National Debates on Farmer Suicides: Live Broadcast of Farmer Suicides, Rallies and briefing by political leaders to nations

"A farmer hanged himself in front of 24 x 7 media in a political rally, while a state CM, national media TV and Print, police officials etc. had a decent watch of the process. Evening shows packaged with who should be responsible for the farmer live lost in front of everybody. An enquiry is being conducted and wittness gathered to prove that he committed suicide."

In the post independence India, this kind of incidents are not only shameful but criminal neglect by everybody. The ignorance and indifference of the leaders and political class is very hightned in this incident. The statements by hon. Home Minister and later by PM to condone the incidents may not be enough. The ownership of the people are taken over by them, have become masters to distribute the doles to the poor farmers. The systems have failed to respond in the natural disasters, whats the role of political class in realeasing the funds for the affected farmers. There was huge funds, and legal systems enacted to respond to the disasters, yet none of the state government reacted properly, the hypothetical assumption of the power by them raised concerns about the decisions to be taken by the political class.

The farmers who lost the crops must not be at the mercy of the political leaders, but the systems made to provided immediate relief have failed measirably, we are yet to get quick assessment despite the modern satellite technology to assess the damage. The numerable man power available at the disposal of the district governments could have been used to assess the losses and damages. Yet even after 45 days people have no idea how much compensation they can claim or get. The linkages of bank accounts, aadhar cards and other systems have also not helped in quick transfer of money /financial assistance. The issues are being rallied between the state and central government, who should act fast, why it takes months to assess.

While the nation watched the recent suicide of the farmer live 24 hours the pain of the citizen is very much in forefront. The politics of the national disasters must avoid the system to be enacted for the disaster management. We are so week that the political leaders take their own time and political situation to encash the dole transfer. We must not take these lightly, the world would look at us in peity.

I hope we must strengthen our systems to upgrade the disaster management in the manner as designed in the governance system. Empower the local bodies to take action, and provide necessary relief on time. 

Gag the Civil Society and tag them Anti National

The soft spoken ex prime minister has left a harsh decision to get the intelligence report on the Non-Governmental organisation. The recently submitted report alleges lots of irregularities (financial?) and anti national activities (protesting against developmental projects and stopping exploitation of environment). These NGOs are posing threat to the governments development programs (developing private industries, and investment in corporate facilitation infrastructure) which are supposed to raise the GDP. Due to civil society protest, now say the right to information, revised land acquisition bill and forest rights etc, which was passed by parliament under the pressure from the NGOs. The activism which led to the justice and policy for the Sardar Sarovar Dam, led by supreme court. All these measures made post 1991 libralisation led government unhappy over the civil society namely the NGOs. They could only target now the internationally funded NGOs for their alleged 'Anti National' or 'Anti Development' activities. How strange the governments led by the Congress in past ten years got the service from the National Advisory Council whose member belong to these so called internationally funded NGOs!! The present IB report made these NGOs responsible for the slow growth rate. Good at least they recognised that NGOs can become a big force to effect the governments decision making.

The activism of the NGOs led to rise of a political party namely 'Aam Aadmi Party' AAP due to their struggle against the injustice done by the past governments. Governments instead of listening to these voices rose with repressive actions against the citizens. The stalemate of December 2011 upto April -May 2012 with the Anna Movement and government showed the government the power of civil society. The action now against the NGOs are targeted to supress the voice of civil society in the name of anti-nationalism. The rights based activists are wrong in assuming that government listens to their concern of environment, they only provide lip service.

The government at present is led by huge corporate supporter base who want their projects on the fast track. The more the projects cleared, the more investment, and thus the raise in GDP in two digits. Instead of focusing on the 'inclusive growth' and addressing the needs of rural and urban poor the government tries to bypass their own agenda set for the Twelfth Five Year Plan. It tries to hide its failure to improve HDI in the name of economic growth. Thats what the economists have be tought in the classes and many PhDs they do to address the macro economic issues. The lack of sensitivities towards the civil society and improper action to supress independent voice. This is gag order by the government machinary against the NGOs and civil society to support unilaterly the desires of the capitalists. Let the people now think again in the manner in which government should be going about in running the country for next decade. The political parties do not matter, its sold to the high and mighty to thawart an attempt to protest against the unjust actions.

The dance of capital in Globalised world continues..

The billionare lists prepared with much funfare world over, has made true joke of the present economic crisis in the US and Eurozone. The capitalists continue to maximise their wealth not loosing sleep over the present crisis. The recent news about Hindujas Manson in UK and million dollar, CEOs and professionals salaries in top companys would make the rest of world and country envy about their position. Its given same explaination that these neo-rich work harder to have earn their rights to encash their labour, the maximum of ownership even in this era of public companies not being corrected. The capturing of the wall street in US by commoners is representation of the growing antithesis about the march of capital. But these efforts in the US can not be equalled to what is happening in Egypt or Libya. At least they had targetted the persons who not only cornered the money but has dominated their life ever. The new capitalists also dominates but through its art and science of capturing the market, this would often create and positive sense. People in general are not averse to these, only they become jealeous for the targets capital which they themselves would not be able to acheive.

India, has also thrown the billionare club and more so is joining, some by their right while they own (??) a large public enterprise and some by their might. Among such is the liquor barronm Mr. Mallaya refuses to be mowed down by present aviation crisis, would bend the governments to facilitate his exit from the situation. It is clear that they have mismanaged their economic interests in businesses, would now force the government of India to garner more funds from the across the world, thus inviting the MNC to take over. Why such bending of rules or facilitating them is evident, ya we all know they run the government in proxy.

Capital has helped the political Class. They have printed hoardings, put politicians on charted flights to world trip, played in casinos to encash their fortunes, helped most of them to open Swiss Bank account. Why would then they keep silence on the any wrong doing by fleecing the consumers, land owners, financial institutions and governments at local level. They do not see existance of city government, only interact with the PMs and head of state. Their art of negotiation with the government is immense, as if they belong to different breed and have special citizenship status in country.

A normal citizen would have end number of difficulties in getting into the government headquarters whereas these neo-capitalists would sit in their offices, car and residences just because they belong to their place. Rest do not matter.

End of Industrialization in West and Weak Natural Resource base

The present economic crisis in the west looks like failure of market to move ahead without persistent support of the state. The North block countries including US, Canada and Europe faces severe resource crunch owning to high consumption and low availability of natural resources like fossil fuel. The desire of the west to dominate the world economy slows down as the developing countries like, China, India, Brazil, Iran and Countries South Asia emerge to utilize the world resources. No more the fight to capture the resources has done severe damage to industrialization as it has happened in 1980s to late 1990s. The disturbances in middle east including Afghanistan and Iraq poses the serious danger to the stability of north blocks resource utilization.

The paced industrial revolution led by the European nations in early 17th Century till 1960s have recently lost ground to recover owning to little access to resources of the developing or the least developed nations. While the these two group of nations are busy in utilizing the resources for their own consumption and trade or they are prone to civil wars disturbing the supply of the raw and finished material to the markets in developed nations.

The crisis riddled with controlled market economies of Europe and America which in late 1980s sought to liberalize the economies of the world to have better access to the resources and treating others as potential markets. The economic power of the worlds leading countries would hardly sustain for next two decade given the growth enjoyed by the countries in the Indian Continent and South East Asia. When the nations in the North decided to give up manufacturing and rely on the service based economies cities would tend to have depressive effect on the national economies. Recently cities in the west hardly support the manufacturing pool in US economies, its trade and commerce which so far eluded the employment downfall is now facing serious threat from the outsourcing. They need to diversify and strengthen the production in order to bail out the cities.

Series of the bailout packages for the industries are utilized to strengthen the units already ineffective to sustain beyond the desired period before government treasurership bows out. The going back to people centric industrial model is inevitable to resist given the high unemployment in the developed nations. The demographic transition of the nations in economic crisis from high proportion of aged and low young working group leaves the production line high and dry relying totally on the capital investments. This would have poor distribution effect and increased debt crises in the western nations.

World would not be in the position to bail out the nations and would be mute spectator in case threat of war is imposed by those who would like to sustain economy at any cost. Till they go back to the starting point from it all begun North cannot expect any concession from the South.

Climate Change: Positives!!

Climate change debates in world has remained a occupation for the doomsday predictors...more inclined toward scientific explainations. But there are positives too associated with climate change scenarios. To our mind can these be considered positives;

(A) Climate change is natural phenomenon and natural processess adjust and adapt to such change (with equal speed).
(B) Nature works out the methods in dealing with Hydrological and Vegetational changes.
(C) Certain areas are likely to have gradual increase in rainfall like semi-arid and arid regions woudl enable large areas under the vegetation and crops.
(D) Cold deserts would be no more uninhabitable and can be utilized by humans for activities mainly in Northern Kashmir, South-Central China, large areas in Russia and Europe.
(E) Behavior of clouds is not fully understood and which is an important factor controlling the rainfall and precipitation. In most of the climate change studies clouds are not modelled in order to predict the changes.
(F) Regional and Agro-Climatic changes are yet to be predicted and local climate changes are not equivelent to the Global predictions as presented in IPCC reports.
(G) Technological changes would occur faster then predicted and most of the industrial process would target the least emission targets.
(H) Dependence on the fossil fuel would likely to go down within next 20 years with high cost of the fuel and discovery of new sources of energy.

and many more..to understand the other side of the climate change...debates..

SEZ and Zoning

Special Economic Zones are one of the important steps taken for placing the nations and states on the economic boom in developing countries. These are opportunities fed to the industrial sector to invest in maximum in the regions they find suitable for their venture. Both India and China has been able to invite large scale investments in the regions which were supposed to be backward (rather vacant lands) and networked with cities. People in the region they ventured were having least knowledge of the activities rather it was states which had imposed their decision to the local governments. Every local body has to toe the line of state and national governments. People at these points are insignificant given the investments. How would the existing dwellers cope with new change in usage? Did anybody visualise these 10 years ago? Why SEZ is seperate local authority where in Local bodies have no power to regulate? Then who takes care of sustainable development (land and its resources) centre or state or concerned SEZ? Formal hearing of SEZ as per the current Environment Laws have taken place true in the respective villages without overseeing the overall the project. This kind of foot loose planning is going to destroy the regions where they would be placed. Today almost all the leading states are running after time to complete and allocate the land for SEZ and huge success are reported in Gujarat, Maharasthra, AP and even Madhya Pradesh.

We have not learned serious lessons from the climate change debate or rather our technocrats and professionals are providing only lip service. We have started branding industry are climate friendly and 'green' terming the whole carbon debate defunct and obscene limited to cleaning the act. Forget about stopping developmental violence initiated by the libralised and globalised state..for coming years!!

Climate Change: Blindfolded Indian Researchers

Across India the issue of the climate change has not moved beyond the rooms of babus preparing for the agenda and documents for various international summits across the world. The breaucrats and politicians are busy in holding the bull of climate change by its horn. It seems the NGOs, Corporates and Journoes are interested in climate change related negotiations in exchange with monitory benefits by 'capitalizing the climate change causes' i.e. Carbon markets and Green Technology. Though some of the national institutions have been contributed towards the Global climate studies we in India find diffcult to make the researchers understand the symentics of climate change. The universities and government departments have been organising lots of the seminar, workshops and debates on the climate change - co-terminus with the Environment, pollution, disaster and mitigation. All is right while dealing it as an individual subjects, but climate change research needs to look into the regional impact scenarios data in order to really work on the mitigation and adoption model. The state and district level agencies are still to get information on the scenarios in order to workout the change in development schemes, techniques and technologies for the their upcoming plans.

We have already started planning for the 12th five year plan and scenarios for the 2012-2017 and next 50 years should be incorporated in the prespective plans of the nation and state in order to generate documents and facts to add to the climate change issues. The research communities mainly the earth and social sciences stream needs to work together inorder to generate regional or state level scenario and prepare an effective mitigation plan. Why we are not able to wake up the researchers working in these areas in right direction? Are we as a researchers have become blindfolded by own attitudes...? At least start the change now!!

'Climate Change' caught in Prespectives!

One must understand climate change in the right prespectives...the comments recieved during the recent interaction with academicians at a gathering made me sit for a while. Yaah! like 'Development' and 'Hapiness' as a term has widely defined by various thinkers and scholars. But those opinion makers on the 'Climate Change' are taking the debates to their own subject of understanding, the environmentalist - terms it change induced primarily by the human actions and this climate change is determental to the existence of the mother earth. Environmental Economists (though I consider economists to be special breed who would draw learning (blood!!) from all the sciences and dominate the debate) -who often refer climate to be adapted and mitigated by investment, organisational changes, and so on impacting the Income and production cycle of the humans. They are cloned again by the political scientists who ventures into series of negotians with the elite business houses, lobby groups and trade blocks in order to maximise the regional or national benefits. They talk of North South divide..groups on either side of line in climate change debates. The scientists working on the climate change try to develop wonderful products to safe guard from impacts -suggests climate change a boon to research community with loads of funds available for their labs and institutions.

What about peoples understanding of climate change? Yes media bombards them with news and views on the climate change with serious disaster like floods, Tsunami, and even earthquake attributed to climate change. People keep on delibrating every summer, monsoon and winter about how excessive or scanty the phenomenon has become since they attained their adulthood. 'Climate Change' like a elephant body parts are different to these groups of knowledge makers and providers. With the changing body politic of the global empires and super powers, nations tend to pass on the information selective to their own people. Yet these countries a platform for serious debates ...on every thing on climate change. This is not clear to many why executives on the administration dwelve on the series of discussion on the issues brought up a handful of researchers (observers) who tend to make opinions from North pole to South Pole, from 1 million years ago to 100 years ahead and from your backyard to the tip of iceberg in Antartica.

Would this become a favourate time pass by the stakeholders? Unless there is serious inward looking executive, economists, environmentalists, political scientists or negotiators, the world would enter to the regime of 'deterministic' regime. Since last two decades (rather since 1987, Sustainablility - Earth Summit) the world has moved closer to climate observation and more fearful it has become. Similarly, as NASA scientists closely monitor the Sun and Mars we get more mesmerised by the serious fallout of phobia of 'If' this happens then what!

Stinking Cities..Rains bring more...

You must be welcoming rains with delight since the temperature went down during this week. The farmers are happy to get much needed water for their fields, while started to make huge investment in High Yeilding Seeds of various food and commercial crops, pesticides, fertilizers, etc. We in the cities tend to see rains not beyond our doors and windows. What meaning do we have for the rains except personal non-commercial interest? Its the city administration which has to tackle the rain into the drains or underground channels. Whilst, among these we should also know that, rains also brings back the stink emerging from the wastes, human night soil and sludge mixed with all the industrial and domestic lines. Our water bodies are filled with such a nightmerish water and wastes. Can you breath properly in the rains minus these wastes. Cities like, Surat, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, etc in Gujarat and other major metros of the country is stinking these days from the waste being decomposed with a mixure of hot and humid climatic changes. Stinks and humidity leaves most of the part of cities unbearable to venture out during the business hours (9.00 am to 7.00 pm). The rains and stinks would be apart only after 10-15 light showers days helping these wastes to move out of the city and pollute the regional environment. Smoke and hazardous gases rarely go away during the cloudy and humid seasons, it remain present in the lower strata of the atmosphere. This leads to more breathing problems in humans and plathora of dangers to plant and animal species.

Administration can at best clean the drains and leave the heap of waste away from the eyesight of the citizens, but its stink stays in the atmosphere of the city. This results the air we breath laden with heavy odur, bad tastes in mouth and infections in throat. What can be done? The cities would remain like that till we keep badly managing our solid and liquid wastes by treating them secondary to the city issues. Cities are happy to see creation of the infrastructure but are poor in operation and management of the systems.
Even the small town and large village settlements are also not left out from this modern life styles which are becoming 'chemical and plastic guzzling' economies. The outcome this phenomena is in wastes being generated, dumped all over the places and choking of the natural systems. Do we really care about city environment? At least not in the present cities of 21st century India.

Volcanic Ash: Major Disaster in Making?

As we all are aware of the recent volcanic eruptions in iceland since March 2010 to April 2010, since last 200 year ago such eruptions has taken place. Most of Europe is being affected by plume emerging from the ashes. The scale of ash dispersal is huge and its likely to affect not only the flights but also health of the people living the area. The dispersal of clouds and ashes from the mountains is likely to continue for few more days before it subsides. A less understood earth has kept people looking to god to save them from upcoming disasters to mankind in europe.

People in Europe are busy in just calculating the economic losses rather the attempt should be immediatly prepare for settling of ashes on the towns and settlements in Europe. Natural catstrophe like this is hard to imagine in recent years, the climatic effect of this can be immense on the coming summer season in Europe and rest of world.

Hope the administration and people prepare themselves for the immense stoppage of wheel of life in the continent. Keep mailing on us at gercbrd@gmail.com to get more updates.

Climate Change : Alarm Rings at Gujarat State

In one of the first signals of alarming rate of climate change impact is predicted for the Gujarat state, specially areas around Gulf of Kachchh (IPCC, 2001). In one of our analysis it is been estimated that 'coastal districts of the state ...Surat and Valsad district is most vulnerable given the length of coast and population density. In the Saurashtra region, Jamnagar and Junagadh (inclusive of Porbandar) district can be most vulnerable to the sea water changes.

This vulnerability is further going to increase in next 100 year given population rise from present 5.6 million (2006) to 5.9 Million (2011), 6.6 Million (2021), 10.0 Million (2041), 17.8 Million (2061) and 36 Million (2091). In the coastal districts population would be 3.8 Million (2021), 9.6 (2061) and 19.3 Million (2091) persons. Increased urbanization and industrialization along the coasts especially in Valsad, Surat, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Jamnagar makes them vulnerable to sea water rise. The resultant urbanization and economic activities along the coast would also have negative impact on the coastal ecosystem and surface water channels. More analysis at micro level is required in order to have location specific mitigation plan for the upcoming natural disasters.' (Green Eminent, 2010).

The map (CESIN, 2007) showing population density distribution in district of Gujarat with elevation level less then 10 meters and above presents disturbing scenario of high density of population along Gujarat coast. It reveals the impending danger posed by the state of Gujarat wiping out key economic and port centres of the state. Beyond actual inundation, rising sea levels will also put millions of people at greater risk of flooding. The upcoming environmental disaster has potential to displace a large number of people and result in large scale migration of people to urban areas.
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