Trip to Neela Hauz

  The Neela Hauz is what used to be a beautiful lake on the Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi. It was filled up with construction waste during the building of the Valecha bridge over the lake, this lead to the drying up and degradation of the lake which has reached the verge of the end if its existence. Neela hauz has become a popular dumping ground for construction waste and there is a nearly 5 foot long pile of debri in the lake which is killing it.

The second year class of Journalism Hons, KNC, went for a field trip to Neela Hauz on Thursday, for their developmental communication class. Although it was only a few of us, the trip was alot of fun, we looked around for a while then we went into thelake and started pulling weeds. The lake water stinky and there was freen much floeating all over, but we went on pulling out long weeds with floating roots ouf of the water and we managed cleaning off an admirinble chunk of the lake. We even cleared off some big rocks on the debri plile and  threw it all in a pit.




The idea of this trip was to understand what could be done to revive the lake, and i understand that it is possible to revive the lake if a large scale manual cleaning campaign could be initiated. Also there should be involvement of  geologists, environmentalists and other such experts who would understand the ecosystem of the lake. While talking at the lake  someone said that the use of natural cleaning agents like some specific weeds and all would help.

I do not know where this initiative would ge but  i learnt a very inportant thing yesterday that I'd remember and which is universal for all developmental endeavours:" Do what you cando, and let nature take is course".\

The MINE story

The recent, miraculous rescue of the 33 miners stuck half a kilometer underground , in the San Jose mine ,Chile, has drawn my attention to the situation of mining activity in our country. This is also coming from two articles that i read, one from todays TOI, page 13, headlined: ' jairam vows action aagainst Maha mining' and one from india together.com
link: mining vs communities
So forst of all i must establish the ill effects of mining activities to the environment. Firstly mining activities are the reason for deforestation. Chemicals like mercury, cyanide, sulfuric acid, arsenic and methyl mercury are used in various stages of mining. Most of the chemicals are released into nearby water bodies that leads to water pollution , which consequently leads to loss of aquatic life. Sometimes the liquid waste that is generated after the metals or minerals have been extracted is disposed in a mining pit. As the pit gets filled up by the mine tailings, they become a stagnant pool of water. This becomes the breeding ground for water-borne diseases causing insects and organisms like mosquitoes to flourish.
I found all this out after reading the toi article. the article talks about the Sindhusdurg district of Maharashtra , it has the highest green cover in Maharashtra and was declared the first eco tourism district of India. The report says that The Maharashtra govt has approved 49 mining licenses for this region. Now , with the entire world heating up with environment talk, how senseless it is of the maha govt to take a step like this, it is being criticised widely, but this is an example as to how under the retext of being a developing country who are not as responsible for envoronmental  troubles as the developod nations, we are shying away from our responsibilities, we must realise that above all different nations is one planet earth, and if thats gone, everything else is irrelevant!

Malnutrition

I was just googled 'malnutrition in India; out of a sudden curiosity and I was not really surprised at the figures, but the more i read about malnutrtion the more intrigued  became!
The first point which I realized I was not aware of was that both under nutrition and over nutrition counts as malnutrition. Secondly, malnutrition is the cause for more than 50% of infant deaths. Also according to a 2007 survey 43% of the children in India are malnutritioned..

Now, I do realise that though it is more commonly scene in the lower socio economic segment malnutrition does not restrict itself to any particular economic strata. It could be caused due to lack of immunity, retention or mental disorders like anorexia and bulimia. The problem is that in a country where it is so difficult for a family to feed itself. how do you enssure proper nutrition. A daily wage worker cannot afford to buy fruits for his children! With the sky high prices of almost everything,  maintaining a propoer nutritional diet gets difficult in a middle class home.
Improvement in sanitation, water and hygine facilities. Spread of awerenes is thw suggested way out, but the problem has more minute ddicreoensies that need to be looked into. This could only be done by voluntary work for the spread of education.

ayodhya: verdict that was

  Sixty years after it first went to court, the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court has pronounced judgment in the Ayodhya title suit.

The three-judge bench has ruled in a majority judgement 2:1, that one-third part of the disputed land will go to the Sunni Waqf Board, one-third to the Nirmohi Akhara and one-third to the party for 'Ram Lalla'. I am embarrassed to admit that i had no idea what the ' Nirmohi Akhara'  is before today. Wekipdia says that : irmohi Akhara is a Hindu religious denomination following its own religious faith and customs . It is one of the 14 akharas recognized by the Akhil Bharatiya Akhara Parishad and belonging to the Vaishnava sampradaya. So doesnt that mean that two thirds of the land has been given to the hindu community!  according to the news update by NDTV the distribution of land has been describes in a manner that there as a temple there,or as per hindu related structures: like the ram chabutra andd sitarasio, i found that unfair !

lukha sings the blues

 This is the picture of Lukha river in meghalaya, which was once a source of livelihood for thousands of fishermen,  due to pollution caused by extensive mining activity in that area , the river is now unfit to support aquatic life and is a health hazard for locals. It is extremely sad. The colour of the water has turned a very acidic blue. Pity at the lack of media attention

empowerment and liberation and women

After boggling my head for more than a year over woman liberation I have come to a conclusion that suppression of women is not a problem that has a one fold solution. I doubt if it has a solution at all. The change that we wish to see is not through any ACT or provision but there needs to a a change in attitudes! Mr. Sanjay Mattu explained to us the entire concept behind objectifying a woman's body and establishing the entire SHAME factor . So in a patriarchal society the only way a man could be sure that the child who his wife gives birth to is his, is by creating an environment so hostile , that a woman is trapped in the realm of her own femininity! I am not sure if I am perfectly satisfied by that explanation,  mostly because coming to terms with it is scary for me!


Also this whole feminist issue is kind of a no issue for me. Please do not get me wrong, all I mean is that I feel that the way to bring about the EGALITARIANISM is to stay egalitarian, if i stress to much on my womanly woes, i am inviting subjugation. Hence, I shall defy what tries to bind me, and ignore my limitations and suffer my own consequences.

If I were the PM

On the occasion of the 63rd independence day of our country I, the Prime Minister of India announce that for today the price of petrol is Rs 12 per liter.  Today the forces in Kashmir will stay in their stations, today we will not discuss any issues : commonwealth, Mamta Banerjee, naxalites, Pakistan, nothing. Today we take a break. Sit at our homes , do nothing. Enjoy your freedom to do nothing. Dear countrymen, happy independence day!

Sanitation and India

In order to update my blog this week I googled ' Sanitation' and I came across a really interesting article about these women in a village called Medapally in Andhra Pradesh who belong to various self help groups and each of them have assigned themselves a street that they clean twice a week. How cool!

http://www.indiatogether.org/2008/dec/hlt-medepally.htm

I think the importance  of sanitation is getting really undermined in India these days. Not only does this mean that there is a lack of institutional efforts but also that the urban media does not pay enough attention to it. A few days ago , we all saw a documentary called Q2P. A beautifully directed satirical film on the availability of public toilets for women in cities. Although the film shed light on a lot of issues I'll not digress in this post. There was a segment where the film talked about the condition of Mumbai municipal schools. The state of toilets there is sop bad, there was poo all over the floor. In an interview one of the teachers said that she had got an infection from using those toilets Girls avoid drinking water in order to avoid needing to go to the loo, which is terrible for their health.

AGRICULTURAL EXTENSION

The use of new technologies to extend the efficiancy of agricultural practices is agricultural exxtention. The efforts of the indian govt started after independance with the grow more ffood campaign