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.