Dilution of the Nuclear Liability Bill

Won't we ever learn ? One would have thought the Bhopal tragedy would have made future Indian Governments wary about formulating laws which hold foreign firms accountable for accidents happening on Indian soil. But no. It appears that the Nuclear Liability bill has been diluted favouring American suppliers.
See here.

Clause 17b which says "Foreign suppliers can be sued for damages by the operator if the nuclear accident has resulted from the willful act or gross negligence on the part of the supplier" has been deleted on the insistence of the Americans.
What’s more, the bill pegs the maximum amount of liability in case of each nuclear accident at Rs 300 crore to be paid by the operator of the nuclear plant. In other words, if, God forbid, if an accident occurs which kills some 10,000 Indians, the maximum damage that can be extracted is Rs 300 crore.

Compare this with what's happening in the US over BP's Gulf of Mexico oil spill disaster. On the insistence of the US, BP has set up a USD 20 billion fund to compensate for the damages caused by it ! Yes - 20 billion. (It will take me a while to calculate the number of zeroes in that figure )

BP is being bled dry and the Indian Govt is being apologetic about formulating a bill which takes care of extracting adequate compensation by potential wrong doers !

Greenpeace has started an online campaign. You can express your outrage against this. Pls take 2 minutes to do so.

Count your blessings

Here is a list of things - material or otherwise which - I take for granted but which are out of reach for the majority of India's population. To be very frank, compiling this list scared me.
Needless to say, by no stretch of imagination is this list comprehensive.

Ghee with every meal
Fruits
Electricity and all its associated comforts
Plumbing and a decent toilet
The ability to purchase new clothes whenever the urge hits me
The ability to dial a pizza whenever the urge hits me. (Pizza ? The poor don't even have access to 2 chappattis a day)
Telephone
Services of a doctor
A private vehicle
Internet/Computer
Television
Domestic help

The very thought that 600 million Indians are not able to afford even one of the above mentioned things is sad. Whether we are able to do anything to alleviate their lot is a different matter. We should at least be aware that there exists a world outside our little cocoonish life - a world that's dreary, miserable and wretched.

Raavanan - not my Mani's worth

Raavanan was a let down for me. During the weeks leading up to a ManiRatnam movie release and for a few days after, I usually devour all the reviews/analyses that I come across. It serves as a nice buildup. This is what I did this time too. Most of the reviews were good which, I guess, upped my expectations.
Well, I knew that this movie was based on the Ramayanam. I supposed that the general story would be used. But this is a straight lift - down to Shurpanakha's nose humiliation ! It is as if characters and scenes have been injected into the storyline just to make it fit into the Ramayan mould. There are some loose ends which want tying up as well. How the SP identifies there is a traitor in his camp is never shown.

The dialogues fall flat. Suhasini Maniratnam is the culprit. The vacuum created by Sujatha's death is all too tangible.
When Prithviraj rescues Aishwarna and taker her back home, he asks her to take a polygraph test to prove she is 'clean'. The scene is so un-Maniratnamesque. Left me squirming in my seat.

The climax is also messed up. Dozens of STF personnel start shooting at Vikram with Rai hardly two feet from him. She is also shown mourning Vikram's death ! Doesn't quite add up.

The photography, though, is brilliant. The movie is a visual treat. Rahman's music would stand up to critique. No complaints there.
But the cons outweigh the pros. Definitely not my Mani's worth.

South Asians as Politicians in the West

What with many people with South Asian origins making it to political positions in Western countries (read UK and US), I think curbs on who can make it to the Senate are on the cards.
Imagine a situation where the US needs to decide whether to bomb Pakistan 'back to the stone age' and there are influential Senators of Pakistani (or for that matter Indian) origin among the powers that be. Don't you think the situation will be fraught with all kinds of overtones and undercurrents? Sure it will be. It is impossible to believe these Senators (or MPs) can remain totally neutral.

Bobby Jindal and Sayeeda Warsi (http://beta.thehindu.com/news/international/article429157.ece) are examples. I'm sure people very high up in the echelons of power both in US and UK (and elsewhere) are already talking about it. I'd say it is only a question of when rather than if.

Science and Spirituality

How often in the past has science made a declaration about 'facts' only to change it decades or centuries later as and when more clarity emerges ? Too often for comfort, I'd say. The Human Genome project (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project) is the most comprehensive study made on the human DNA to date and yet it can make no sense whatsoever of over 97% of the sequences in it and so calls it 'junk'. Just because science cannot understand something completely, calling it junk is just being naive.

I'm part of the 'Narayana Movement' (http://groups.google.co.in/group/foaf2012) whose primary aim is to educate the world about 2012. There has been a lot of misinformation about what is going to happen to the earth in 2012. The popular theory is that life as we know it will come to an end in 2012 (reinforced by the Hollywood movie by that name). This is not what the Narayana movement believes. 2012 will herald the end not for the earth per se but for all negativity on earth. Armageddon for negativity, if you will.

The Narayana movement (in conjunction with http://www.kryon.com/) also says that the human DNA contains 12 strands of which only two are active for most people. Realised souls (Ramana Maharishi, Seshadri Swamigal, HH Chandrashekarendra Saraswati, Jesus etc) had all 12 active. There are literally thousands of people who have had first hand experiences with the seemingly 'magical' powers of the Kanchi Yogi (http://www.kamakoti.org/newlayout/template/souvenir.html). These incidents are too numerous to recount here. Science cannot even begin to explain some of these.

I'm now convinced that the 97% of the DNA which science calls junk holds many secrets. According to the Narayana movement,

• it is possible for ordinary humans to increase their active strands by practicing certain techniques - all easy ones
• The total number of active strands need to be increased to at least 6 by May 2012
• the number of active strands is directly proportional to closeness with Brahman
• DNA contains information about a person's past lives
• Children being born these days naturally have 3 strands active ! These children are termed 'Indigo Children'

It is a truism that science and spiritualism are both sides of the same coin; they go hand in hand. But today's science cannot be blamed for not being to explain phenomena which it loves to call 'supernatural'. It is simply not mature enough today to offer an explanation. But every single 'supernatural' phenomenon - telepathy, life after death, astral travel etc - should have a scientific explanation. There has to be.
I'm positive Science is marching towards it.

Technology as a bane

The Indian middle class has been benefited a lot by the advent of new technology. Much of this new technology has come in the last 30-40 years before which things were pretty much static. I would say the current generation of 'home makers' in the age group of 50-65 is one that has been impacted most. (I'm using the word 'impacted' and not 'benefited' for a reason I will go into later).

Mixer-grinders, microwave owens, LPG, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners and indeed electricity itself are some of the things this generation has seen coming into their lives. These ladies know what it means to live without these gadgets and hence appreciate them much better. But their daughters are born in a world with all these gadgets and hence their attitude to these gadgets is completely different.

Regular use of the grinding stone used to build brute, physical strength. Blowing into wood powered and kerosene stoves built lung power. Bending over double to wipe floors helped in keeping the body supple. More than anything else, it help inculcate tolerance levels, patience and endurance. Qualities you don't find in the current crop of youngsters - both male and female.

So, yes, there is no doubt that these gadgets have made life a lot easier for people but it also brought in a new set of body related and mind related problems along with them.

You can extend this analogy to practically any sphere of life, to any sample size of population belonging to any strata of society. You will find more or less a similar kind of cause and effect phenomenon.
We specialize in inventing technology which is supposed to improve our quality of life but which, over a period of time, in fact has the opposite effect.

Maoists are not enemies of the state

The Maoist problem in India seems to be a riddle without solution. Most people appear to have the perception that the Maoist menace is something that should be put down with brute force by the Government. They view the Maoists as terrorists who take pleasure in killing innocent citizens; they are the bad guys and should be treated as such.

While the above might be true - and I don't condone their methods - I think the mainstream India media needs to relate their side of their story as well. Outlook is one mag that has been trying to do this through Arundhati Roy (although people need to have a PhD in English literature to understand her articles ) for some time now. We also need to try and understand the reason they have taken up arms. After all, nobody starts a civil war for fun.

Successive Indian Govts have been consistently insensitive to the needs and difficulties of the rural Indians in their quest to sate the needs and address the difficulties of urban Indians. In the name of building factories, townships and big dams, millions and millions of the poorest Indians have been displaced from the lands they have been traditionally occupying for centuries. In the name of letting greedy mining companies set up shop in the rural hinterland, lakhs of people have been literally chased out of their homes - sometimes at gunpoint.
Every single time, it is the poor who get trampled.


Problems afflicting the educated middle class and affluent Indians gets a disproportionate amount of attention. A handful of people died at the hands of Kasab in Mumbai. This was covered on the front pages of every single newspaper in India over several weeks. Farmers have been committing suicides by the thousands in the Vidharba region of Maharashtra. Sadly, this gets a only a few centimeters of news space.

Hundreds of well-to-do software professionals lost their jobs when the Satyam fiasco broke out. Bowing to public pressure, the Govt of India itself had to step in and consider bailing the company out. Lakhs of textile workers and lakhs of daily wage labourers employed in the jewellery industry in Surat and elsewhere lost their jobs in the midst of the recession. Nary a whisper about their plight in the media.

Since the liberalisation started in the early nineties, the policies adopted by the Governments at power in the Center (including the BJP led one) have a distinct capitalist hue as against the totally socialist trend seen earlier. Editorials and economists have cried themselves hoarse about the 'benefits' this trend has brought to India. But the 'benefits' have not started to percolate to the masses below the so called poverty line (at least not as much as we would have liked). So there is this huge section of have-not people in India which has been seeing this other section move from strength to strength while they themselves have been continually deprived (or continually been kept deprived). In other words development and progress is skewed across the different sections of the social fabric. We don't a rocket scientist to figure out this causes frustration and heart burn.


Disgruntlement and restlessness builds up. It was only a matter of time that an organized movement by this disgruntled lot started. We now have a name for it - the Moaist movement.

So does the Government need to go back to its socialist ways ? Maybe not. So does the Government need to go back to its pre-liberalization ways ? Definitely not. All it needs to make sure is that progress is inclusive. Ah, that's easier said than done !

The point I'm trying to make here is that we should not automatically jump to the conclusion that the Maoists are enemies of the state. The Government needs to engage them in talks rather than try to suppress the movement by brute force. It may be successful in the short term but, for sure, the problem will crop up again.