Who is watching Corruption in Urban India ?

As day after day country like India sees the visual images of corruption happening in public arena and wealth massed by who is who of well to do personals we think regressively. What a joke on a system that has all the provision in the law to protect the interest of the public? We have agencies looking after the interest (Is it really?) namely the Central Vigilance Commission, IB, CBI and CAG. Each of these agencies support the government in power or those closer to power to move ahead without inhibition to think twice about the public money. The media moves fast enough to reach their news rooms daily and 25 x 7 makes them run after or breaking news rather then spilling the beans.

If at its not high profile nobody is interested in pity theft or corruption of below 1 crore its beyond their dignified image. As being closer to Delhi, by actively following the development, its pathetic to imagine the sleeplessness and over reaction in recent Laxminagar building collapse to the quell the anger by taking the foolish action like getting residents of more than 30 such building out of their homes in a day. If they would have taken this action against the concerned builders or contractors or made some alternate arrangements these would have brought some solace and peace in the minds of the people concerned.

But then why blame Delhi, the whole of urban India is repeatedly living in the these situations, comparable to retarded thinking of the educated, suave and elites towards the pressing the buzzer of 'danger' when they are suffering and leaving the rest of the citizens of India here in Delhi 'Out in Cold'.

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!!