-day stay. The cost was equivalent to 3-month take home pay of my wife after 18 years of service in a bank or 2 years’ income for a medium land holding farmer back in my village. Startled, I expressed my concern at the cost. “ But you will get reimbursement”, was the answer I got. I paid the money and waited for an hour-and-a-half for the allocation of a room. Obviously, some other patient must have been discharged to accommodate me.

Two hours later, I was wheeled out of the room on a stretcher and I assumed it was to the Operation Room. Not so quite. I was parked outside the operation room still on the stretcher as the room was getting cleaned. I learnt later that the hospital has multiple operating rooms. I could see two others waiting in the same fashion but they were moved to Post-Operative recovery room after 20 minutes or so after two patients were moved from the recovery room to their respective beds. I was amused. The conveyor belt manufacturing process was being implemented for surgeries in such a robust way that Henry Ford would have gaped in wonderment. Finally, I was wheeled into the operating room.

The anaesthetician looked too young for me to allow him to inject anaesthetics into my spine without getting a second opinion. So I called one of my friends who is an anaesthetician himself. He assured me that my paralyzed lower half of the body will come back to normal after 3 hours. The surgery having completed, I was moved into the recovery room without any waiting period. My index finger was clipped to a machine to monitor the pulse rate and other essential metrics. There were about 4 others in the room. What do I do with 3 hours with an active mind and a paralyzed body. I began toying with the index finger and realized that if I wag it vigorously the monitor goes into a tizzy with its keek, keek , keek beep. The nurse rushed around the room the first time and zeroed in on me by the second time. When I repeated the prank the third time, she coolly walked to my bed side and in the guise of adjusting the saline, dropped the bottle on my crotch, gave a half apologetic smile and walked away. That has put to rest all my pranks.

I was wheeled into my room after 3 hours. I was discharged 2 days later. During the 2-day stay, I had to periodically remind the nurses of the medicines I need to take. If somewhere, these were recorded, at least several of the nurses were not aware. And everything is to be back to square one when the nurses change duty. It is apparent that the robust processes of conveyor belt model are being followed only for surgeries and not for post-operative care.

What struck me was the fact that less than two hundred million people have medical insurance in India. And all these corporate hospitals cater majorly to these insured people and prosper on insurance money payouts. Anyone without an insurance ever dares to enter these portals, be assured that the last drop of the financial juices will be slurped.

The FountainHead - Book review

2008-02-04T23:55:00.000-08:00

If a question is ever posed to me on whether any author has so heavily influenced me as to drastically alter my life’s philosophy, I will answer, “ not one but two”. When I was in the budding twenties, I chanced upon The FountainHead by Ayn Rand in my university library. The book jolted me out of my several strong convictions and had turned me into a more logical, objective and individualistic person. I immersed myself immediately into devouring Ayn Rand’s books and once I read Atlas Shrugged my outlook was sealed. The other influential author was Richard Bach, introduced to me by one of my colleagues Prabhs, when I was in blossoming twenties. Bach made me turn more romantic and carefree about life. While the fictional Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged was my first love, the real Leslie Parrish, actress in 50’s to 60’s and soul mate of Bach immortalised through his novels, was my second and still going strong. Though both Bach and Leslie have broken my heart and a million others by calling it quits in 1999 after being soul mates for more than 20 years.

While I have re-read several books of Rand over the years, The FountainHead was one exception. The reason being that somewhere during the late 80’s, the book lost the first few pages. That has put me off from the book as I always read a book starting from the author’s foreword. I was also reluctant to buy the book again hoping that I will be able to retrieve the lost pages. Two-and-a-half decades later, when I realised Bach’s magic was not working in being able to retrieve the lost pages, I bought a freshly printed book a week back.

It is amazing that The FountainHead was published in 1943, weaving the main characters around the philosophy of objectivism, which even now several consider as a radical philosophy. The novel is about how individualism is a corner stone of human life and how the creator’s ego has to be taken care of. Howard Roark, an architect and the protagonist of objectivism is a creator par excellence. The heroine Dominique is his mirror ego. Roark lives his life on his own terms. Completely unpretentious by nature, he neither humbles nor gratifies himself. His work speaks for him. He is neither driven by compliments nor is flattered by a compliment. However, the world around him misinterprets the ego of this creator as arrogance. The world is sometimes too happy to celebrate the fall of a hero, who stands for what he believes. Even in the most extreme hardships, Roark doesn’t compromise on what he believes is right. This is the battle we all face every day of our lives and most of us all too soon cave in and hold on to self made justifications.

The main antagonists of objectivism are Ellsworth Toohey and Peter Keating. Ellsworth is the man who had identified the means to control and gain power by manipulating men. He uses the pretension of altruism to form a community of the weak minded second raters. He requires more and more power by breaking men. He instinctively senses and quashes the force of individuality in men. Individuality is something that he considers a threat to the society, a dark force that he detests. It is this force that he sees in large quantity being personified in the form of Howard Roark. Ellsworth personifies the society and Peter Keating the immoral second rater.

Peter Keating is that smart boy who is admired for being successful right from childhood. But he is never true to anybody, including himself. He needs somebody to help him make decisions as he is always unsure about what he wants. His insecurity leads him to committing sins, small ones at first, and as he moves on the ladder of success, he ruthlessly tramples on many people to reach his objective.

In the end Howard Roark triumphs.

The novel usually jolts people who feel the idea or philosophy behind the book, Objectivism, selfish. But as one thinks deeply and rationally it makes perfect sense. When we look at history, it is those people who defied authority, society and conventional thinking and who stood by their ideals and what they believed is right even at the prospect of death, it is those people who have charted the progress of humanity to a better future. Charles Darwin, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Bill Gates, Gorbachev, are some of the examples who stood fast in what they believed and caused a revolution in the progress of humanity. While every person cannot become a Gandhi or Gates, if the philosophy of objectivism is embraced by all, it can make the world and the workplace a better place.

Being a second rater or follower is not a sin. Lack of originality is also not a sin. But lack of originality with lack of integrity and contempt for the creator is an unpardonable sin.

This novel can change your life—for the good, as it has changed mine.

Gandhi - Film Review

2008-01-29T03:58:00.000-08:00

I was channel surfing on the Republic Day and noticed some DD channel telecasting the movie Gandhi. I eagerly selected the channel but alas, it was the Hindi dubbing version. I was disappointed as my proficiency in the language is limited to comprehending Amitabh Bachan’s dialogues in Zanjeer. My disappointment has not come from not being able to watch the movie. I have watched it more than a dozen times. The movie is such a top of the charts one, not only in production excellence but also in brilliantly portraying one of the greatest leaders this World has ever seen, that you do not want to miss any opportunity to watch it again and again. So I have settled for the DVD and my home theatre, watching the movie yet again. Even on the Nth time, the movie does not fail to move me emotionally and mesmerize me for its production brilliance.

The movie is a biography of Gandhi, compressing half-a-century into a three hour powerful, dramatic and quite authentic epic. In his screen debut, Ben Kingsley is incredible as Gandhi. He actually resembles Gandhi with make-up and he portrays the character with great sensitivity. The film essentially highlights Gandhi's work in South Africa in the early part of the 20th Century in which he effectively frustrated and thwarted the British in many of their discriminatory policies of governance, and then his long non-violent crusade for independence in India.

There are several scenes that are brilliantly filmed. The Dandi march is one of them. The amazement of the British at Gandhi’s plans to march to Dandi to make mere salt and the way the march infuses a fervour among people are excellently filmed. The Jallianwala bagh massacre is another. General Dyer’s casual remorseless remarks to the inquiry committee infuriate every Indian and portray the ruthlessness of the British in brutally suppressing even peaceful demonstrations. The episode of Gandhi in Hunger Strike ( Satyagraha) to bring some sanity to the frenzied mobs killing each others on religious basis during the post Independence riots in Calcutta and the city coming to senses after a week brings tears to our eyes. The greatness of the man in influencing millions of blood-thirsty frenzied people just by his hunger strike comes out starkly.

The director Richard Attenborough has not deviated from history to make any character lively and yet he has made the film into one of the most acclaimed films. It will be hard for anyone to surpass Kingsley's performance as the incarnation of a famous person. He deservedly won an Oscar for his performance as did the picture as best picture.

On this day January 30th , when this greatest man was assassinated by a religious fanatic let us all recommit ourselves to nurturing religious harmony and respect to diversity in our children.

Cousins' Cruise

2008-01-08T03:03:00.000-08:00

The cousins get-together for the boat cruise went off well. On December 30th noon, a 35 seater bus started in Dakaram with 10 of us, including Mallakka boarding there. Since Monica had to be in school till the previous evening, she and Kumari came in by flight from Hyd on 30th morning and boarded the bus in Eluru along with Sailu’s family and Pedda Attamma. Sankara Rao mamayya could not join as he has unavoidable work at the Farm. However, he came up to the bus to see us off. In Gudivada, Naveen and family along with Amarendra mamayya, Leela attamma, Raja babai and Savitri boarded. Madhavi could not join as she had some pooja at home on that day. Padma did not join as she was shifting house. Devi took a train to Rajahmundry and Haritha and her sons came from Kakinada. Both of them with their children joined us at the hotel.

We reached the hotel, River Bay in Rajahmundry by evening but missed the Sun set by a whisker. The ambience of the hotel as well as rooms was excellent. We all had dinner at the hotel. The dinner was a fiasco with the waiters milling around and not able to serve properly, with different orders flying thick and fast.

We started off early morn to Patti Seema , 30 kms from Rajahmundry which is the boarding point for boats to Paapi Kondalu. The two-deck boat was excellent. We started off at 8.30 am. Breakfast was served in the boat. Several games were played out by children and every one of them won loads of gifts. There were fun games for elders too. A game for all – finding the one missing number among the jumbled numbers from 1 to 99 was won by - hold your breath- not by any elders but by Manisha in flat 3 minutes. Sunny was adjudged King of the day for winning maximum prizes. The games were organized by Kumari and Devi. After sumptuous lunch in the boat we started back. At 5 pm we got into the bus and got dropped off at our respective places.

It was a memorable day.

Rumble on Ramayana

2007-12-19T00:11:00.000-08:00

I grew up on Ramayana and Mahabharatha in my childhood, the illustrated versions though. As I matured into an immature fierce leftist, I devoured the book Ramayana Visha Vruksham (Ramayana- The Poisonous Tree ) by another immature leftist writer, Ranganayakamma. Though I loved the book at that point of time and used to quote profusely from the book to prove Rama did not exist, a decade later ( matured into an immature Capitalist sympathizer) when I re-read the book, I realized it was a complete trash. The adage, “ If you cannot dazzle them with brilliance, confuse them with bull shit” suits best for this book. The point I wanted to make is two or three decades back a writer could trash Ramayana and Rama and still not get beaten up or shot at. We did not have then the saffron brigade demolishing mosques and lynching communities or green berets planting RDX in temples and public places. So it was very amusing to me following the recent high drama on the Rama Sethu ( Adam’s bridge ), where every politician had a ready sound bite.

This piece is just an attempt at humour. Malice to None.

A film buff like me who has dreams of making a film one day but doesn’t have money applies to National Film Development Corporation for finance to produce Ramayana. The NFDC did not want to take a call on its own scared of the controversy that has recently blown across the country. So NFDC formed a committee with all government departments to go through the script and comment. Here are the comments from each of the departments.

The National Commission for Women:- We strongly object to the portion of the script where Dasaratha is shown as bygamous having more than one wife. That portion needs to be deleted.

The Ministry of Child Welfare and Family Planning:- The script shows Dasaratha having four children. This negates all the progress we have made in convincing people to have not more than two children. The script needs to be amended accordingly.

The Ministry of Labour:- War being a hazardous industry, and Viswamithra has used both Rama and Laxmana in war with Demons while both of them are still minors , this depiction will be construed as a case of child labour. Also there is no record of being paid any compensation. This may also be deemed to be violatory of the provisions of The Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986 and Minimum Wages Act, 1948. Such references in the script may be removed.

The Ministry of Women Welfare:- Sitha appears to be a minor at the time of marriage. This depiction can be construed as violation of Child Marriage Act. Such reference should be removed from the script.

Home Ministry:- The entire episode of Ravana and Maricha plotting and executing the abduction of Sitha is a punishable crime. Maricha should be booked for abetting abduction and Ravana booked for abduction. The script needs to be suitably amended.

The Ministry of Animal Welfare:- The episode of building Rama Sethu by Monkeys and making them participate in the war is depicting Violation of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. Hence this needs to be deleted.

The Minitsry of Women Welfare:- The depiction of Sitha being asked to enter the fire pit to prove her purity falls under the purview of IPC 498 A, which is enacted to prevent husbands mistreating the wives. This is a non- bailable offense. This portion should be deleted.

In view of the above recommendations from various ministries, the NFDC finds itself with no script at all. Hence, NFDC informs the applicant, it is not in a position to finance the film.

Genocide in India

2007-12-18T02:54:00.000-08:00

It was 1991. I held gingerly the bundle of joy, my little daughter born less than an hour ago. The doctor congratulated me on becoming a father and added I was lucky for having a girl child because by the time she grows up some 25 years later, there will be dearth of women due to the skewed sex ratio and I might even get dowry in reverse. I laughed out aloud.
Just 16 years later, it is no more a laughing matter. The belief that women will attain a better status because of their scarcity has been proved a myth. Far from the shortage of women increasing their worth and standing in society, as people like me and the good doctor have imagined, the result is just the opposite. Women are now being trafficked in increasing numbers to some Indian states like Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh from Southern states.. Some are sold into marriage. Others are forced to engage in polyandry – becoming wife to more than one man, often brothers. Those that fail to produce sons are often abandoned, sometimes killed. This further perpetuates the cycle of prejudice and injustice, ensuring many women themselves prefer to give birth to a son to ensure no child of theirs suffers a similar fate.
Unicef recently concluded that the alarming decline in the childsex-ratio in India is likely to result in more girls being married at a younger age, more girls dropping out of education, increased mortality as a result of early child-bearing and an associated increase in acts of violence against girls and women such as rape,abduction, trafficking and forced polyandry.
Although sex-selection tests have been illegal in India since 1994, unwanted female babies are now being aborted on such a staggering scale that it is estimated India has lost 6 to 10 million girls in the past 20 years.. While abortions have long been legal in India, choosing to terminate pregnancy because of the child’s sex is not. One recent Unicef report estimated that currently 7,000 fewer girls are born in India every day because of sex-selective abortion amounting to more than 2 million “missing girls” a year.”
Female foeticide is the result of the deadly alliance between the traditional preference for sons and the modern medical technology, the increasing greed of doctors, the rising demand for dowry that makes daughters financial burdens and the ineffectiveness of PNDT Act in fighting these problems. Female infanticides in most places have been replaced by female foeticide.
Dr Puneet Bedi, a respected obstetrician specialising in foetal medicine and advisor to the Indian government says,“Just as throughout history euphemisms have been used to mask mass killings, terms like ‘female foeticide’, ‘son preference’ and ‘sex selection’ are now being used to cover up what amount to illegal contract killings on a massive scale, with the contracts being between parents and doctors somehow justified as a form of consumer choice,”
This is Genocide against women and this must be urgently arrested. The government has to focus on this by encouraging birth of girl children. A hundred thousand rupees in fixed deposit for 21 years in the name of every girl child born for the next five years, free school education with high scholarship amounts for college education, shoot the doctor and the father for any violation of Pre-Natal Determination Test Act can to a large extent arrest this disturbing trend.
We are nearing a dangerous phase where testosterone-charged males will be running amok.

Papillon- Book Review

2007-12-02T19:46:00.000-08:00

I read some books again and again. Not immediately though. Re-reading is done once every few years. I am always surprised to find some new insight even when I am reading it for the 4th or 5th time. Must be because as you age you mature like wine and things that you would skip with out a thought five or ten years back would hold you by neck and shake you now. Or it could be that I am a slow learner.

So when I read Papillon , ( someone who claims to have known French told me that it is pronounced with both LL s and N silent) may be 5th or 6th time after I bought the book some time after the movie with the same name was released late 70s, the extra-ordinary character of Papillon gets revealed more and more. The strong will to survive at any cost and break free from the inhuman French penal system, the goodness of the person not to succumb to the wild pleasures and passions of convicts in prisons, always standing for his friends and helping them even in life threatening situations, perseverance, endurance and never never even for a moment neglecting his goal- the Break. The character was portrayed brilliantly in the film by Stev Mcqeen as Papillion and Dustin Hoffman as his friend Dega.

This book hits the reader real hard. Right from the opening line ""It was a knock out blow— a punch so overwhelming that I didn't get back on my feet for fourteen years...".Papillon is a real life account of the author Henri Charriere ( in the picture here) who was wrongly sentenced for a crime he didn't commit, when he was 25. The book is an account of the years he has spent in French Guiana and the attempts to escape. In one attempt he sails a small boat along with his two friends more than a 1000 miles and reaches Trinidad and Columbia. As fate would have it, he is handed back to French authorities who puts him back in French Guiana, this time in a solitary confinement . His story describes the nine escape attempts he made from jail, finally securing his freedom in Venezuela. The suffering and anguish that he endures during his 13 years in captivity leaves the reader breathless and in awe of the courage this man possessed. You finish reading Papillon and you put the book down feeling that anything is possible.

Dirty Dow

2007-11-20T01:07:00.000-08:00

“ Bhopal isn’t only about charred lungs, poisoned kidneys and deformed foetuses. It’s also about Corporate crime, multinational skullduggery, injustice, dirty deals, medical malpractice, corruption, callousness and contempt for the poor. Nothing else explains why the victims’ average compensation was just $500- for a life time of misery…… yet the victims haven’t given up. Their struggle for justice and dignity is one of the most valiant anywhere. They have unbelievable energy and hope ---- the fight has not ended. It won’t, so long as our collective conscience stirs.” Outlook India 7 Oct 2002

On the eve of the silver jubilee anniversary of the horrific tragedy, the mind less, sense less, soul less Government of India has quietly allowed the Dow Chemicals to set up a research center in Maharashtra, through an MoU with the department of industrial policy and promotion. The department is also preparing a note requesting the Union Cabinet to delink Dow from legal liabilities for the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster. Till now the government held back from permitting Dow fearing strong opposition from civil rights groups and the IIT alumni which has successfully called for a boycott of Dow by IITians. In spite of several cases pending against Dow in Bhopal and several PILs in Supreme Court, the government is paving the way for Dow to enter from backdoor. This is an insult to the 20,000 dead and hundreds of thousands still suffering due to Dow Chemicals continuous refusal to share data on toxic affects of the deadly MIC gas and its refusal to own up even cleaning the huge dump of chemicals still lying at the Bhopal factory, the residue of which sinks into the ground monsoon after monsoon. The picture here taken from http://www.bhopal.net/ is an indication of how a new generation is being poisoned. It is a shame that Indian business tycoons are actively lobbying for Dow’s entry.

The Dirty Dow:
Several colleges and universities in the US have passed resolutions condemning Dow and urging their Institutions to sever all ties with the company unless it resolves its responsibilities in Bhopal. Indian IIT alumni association has called for a boycot of Dow by IITians.

Amnesty Indicts

In December 2004, Dow earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first corporation ever indicted by Amnesty International for violations of human rights. In fact, in its report, Amnesty International cites Bhopal as the prime example of the need for binding human rights standards that can be universally applied to multinational corporations .

During the Vietnam War, Dow became the sole supplier of napalm to the United States military. Napalm, an incendiary liquid used as a weapon in Vietnam, led to human casualties that were widely displayed in the news media, which shook the conscience of the world. There were wide spread protests against Dow but Dow's board of directors voted to continue production of napalm.
Another infamous chemical of Vietnam war , Agent Orange, sprayed liberally on the forests of Vietnam by the U.S. to wipe out the forest cover so that helicopter gun ships can fire at Vietcong. The chemical made its way into the food chain and was linked to a major increase in birth defects among Vietnamese people. In 2005, a lawsuit was filed by Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange against Dow and Monsanto, which also supplied Agent Orange to the military.

Dow has settled multiple law suits in the US and elsewhere giving away billions in compensation but steadfastly refuses even to clean up the factory at Bhopal not to mention the compensation liability it has inherited from Union Carbide.

Action:

We have to stop Dow from escaping the legal liabilities through a Government Order. Citizen action and pressure campaigns through e mail may help. Given below is a link which allows you to send e-mail to H.R. Bhardwaj, Minister of Law & Justice, Oscar Fernandes, Minister of Labour & Employment and Kamal Nath, Minister of Commerce & Industry.

http://www.studentsforbhopal.org/EmailAction07/email_action.php

The fight has not ended. It won't, so long as our collective conscience stirs.

The Road- A book review

2007-11-18T20:49:00.000-08:00

Cormac McCarthy !! Never heard of him, was my first reaction when the book The Road was presented to me by my teen daughter, Monica. I flipped through the pages and was further disappointed as there were one-liner long conversations and more than necessary gaps between paragraphs. I was sure it was a ploy by the publisher to make the book look bulky enough to attract potential buyers while on travel. Monica was anxious that the precious euros she had spent on the book at a Paris airport did not rouse my immediate interest. I could not have been more wrong in my assumptions. What a book it is. And what a writer McCarthy is. I have never come across any writer better than McCarthy who can write prose that sounds like poetry.

The Road is a tale of a boy and his father stumbling across the cold, wretched, wet, corpse-strewn, ashen landscape of a post-apocalyptic world, six or seven years after a horrific disaster, probably a nuclear war, which incinerates most of the humans and the landscape that might once have been America. We follow father and son as they walk , pushing a shopping cart, scavenging through empty houses and gutted cities, hiding and running away from gangs reduced to cannibalism and sub-human madness. Their destination is South. The father has just two bullets in the gun for their protection or for killing themselves.

Neither the man nor the boy is given a name. They are referred as “the man” and “ the boy”. The tenderness between them and constant haunting fear gives an animal urgency to their long march. McCarthy maintains the pace by keeping each scene barely more than a paragraph long. And the gaps between paragraphs can be a gap of a few minutes to few days. This has given the book a raw power and rhythm, as if the book was not composed of sections but stanzas in a poem. Every time father or son moves more than a few feet away from the other, a panic intrudes as we read. It is the tense chord of the lost child suspended in our heart, the worst thing about to happen, and McCarthy does it again and again. Few will be able to read The Road without running to hold their own children close. The mother of the boy is only in the memories of the man. The scene is not described but it is implied that she committed suicide losing her will to go through the horrors of the new world.

As we read, we are constantly reminded of the lost human world. All the lost possessions of the human race litter the pages of this novel as garbage and junk. It is haunted by the constant memory of the world before the apocalypse. The shell of that world is still partially there, empty houses and stores and other structures. Highways, bridges, railroad tracks are all still there and may still be there, as the man explains to the boy, for hundreds of years to come. But the human world, the world that created those objects, is wholly gone.
There are other humans too on the land. They appear as wrecks stumbling along the road, or bands of refugees marching military style with yoked slaves in tow, or a small family group that locks up refugees in the basement and cannibalizes them one by one. These are the “bad men.” The boy often asks his father who the good and the bad men are. He is worried by some of the acts his father has committed. The father kills a man who holds a knife to the boy’s throat, and he refuses to give food to various people they pass. He refuses because he wants to ensure his son’s own survival, and they have nothing to share.
The man has no idea what he and the boy will do when they reach the South. He doesn’t expect to be rescued, to find “good” people who will take him and the boy in. Every human being they run across is a danger, to be avoided. Moreover, the man is ill. He coughs up blood, and over the course of the novel he weakens. He knows he is going to die and the boy knows that too. The man knows the boy will outlive him and at first he thinks about killing the child to save him from the horrors of the new world, but ultimately he knows he cannot kill the boy, even out of love. He loves the boy too much.
Finally they reach the coast and then South. The man dies and the boy is taken in by a family. Despite all the despair and pessimism, The Road ends on a note of muted optimism.
The novel is a warning to the World that our own recklessness may destroy everything, not just in the materialistic sense but also in the Spiritual sense.

Banker To The Poor - A book review

2007-11-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

The book Banker To The Poor by Muhammad Yunus, a Professor of Economics in Bangladesh shatters several myths surrounding the principles of banking. Yunus has dedicated his life to make his vision a reality. With unstinted commitment to his vision, he has made the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh improve their economic status through micro-credit. Started in 1983, Grameen Bank established on the principle of credit as a basic human right and the concept of collateral to a loan favours only a few privileged, the bank now disburses 2.5 billion dollars of micro-loans to more than two million families in rural Bangladesh. Ninety-four percent of the clients are women and repayment rates are near 100 percent. Around the world, micro-lending programs inspired by Grameen are blossoming, with more than three hundred programs established in the United States alone.

Muhammad Yunus also exposes the International Donor Institutions way of functioning and how they only feed the International consultants, suppliers and donor agency officials. The book is also Muhammad Yunus's memoir of his life from childhood to adulthood and how he decided to change his life in order to help the poor and the challenges he has faced in establishing Grameen Bank. He practically dispelled the myths associated with giving credit to the poor. The commercial banks always insist on collateral and suspicious that poor will not repay and so do not extend loans. Truth is the reverse. It is the rich who cheat the banks by not repaying loans claiming their industrial units have become sick. This also very well applies to India where 40 billion USD was written off by National banks as bad debts by industrial units. For Muhammad Yunus, it is a crusade in "putting homelessness and destitution in a museum so that one day our children will visit it and ask how we could have allowed such a terrible thing to go on for so long." The definitive history of micro-credit direct from the man that conceived of it, Banker to the Poor is necessary and inspirational reading for anyone interested in economics, public policy, philanthropy, social history, and business. And above all to understand poverty and how the Poor desperately want to come out of it to have Roti, Kapada, Makan ( Food, Clothing and House) all 365 days.

The World Is Flat

2007-10-30T23:50:00.000-07:00

Though I had this book presented to me over a year ago at a corporate event, I had put it down after 10 pages. Recently, I had an opportunity to attend a lecture by Friedman and this has kindled my interest in the book. However, in the end his 45 minute address was far more interesting than the 450 page book. The book excites the reader for a moment with insights and the next moment frustrates as the narrative loses the focus.

Friedman basically is a cheerleader for globalization. Friedman writes that the world has now entered the era of "Globalization 3.0. The Globalization 1.0, which ran from 1490 until 1800 and was driven by mostly European countries through colonization by force and Globalization 2.0 starting 1900 was led by US multinational companies driven to look abroad for markets and labor. That has ended around 2000, replaced by the individual of every race and country with the aid of global fiber-optic network that has made us all next-door neighbors -- connecting, competing, collaborating.

In particular, Friedman is obsessed with one of the greatest recent economic phenomena- the outsourcing of services and information-technology work to India. However, Friedman over estimates its novelty. Globalization or level playing field ( flat world ) is not new. Manufacturing outsourcing to China, supply chains from diverse countries has been in vogue for the last 2 decades. Like wise the start of Dell from scratch taking on the mighty IBM, or Apple’s i-pod that has swept away all the personal audio players from market have been possible because of the level playing field only. What must have intrigued Friedman to make this journey to India is to understand how can a Jerry Rao, Azim and the like from a Third World country could have been an international success. Friedman has been Foreign affairs columnist of New York Times for long and we can understand the reason for his dismay at suddenly discovering outsourcing to India and China will affect the western economies.

If one can bare with the emphasis on first person ( the “I” in the key board must have worn out) and at times dragging monologue, the book will be lively and provocative to all those who remained locked up in a cup board for the last decade.

The Bourne Ultimatum- Film review

2007-10-05T02:05:00.000-07:00

The Bourne Ultimatum is the last of the Bourne trilogy by the author Robert Ludlum. The first book Bourne Identity and the second Bourne Supremacy were also best sellers and adapted as films with the same titles.

But this last film of the trilogy directed by Paul Greengrass is the ultimate in film making. The full affect of the film is felt only after coming out of the theatre as throughout the entire near two hours of the film, one's heart throbs in the throat. Even the comfort of an automatic full reclining sofa seat with a liveried waiter at my elbow in one of the most luxurious cinema halls in Melbourne could not stop me from just sitting at the edge of the seat completely gripped unmindful of the luxury pervasive all around. It is a classic film in the action genre and will certainly be regarded as one of the best action films ever produced.

Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is terrific consumed by his intense desire to find out about those who have turned him into a soul less killer machine. He closes on the Treadstone group with the help of a clue from a journalist. But Bourne encounters hit men who are hell bent on snuffing out any one who comes into contact with him. The action scenes are breath taking and Paul Greengrass uses camera in a very novel way to make the fight sequences chaotic but at the same time giving a feeling to the viewer of being there as a part.

Though the book came out long before the Patriotic Act of the US, the story line jolts us to the stark reality of what happens when a rouge intelligence agency usurps power to order assassinations and sanction torture with no questions asked, all in the garb of protecting its citizens. When the CIA investigator asks the Treadstone director where and when it will end, the director replies, “ when we have won.”

The film ends with the agency being exposed to the Senate.

The film is a masterpiece.

Everyone Loves A Good Drought- Book review

2007-09-19T03:51:00.000-07:00

The book Everyone Loves A Good Drought by P Sainath was first published in 1996 and was reprinted several times later. I bought the book only a few weeks back. As I began to read, I was numbed to the point of depression. The book is a compilation of articles Sainath penned during 1992 , when on a Times of India fellowship he has toured some of the poorest districts in the country to know how the poorest of the poor citizens of free India eke out a living in rural areas. While each article focuses on an individual or a small group, it becomes clear to the reader that there are millions and millions of people in villages under similar conditions. Sainath takes head on the myth being spread by the government and the media that poverty is at least receding in India. Sainath dispels the myth in this compelling account of the realities of rural poverty. In a style that avoids sensationalism and sticking to the facts through well-researched accounts of the living conditions of the majority of Indians, Sainath brings out the apathy, idiocy and gross injustice of the government machinery to the open. And the incredible courage with which the poor battle to lead a life with dignity.

Everybody Loves a Good Drought is full of insights into what is wrong with existing development processes in highly inequitable poor societies. The book also has occasional sprinklings of “what went right” experiences. The book is divided into sections and each article is a story. There is a story of a super hi- tech coal mining project in one of the most backward regions- Godda in Bihar, which creates jobs for not more than 1300 people- many of them from outside the region. Meanwhile, the foreign consultant, a Canadian MNC, has been involved in transactions worth Rs. 645 crores, out of the total outlay of Rs. 966 crores. The mine destroys the lives of people living in 12 villages. Another article brings out how in a loan mela cows were given to a tribe not realizing that the tribe does not consume milk products at all but consumes beef. The cows ended up as dinner and the members of the tribe in a life long debt trap.

Then there is the case of the residents of a village called Chikpaar. The village was first acquired in 1968 for the MiG jet fighter project for Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). The 500 families were evicted and they moved to another location (on the land they owned themselves) and resettled there, nostalgically naming the new village as Chikpaar. In 1987, the families were evicted again for the Kolab multi- purpose project. The villagers again resettled at another place. However, they received eviction notices for the third time for another development project. Needless to say, the displaced persons were paid a pittance as compensation that too after several years.

Then there is this incredible story of villagers being evicted every time the army conducts a firing exercise and paid one rupee fifty paise a day, that is less than 5 cents a day for the pains. A government official himself demands from the author: “What if residents of Malabar Hill in Bombay have to evacuate each time the navy has an exercise ? And are paid Rs. 1.50 a day for their pains ? This is happening here because the people are tribals. Since this is a backward, cut- off region.”

Sainath also exposes the politics in declaring an area as drought hit and the political-bureaucratic-contractor nexus in cornering the drought relief funds.
There are stories upon stories like these- Sainath has captured an entire landscape of people. Through story after story , the book attempts to correct the `event' approach which the majority of the media, government and society at large take to view India's problems simplistically as singular aberrations, rather than taking a broader `process' approach, which looks less at immediate causes.

Finally the book is a scathing indictment of the educated elite in this country. The Indian elite, specially the middle class, which has climbed the ladder of opportunities and prosperity that come with this very ‘development’, has kicked the ladder. In other words, the middle class has climbed on the heads and shoulders of the poor in India, and has forgotten them.

A must read book.

Palagummi Sainath is the son of India's former President V V Giri’s daughter and has dedicated his time to reporting on rural issues.

India at Crossroads

2007-08-23T05:31:00.000-07:00

India is at crossroads. The country is on the verge of making another " tryst with destiny". Sixty years ago, Nehru said, "At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."
How sad! Even after 60 years of Independence, this democratic nation’s soul has not found utterance. The soul of this nation has been the middle-class. Largely educated and ambitious, the middle-class in India moulds the public opinion.
But sadly, the middle-class is in a delirium. It is cheering itself for the growth rates, GDPs, Forex reserves, FDI and bull runs. It thumps on its chest reeling out statistics of how many more of its class were added to the millionaire club. The fact that this is a wafer thin portion of the society is blithely ignored. In its delirious state, it has forgotten that increase in wealth and income for a few million people does not lead to well being of the entire population. It has turned a blind eye to the institutionalizing of political-bureaucratic-business nexus, which siphons off public funds and loots the public exchequer. Corruption in India is the direct result of the rich wanting to be super rich. Policy making is increasingly subverted to favour this wafer thin layer of the super rich. Through special laws, thousands of acres of cultivable land is forcibly acquired from small farmers and handed over to super rich ostensibly for the good of the country. Those who protest get a bullet in the head. About 40 billion dollars is the bad debt owed by companies to public sector banks, much of which was written off. The same banks seize property of farmers for default of a few thousand rupees loan. The élitist orientation of public policy in India has intensified during the recent period of "economic reform." Today, India's international credit rating and the "sentiment" of the stock market receive far more attention in economic policymaking than the lives of its poor. The indifference of the ruling class to the farmers’ suicides, growing malnutrition and the misery of the poor is monumental. The poor do not have means for a proper education with the kind of quality of government schools and colleges. The poor do not have means for a healthy life with the kind of quality of medicare in government hospitals. The political class does not make any attempt to improve the standards of institutions that are exclusively frequented by the poor. Instead, crumbs are thrown through some ‘poverty alleviation’ programmes, an unavoidable necessity and a concession to electoral compulsions.
Even 60 years after Independence, 800 million, close to two-thirds of the population are trapped in poverty. And with poverty comes malnutrition, disease, deprivation, inequality and injustice. The Planning Commission, a government body, in its report states that 28% of the population was living below the poverty line in 2006, down from 51% in 1977, and 36% in 1993. The government proclaims that poverty is drastically reduced basing on these statistics. Look at the numbers from a different perspective. In 1977 India population is 500 million so 51% of it is 255 million. In 1993 the population is 800 million and 36% is 288 million and in 2006 we were at 1.1 billion and 28% is 300 million. And what determines the poverty line. Hold your breath. Monthly per capita consumption expenditure below Rs. 356 for rural areas and Rs. 538 for urban areas. That is ten and twenty rupees a day, in dollar terms 25 and 50 cents a day. So 300 million people live in abysmal poverty. Another 300 million earn close to a dollar a day but are counted as above the poverty line. So 600 million do not have two square meals a day. Another 200 million barely manage to eke out a living earning 2 to 3 dollars a day, about a hundred rupees a day. In this dismal scenario, what would be the fate of children. The third National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) of 2005-06 shows that nationwide 46 per cent of children under three are undernourished. Severe malnutrition leading to high infant and child mortality puts India low (126th in 2006), in the United Nation’s Human Development Index (HDR), a key indicator of the well-being of populations. Statistics indicate that 2.5 million children die in India every year, accounting for one in five deaths of children in the world. The HDR of 2006 points out that despite a steady growth of GDP in the country, the decline in child mortality has remained stagnant.
Time and again, the teeming millions of poor have changed governments through democratic process with the hope that their lot will be improved. But successive governments have failed them miserably. This paradox of having the power to change governments but powerless to change the exploitative and unequal economic order will imperil democracy itself. The signs are already tell tale. The “disturbed areas” declared by the government constitute one-thirds of India where armed extremists run parallel governments. Is inequality a cause for the increase in armed insurgency. The World History tells us that large scale poverty spawns Dictators, tyranny and lawlessness.
Markets must flourish but masses should not be left behind to rot. A booming middle class, corporate profits, bull runs in stock market alone cannot sustain democracy, when over two-thirds of the population struggle to get two meals a day.

India is at cross roads. If it takes the road of compelling the political system to formulate policies that improve the basic facilities like public distribution system, education, healthcare and implement them without funds being siphoned off, democracy will flourish.
India is at cross roads. If it takes the road of continuing subverting all systems to benefit a million super rich and frame policies to please the 200 million middle-class, the day is not distant for anarchy to prevail.
Indifference is a sin. The soul of this nation- the powerful middle class- has to find utterances to make India awake to a quality life and freedom from poverty. That moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.

Losing is Winning !

2007-08-02T02:47:00.000-07:00

The Fruit Therapy I have followed for several weeks has ended. One can see the physical transformation that has taken place in a few weeks- 6 weeks to be precise- from the before and after pics posted here. Now I am in the process of arriving at a diet regimen which will help me to maintain the transformation ( will blog it soon ). I can understand the immense interest the diet regimen has generated amongst all the people known to me and their persistence for more details on the aftermath. Not many cared about detoxification affects though. About 15 kilos of weight and 10 cms of waist loss cannot escape attention, astonishment and admiration in these days of lean and lithe females scorching the TV sets, in tow with the tucked-in tummy-bulging-biceps-bodied male gigolos swaying them off their feet.

Buxom has slowly become an archaic word in English language.

Losing weight has become a winning proposition ! And big business too !!

Lose to Win:
However intelligent, liberal minded, laissez-faire approach we have or think we have, the fact is most of us are not completely free from being influenced by the prejudiced thought process of majority society, that is if we ourselves are not completely clouded by our own prejudices. Being lean is right ( not from the health point of view) is one of those strong prejudices we carry, not only with in ourselves but also into our work culture. Our prejudiced minds perceive a lean person cutting across a corridor in the office with the gait of an athlete as a competent person in motion in comparison to a fat person rolling along huffing and puffing. It matters little even if the lean person is a lotus-eater and the fat one a conscientious worker. Our prejudices outweigh what is right. That is the reason why hordes of those trying to lose weight are professionals-- working men and women because they are privy to the fact that the lean one gets a fat bonus and the fat one a lean bonus. So the scales tip for all those overweight professionals in favour of shedding the flab.
Losing weight & losing waist not synonymous
Weight loss is different from losing the excess circumference of a particular portion of the body, waist for men and hips for women- the apple and pear shape. While attempts to reduce the waist and hips will also reduce the overall weight to an extent, the approach to these two objectives are different though the twain meets midway. If you are a well-rounded personality ( overweight uniformly from top to bottom) the fruit therapy helps you to detoxify as well as reduce weight. After you lose 15 to 20% of your weight, you will notice that the waist or hips still protrude ( more visible now ) and refuse to cave in. It is essential to follow an exercise regimen to reduce the protrusions. Again to our minds, prejudiced by the incessant bombardment of visual media, the word exercise brings in images of an opposite gender twisting and twirling in figure-tight outfit but never someone practicing yoga. However passé yoga has become currently, there is no other quicker , safer and affective way of dealing with waist / hip reductions. It is as good as a cosmetic surgery without the use of knife.
Yoga is Panacea
Like many, I too was initially put off by the illustrations in the yoga books. The postures seemed improbable and beyond reach, literally and figuratively. I have later learnt that the beauty of the Yoga is that none needs to attain the perfect posture as illustrated in the books but even an attempt towards the posture will yield excellent results over a period of time. The book by Dr. Manthena Satyanarayana Raju, Aasanalu- Aarogyaniki Saasanalu ( Yogic postures- laws for health ) gives detailed analysis of the method to do the asanas. However, the book is in Telugu. Fortunately, there are hundreds of books in English too. The two asanas that benefit most for waist and two for hip reduction are given below.
1)Asana for Lower tummy reduction:- Uthdhana Padasana
2) Asana for Upper tummy reduction:- Noukasana.

1) Asanas for hip reduction:- Salabhasanam
2) Asanas for thigh reduction:- Supta Vajrasanam

Both these asanas are to be practiced in that order for a few seconds in the initial days and a minute or two later on.
These are simple asanas which one can practice at home with the aid of a book / or even a printed copy of a write up on those particular asanas with clear illustrations.
Weight is Right but Protrusions are Left
For those who are at right weight but retain the protrusions like concave tummies or hips, the reasons need to be examined. Is it because of those Kingfishers or Budweisers you consume in abundance over the week-end or is it because of your eating habits like fascination for fries or having a sweet tooth. Is a complete change in eating habits necessary, or do you just need to cut back a little on sweets or restrain polishing off an entire plate of cashew along with the beer. If you are closer to the weight which you think is right for you, you may not need to start a full-scale weight-reduction program. You may follow the fruit therapy for a week / once a week / replace one meal with fruits. To make the concave protrusions flat, follow the Yoga Asanans as mentioned above regularly.
Weight Watch:
For permanent weight loss, you also need to learn sound eating habits. Balance has to be maintained in choosing the foods and moderation is the key. While fruit therapy may take the extra weight off and Yoga cuts the protrusions for the time being, a successful life-long weight control depends upon YOU and not upon any particular program. Watch your weight regularly but do not be a slave to the scale.
After a couple of months, I shall post the diet I am taking to maintain the transformed physique and the affects it has. Keep a watch on the blog.

Flags of Our Fathers- A review

2007-07-24T02:13:00.000-07:00

I have grown up on Clint Eastwood in adolescence and later when a little bit matured admired Speilberg. So when the two blend their cinematic creative juices, nothing could stop me from viewing the film – Flags of Our Fathers.

Flags of our Fathers follows the lives of three surviving members who raised the American flag in 1945 a second time atop a hill in a tiny island Iowa Jima and how the government used these three individuals and the media to sell war bonds to the American public. The film is very critical on the way war is sold to the public.
The film depicts war scenes to make the viewer understand that there's nothing glorifying about killing or to be killed on the battlefield. The only thing that matters is that you protect your friends in the battlefield and that they protect you. One of the characters, Ira Hayes , the native American ( Indian) says in the film, “ They fight for their country but they die for their friends.”
Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach played by John "Doc" Bradley, Rene Gagnon and Ira Hayes respectively were partly responsible for the second American flag raising that graced newspapers and magazine covers all over the world.The photograph has become an iconic image of hope and American victory in WWII. But hold your breath- it is literally stage managed. When US marines took over the Island Iowa Jima in the Pacific off Japan in 1945 after a fierce and brutal battle , the American flag was raised on top of the hill. The flag was small and not imposing. So the commander sends a larger flag later and Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped off this shot when the flag was being raised a second time. The photograph was all over the front pages of the US newspapers. The US government quickly sizes up the nations’s mood and parades the surviving members of the flag raisers in a cross-country tour to sell war bonds.
But the applause for heroism showered upon the three men is at odds with their own personal realizations that thousands of real heroes lie dead on Iwo Jima, and that their own contributions to the fight are only symbolic and not deserving of the accolades heaped upon them. Each of the three must come to terms with the honors, exploitation, and grief that they face simply for being in a photograph.

Clint eastwood uses flashback such extensively that one gets sometimes confused. The film is not an anti-war film but comes close to that genre.

Prawn Curry - The Source Code Recipe

2007-07-10T06:14:00.000-07:00

Prawn Curry - Recipes Galore

One of my cousins, Jag, living in Australia wanted me to post in my blog recipes for curries in addition to pickles. He has specified the curries he wanted too. He said that both he and his wife have forgotten the recipes of these curries as they were too busy all these years cooking software code. His mother, my mother’s youngest sister, who was also my school mate will certainly be livid, if she comes to know that her beloved son has asked me recipes, while she is considered in our family circle as a very innovative cook.

While I may take small pleasure for such requests coming to me thereby acknowledging me as a cook of repute, if not par excellence, there is a flip side to all this labeling. Now-a-days, my wife gladly gives up her position in the kitchen to me in contrast to her earlier stand of yielding it very reluctantly. She must be bragging to her friends that she has one of those truly amazing creatures in her home ...... an Indian husband who loves to cook!

Cooking comes very naturally to me and I do it with great gusto, whenever I get into the mood. There is a great advantage in cooking when you don’t have to worry about cleaning dishes and the mess afterwards. When I try something new, I prefer not to use a fixed recipe and cook almost entirely according to the whim and taste. Usually it turns out to be tasty and exotic but occasionally a disaster. Then it will take all my ingenuity to repair the dish and make it edible.
Source Code:
So here is the code for a prawn curry. All measurements given here are approximate. As long as one sticks to moderation in adding ingredients, any curry will come out tasty. So consider this recipe as source code. As long as you don't corrupt the source code, you can develop N number of variations.

If you can get only whole prawns, don’t get disheartened. Removing head and shell is easy if the prawns are frozen for some time. Remember that Prawns have to be de-vined at home if de-vined prawns are not available in the market. Vine is nothing but the black thread like intestine of the prawn. At the junction point of the head and torso, one can see the black thread like intestine inside, which needs to be gently pulled out. If you find it difficult to remove, make a small slit at the back of the prawn and pull out the vein.

Ingredients:

1 kg prawns ( after head, shell are removed weight will be approx.600 gms.)

2 large onions, finely chopped

2 tbsp garlic and ginger paste

2 tsp powdered spices ( masala )

1 tsp salt to taste
1 tsp chilly powder to taste
3 to 4 green chillies- sliced vertically

Process:
Thaw the prawns at room temperature for an hour if they are straight from the fridge. Wash them thoroughly in water 3 to 4 times. Mix the prawns with a couple of tbsp curds and wash. This will remove any unpleasant odours the prawns might be emitting. Toss a big pinch of turmeric powder, mix well with prawns and wash for the last time. Drain the water thoroughly.
Mix salt and chilly powder with the prawns and keep aside.

Heat a saucepan. Add 2 tbsp oil. When oil is heated, toss in the sliced green chillies. After a few seconds, toss in the onions and fry until slightly brownish. Add garlic and ginger paste mix and fry together in a low flame for a minute till the garlic and ginger paste loses the pungent odour. Add the prawns and stir well so that onions and garlic ginger paste gets mixed well with the prawns. As you begin to fry, the prawns ooze water. Keep the lid and let them simmer for 10 minutes.
Water gets evaporated and a thick gravy is formed. If you want the curry to be completely dry, fry for some more time stirring well.

Put off the heat and sprinkle the powdered spices ( ready-made masala ) on the curry and stir once.

Garnish with fresh coriander if desired.

Serves for 4 to 5 persons in steamed rice or roti.
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There are umpteen ways of adding colour and spice to the same curry by adding something that gives a distinct taste. Depending on the added ingredient, adjust salt and chilly powder. Remember that the added ingredient should never be more than half of the prawns volume for best results.

Tomato prawns:
After the garlic and ginger paste is fried along with onions, add 4 medium sized tomatoes cut into pieces and let them simmer in their own juices for a few minutes before prawns are added. Add the juice of a lemon to the curry just before masala is added. Tastes better in a gravy curry.

Cucumber prawns:
Chop a cucumber to fine pieces, add to the saucepan when prawns begin to simmer and let them cook along with prawns. It turns into a fine gravy and tastes excellent. Those who want to retain the taste of cucumber can cut it to ¼ inch pieces and follow the same process. Tastes better in a gravy curry.
Snakegourd prawns:
Scrape off the thin outer filmy layer of the snake gourd with the blunt edge of a knife or a steel spoon. Slit it vertically and remove the seeds with a spoon. Cut into small pieces. Boil the pieces in a little bit of water ( pieces themselves ooze lot of water ) for five minutes. Put the pieces in a thin cloth and squeeze hard once or twice to squish out the juice. If the juice is not squished out, curry might have pungent odour but some like the odour. Add to the curry when prawns begin to simmer. Tastes better in a gravy curry.
Coconut prawns:
Grate half a medium sized coconut. Add when prawns begin to simmer. Fry the thick gravy till it is dry. Grated coconut can also be added after the gravy is fried to near dryness. Fry for a couple of more minutes. Tastes better in a fry curry.
If you want the coconut taste but wants gravy too, then put the grated coconut in a mixie and strain the coconut milk. When prawns begin to simmer, coconut milk can be added. Once the gravy becomes thick, curry is ready.

Chilly prawns:
Add 6 to 8 sliced green chillies after the curry is fried. Continue frying for a couple of minutes till the pungent smell of the chillies reaches you. Tastes better as a dry snack. It will be hot.

You can make a mixed prawn curry with ay vegetable you like.

Drumstick Pickle

2007-07-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

Drumstick tree known as Kalpataruvu ( giver of everything)

The drum stick tree is a very popular tree in villages. It gives the yummy vegetable year long without anyone taking care of the tree and every part of the tree has numerous benefits. Drumstick is a popular vegetable and is widely used in vegetable curries, sambar and rural folk use drumstick leaves for a variety of purposes from making curries to using as a natural antibiotic, anti-fungal to getting rid of leg spasms and ankle sprains. Drumstick leaf curry is a frequent dish for pregnant and lactating women for its high iron and Vitamin A content. A drumstick tree in each and every back yard with scores of drumsticks dangling is a common sight in villages. When I was a kid many drumstick trees in the backyards of my village were said to be more than 20 years old and I am surprised to see many of them still intact and in full productivity. That makes those trees more than 60 years old.

During the caterpillar season, no one goes near the tree. Hundreds of caterpillars swarm the tree and polish off the leaves in a few days time. May be those which eat the drumstick leaves will turn into a beautiful butterfly without fail.

The Pickle:

The recipe given here is unique as raw drumsticks are used to make the pickle. Raw Drumstick pickle, on the face of it, appears unusual and daunting. Though not very common like tomato or lemon, it is not unusual. It is also very tasty. The marinaded juice of the drumstick piece is heavenly and oozes non-stop as you munch and munch not wanting to part with it.

The pickle is also very easy to make.

Ingredients:

One KG drumsticks ( about 25 medium long fully mature drumsticks)
2 tbsp turmeric powder
250 gms tamarind
150 gms Chilly powder
150 gms crystal salt
100 gms garlic

2 tbsp fenugreek seed powder
500 gms oil for seasoning

Process:

Take about 25 drumsticks ( one Kg ). Select those that are not tender and the seed is a bit hardened. This will help the pieces to retain their shape even after pickling. Tender drumstick pieces, some time after pickling, will get soft and even soggy.

Wipe the drumsticks with a damp cloth first and then with a dry cloth. Cut the drumsticks to about 11/2 to 2 inches long pieces. Transfer the pieces to a non-metallic container which has a proper lid. Add a tsp oil to the pieces, 2 tbsp turmeric powder and mix well. Add salt to pieces and mix well. Peel the tamarind lump to smaller pieces and place at the bottom of the container. Place the lid firmly and let the pieces marinade overnight or for a day. Due to salt, the drumstick pieces will ooze water and the tamarind becomes soft.

Next day, take the drumstick pieces out.

Mix chilly powder, fenugreek seed powder and garlic paste with the water that has oozed and the tamarind turned soft in the container. For better mixing, you can put all the ingredients into mixer / grinder for a minute. Add the drumstick pieces and mix well.

Seasoning:

Heat the oil in the pan. Toss in 10 red chillies, 10 garlic flakes, 2 tsp polished green gram, I tbsp mustard seed and a handful of curry leaves.

After oil is cooled, mix well in the pickle. Transfer the pickle to glass jars / plastic bottles.

Wait for a couple of days before you start polishing it off.

The shelf life is one year.

Andhra Aavakaaya ( Mango Pickle )

2007-06-13T04:06:00.000-07:00

I have been facing two major challenges during this last few weeks while making pickles. One is determining the quantities of the ingredients relying on senses other than taste ( as I am still on fruit therapy ) and the second is to resist tasting them in the rustic fashion. In villages, when pickle is made and packed into containers, the leftover residue of the pickle in the original container is mixed with rice and fistfuls of this pickle rice is passed on to the household members. It is yummy!

Among all the pickles in Coastal Andhra, two pickles find a special place in the hearts of the village folk. Gongoora pickle (Indian sorrel leaves / sour greens ) is referred by poets as Andhra Matha meaning Mother of Andhra. The second one is Aavakaaya pickle ( mango pickle) . Aavakaaya can be called as the King of the Pickles. There are umpteen varieties in this pickle. Cut mango, full baby mango, jaggery mango, raw pulp mango, dried mango are some of the well known varieties.

The Tradition:
For someone hailing from coastal Andhra, heavenly bliss is eating Aavakaaya ( mango pickle) with cooked toor dal paste ( pigeon pea paste / Kandi Pappu cooked as Mudda Pappu ) in steaming rice with a generous sprinkling of Ghee( clarified butter). The pickle has a special place in the hearts of the people and woven intricately into the social fabric.
In villages, making mango pickle is a social event involving most of the household, domestic helpers and neighbors. Planning starts at least a few weeks in advance with procuring the right variety of chillies and making them into powder, gingelly oil and paying advance amount to reserve fixed number of mangoes from specific trees, the fruits of which have proved over the years to retain the sour taste and hardness till the next season. On the D-day, mangoes are plucked fresh, washed, cloth dried and the muscular male member of the family or strongest of male domestic helpers take the responsibility of cutting the mangoes into uniform sized pieces with a huge cutter. While the womenfolk busy themselves in readying the spices and powders, the children sit around the mango cutter envying him and scrape the wafer thin layer on the stone of the mango with steel spoons. All the ingredients are mixed with the pieces immediately. The shelf life of the pickle, especially the mango pieces retaining the taste and hardness, is a matter of prestige to the women folk and a subject matter of discussion amongst them. The reputation of a housewife as an excellent pickle maker can be made or marred by the way mango pickle turns out to be.

Me living in a city lacks all this excitement where everything is available over the shelf. However, I wanted to re-live at least part of this excitement. Last year, I looked at the recipe and it appeared very simple and easy. I tried making the pickle with the confidence of a pro and bit the dust or rather mustard powder. So this year I have armed myself with the recipe from my mother, learnt the nuances of which ingredient should go in first and the process and set myself to make a big hot splash. I have succeeded fairly well in the Endeavour.

Here are the recipes for Aavakaaya ( cut mango) and Magai ( dried mango) pickles.

Avakaaya ( cut Mango Pickle ) :

Ingredients
12 medium size raw sour mangoes

250 gms mustard powder

250 gms red chili powder ( to be increased if chilly powder is not hot enough to be fiery)

500 gms crystal salt ( powdered)

150 gms fenugreek seeds powder
250 gms garlic ( paste)
250 gms peeled garlic flakes1 kg sesame seed oil ( gingelly oil)

Method
Choose the mangoes carefully. They have to be fully mature, yet raw and green, fibrous and very sour to taste. The mango that is very fibrous will withstand pickling without going soft till the next season.

Leave the raw mangoes in water for 10 minutes and dry them with a clean cloth.
Slice each of the mangoes vertically in half in such a way that the hard stone in the inside of the mango is also cut into two parts, with each part firm on the two halves.
Remove the seed. Scrape the wafer thin layer attached to the stone with a steel spoon.
Cut each half of the sliced mango into 4 to 5 pieces. Each and every piece should contain the stone without which the piece gets softened in no time after pickled.
Clean the cut pieces with dry cloth.
Transfer the cleaned pieces to a basin.
Sprinkle two tea spoons of turmeric powder on the pieces and mix with hand. The hand should be completely dry and the same hand should continue the other processes. Lot of different hands will spoil the pickle.
Pour half of the oil on the pieces and mix well with hand. It is very essential to mix the pieces with oil first before adding any other ingredients. This will help the pieces to retain the hardness for a long time.
Mix the powdered salt with the pieces.
Mix the mustard powder, red chili powder, garlic paste and fenugreek seeds powder together in another container. Add half of the remaining oil to the powders and mix to a consistency that can be held in a fist.
Mix the paste well with the mango pieces.
Add the remaining oil to the pieces and mix well.
Cover the basin firmly with a lid. If the basin used for mixing doesn’t have a proper lid, transfer the contents to a porcelain jar or a clean plastic container with a firm lid. Tie a neat thick cloth over it and store it in a cool dark shelf.
Open the lid after three to four days, mix well and taste it. The quantity of salt and chilly powder needed in the pickle differ depending on several factors. Add salt / chilly powder if necessary but be cautious in the quantity. The added quantities should be small to only tweak the taste and not alter completely. Those who want to add garlic flakes can do so now.
Transfer the contents to galss / plastic porcelain jars. .
Tips
For those who are making this delicacy for the first time, here are a few tips.
1. Keep ready a reasonably big ceramic jar or a plastic container with a proper lid. Clean and dry thoroughly.
2. Mangoes must be cleaned and dried properly before cutting. The pieces too need to be cleaned with a dry cloth but never washed.
3. Let one person do all the mixing. That person should wash and keep the hands dry. No damp object should be allowed to touch the ingredients at any stage.
4. On day one of mixing, oil may not be visible but on the third day one can notice oil floating above the surface of the pickle. If oil has not covered the pickle completely and floating, add a little bit more oil and mix well just before transferring to smaller containers.

Magai Pickle ( Dried Mango pickle)

This pickle is also usually made along with the cut mango pickle.

Ingredients:
12 medium size raw sour mangoes

150 gms mustard powder

250 gms red chili powder

300 gms crystal salt ( powdered)

100 gms fenugreek seeds powder
250 gms garlic ( paste)
2 tbsp turmeric powder
500 gms husked sesame seed ( gingelly) oil for seasoning.

Method:
Place the mangoes in the water for 10 minutes. Dry them thoroughly with a cloth.
Peel the outer layer of the mango.

Cut them into thin flat slices of an inch wide and two inches long. The inner stone of the mango should be left out.
Mix the pieces with half of salt and turmeric powder.
Place the mix in a plastic container with lid / air tight ceramic jar and let it marinade for a day and night. When mixed with salt mango pieces ooze water.
On the second day morning, squeeze with your fist the pieces of the water and spread on a plate / thin cloth. Sun dry the pieces until the dampness disappears. Since the pickle is made in mid-Summer, 5 to 6 hours of drying will do. (don't let the pieces become rock harden).
Once dried add the remaining salt into the watery sap in the container along with red chili powder, fenugreek powder, garlic paste and mustard powder. Now add the dried mango slices to this mix.
Heat sesame seed oil for seasoning.
Add 10 dry red chillies, 2 tsp mustard seed, 2 tsp fenugreek seed, 10 garlic flakes and a fistful of curry leaves. Allow the oil to cool and mix into the pickle.
Store in a ceramic jar / glass / plastic container. Shelf life is more than a year.

Fruit Therapy:- The Why, When & How

2007-05-08T02:40:00.000-07:00

I find it quite embarrassing to meet people over lunch or dinner during the period when I am on fruit diet. First I will have to explain why I can’t take any cooked food, not even a single idli and it is a lengthy explanation. Usually there are several questions on the method and the reasons, its efficacy and a host of other stuff. While questions can be easily answered, it becomes difficult not to feel embarrassed when the hosts or the guests want to enjoy the sumptuous meal spread on the table whereas all I consume is a fruit or a glass of fruit juice. And then there are those who want to know why, when and How? This article is for those enthusiasts.

Why:

We all tend to accumulate toxins in our body. Through the polluted air we breathe, the food we eat laced with deadly pesticides, the stressful work, irregular food habits, junk food, smoking and alcohol etc.. Over a period of time the accumulated toxins start affecting us, physically as well as mentally. So there is a need to detoxify the body from time to time. Having fruits as the sole diet helps remove the toxins.

I have been following this method for the last one decade, once in a year at least. I have perfected the system over the years to suit my 8 to 8 office hours. I usually follow the regimen for 40 days though I haven’t been able to stick to the duration for the last 3 years except for this year.

Fruits are cleansers:

Fruits are natural cleansers. Each and every variety of fruit has a beneficial effect in normalizing all the body functions. Raw juices of fruits and vegetables are extremely rich in vitamins, minerals, trace elements, enzymes and natural sugars. They supply needed elements for the body's own healing activity and cell regeneration, thereby speeding the detoxification process. The juices extracted from raw fruits and vegetables do not require lengthy process of digestion and almost all their vital nutrients are assimilated directly in the bloodstream.

When & How:

Once a week method:
Depending on your convenience choose a day in a week. As soon as you wake up, drink at least one liter of water. If you find it difficult to drink at one go, you can space it two to three times but all in a span of a couple of minutes. Water adds to the cleaning process and it is essential that the day begins with lot of water to ensure bowels get cleaned. After drinking water, pace up and down the room leisurely for about ten minutes and then start the morning ablutions. The water will greatly aid in free bowel movement. From then on eat one variety of fruit every two hours. There is no limit on the quantity of fruits you eat at a time. But don’t mix fruits as you will not get signals from the stomach on when to stop. Drink generous quantities of water in between the fruit diet. Continue eating fruits / fruit juices till your bed time. Your body gets detoxified every week.
Do not add salt / sugar to any of the fruits/ juices.
Please consult your doctor before you start the fruit diet if you are suffering from ailment(s).
One week every month / quarter method:
The method is the same as once a week method. The only difference is a couple of days prior to the start of the fruit diet week, ensure your daily diet consists of 50% of fruits so as to acclimatize your system to fruit diet. Similarly don’t stop fruits abruptly and start cooked food right away at the end of the week. On the 8th day have 50% cooked food ( avoid spicy foods and meat ) and on 9th day make the cooked food two-thirds of your diet. If you are an office goer, sprouts in the morning will help you a lot. You will not feel the hunger pangs immediately as you start work in the office. Six to eight tea spoonfuls of green gram, 10 number ground nuts, 10 chena / Rajma soaked in water for 12 hours and in a wet hand kerchief hung in the shade for another 12 hours will make the seeds sprout. That will take care of the protein requirement of the body.
Do not add salt / sugar to any of the sprouts/ fruits/ juices.
Please consult your doctor before you start the fruit diet if you are suffering from ailment(s).
40 days once a year:
The method is same as the above- one week a month regimen. For those who want to lose weight along with detoxification of the body, this 40 day regimen will yield excellent results. The only word of caution is not to amend the diet program given here to suit individual tastes like avoiding sprouts or not taking veg juices such as carror + beetroot mixed juices.
My daily intake:
5 am: One liter of water.
6.00 am: one cup of water mixed with ½ lemon juice and a spoon of honey. Those who want to lose weight should add lemon juice and honey to warm water.
6.30 am: One glass ( 200 ml) of carrot and beetroot mixed juice.
7.00 am: one liter of water
8.00 am: Sprouts
From 11.00 am till bed time, I take fruits / fruit juices once every two hours.
Usually 30 minutes after taking fruits, you will feel hunger pangs. Actually they are not hunger pangs but thirst pangs. The body demands more water for cleansing purpose and people generally mistake these thirst pangs as hunger and eat fruits every 30 minutes. Finally it becomes so inconvenient to have fruits every 30 minutes, most people quickly abandon the regimen. To address these pangs, I drink a big glass of water every 30 minutes.
I prefer locally cultivated seasonal fruits that are not sprayed pesticides like Guava, chikoo, pineapple, papaya, water melon, musk melon, pomegranate, tender coconut water along with the tender coconut cream, etc. I avoid grapes, apples and other exotic imported fruit. Over the years, I have also observed that dark pigmented fruits like Chikoo, papaya, Water melon, musk melon, orange , pomegranate and carrot, beetroot are more beneficial in cleansing than custard apple, apple, banana, cucumber etc.. However, there is no bar in consuming apples , grapes or bananas.
On 41st day, I add a little cooked food to the diet like Idli / light oil-less snack. Salt and chilly powder has to be bare minimum. On the 42nd day, I take bread-jam / idli / upma as breakfast. On 43rd day along with breakfast curd rice for lunch and on 44th day regular meals. I do not take meat immediately after. Usually I wait for a week to add meat to my diet.

Dos:
1. At least two days before you start the regimen, acclimatize your system to fruits by ensuring fruits component in your diet steadily increases.
2. Water plays an equally important part. Drink a minimum of one litre first thing in the morning for free bowel movement and cleaning and lots of water very frequently till bed time.
3. Choose locally grown seasonal fruits over exotic imported fruits.
4. Eat as many fruits as you can and several times a day
5. when you eat, eat large quantities of fruits till you really feel full

6. If you are following the fruit therapy for long duration, sprouts and carrot + beetroot juice is a must to balance protein and vitamin requirements.
7. After the fruit diet duration is completed, add cooked food in small quantities increasing it every day.

Don’ts:
1. smoke or consume alcoholic beverages
2. consume any soft drinks in lieu of water
3. eat whenever you feel hungry without giving 2 hours gap.
4. eat grapes / apples in large quantities which have high pesticide residues
5. add salt / sugar in juices / fruits / vegetables

6. amend the regimen to suit your tastes like avoiding sprouts or eating regular food along with fruits

7. abruptly stop fruits and start eating cooked food.

You can feel the difference in you and others will notice the difference in you.

Can Water Wash Away The Guilt of Blood? ( Bhopal Gas Tragedy )

2006-11-08T00:09:00.000-08:00

I read an article a few days back about how Dow Chemicals Corporation, in association with a Non-Profit Foundation, has provided safe drinking water to a village as part of its Corporate Social responsibility initiative. That spurred me on to blog this article.

Prologue
Circa 1970: Foreign Direct Investment in India was literally non-existent. License Raj was prevailing. However, with the ease of a knife plunging into a mound of butter, the Multi-National Giant , Union Carbide Inc, USA, obtains license to set up a pesticides factory in India.

Act-I
Circa 1971: . The Madhya Pradesh Government welcomes Union Carbide to set up its factory in the state. UC chooses Bhopal due to its nature of being a junction point with train links to all over India. The Management declared that its avowed goal was to make available latest pesticides to Indian farmers to boost their agricultural production.
Act-II

Circa 1980: Indian farmers could not afford the prohibitively priced pesticides. As sales slumped, production was suspended. But the deadly raw materials were retained in the factory. However, on specific orders from top, all safety measures were turned off, one after the other to save operational costs. The last safety system to go was the refrigeration system- to save $ 37 a day on the coolant fluid. A ghost factory it was, to make its host city a ghost city.

Act-III Scene-I

1984, December, 2nd-3rd . The clock struck 12, heralding another calendar day. Mothers nuzzled the babies closer to give them more warmth as the night had biting chill. The babies smiled in their sleep, not knowing a ghost was rising from its slumber. The ghost opened its eyes and began to spew out its deadliest gas, methyl isocyanate, ( MIC ) from its belly. A white ghost cloud formed slowly from the factory over Bhopal and descended on the sleeping homes, choking the lungs, wrenching the guts out and made men and women, Infant and animal collapse with crumbling nerves.
And the most primeval instinct of human beings - to run in danger - took over. The million strong populace of Bhopal ran for their lives. Crying and shouting, half- dressed men and women stumbled carrying the infants and dragging along children. Those who fell were not picked up by anybody, they just kept falling, and were trampled on by other people. People climbed and scrambled over each other to save their lives – even cattle were running and crushing people as they ran. In those apocalyptic moments no one knew what was happening. People simply started dying in the most hideous ways. Some vomited uncontrollably, went into convulsions and fell dead. Others choked to death, drowning in their own body fluids. Many died in the stampedes through narrow lanes, where street lamps burned a dim brown through the white ghost clouds of gas. The force of the human torrent wrenched children's hands from their parents' grasp. Families were whirled apart.
The ghost cloud was so dense and searing that people were reduced to near blindness. As they gasped for breath, its effects grew ever more suffocating. The gases burned the tissues of their eyes and lungs and attacked their nervous systems. People lost control of their organs. Urine and feces ran down their legs. Women lost their unborn children as they ran, their wombs spontaneously opening in bloody abortion.

Lucifer would have cringed in horror .

Act-III Scene-II
The dawn came slowly, painfully. For the near and dear of the 20,000 dead, lying stiff on the streets, another 150,000, sick to the last bone, just slumped where they were. For another half-a-million, terrified now, in the knowledge of what would be their future as they were exposed to the gas. The dead were disposed off in mass cremations and graves.

The dawn also came swiftly and eagerly. For the vultures and hyenas. The hyenas came in chartered aircraft, military jets, from all parts of the World . Some were scientists , some were experts in unconventional warfare, descended on the city to observe passively, with clinical detachment, the effects of the deadly gas on the living. They would not get a similar opportunity in their life time. After all, Holocausts do not happen often.

The vultures were the products of Yale and Harvard, sniffers of death from distance, the slick talking lawyers, descended to devour the living in the name of suing the company for compensation and taking a cut. The Chairman and the CEO of Union Carbide, Warren Anderson also came. He was detained by the police but let off by the Indian Government, unable to withstand the pressure exerted by the US Government. Anderson declared that the disaster at the factory was a result of sabotage by an Indian employee.

Act-IV

Circa 1990: Union Carbide, in a partial settlement with the Indian government, agreed to pay out $470 million in compensation for the survivors. The victims weren’t consulted in the settlement discussions. Each survivor got -$300-$500. The dead were forgotten as in most of the families, everyone perished.

Act-V

Circa 1991: The local government in Bhopal charged Warren Anderson with manslaughter. However, Anderson has never stood trial before an Indian court. In addition, he has also evaded an international arrest warrant and a summons to appear before a US court. For a decade, Anderson’s whereabouts were unknown, until August, 2002 when the Greenpeace found him, living a life of luxury in a resort off Bahamas. The Union Carbide Corporation itself was charged with culpable homicide, a criminal charge whose penalty has no upper limit. These charges have never been resolved, as Union Carbide, like its former CEO, has refused to appear before an Indian court.

Act-VI

Circa 2001: Union Carbide’s world wide assets were bought by Dow Chemicals Corporation. The deal was completed much to the chagrin of a number of Dow stockholders, who filed suit in a desperate attempt to stop it. These stockholders were surely aware that a corporation assumes both the assets and the liabilities of any company it purchases, according to established corporate law. Indeed, Dow was quick to pay off an outstanding claim against Union Carbide soon after it acquired the company, setting aside $2.2 billion to pay off a few hundred former Union Carbide asbestos workers in Texas. However, Dow has consistently and stringently maintained that it isn’t liable for the Bhopal accident.
Act-VII

Circa 2006: The gas-affected people of Bhopal continue to succumb to injuries sustained during the disaster, dying at the rate of one each day. Treatment protocols are hampered by Union Carbide as well as Dow Chemicals continuing refusal to share information they hold on the toxic effects of MIC claiming the data is a "trade secret," frustrating the efforts of doctors to treat gas-affected victims. The site itself has never been cleaned up, and a new generation is being poisoned by the chemicals that Union Carbide left behind and Dow Chemicals refuses to clear. In the neighborhoods near the abandoned factory, people suffer from cancers, gynecological problems, tuberculosis, vision problems, intestinal difficulties, joint pains, chronic headaches, psychiatric problems. These illnesses are a direct result of the left over chemicals polluting the ground water, a thousand times beyond any acceptable limits. Thus the victims in Bhopal have been left in the lurch, told to fend for themselves as corporate executives elude justice and big corporations elude the responsibility. Dow’s unwillingness to fulfill its legal and moral obligations in Bhopal represents only the latest chapter in this horrifying humanitarian disaster. For more than two decades, the victims of Bhopal have continued to demand justice; the only question is: Is there any one to listen?

Act-VIII

Circa 2006: Dow Chemicals is active in India, in business as well as in Corporate Social Responsibility activities. It has teamed up with NGOs and Foundations to provide purified drinking water to a village here and there. And now and then, a local daily splashes the story with color pictures of the villagers potting the water, waxing lyrics of the giant MNC for helping the amenities challenged population.

Epilogue
Circa Future: Dow Chemicals Corporation is the recipient of the top CSR award for its contribution to providing safe drinking water to a few thousand people.

Can Water wash away the Guilt of Blood ???

Review of eimona, a novel by GB Prabhat

2006-08-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

eimona- a novel by GB Prabhat

Review by Ramana Dukkipati

Religions have doctrinized it. Philosophers have theorized it. Physicists have formulized it.
It is “ Every thought and every action, however minor it may be, will have a bearing in the future somewhere, someplace.” And mathematicians have proved it. ( Norma McCorvey, a woman from Dallas won a case on her right to abortion resulting in a sharp decline of crime in New York 20 years later. Source-Freakonomics)

GB Prabhat through his latest novel eimona has changed the future. Irrevocably. By making his readers pause and ponder.

What is eimona? I scurried to look up in a dictionary but couldn’t find it. Puzzled I was that an author gave a title that has no meaning. I started reading the book sometime around 9 in the night and when I leaned back closing the book, it was 2 am. It was a gripping tale told in a racy style with pungent satiric humour. It is a tale about all around us, about all of us- the new age kids in the new age economy who are the new age economy multi-millionaires in young urbane India, whose fortunes and personal wealth obscenely rises and falls everyday inexorably linked to the stock market ticker tape.

So what is eimona? It is a world that is topsy-turvey, where the normally abnormal is normal and the normally normal is abnormal. When marriages are solemnized with lawyers drawing up contract papers on property, when husband and wife need to have separate bed rooms with a connecting door because each needs his or her own space, when men and women who would have been called debauchers and sluts for frequently changing sex partners are now called liberated single men and women, when visiting a shrink becomes common as visiting a dentist, when a child wanting to watch nature, play snakes&ladders or chess and not showing interest in online chats or computer games is considered a problem child and is diagnosed as suffering from anomie, well… that is the world of eimona- the reverse of anomie, an affliction where the social interaction is markedly different from the normal social norms. So when the normal social norms are abnormal, that is the world of eimona. It is not somewhere-over-the-horizon-future menacingly racing towards us. It is the present – pervasive all around us.

The Protagonist of the novel Subbu, an 80 year old, watches with amusement and dismay this present day world of eimona. He lives in Chennai with his grandson Bharat and his beautiful wife Indu, both young and working in Multi-national companies and their 8-year-old daughter Maya. Bharat is always indecisive like a Buridan’s ass which died of starvation because it couldn’t decide which bale of hay it wants to eat. Indu is strong willed and a winner always. Both Bharat and Indu have stock options, earn more than 150000 dollars each in salary. They watch everyday their stock price and calculate the wealth , not the combined wealth of both but each individual’s wealth. Maya is full of childhood innocence and is attracted to nature, loves to play chess and snakes and ladders and dislikes chatting online or playing games on computers. So she is diagnosed by a shrink as suffering from anomie. Subbu fiercely tries to protect her. The author ends the book with a brilliant twist.

The author’s views on free markets, the poor , capitalism are aired through Subbu. The principle pillar of capitalists’ and free economy protagonists’ theory and practice that rewards will be proportionate to the value people create and inequality is the natural result, Subbu asks, “ so what happens to people who begin in capitalism with nothing in their pockets?”

The author warns of the chilling effects of inequality if not addressed urgently. The oft repeated remark of the new age economy millionaires is that we earned our wealth lawfully. We pay taxes on every rupee we earned. We have a right to possess it. We are responsible citizens. The police must protect us. To this a police man asks Indu how many are rich and how many are poor in this country. Will all the policemen and soldiers be enough to protect the rich from the poor. How about people who created free market? Are they responsible? How about availability of quality education only to the rich? Is that very responsible.?

The book makes the readers reflect about themselves and an urge to slow down in this maddening race to success and prosperity overwhelms.

A must read book.

Black Chilly Powder / Nalla Karam (Telugu)

2006-07-20T01:39:00.000-07:00

Rural folk take this with the first meal after a bout of fever. It improves appetite. It goes well with hot steamed rice, and snacks. Ghee/ butter needs to be added lest tongue should be on fire.
Ingredients:
1 kg dry red chillies
1 kg crystal salt
250 gms Tamarind
250 gms coriander seeds ( Dhania)
500 gms garlic
250 gms polished black gram
5 tsp Jeera
2 tsp fenugreek seeds ( Menthulu)
5 tsp turmeric powder

Preparation:
Dry the dried red chillies for a day ( 5 to 6 hours) in the Sun. Drying in the Sun is essential as it takes out the moisture and grinding to powder becomes easy.
Fry the dried chillies in 7 to 10 tsp oil till they turn slightly blackish. While the chillies are being fired, tamarind too can be peeled to small thin pieces and fried lightly along with chillies. Powder the chillies.
Fry three handfuls of curry leaves. Powder them.
Fry the coriander seeds on a low heat with in a dry pan for a few minutes. Add jeera a minute before you switch off the heat. After they cool, powder them.
Fry the polished black gram in a dry pan till the aroma reaches your nose. Powder them.
Fry the fenugreek seeds in a dry pan lightly and powder them.
Powder the crystal salt.
Grind the garlic to paste.
Grind the tamarind to powder.

Mix all the pastes and powders well adding the turmeric powder.
A La, you have on hand mouth-watering powder. Transfer the powder to glass / plastic jar.

The Birth of a Nation- A Review of Condemnation

2006-07-18T01:25:00.000-07:00

The film Birth of a Nation is acclaimed as one of the 100 best Hollywood films ever produced. It was produced by D W Griffith in 1915. With great difficulty and months of search, I finally got hold of a DVD of the film. As I watched the film, I felt revulsion and anguish at the unadulterated racism, portraying the Afro-Americans as lustful rapists and looters and glorifying the Ku Klux Clan.

Birth of a Nation is an adaption of Thomas Dixon’s novel, The Clansman. Technically, the film is a masterpiece considering it was produced in 1915. Griffith’s editing is flawless and his use of camera was very novel. He has alternated close-ups and long-shots from varying camera angles and use of frames gives the film a classic touch. It is a silent film. The film is a testimony to Griffith’s genius, but alas a diabolical genius. Like Nazis, who have used films to raise the anti-semitic feelings of dominant population resulting ultimately in genocide, Griffith too tries to raise the passions of Southerners against the Blacks.

The film begins with the tale of Phil and Tod Stoneman of Pennsylvania who are visiting their school friends, the Camerons of Piedmont, South Carolina. A love affair develops between the Stonemans and the Cameron’s sisters. These love affairs are interrupted by the Civil War. The Camerons boys join the Confederate army while the Stoneman boys join the Union army. It is during the war that the younger Camerons and Tod Stoneman are killed. After the war, the father of the Stoneman’s is elected to Congress and “agitates for the punishment of the South.”
The Reconstruction period starts. From here on Griffith portrays the Negro characters as hooligans, looters and rapists. He tries to convince his audience that the blacks who outnumber the whites in Carolina prevent whites from voting and capture the legislature. The entire portrayal of the Reconstruction days showed the Negro when freed from white domination, as arrogant, lustful, and villainous. Negro Congressmen were pictured drinking heavily, sleeping in Congress with bare feet upon the desks, or lustfully ogling white women. But, in addition to this general attack on the recently freed Negro, The Birth of a Nation depicts in the most graphic terms the individual threat that freed Negro men posed to the South--white women! Griffith’s creation of the character of Gus, the freed Negro servant of the Camerons as a black skinned renegade who pursues Southern women for sexual purposes, represents the arch stereotype of the Negro man as “sexual monster.” These scenes were constructed to justify the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. Through many twists and turns, the film finally reaches its climax when the Klan metes out justice to the Negro militia.
Griffith will be remembered for long as a person who took his Southern Prejudices to a film and tried to instigate the Whites against Blacks.

Best ways to teach housebreaking to Dogs

2006-07-17T04:55:00.000-07:00

Ramesh got a cute German Shepherd pup. His entire family was joyous for the first few days. But as days passed, the joy turned out to be frustration as the pup began to pee in every corner of the house. It has also excreted on his beautiful carpet. Ramesh is not alone in facing this frustrating situation. Here are some tips on how to house train a dog:

Right from day one, observe the puppy during times when he is relieving. This will tell a lot about the warning signals and the different signs that dogs are making when they are about to unload it. Make it a point to make the dog feel comfortable outside the house. Let him explore your garden for him to find a comfortable spot to relieve himself. Do this everyday and the dog will eventually be more comfortable in doing this outside the house. The good news is that dogs are quite predictable in their potty habits. Primarily, you will need to keep an eye on your puppy if he is excited, about 15 to 30 minutes after he has eaten or drank water, and after he wakes up. If he is Moving around in circles, Getting into a crouch position, Sniffing the ground, then pick up him up quickly and move him to the potty area that you have set up for him.

When house training your dog, always make sure that you stay with him until he finishes. If you leave him by himself, he will have the tendency to do other things such as explore the garden or chase other animals. Praise him in a cheerful voice when it is relieving ( not after ).
Don't give your dog treats before bedtime or times when he will be left alone for long periods. Many doggy treats cause the dog to emit high levels of waste, and at irregular times.

Never use ammonia-based cleaners
During house training, dog owners should never use ammonia-based cleaners to clean their houses. These substances smell a lot like urine. Dogs will have the tendency of peeing on corners which smell like urine, so avoid using these substances.
There will be times that the dog or puppy will make a mess inside the house and there are cruel dog owners who would punish their dogs too much. Some slap their dogs with newspapers or other things. The most common myth is that if one sticks the dog's nose into his mess, he will not do it again. This is not only false, but it will make your dog confused and fearful of you. Remember that it is not the dog which should automatically know where to relieve, but remember that it is your responsibility to teach the dog where it should relieve.
Do not get frustrated in the first few weeks if accidents happen. They are bound to happen not because the dog has not understood where to relieve but you have failed to understand the signals given by the dog and has not provided the means to the dog to relieve outside. When the dog or pup relieves himself in the house, clean it with water mixed with a few drops of white Vinegar. The Vinegar will take away the smell of urine.

Mixed Lemon Pickle ( oil free)

2006-06-08T01:31:00.000-07:00

I like my pickles hot. So when the lemon pickle that my mom gave got exhausted, I wanted to try out something different. I added whole green chillies and slices of bitter gourd. The combination turned out to be excellent with the pickle getting altogether a new and wonderful hot tangy taste. The beauty of this pickle is it is completely oil free.

Ingredients:

50 ripe yellow lemons
250 gms green chillies
250 gms bitter gourd
200 gms crystal salt ( non-iodised)
250 gms chilly powder
250 gms garlic bulbs
3 tsp fenugreek powder
¼ tsp turmeric powder

Process:

Take 50 ripe yellow lemons ( Indian lemons are smaller in size compared to US / Europe/ Australia ) If the lemons are big in size take 15 to 20. Soak them in water for 10 minutes to get rid of dust / chemicals and wipe them completely dry with a dry cloth.

Squeeze 30 lemons of juice into a plastic container.. Cut the remaining 20 lemons into 4 pieces each.( If the lemons are big cut them to 8 or 16 pieces depending on how big the lemons are)

Add 200 gms of crystal salt after grinding it into powder to the lemon juice. Add a dash of turmeric powder ( ¼ spoon) to the juice.

Toss in the cut lemon pieces in the juice and marinate for a day and night. Squeeze the juice of each piece in the container and place them in the Sun on a polythene sheet. Expose the lemon rind to the Sun. At ~35 degrees centigrade and bright sunlight 5 to 6 hours of drying will do.

After removing the lemon pieces for drying, strain the juice to remove lemon seeds.

Take 250 gms of green chilles . Remove the broken / wilted and those turning to red colour. Wash the rest of the chilles with cold water and dry them completely. Remove the stalks. Pierce the chillies with a fork. Just a gentle nudge with the fork will do. Marinate the chillies in the juice container.

Take 250 gms of bitter gourd. Wash and dry them. Cut the bitter gourds into thin round slices. Remove the seeds. Marinate along with chillies.

Grind 250 gms garlic flakes to paste by adding a little of the juice in the mixie jar.
Add the paste to the juice.

Toss in 250 gms of red chilly powder to the container.

Add 3 tea spoons fenugreek powder and mix well.

Add the dried lemon pieces and mix well.

Marinate for a week. Taste the pickle and adjust salt.Transfer to jars.

Depending on your mood, you can choose to have a lemon piece, chilly or bitter gourd.

The shelf life of the pickle is one year. Towards the end of shelf life, chillies tend to get completely soft.

Ginger Pickle

2006-06-07T22:16:00.000-07:00

This is one of the tastiest pickles. It goes well with rice, roti and with snacks.

Ingredients are Ginger, garlic, tamarind, jaggery, salt, chilly powder, Fenugreek seed powder( Menthulu in Telugu)

Take 250 gms of ginger, wash well in cold water, peel the outer layer, chop into fine pieces and grind to paste.

Take 100 gms of garlic bulbs- grind to paste

Take 200 gms of seedless tamarind- Soak in boiling water,( do not cook tamarind by allowing it to be on the stove for long ) let it remain in the water for a few hours till it cools to room temperature and grind to paste

Take 250 gms of Jaggery- grind to pulp/ powder. You can also beat it to fine powder. In place of jaggery, sugar ( one cup- about 100 gms) can be used but jagery has a better taste and the pickle shelf life will be long.

Take 250 gms of crystal salt and grind to powder ( do not use powder salt as it is usually idionised which will spoil the pickle )

Take 3 tea spoons of fenugreek seeds- fry them for a couple of minutes in a dry pan till they turn dark brownish. Powder the seeds.

Take 250 gms of Red chilly powder. If the chilly powder is not very hot, add another 50 gms

Mix all pastes in a container and grind once for a minute to get mixed well.

Seasoning:
Take 100 gms gingelly / groundnut oil, heat it in a pan, and toss in 5 to 8 dry red chillies, 5 to 8 garlic bulbs, 2 tea spoons polished black gram, 1 tea spoon mustard seeds. Toss in a few curry leaves a second before the heat is turned off. After the oil cools, mix well with the pickle.

Transfer the pickle to a plastic or glass bottle.

What to feed the Dog

2006-05-29T02:46:00.000-07:00

For thousands of years dogs survived as human companions with only left over food. Till a few decades back dogs were eating only table scraps. With the explosion in the growth of pet food industry, today pet dog owners face a puzzling array of colorful bags of dry premium foods, convenient semi-moist packets, and gourmet diets for puppies, adult dogs, hunting dogs, show dogs, lactating dogs, old dogs, skinny dogs and fat dogs. Compounding the confusion is the barrage of advertising touting the benefits of this or that food: It’s all natural, it’s real meat, it’s non-allergenic, it’s high protein, it’s low protein, it’s low-fat, it doesn’t have by-products, your dog will love it . . . Add to these claims the crying of the nay-sayers: It’s cooked, it contains chemicals, it causes allergies, they use meat wastes and animals not fit for human consumption, soybeans cause bloat . . . and it’s not a wonder that when two pet owners meet they invariably discuss what they feed their dogs.
Nutrition
Like all living creatures, dogs need a combination of fats, carbohydrates, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and water in a balanced diet that provides sufficient calories to meet their daily needs for growth, activity, and repair. As people have become more conscious of the amount of meat in their own diets, they have also begun to wonder about meat in the dog’s dinner. Some folks have switched from beef and are looking for a dog food with little or no beef, so companies have responded with chicken, lamb, turkey, or venison-based foods. Some owners want a vegetarian diet for their dogs, and companies provide such a diet. The fat and proteins in the dry dog foods mostly come from by-products of poultry and meat. By-products fall into several categories: parts of the animal that people prefer not to eat, such as intestines, feathers, feet, beaks, lungs; tongue, or tail meat.
The average house pet will do well on any of several dry dog foods or home made food, depending on his level of activity, his metabolism, and his individual body chemistry. If jasper is doing well on the food you are feeding and it falls within your budget and is easily obtainable, don’t switch. If Jasper has skin problems that cannot be traced to an obvious cause such as fleas, consider a switch of food
Conclusion
Feeding the family pet, like feeding the family, involves psychological as well as practical decisions. Somehow, the choice of food gets wrapped up in how much dog owners care about their pets. Commercial companies bombard owners with advertising in every media. The over-riding message is that if pet owners don’t choose this or that brand, they don’t care about their dog’s health and well-being. Companies have made it look like home made food for dogs has become out of date and pet unfriendly.
If a dog has a healthy skin and coat, is energetic, and gets good marks from the veterinarian on the annual checkup, pet owners can continue to feed the same diet no matter which they have chosen. If the dog is having problems, they can find out if the food might be a contributing factor and take steps to fix things by adding a supplement, switching to another food, or asking the vet to run some diagnostic tests.

What I feed my dog:

My dog Scooby is a medium sized Himalayan terrier with a long coat. After experimenting with dry dog foods of several companies and also feeding it with complete home made food, I find not much of a nutritional difference between the two. Home made food has not made Scooby’ lazy or his coat dull. Nor the company’s dry food made it hyper active and the coat shiny. Dry food has a tremendous convenience, when you don’t have anyone at home to prepare the food exclusively for the dog. But mind you, dry food of some companies is prohibitively expensive, especially if you have a large breed dog. The only caution to home made food users is to not limit the food to leftovers alone. This will cause nutritional deficiencies.
Home made food: Allocate an old pressure cooker in good condition exclusively for preparing dog food . Keep stock of broken rice( cheaper than rice but same nutritional value ). Shop on Sunday for a week’s supply of boneless meat / chicken / beef. Wash well and pressure cook it for 10 minutes ( two whistles of the cooker ). After it cools, divide the same equally in seven plastic boxes and store in the freezer compartment. Thirty minutes before the dinner time for the dog, cook the broken rice in the cooker. Transfer the steaming rice to a bowl and mix it with the meat. The heat of the rice will defrost the meat. After it cools, add a tea spoon of sun flower cooking oil, a cup of milk / butter milk and feed. For a medium sized dog, 150 gms of meat and 100 – 150 gms of rice a day will do.
If you want your dog to be vegetarian, then the left-over vegetables of the day can be added to the rice and cooked.

10- 20 ml of Ostocalcium mixed with Vimral can be given twice a week. Pregnant and lactating bitches need more food enriched with Calcium and Vitamins. So accordingly the quantity and quality needs to be increased.

What I feed Now: To avoid wasting the leftover rice of the previous night, I add whatever rice is left to the boneless chicken ( cooked and frozen) and depending on the quantity of rice I reduce or increase the dry food. A glass of Butter milk is added.
Scooby is hale and hearty and jumping with joy for the last 3 years.

Tomato Pickle

2006-05-29T00:23:00.000-07:00

Making tomato pickle is very easy. I am listing down the ingredients
and the process below.
Ingredients:
1 kg tomatoes ( unripe green hard ones)
200 gms tamarind seedless

200 gms Garlic bulbs ( optional)
300 gms crystal salt
300 gms chilly powder
2 tea spoons fenugreek seeds powder( Fry the seeds in a dry pan for 2- 3 minutes and powder)
2 tea spoons turmeric powder
750 gms ground nut oil ( more oil if you want the pickle oily but not
more than 1 kg )
Process:
Select the tomatoes carefully. They have to be unripe green and
hard.Wash them in cold water thoroughly and dry them in the shade. An
hour's drying under the fan will do. If still not properly dry, use a
clean dry cloth to wipe off the wetness.Cut each tomato into four
pieces.
Transfer the pieces to a container ( non-metal), add the turmeric
powder and salt. Mix well, preferably with your own hand. using a spoon
might crush some of the tomato pieces. Please note that hands or spoons
have to be thoroughly dried before dipping them into pickle. Place a
lid firmly on the container and let it marinate overnight.
By morning,juice out of tomatoes would come out. Take the tomato pieces
out and spread them thinly on a polythene sheet. Dry the pieces in the
Sun for a day. At ~ 35 degrees C and bright sunlight, 4 to 5 hours of
drying will do. Remember that the pieces will not be completely dry or
whittle down.
In the morning, after the tomato pieces are taken out of the container
for drying, add the tamarind to the juice in the container and let it
soak in for a few hours. Add garlic paste. Add chilly powder and fenugreek seeds powder
and mix well till it turns into a thick paste. Grinding in a mixie for a couple of minutes is recommended.
In the evening add the dried tomato pieces to the paste and mix well.
Seasoning:
Pour the cooking oil in the heated pan. After oil is heated put 20 dry
chillies,20 garlic bulbs,4 tea spoons of Bengal gram, 4 tea spoons of
polished black gram, 2 tea spoons of Mustard seeds, one after the other
in quick succession. Flame should be as low as possible. After a minute
add a handful of curry leaves. Put off the flame and let the oil cool
to room temperature. Pour the seasoning in the container and mix well.
Let the pickle remain in the container for at least a day. Two days
would be better. Taste the pickle and add salt if necessary. (
Adjustment of salt quantity is necessary, since the saltiness of
crystal salt differs to a small extent from one packet to another. Also
the soarness of tomatoes differ.)
The pickle is ready. Transfer the pickle to glass / plastic / porcelien
containers.
The pickle goes well with rotis, rice.
Shelf life without refrigeration is 10 to 12 months. As long as tomato
peices remain green, you can assume the pickle is fresh. Towards the
end of the shelf life, slight colour change might happen to the pickle
paste. It is normal.
For the pickle to remain fresh, do not use wet spoons and do not leave
metal spoons in the pickle for long periods.

Green Chilly Pickle

2006-05-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

The green chilly pickle goes well with all types of food. It is a gourmet's delight when taken with snacks.
I am giving below the ingredients and the process to make the pickle. Follow them diligently and have a feast.
Ingredients:
1 kg green chillies ( lean, long ones)
300 gms seedless tamarind
250 gms crystal salt
50 gms Fenugreek seeds
250 gms garlic bulbs
2 nos. coconuts
Process:
Wash the green chillies with cold water and dry them by placing them on a dry towel or newspapers.You can also dry them by wiping the wetness of each chilly with a dry clean cloth. Remove the stalks. Heat the pan, pour 2-3 tea spoons cooking oil. After the oil is heated, put the green chillies in the pan. Stir well while frying till some discolouration happens to most chillies. Do not overfry or roast. Keep them aside.

Boil 2 cups of water ( about ~150 ml ). When the water begins to simmer, put the tamarind in the boiling water. Ensure tamarind is submerged. Do not cook the tamarind.Keep it aside to let it cool to room temperature. Mash it to paste with a spoon.

Grate the 2 coconuts. Keep it aside.

Fry the Fenugreek seeds in a dry pan on simmer heat till they turn deep brownish. 3-5 minutes of heating will do. Powder the seeds in a mixie. Keep it aside.

Powder the crystal salt in a mixie.

Remove the wafer thin outer layer on the garlic bulbs by putting them all in a cloth and rubbing vigorously. Do not waste your time by trying to remove the outer layer for all the bulbs. Make it into a paste in a mixie.

Now put proportionate portions of each of the ingredients ( chillies, tamarind paste, grated coconut, fenugreek seed powder, garlic paste, salt ) in the mixie jar depending on the size of the jar and make complete paste of it. You may have to do it in 5 to 6 portions for a medium sized jar. Mix all the portions of the paste well.

Taste it and add salt if necessary.

Season the pickle paste as follows:
Pour ~50 ml ( 100 ml if you like your pickle oily) of cooking oil in the heated pan. After oil is heated put 10 dry chillies, 10 garlic bulbs, 2 tea spoons of Bengal gram, 2 tea spoons of polished black gram, 2 tea spoons of Urad dal, 1 tea spoon of Jeera, 1 tea spoon of Mustard seeds, one after the other in quick succession. Flame should be as low as possible. Aftera minute add a handful of curry leaves, stir and add the seasoning to the pickle paste. Mix thoroughly with a spoon.

Let the paste cool. Transfer the pickle to glass/ plastic / porcelin jars/ bottles.

Bingo! you have the pickle ready for polishing off. The pickle remains fresh for 8 to 10 months without refrigeration. Do not leave metal spoons in any pickle jar for longer periods.

For a family of 4, the pickle will be sufficient for 6 months assuming all the members consume once a day with snacks.

For snacks:- Take a small portion of the pickle to a bowl, add curds / water / buttermilk at 1:1 ratio. If you want the serving to be less hot increase the portion of the curd. Serve with snacks.

Responsible Dog Ownership

2006-05-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

Most times decision to bring in a pet dog is taken on the spur of the moment. You meet a friend who has a litter and offers a pup free. Or your kid has been pleading with you to get him or her a pup. And you just pick up whatever is available that doesn't cost much or because you read somewhere that a particular breed is very friendly etc.. For a lifetime's happiness of owning a dog, the first and perhaps the most important decision is to carefully select a breed or mix of dog that is most likely to fit into the family temperament and lifestyle. Fortunately, there are many breeds to choose from, and there is at least one to fit every situation. There are breeds that are predisposed to retrieve, to guard, to pull sleds or carts, to snuggle, and to lie by the hearth. There are active breeds and calm breeds. There are breeds to satisfy the desire to comb long strands of silky hair and breeds that require only an occasional rubdown to keep coats healthy. There are breeds that can withstand cold climates and breeds that can cope with hot, muggy temperatures. There are breeds that love children and can put up with a toddler's teasing, poking, and pulling and a 10-year-old's rough-housing. Do not make your decision basing on popular beliefs that small dogs need little attention or can fit into an apartment and big dogs need lot of excercise. There are variety of small dog breeds that are hyper active and need lot of excercise and play and there are huge dog breeds that simply want to rest 24x7. Keep in mind that big dogs need lot of food and prepare yourself for a hefty monthly budget.

Before you make a decision on the breed you would want, check out the breed origin, for knowing where and why a breed was developed helps to understand its character and physical attributes.

Once the breed is selected, the buyer should look for a breeder who produces puppies that fit the breed's physical and attitude description. Choosing a puppy that has the name of the breed but not the appearance and character negates the vast amount of work to get to this point. Why bother reading and studying about breeds just to buy a puppy that is a Labrador Retriever in name only?
To find a breeder, contact a local veterinarian, groomer, or kennel or obedience club for a referral, check ads in the Kennel Gazettes or surf the Internet for a breed club website. Do not buy from the puppy mills that seem to be sprouting everywhere. The breeders of puppy mills have only one thing in mind- making a fast buck. The dams are reared in inhuman conditions and bred indiscriminately. Puppies are not socialized causing psychological and behavioural problems as they grow.
Once the puppy comes home, there are many other decisions to be made, but they can all be approached with common sense and made to fit your personal biases, budget, and life circumstances. Take the pup without delay to the vet for vaccinations. Maintain a file recording the vaccinated dates and treatments to other ailments.

Do not pamper the pup as it grows to an extent where the pet dog becomes the master of the house. Obdience training is a must which can start as early as 3 months. You should be a responsible dog owner and an obedient dog is a pleasure to have. Dogs that jump on people, chase cars, or bite strangers are not only a nuisance but dangerous too. There are hundreds of books and material available to learn the basics of obedience training. After all you are not attempting to make your dog a movie star. Basic obedience training will do.

(If you are in or in the vicinity of Australia, you can go to Alpha Dog Training Institute headed by Greg Fontana. His Canine Lifestyle Communication system, the methodology of training dogs is unique and very effective. You can send the dog to Alpha Boarding kennels at 8 Kiernan Road, Macclesfield, Victoria 3782 Ph. no- 59688101 www.alphadogtraining.com.au for boarding as well as training. Or best, you can take a short term course ( 1 week) in dog training and you will be amazed at the results. Just a few minutes drive from his kennels and training center are beautiful cukkatoo cottages that are rented out. )

As the dog matures the decision to spay or neuter is often at the top of the list. Sterilization surgery is often cited as the demarcation between “responsible” and “irresponsible” dog ownership, but that is a political and moral judgment, not a practical one. However,sterilization has many advantages: spayed bitches never drop estrus fluids on the carpet or unwanted litters in the closet, don't develop reproductive cancers or uterine infections, and don't require management skills to separate them from male dogs, and castrated male dogs don't get testicular cancer, macho attitudes, or stud dog wanderlust. However, if a family wants to keep a dog intact, exercises common sense precautions to prevent unwanted litters, and understands the risks of infection and cancer, they should not be considered “irresponsible.”

Close on the heels of the decision to spay or neuter is the decision to breed. This one requires at least as much care as the selection of a breed, for the determination to bring more puppies into the world should be based on more than wanting the kids to see the miracle of birth or aiming to make a few dollars for the vacation fund. Puppies are not cars or toasters; they should be thoughtfully produced, thoughtfully raised, and thoughtfully sold.

Responsible Breeders often study their breed for years before producing a litter. Dog breeding is animal husbandry every bit as much as the breeding of race horses . In dogs, the aim is to package the genes into a healthy animal that is representative of its breed, not merely to produce more Labradors or Rottweilers or Jack Russell Terriers to sell for a fast buck. The original developers of these breeds knew what characteristics they wanted and carefully mated dogs to get them; breeding today should be approached with the same care.

Breeding a healthy litter is expensive. Sire and dam in all medium-to-giant breeds and mixes should be checked for hip dysplasia even if they show no signs of problems, and they should be screened for other genetic diseases that are prevalent in their breeds and for which tests exist. Toy breeds should at least be checked for slipping patellas (kneecaps). These precautions do not eliminate the potential for inherited disease or abnormality, but they do improve the odds for a healthy litter.
Finally, the decision to breed a litter should include consideration of the puppies' need for socialization and careful screening of potential buyers. Since the puppies will be pets, they should be accustomed to living with people and their noises, smells, and activities from the beginning. Gentle handling is recommended from birth onward, handling that can be done during the three-times-daily cleaning of the whelping area. When puppies begin to move around freely, they should be given toys to play with and spend some time outside the whelping area each day. At five weeks, they can spend time outdoors every day, weather permitting.

Potential buyers can visit the puppies from six weeks on, but no puppy should go to a new home before seven weeks and preferably not before eight weeks. Breeders of toy dogs often keep the litter together for 10-12 weeks or more.

No dam should be bred before 18 months age and for large breeds >2 years. There should be a gap of 2 years between litters and not more than 3 litters in its life span.

Life span of a dog varies from 8 to 14 years depending on breed, the care taken and several other factors. When in old age, dogs develop joint problems, reduced vision, sores, tooth loss. This is the period when people simply drive the dog away from home for it to die on the streets. This is the most inhuman act. If the dog is suffering, consult your vet for mercy killing rather than drive away the dog that has given you happiness for years.

Be a responsible dog owner.

Dog Trivia

2006-05-25T22:57:00.000-07:00

•Irish Wolfhounds are the largest dogs among all breeds (in height).

•Most dogs have pink tongues except for two...the Chow-chow and the Shar-pei. Both have black tongues.

•The only barkless dog in the world is the Basenji, an African wolf dog.

•Dalmatian puppies are pure white when they are born and develop their spots as they mature and grow older.

•The Pekingese was a favorite dog of ancient Chinese royalty. They carried these small dogs along in their sleeves of their royal robes.

•German Shepherds have 225 million cell receptors in their noses, making them ideal for police work and search and rescue activities.

•Humans have 5 million cell receptors for smelling while most dog breeds exceed 100 million cell receptors.

•Saint Bernard’s were originally trained to rescue lost travelers in the Swiss Alps.

•Dachshunds were bred to fight badgers in their dens.

•The original reason behind the Poodle's "haircut" was to improve their swimming abilities as a retriever. The pom-poms were left to keep their joints warm.

•A Greyhound can reach speeds up to 45 miles per hour for short periods of time.

•Large quantities of chocolate can be fatal to your dog, especially the type used in baking.

•Dogs curl up with their tail covering their nose to keep it warm in the winter.

•Not all dogs' eyes reflect the color green in the dark; some reflect orange or red.

•The world's first ever space astronaut was a dog named Laika. The Russian Government sent Laika into space in an artificial earth satellite in 1957.

•Cerberus, a 3-headed dog of Greek mythology, was said to guard the gates to Hades (the Underworld). The only person to ever get past his guard was Heracles (or to use his Roman name, Hercules).
•The first dog show was held in England in 1859.

•Two dogs survived the sinking of the Titanic...a Pomeranian belonging to Miss Margaret Hays (in lifeboat 7) and a Pekingese belonging to Henry Sleeper Harper (in lifeboat 3).

•The Saluki breed is the oldest known breed of dogs. They were raised by ancient Egyptians as hunting dogs. Saluki is an Arabic word meaning noble one.

•1990 was the last year that a breed other than the Labrador Retriever finished 1st overall in American Kennel Club dog registrations for a single year. The Cocker Spaniel edged the Lab in 1990 by almost 10,000 dogs. Since then, the #1 spot has been all Labs.

•The term dog days of summer was coined because the hottest days of the summer in Rome coincided with the night sky when the Dog Star (Sirius) could be seen. The Romans believed the brightness of the star added to the heat of the sun.

•A dewlap is the pendulous fold of skin on the neck, like you would see on a Bloodhound.

•Did you know there is a dog museum? In St. Louis, Missouri, you will find The AKC Museum of the Dog, founded by the American Kennel Club. There are paintings, sculptures, and other works of art that are about dogs or have dogs in them. Dogs have been in artworks that date back thousands of years!

•The United States and France have the most pet dogs. Almost one in three families in these countries own a dog.

•What countries have the least amount of pet dogs? Germany and Switzerland only have one dog for every ten families. They need more dogs!

•A dog's temperature is between 100.2-102.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

•Contrary to popular belief, after the first year of life, a dog is equivalent to 16 human years. After two years, they are equivalent to a 24 year old, at 3 years a 30 year old, and each year after, add 5 human years to determine your dog's age.

•Dogs breathe 10-30 breaths per minute.

•It is illegal to crop your dog's ears and dock the tails in the UK & Australia.

•The English Romantic poet Lord Byron was so devastated upon the death of his beloved Newfoundland, whose name was Boatswain, that he had inscribed upon the dog's gravestone the following: "Beauty without vanity, strength without insolence, courage without ferocity, and all the virtues of man without his vices."

•Dogs and humans are the only animals with prostates.

•More than 40% of pet owners talk to their pets on the phone or through an answering machine.

•Twenty-five percent of pet owners blow-dry their pet's hair after a bath.

•More than 50 percent of dog and cat owners give their pets a human name, such as Molly, Sam or Max.

•Dogs have 42 teeth, cats about 30.

•The maximum speed of a Whippet is 35 miles per hour.

•The name of Superman's dog is Krypto.

• Three dogs -- an American Foxhound, a St. Bernard, and a Great Dane -- have each given birth to a litter of 23 puppies. The record remains unbeaten.

•Pollsters say that 40% of dog and cat owners carry pictures of the pets in their wallets & mobiles.

•In the original 101 Dalmatians movie, Pongo has 72 spots, Perdita has 68 and each of the puppies has 32.

Requiem for a Friend

2006-05-25T04:38:00.000-07:00

Requiem for a Friend

It was a normal morning like any other summer morning. I was on my morning walk with my dog when the cell phone rang. The call was from my village and a hysterical voice told me Siva is no more. He met with an accident. I couldn’t believe it. The caller confirmed that the body was positively identified. It was like a bolt from the blue. I rushed to my village to have a last glimpse. Mercifully the face was intact and he appeared to be in deep sleep. He was cremated on the same day.
I was 10 when I first met him in my village during summer vacation. He was a month older to me. He came from a nearby town to visit his grand parents. He came in an amby and was a sport to accept my exciting suggestion to take a side seat while I test drive the car. He stole the car keys when everyone at home was taking the afternoon nap and gave them to me. Together we were off. Not far though! Before I could manage to start and roll the car for a few yards, both of us were dragged out and a sound thrashing given. That day a bond of friendship sprang between me and Siva and blossomed for 35 years till a few days back when he rammed his car into a stationary truck from the rear during the dead of the night on NH-5 and died on the spot.

A few years after our first meeting, his family permanently moved to my village after his father lost a fortune in business. We met during every holiday, started our jobs same time in Hyderabad, shared a room and shared everything. We had similarities as well as differences. He was a religious person and I was an atheist and later a convert to the concept of Almighty. He was a conformist, while I was a rebel. We both chucked our jobs and started our own businesses, tasted the headiness of success and the pain of failure. Finally he settled in Chennai 15 years back. We used to plan out trips to the village to ensure both were there at the same time.

During the last 5 years, the meetings became infrequent as I was not able to make it to my village when he visited. I traveled to Chennai scores of times but there too didn’t find time to stay back for a day to spend with him. I visited him only a couple of times for an hour or so. He used to say that work will always be there and heavens will not come crashing down if I take a day off to be with him. How I wish now that I had done it. How I wish now that I had met him every time I visited Chennai. How I wish now that he lived for some more years for me to make amends. Alas, if wishes were horses beggars like me would be riding them.

I am left with emptiness in my heart. I am left with a guilty consciousness. I am left with a deep sorrow for not being able to meet him more regularly when I could have done it easily.

Siva is survived by his wife and 13 year old son.

May his sole rest in peace.