The Haiti curse

This note is in context of understanding how black holes of the failure of human intelligence and spirit like Haiti exist and then also get rocked by one natural disaster after the other.

I am copying below one small chapter from a book which I have found very thought provoking and enlightening and to which I was introduced by Mr. Raj, an alternate health practitioner who primarily works at correcting imbalances in spiritual energy. A close family friend had introduced him to us to work on my fathers terminal cancer in 2007.

He was aware of my work in environmental issues and gifted me his copy of “The Last hours of Ancient Sunlight” by Thom Hartmann.

This  chapter copied below relates to Columbus’ oppression and havoc on the current islands of Haiti as  he landed there first.  Even as I was following the earthquake and then read this article http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/opinion/22danner.html?pagewanted=1

I was reminded of my having read the chapter below from “Last Hours…” and how there could be a strong possible connection between what happened there 500 years ago and the sustained misery that the country finds itself in. Some comments are after the passage below. The thoughts are in the context of all places where we carry out cultural and environmental genocide even today.

This chapter will always be soul stirring and special to me because I read it first as I was on my first trip to the United States on June 1st 2007. Till then I had been aware of the Spanish savagery in the Americas but had never read a graphic detailed note on the savagery of the discoverer himself. Two decades of awe, fascination and a general inspiration about the spirit of discovery collapsed within an hour and ironically just as I was about to enter the country itself.

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Glimpsing a Possible Future in Haiti and Other Hot Spots

The future is made of the same stuff as the present. – Simone Weil (1909-1943)

Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set an example for us all. – George Bush, 1989 speech

If you fly over the country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, the island on which Columbus landed, it looks like somebody took a blowtorch and burned away anything green. Even the ocean around the port capital of Port au Prince is choked for miles with the brown of human sewage and eroded topsoil. From the air, it looks like a lava flow spilling out into the sea.

The history of this small island is, in many ways, a microcosm for whats happening in the whole world. (emphasis is mine)

When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire island was covered by lush forest. The Taino “Indians” who lived there had an apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by literate members of the Columbus’ crew such as Miguel Cuneo.

When Columbus and his crew arrived on their second visit to Hispaniola, however, they took captive about two thousand local villagers who had come to greet them. Cuneo wrote: “When our ships…were to leave for Spain, we gathered…one thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians, and of these we embarked in our ships on February 17, 1495 …For those who remained, we let it be known [to the Spaniards who manned the islands fort] in the vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them could do so, to the amount desired, which was done.”

Cuneo further notes that he himself took a beautiful teenage Carib girl as his personal slave, a gift from Columbus himself, but that when he attempted to have sex with her, she “resisted with all her strength.” So, in his words, he “thrashed her mercilessly and raped her.”

While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, there was then and today still is no evidence of this: it was apparently a story made up by Columbus-which is to this day still taught in some US Schools – to help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the Spanish monarchs in 1493: “It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell…Here there are so many of these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they are as good as gold…”

Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common reward for Columbus’ men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: ” A hundred castelanoes [a Spanish coin] are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general that there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls, those from nine to ten [years old] are now in demand.”*

* Letter of Columbus quoted in Eric Williams’ Documents of West Indian History (Port – of – Spain, Trinidad: PNM 1963), and Peter Martyr, De Orbe Novo (1516)

However the Taino turned out not to be particularly good workers in the plantations that the Spaniards and later the French established on Hispaniola: they resented their lands and children being taken, and attempted to fight back against the invaders. Since the Taino were obviously standing in the way of Spain’s progress, Columbus sought to impose discipline on them. For even a minor offense and Indian’s nose or ear was cut off, so he could go back to his village to impress the people with the brutality the Spanish were capable of. Columbus attacked them with dogs, skewered them on poles from anus to mouth, and shot them. Eventually, life for the Taino became so unbearable that. as Pedro de Cordoba wrote to King Ferdinand in a 1517 letter, ” As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians chose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth… Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as to not leave them in such oppressive slavery.”

Eventually, Columbus, and later his brother Bartholomew Columbus who left in charge of the island, simply resorted to wiping out the Taino altogether. Prior to Columbus’ arrival, most scholars place the population of Haiti/Hispaniola at around 3 million people. By 1496, it was down to 1,100,000, according to a census done by Bartholomew Columbus. By 1516, the indigenous population was 12,000, and, according to Las Casas (who was there) by 1542 fewer than 200 natives were alive. By 1555, every single one was dead. (today not a single Taino is alive: their culture, people, and genes have vanished from the planet.)

As the transported population of slaves from Africa grew in Haiti, people began cutting the forests to create farmland and to use the trees as firewood for cooking and boiling water. As a result, today trees cover less than one percent of Haiti. The denuded land, exposed to rainfall and runoff sped up by the slope of the country’s hills, has been so thoroughly eroded that it has mixed with sewage and carried the stain a full four miles out to sea from Port Au Prince. Millions of people are crowded into the cities, where they provide a ready pool of ultra-cheap labor for multinational corporations, as well as cheap domestic help and inexpensive child and adult prostitutes for the European and American managers of those corporate interests and the occasional tourist.

The legacy of Columbus is that life in Haiti is more than poor: it is desperate. As much as 16 hours a day are spent by the average country-dweller in search of food or firewood, and an equal amount of time is spent by city dwellers in search of money or edible garbage. Diseases ranging from cholera or AIDS run rampant through the overcrowded population.

While Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, it is not unique. The Dominican Republic, which shares the island, is moving in the same direction, as is much of the rest of Central and South America.”

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Some thoughts -

1) The Spanish must be beyond competition the most savage and ruthless set of people to inhabit the planet. And it is interesting how the images of savagery that occupy the popular thought are ones either of Africans in dark rainforests or maybe Oriental. In the South and Central American context also I have always been sickened with the kind of brutality with which the Spanish took control of the land and decimated people and cultures which existed there since millenia. And in popular discourse and in documentary programs the general flavour given for all the killing and pillage is one of adventure and heroism.

2) It is quite possible that in going the Taino must have left a curse that whosoever inhabits the land after them would never ever be happy and that is pretty evident in the history of that land. It is incredibly saddening to read the line which describes the people as living idyllic self-sustained lifestyles on a lush land who came to greet Columbus as a show of good will and curiosity towards visitors and then got wiped out in one century (3 million of them gone).

My wonder is that will the curse come to the Spanish at some time? It is ironical that the Africans who themselves underwent significant misery and still do at the hands of the White and Spanish in particular are the ones who bear the brunt now.

3) Will places like Orissa face the same fate one day? In the next two decades to fill the insatiable demand of educated and upwardly mobile people for metals and minerals almost all the forests and tribal people there will be destroyed – leading to a Haiti kind of imagery when flying from above. Forests which are held sacred by tribal communities as the abode of gods will be scooped out awith gaint excavators and the people themselves sent to tin and cement barracks -  will the deeply disturbed spirits of the gods and the people end up leading to sustained misery in Orissa?

Food price rise paid for bills of LS 2009 elections?

It is quite plausible that the Lok Sabha 2009 elections may have been partly or largely funded through the subsequent food grain price rise that we have seen. The LS 2009 elections were by far the costliest elections with the stakes being really high and the Congress having spared no efforts in winning.

Lok Sabha polls to cost more than US presidential elections

Contesting and winning elections is not an easy job. You need thousands of vehicles, manpower, food for the workers, banners and other promotional material, full time teams of strategists and so much more. The LS 2009 elections cost Rs. 10,000 crores. How do parties get this kind of money to spend? What was the spend per party and what different accounts? Do we have a detailed breakup of the accounts? Who are the official big donors? Even if we get to know the big donors there is a gigantic list of business interests who spend on the parties in cash and how does one account for that?

Even with the donors are people doing it for love of the political party? What is the pound of flesh being extracted if any? Could there be a policy of mutual favours and payments in kind?

One mutual favour policy could have been to receive funds for all the expenses during Mar-April 2009 and then repay with interest during May -Dec2009 by allowing for a sustained rice in prices of food grains. The mechanics of the same could have been an arrangement with the big traders of food grains about funding the various costs of contesting LS 2009 in response to which the political parties would take suitable measures to ensure that the food grain prices hover significantly high for some time once the government is formed. This is a perfect system and an arrangement with which business interests are most familiar and comfortable with. This is also like having a gigantic election IPO in which the millions of stakeholders make payments for keeping the organisation – democracy in this case – running.

While I will be reading further and forming my opinion something intuitively tells me that my hypothesis is correct.

The big traders would be the kind who deal in bulk wheat, rice, sugar etc. – the kinds who deal in million tonnes. There is no point raising money from small traders, the logistics of collection become very high and anyways with the big traders ultimately you are dealing with a few gate keepers through whom ultimately the food grains have to ultimately flow. And maybe the small traders will help at the local levels but for the big ticket spending for centralised campaigns and organized money distribution to purchase media and votes it is the big traders who come into play.

Imagine a cartel of 100 (or 1000) traders decides to extend 500 crores to a political party or parties in cash. The maths being that if you can offload 10 million tonnes of a combination of food per month at even Rs. 200 more per tonne for five months then you have recovered Rs. 1000 crores. Not very difficult? Entirely doable. A lot of reasons can be used to justify the rise, media can be managed to confuse people by flooding with a host of different reasons leaving people disinterested in applying their mind. Droughts, easy credit, difficult credit, dysfunctional distributions systems and what not. The poor will bring down their consumption, the rich will stay at the same level, but in the end the same amount would be consumed fetching a higher return.

This may seem a conspiracy theory but in the kind of democracy India is with very poor public debate on important matters and an enormous capacity in the common man to experience considerable hardships over decades without questioning the lack of simple interventions which can solve the problems, makes India a fertile ground for all kind of manipulators. The common man are the planktons, which help millions of a particular species of manipulators to breed on whom in turn a few thousand master shark-hunter-politico-business-interest kinds thrive.

A healthy democracy would have a debate on such issues for days to end. There would be multiple opinions, a huge amount of data and analysts.

This need not have been a sole job of Sharad Pawar but instead be cutting across party lines for the amount of benefits that such an exercise would yield. Even then one has to give it to him that a lone Sharad Pawar possesses the brilliance and capability to swing this kind of an activity single-handedly. A large number of politicians themselves are involved in the food grains trade.

The poor progress we have made as a society to discuss the funding of elections and party expenses is quite embarrassingly characteristic of the great democracy some of us would like to believe we are.

The need of the hour is to collect a number of data sets which will help understand whether this hypothesis is correct or incorrect. The media was mostly sold out but there need to be some independent academics and researchers of repute who need to put together the following:

1) What has been the quantum of extra money spent by the public as a result of the price rise. Thus supposing Mumbai consumes a 1000 kilograms of sugar per month at the rate of Rs. 25 / kg and the rate goes up to Rs. 40 / kg the differential outflow is Rs. 15,000 more than what would have been Rs. 25,000/-. This is just an example, we need to have all the figures on an all India basis and then be able to find the amount of money that has additionally flown out of the pocket of citizens.

2) Who are the key big entities, companies and individuals who trade in food grains in large quantities? What are their linkages with key politicians? What kind of relationships  in terms of positions in companies, consultative contracts etc. are held between such entities and politicians?

3) A detailed breakup of all the election expenses leading to the 10,000 crore figure.

Maybe we have been funding elections like this all along. Maybe this is the Indian-Way. In which case there needs to be an analysis of such phenomenon across elections. Any which way I would like to know whether I am paying for the bills of keeping our great democracy going? There are no free lunches right?

Whats on agenda at Copenhagen?

With the considerable discussions on COP15 arising out of the meetings at Bangkok, Bonn, Barcelona and elsewhere and a global community engaging in the debates and following it through the net, I am left wondering what exactly is it that we will be discussing at Copenhagen?

Especially what will India be speaking and expecting? Will it be India’s stand of the developed world taking stringent emission cuts? Will it be KP beyond 2012? Will it be common but differentiated responsibility? Continuing with Annex I Annex II definitions?

If the US absolutely refuses to do things as we expect it to then are we going to keep it as a sore point which takes our whole focus or will we say chuck the whole world, we will work within our borders to become the one developing country which did the best with the resources available to us?

Is it not high time that we realized the futility of a talk on emissions control at two levels -

At one are we going to be discussing emission cuts and improving lifestyles side by side? Is one possible with the other? I am yet to see a rigorous debate on a paradigm shift which questions the very fundamentals of our developmental paradigm. I read news articles which have lines like

“The broader social and moral questions about coal are vexed ones. How do we weigh the potentially catastrophic effects of climate change against the desire of developing countries to achieve standards of living that the West has achieved by using cheap electricity and steel?”

http://www.theage.com.au/national/old-king-coal-20091107-i2w7.html

Can the discussion at Copenhagen be about realising that if everybody or even half the current population had the standards of living which the West has achieved, then possibly there will be a time sometime in 2110 (I am counting BAU, without any of the dire climate change projections happening) when the population has reached 9 billion, and half of that or 4.5 billion has been guzzling oil and gas and coal at West standards, when suddenly there has to come a time – this is pure maths without any dire exaggerated environmental outburst – when all of oil and gas and coal will be finished.

In such a scenario if we haven’t given sufficient thought a few decades in advance to preparing people to live happily and wholesomely a life and lifestyle, which is not the current Western one, dependent on only high carbon to provide satisfaction, then we will see a scenario where one moment people are driving the best of air conditioned sedans and working in sophisticated offices, and partying an vacationing at great locations and then in another decade everybody is living like the tribals, of the land, trying (trying because they never planned for what was to come) to surviving on decentralized food supply, and in a completely depressed state of existence, large amount of population dying because they bodies cannot bio-chemically adjust to the new situation.

Second, if it is sufficiently proven that technologies like CSP can provide the electricity needed to provide lifestyles like the West for everybody in India and China, then great lets party and see which vested industry lobby is stopping the transition and go one-point at a time to ensuring the whole of India (and China and the world) moves to CSP fed lifestyles by 2030.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/worlds-biggest-solar-power-china.php

Then what is the point of discussing emissions? Why worry about what America does or doesn’t, KP or not, common but differentiated or not? Are resources really a problem? If India just restructures it leaking and completely illogical subsidy structures then we could be in a position to fund projects in our neighboring countries. So the question of requiring funds from the West is gone. Are we going to have the guts to take leadership on dismantling our subsidies and creating resources within the country for everything from efficient and intelligent public transport to a spread of renewable like never before?

Today a completely venal political leadership which with vested narrow minded business interests has taken complete control of India’s climate change agenda discussion.And most in the country just do not have the guts to handle this coalition -  hitting at America is kids play. We are only talking about the faults of others to hide the enormous defects inside. I would much rather have a position where we are correcting our defects irrespective of what the west does or not. And we would be doing this  if we innately cared and were responsible. But our country and its people are no less irresponsible than those we point fingers at.

Are we talking technology for doing all this? I thought we had the best brains in the world? And anyways when we have the money from the source above then we can import the best solutions. Why are ‘we’ (the we is tricky because it may be the vested interests masquerading as speaking on behalf of one billion Indians) looking for charity from the West, by emotional blackmail on their historical emissions record. Can we, like the Australian viewpoint in the article above look at taking a leadership position?

A third important point of discussion will have to be a paradigm shift at the level of human beings who comprise the human species. Will people continue to live in a current paradigm where selfishness and greed and apathy about the community rule or will we move to an educated class which sees education not just as a means to high paying jobs and then high carbon lifestyles (and this has and continues to remain big in India , a whole family co-ordinated operation) but which reads material beyond their degree seeking text books and understands linkages in the much flaunted Vasudhiava Kutumbakam. How many in India have that feeling for the country also – forget the world?

The discussion at Copenhagen will have to be less about emissions and more about values then. Once we have the common and shared (not differentiated) values in place then emissions will automatically restore themselves. When the fresh into a high-paying job 25 year old in America and India will accept paying a higher tax on his vehicle, will accept a much higher electricity tariff for his/her favorite lounge bar, the additional resources from which help solar electrify a  village at a time, and numerous other such segments would have given similar thoughts, then we would have moved to a world where we would have sorted our not just climate change but MDGs and a hundred other problems.

But until the quality of the human being itself is bad, the situation is like high ash high sulphur content coal. If you burn it you will get sulphurdioxide and ash. As long as an irresponsible humans bides 60 years or more on earth we will have emissions, accept it and face the consequences, shut the COP shops and let everyone be on their own.

The Pied Pipers of India

I have been reading intensely (not as much quantitatively as much as I would have wanted to) on the climate change negotiations leading to Copenhagen and various other related topics like technology and the legislation’s being proposed.

I would maybe not express myself as I find below, had I found some credible amount of diversity in India’s positions on climate change as I find in many of the Tier – I industrialized countries (developed in popular lingo). Almost all of the discussion on climate change in India displays a lack of deep research and creative thinking. Almost every article in mainstream papers seems like some kind of a copy paste kaleidoscope. The more dominant ones display a hard headed thinking or smack of a clear vested interest influence. In fact most of the efforts in India are being financed by vested industry interests. Independent thinkers – and I would count myself as one – live a life so starved of resources that I even wonder why I take the trouble of writing right now.

Also its time we stopped calling ourselves a developing country (Tier II industrialized would be my lingo). We should call ourselves so only if we allow the real poor and backward people drive the India negotiations. All the India climate change negotiations are being led by Indians who know English better than the Queen, are more well versed with worldly issues than the average American and yet call themselves developing.

A hard headed way of thinking and approaching an issue is integral to India. You see it everywhere; people can’t do 360 degree thinking, cannot quickly create or respond to new scenarios, think creative solutions, accept mistakes and make amends. The result clearly is that once we take a position we end up we remain wedded to it, for good or worse, mostly worse.

Socialism was failing us by the late 60’s itself but we dragged it for two decades more. The country’s thinking was firmly in the hands of a few hard headed mono-visioned people. The millions (hundreds of) who make up India are like the rats who followed Pied Piper.

Most in India didn’t care much about what was going on which, lead to 1991, did not participate in bring about that change and then hardly blinked an eye lid before a transition and new generation passed the goodies through their digestive tracks. And it is on the strong shoulders of these indifferent people that Ministers stash of billions of dollars to Swiss Bank accounts by just keeping the dope of cricket and cinema flowing liberally. In this dreary desert has my country awoken and tries to lead G-77 on climate change.

The hard headed are generally the best at making coalitions and taking charge and in ensuring resources to feed their operations.

And in the climate change dialogue and in India’s ‘official’  – and more importantly the more vocalized – positions it clearly is not one but a whole troupe of Pied Pipers who are leading millions of rats to heaven. Millions of educated Indians (not those ‘disgusting’ beggarly brown skinned non-english speaking types) are brazenly unaware of what is climate change, those who are aware are no different in initiative from the generation which partnered in India’s downfall during the socialism years.

Millions go about completely unmoved by the need to address the more pressing and immediate issues facing the country. Poverty, the overwhelming corruption, being short-changed at every level of the government. May be that is also an element of the ‘more superior’ Indian intelligence and spiritualism, which understands that one day climate change will anyways square it all of so what is the point of engaging oneself in all these issues.

And it is from such a country that some have the gall to take a moral high ground by saying blatant lies about how India’s development will be affected by emission caps, these pied pipers ask about cash and technology transfers, while home talent is frustrated and denied opportunities to even implement good laws which already exist and are observed more in their neglect.

Some recent interesting international articles I read, which came as a break in the intellectually starved media reports in India.

The lucky country needs to act responsibly on climate

A wonderful dispassionate, objective and ethical look at their own position.

Old King Coal

Lack of global climate deal won’t crush green tech

FRA then Operation Greenhunt – Congress double standards on the tribals issue?

Yesterday I attended a meeting organised by The Committee for the Release of Binayak Sen (CRBS) as recorded right below my post. (interestingly the event doesn’t find feature in the papers today even as far more frivolous news covers the pages.)

I was already aware of the atrocities being carried out by the Indian state in the tribal regions but hearing the account first hand was sad enough.

The one question I raised during the Q&A was about the status as regards the Forest Rights Act, discussion around which was raging during 2005-06

http://forestrightsact.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&layout=item&id=3&Itemid=300038

The FRA then had polarized those in favour of the tribal rights and the environmental community, which feared the worst for the forests in terms of forests ripping away the resources.

Environmentalists also saw this as the worst form of vote bank politics by the UPA – I government.

Now 3 years down the line we see the UPA – II government declaring the tribals and their supporters as terorists and launches Operation Green Hunt. Whats going on?

Votes from the tribals and notes from the industrialists? What can be any other conclusion? As per the FRA the tribals are entitled to 4 hectares of land. Now they are being forced out of their forest homes and being forced to live in designated camps guarded by the police (concentration camps?, genocide?, state sponsored terrorism?). And if they retaliate then they are hunted down, raped, their houses and food stocks burnt.

Is Chidambaram the Gabbar equivalent?

From the first hand accounts it is very clear that the media is completely suppressing the real events taking place  in the interiors of the country. It will be upto a few right minded citizens in the city to make up their mind about how far will they let the situation deteriorate before it becomes all out war. The tribals are very determined and dont seem to be in a mood to take things lying down.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The Committee for the Release of Binayak Sen (CRBS)

invites you to a press conference to be addressed by

two prominent personalities from Chhattisgarh

Himanshu Kumar – noted Gandhian who has been running the Vanvasi Chtena Ashram for more than 15 years in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh

Advocate Sudha Bhardwaj — leading member of the Chhattisgarh Mines Mazdoor Sangh that was set up by legendary trade unionist Shankar Guha Niyogi; executive committee member of Chhattisgarh PUCL; and Dr Binayak Sen’s lawyer

Thick in the field of action in the tribal areas of Bastar, Himanshu Kumar and advocate Sudha Bhardwaj have witnessed the effects of the “development” efforts on the adivasis of Bastar by successive governments. They have experienced first-hand the fallout of the government’s anti-Naxalite movement, the Salwa Judum.

In May, Himanshu Kumar’s Vanvasi Chetna Ashram was demolished by the Chhattisgarh government because he was trying to rehabilitate the Adivasis displaced by Salwa Judum. Kumar has tried to file FIRs against every offence committed against the adivasis, but to no avail.

With the Centre all set to launch “Operation Greenhunt” against the Naxalites in the tribal belt that runs across seven states, Himanshu Kumar and advocate Bhardwaj are best placed to enlighten those living far away from Bastar about the actual situation there.

Will “Operation Greenhunt” destroy or strengthen the Naxalites’ influence?
Who will be the “hunted” – the armed Naxalites or the unarmed tribals?
Whose purposes will “Operation Greenhunt” serve – those of the tribals who have lived there for centuries, or the companies eyeing the resources in the region?
Can peace ever be brought to this rich region?
What is the context of State violence and Naxalite violence in Chhattisgarh?

For answers to these and other questions, please do attend the press conference and talk on

Saturday, Oct 31, 3 pm -5 pm, Mumbai Press Club, CST

Those wanting to stay on to discuss the situation can join us after the press conference at

Saturday, Oct 31, 6 pm, Shramik Hall, Dadar

Its all about jobs silly!

I read the following story at the Guardian, and couldnt help feeling a bit amused

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/27/economy-recession-car-industry-bankers

Till when will this charade go on? Lets accept it that our current developmental models are just not sustainable. Forget sustainability from the environmental perspective. They are just not sustainable from a very fundamental human need point of you itself. People are being given incentive to scrap even perfectly running cars to buy new ones just so that the companies sustain themselves so that employees are not laid of so that the employees have some income which they can then spend in the market and keep some body else in their job.

What is being missed out is that the employee of the car company is already aware that this could be temporary and sooner or later the hammer will hit again and therefore is very cautious in his spending, preferring to save for a time when his job might inevitably go.

And at what costs other than the immediate market stimulus does all this consumption come at?

In our own country iron ore and bauxite mines which provide the ore for steel and aluminum which goes into making these cars is stripped from fertile forest lands. Complete forests are destroyed and tribal communities murdered and raped if they refuse to leave their forests.

And then we talk about encouraging low carbon footprints? Tribals with zero carbon footprints get punished and some stupid Londoner (or Bombay-ite) who spends half his life in a pub drinking beer and engaging in stupid gossip gets rewarded? Forests which are the mother lode of all life, harboring biodiversity which makes possible strong nutritious fruit and cereal species besides originating life giving rivers are stripped apart to be able to give sterile metal which can only give rides to people, most of which might anyways be unnecessary?

Is this the development being talked about and spoken so gloriously by those who chide environmentalists to be anti-development.

While I read this I also remembered an excellent video I saw in June about the Cuban economic crisis and what they did to tide over the same.

http://www.livevideo.com/video/mercofspeech/CD893609A0CB495D9A9CF04AC9E4AEFF/power-of-community-how-cuba-.aspx

Also in a corner of the same Guardian article I saw and article for the films below -

http://www.guardianoffers.co.uk/mall/productpage.cfm/GuardianOffers/_17284/-/Classic-French-cinema%3A-Gloire-de-mon-Pere-%26amp%3B-Chateau-de-Ma-Mere

Maybe its time we moved away from an extremely centralised form of living which seems forever incapable of standing on its own feet without some support or the other. Maybe people need to move closer to the soil, which shows an infinite capacity to sustain everybody without any sops and stimuli.

Maybe those who have lost their jobs should consider it a god send and move to become masters of their destiny without relying on their corporate slave drivers for an identity.

Jairam Ramesh comments & American Clean Energy and Security Act, 2009

Even as we debate rages on the climate change talks and fresh brouhaha over Jairam Ramesh’s statements, it is important to be aware of what other countries are doing.

I happened to go through (glance over the contents list more like it) the American Clean Energy and Security Act, 2009, a whooping 1428 page document which must be covering everything under the sun. (since the pdf is huge it takes time depending upon the speed of connection)

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h2454pcs.txt.pdf

A summary of the same is here – http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2454&tab=summary

I am also re-visiting my views expressed in 2009 and this post is going to be work-in-progress!

http://rishiaggarwaal.wordpress.com/2009/02/23/indias-super-stupid-position-on-climate-change/

I came across the following good link on Jairam Ramesh’s comments (the content is from IANS)

http://blog.taragana.com/e/2009/10/19/indian-environment-minister-faces-flak-over-reported-policy-turnaround-second-lead-45112/

and came across the following statement -

Sunita Narain, director of the think tank Centre for Science and Environment, fumed: “The idea of changing India’s position to bring the US on board is completely retrograde and immature.

“The US is not only the world’s biggest polluter, but has shown no willingness to do anything concrete about it. New climate convert President Obama’s administration has been no different from that of president Bush.”

The exhaustive Act above and the numerous other steps being taken in the US are certainly not indications of a country which is showing no willingness to do anything. I think proportionate to the amount they have polluted they are also putting in the efforts.

When we compare India’s efforts it seems criticizing the developed world wholesomely seems our only achievement. Of course we are doing a lot but most of the action seems in the domain of the carbon credit seekers who are a different world all together.

In a stupendously complex arena like climate change negotiations I think being absolute in ones positions – the correctness of my approach versus the absolute incorrectness of the others approach – and a complete refusal to change ones stance and accommodate other viewpoints will not take the negotiations anywhere. We might as well not come to the table.

On GM Brinjal and the need to stop intefering with Nature’s plans

Its been the usual flurry of email discussions around the process of getting genetically modified brinjal into the Indian market. In the argument below I am not giving up on the efforts but just highlighting the very obvious inconsistencies, without addressing which we are just shadow boxing.

The same format repeats itself on every issue. A few concerned people who read a lot, bother to investigate, make opinions and the take positions on issues which concern millions.

The vast millions for whom the supposed effort is being carried out would rather be spending their time on dumb reality shows (Big Bosss?, Friends?? – I dont know how much time humanity will spend on the stupid inane laughter of some aimless in life junior artists!) rather than having any fascination for how their food is grown, how it travels, who are the people behind the scenes.

I say whats the point of going through the same motions every time? And for whom? Those stupid dumb idiots whose reality show soaked lives are anyways not worth saving? They would be having genetically modified brinjal pakoras while going through their motions and tell you to buzz of if you showed anywhere on the scene with your ‘mentally excruciating’ arguments.

Even if those people had an iota of an interest in whats happening it was worth the effort. Who do these people give their dollar votes to?

I get concerned about all those hundreds of innocent species who are being wiped out of the planet, even as their own life patterns are completely sustainable. They are the victims of the actions of a ‘much wiser’ species. From ‘ugly’ insects to magnificent mammals to beautiful plants, its a gridlock rush to the path of extinction.

Should the ‘wise’ species not face the consequence of its own ‘intelligence’? Is it possible that these efforts towards harmful chemicals and biological interference are in effect nature’s terminator gene for human species in action? Is nature programming human intelligence towards its own destruction? Is nature working through Monsanto on the human species?

And so are some of us needless obstructions to natures plan?

The environmentalists and the ecologists and those into the ethics of it all need to make up their mind – is it the earths good health they want or of the human race? And both may be at logger heads with each other. Again it may be argued that GM foods will give abundant food which will cause more millions to come up on the earth and hence they need to be stopped

It is the uneven interest in the issue, few doing in depth study and millions having their brinjal pakoras while watching reality shows, that also makes the governance construct go against those opposed to GM foods.

In a democracy as we all know by now numbers count. And silence is consent. So if there is no noise from millions it is assumed they have no objection to genetically modified food. The bureaucrats and the politicians work for those silent millions not the rattlers.

Some interesting links on GMOs

http://video.yahoo.com/watch/4687000/12525766

http://www.thehindu.com/2009/01/11/stories/2009011160490900.htm

http://www.twilightearth.com/2009/05/the-world-according-to-monsanto-full-documentary/

Mumbai goes six inches under

I went through a multiple set of emotions and thoughts after watching Age of the Stupid. And one of those was the almost complete unlikeliness of the situation being as grave and desolate in 2055 as shown in the movie. Humanity has been a more than superb adapter over the years. The do gooders may get fed up and frustrated with humanity and its enormous shortcomings and wish it Armadegon, but the fact remains that there is more to play here than just our frustrated thoughts.

Take the case of Bombay, India’s most important coastal asset and the imagery of water rising up and inundating our coastal cities and areas. If we go by the worst case scenario of all of the poles, Greenland and the glaciers melting, the projection is that the sea levels may rise 50-100 meters. The moot question is that does all of this water rise at one fixed point in a future date? So do you have a scenario like below? (This is only to counter the drastic sea level rise argument, not discounting the other areas of climate disruption.)

(you can skip this if in hurry and read from section marked in red)

January 10th, 2032 – when we are all going about with our work in Bombay ( I will be 57 then and hopefully around),

Its been difficult of late, with infrequent rains, rains in months which never had rains and then cloud bursts.

One fine day on 5th June, 2032, 10:00 am

We wake up with morning news telling us that things are not going well and it might just be possible that the sea waters, which all these decades were projected to rise might just rise today. Even as people have started to panic a bit, the first few inches of water rise takes place during the high tide at 10:22 am . Instead of touching the high tide line you find that the streets are inundated with six inches of water. The tide was supposed to be at a little above the four meter mark but clearly it went way above the 5 meter mark to actually enter the city. Nothing unbearable but its the first time something of this sort has happened. Its not raining. The weather is bright sunny and very hot and humid.

The panic bells are hit. All programs stop on the television and images of the city at various places start going up. The Chief Minster and the Mayor and the Municipal Commissioner and other functionaries are shown rushing into meetings. News has also started to come that the same is being seen around the coast. The National Disaster Management Center is overwhelmed.

The cars and buses, bikes and pedestrians are still able to wade through the water but there is confusion and panic. Everybody has been fed to enough imagery of the rising sea but everybody knows well that there is no contingency plan. All these years none of the governments took any initiative to envisage this kind of a situation and accordingly have a drill. Now a lot of people make quick calculations and decide it might be just right to make a dash for the exists before things get worse. Its only a few thousand people who think like this and that is enough for panic to spread like wildfire. Some hit their bank accounts to remove their money, some get home to get their belongings and family.

The most important job of the police right now is to prevent a grid lock of millions of vehicles trying to hit the bridges and other outlets out of Bombay.The police has called in the home guards and the army but everybody is making a futile effort in the wake of the massive flood of humanity. A large number of the city which does not have cars have straight away come on the roads waiting to walk it out. There is no question of a vehicle gridlock. There is already a human gridlock.

Even as the initial panic is raging the tide has started to go back. At 1:00 pm the water is not exactly back into the sea but still not in the streets. The low tide is at 4:2ipm but hope has completely evaporated. No body is sure how the next high tide will be.

No body has done any calculation of how much time does it take to evacuate the whole city? Alternatively if you have only 12 hours to evacuate how many can be removed? And how many will have to be left to die?

5th June, 2032, 4:22 pm

The tide has not gone down completely. It was supposed to be at the 2 meter mark but it is clearly only a little below 4 meters. The next high tide could potentially be even worse .

5th June, 2032, 9:59 pm

This is the next high tide and supposed to be a little below 4 meters but the waters are gushing into the city. Its clearly more than 5 meters high. A lot of areas which did not get touched with water in the morning tide are also being inundated now. And this time around it seems that the tide will not be going down after all.

News is coming in that thousands of kilometers of ice shelves are taking to the sea in a matter of hours. Helicopter crew from around the world are hovering over Greenland and flashing the frightening scenes around the world. The government in Bombay actually takes a decision to not let those images to be shown to prevent out of control panic.

Those who are close to the creek and the bridges have either walked or swam across. There is shock grief and anger over everybody’s face. But nothing can be done now. All this is happening within hours on 5th June, 2032. By 11  pm the water is two feet and its madness all around. The children and shorter people have climbed on top of buildings hoping that the waters will stabilize around the first floor by which time the helicopters of boats will take them away. None of that happens.

6th June, 2032, 6:am

The low tide has come and gone early in the morning and the city wakes up to more than three feet water in the streets. The waters are only steadily rising.

10th June, 2032,

The waters have unbelievably reached 15 feet. The water has now risen to the height of three floor buildings. Everything is over. All across there is only water, with the tops of four floor buildings visible just a few feet above the water level. The taller buildings stand out. To somebody who is staying in Anchorage building, one of the taller buildings next to the coast, in Versova the site is unbelievable. From their 15th storey terrace anybody who has stayed around can see water till somewhere below the national park hills with a few building tops. Just nothing else – only water.

At 5 meter level rise (and I still dont know what the baseline is for this) the situation will probably be like this for Mumbai http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=19.0232,72.9904&z=7&m=5

WILL SUCH BE THE CASE? CERTAINLY NOT.

Most probably if it happens then on 5th June, 2032 at 10:22 am when the tide will be at its highest for that day the water will for the first time come into the city upto 4-6 inches on a bright sunny day. This too after the same has been understood and deliberated upon for months before and the affected people have been evacuated. By then the city would have well done the calculations. The more affluent and resourceful would have left the city for the Deccan plateau, Pune, Nasik and beyond.

With the economy beginning to get affected, a lot of poor people migrating to the city from UP and Bihar and other parts will choose to die of hunger in their native land than on the water filled streets of Mumbai. All this will not happen drastically within 24 hours. There will be more than sufficient time for the transition to take place. There will come a time (this century or next) when the six inch permanent waters on the streets will become a permanent feature for years. During this time also the city will continue to function with some adaptations. But the outflow would be very systematically underway already. There will be no human or vehicle gridlock of millions making a dash for the exit points.

The reason I write this note is to show how arguments like Age of the Stupid actually do little to help support climate change mitigation measures because they show too much disaster too soon and to a species, which might have a short memory of disasters it has suffered but which has developed incredible resilience and resources to battle out adverse situations.  I may argue that people today seem far stupid than their counterparts in other centuries but such was the case even in those centuries. The response of technological resources in a drastic disaster are questionable but you cannot win an argument or work towards making a game plan by making arguments which are primarily driven by frustration. In my almost 2 decades of close involvement with important public environmental functions in the city I have always felt a bit embarrassed with those who choose to give their arguments like the Furher – fanaticism, absoluteness about the outcome to be exactly as they profess, and vitriol on those who don’t see their side of the story.

Is it not surprising that with so much talk on sea level rise we still have no discussion on even ballpark projections about when and how the sea levels will rise? We have enough super computing to tell us that.

Even with a 200 meter sea level rise, there will be a situation maybe where even after large scale deaths, a 100 million odd population of people will be still found on the earth living very comfortably and in a position to take the race forward – hopefully with wisdom. The situation will certainly not be like the one in Age of Stupid – one sole survivor who is a caretaker for a musuem which doesnt find any land so has to be built on top of a tower surrounded by water everywhere.

An overwhelmingly large number of todays ’stupid’ are aware of the same and are willing to take the gamble that they or their offspring may not be among the 100 million who survive but the human race rest assured will go on. By showing them a stark, false and highly exaggerated picture of future misery we close doors for them to buy in to even our moderate and sensible arguments. And stupid as they may be the masses are not without any intelligence all together.

The way to move ’stupid’ people is not by making stupid arguments. The intelligent do not have the luxury of stupidity. They have to continue refining their efforts and getting better with till the first water rise.

Good governance vs. Good cricket

[ Just to refresh memory or for the sake of those who may not be aware at all I have been into activism for a very long time now and have clearly realised that the need of the hour is to be active in politics to make a larger difference. Having held the view since long and in the post 26/11 scenario I contested LS 2009 - www.rishiaggarwaal.in - and secured 3301 votes]

I have been getting a lot of queries about am I contesting the coming elections? What is Jago doing? Is it fielding any candidates? If not then how does it expect to be seen as a serious contender? etc.

My thinking on this is borne from my experiences from the previous election. Clearly my conviction that I am good leadership material for the country remains.  But along with that is a realization that it takes two hands to clap.

If I think that I can provide good political leadership for the country then there has to be the flip side to it in terms of a demand for good leaders and not just demand but a decent level of support for them as well. And yes speaking specifically an appreciation and support for the excellent work I have already done till now.

Since it is cricket season I keep coming to my bete noire. Are good cricket players and good cricket more important for the country or good politicians and governance? And it is not an either or question. We can very well be enjoying our cricket and be taking good interest in the governance and politics of the country.

But the average man on the street would spend 100’s of his man hours on cricket, some money as well and nothing commensurable on good governance and good leaders. Not just the average man, even within the 3301 people who voted for me or the 188 odd who are on my Facebook support group, how many came back to check on the way ahead? How many keep a tab on the scores and player selection and Dhoni’s health on a daily basis.? Cricket versus good governance?

[cricket and excessive cricket watching anyways I feel is one of the bigger of many reasons for the state of this country]

And because millions are willing to give their eye balls and man hours to cricketers, one finds companies paying them sky rocketing sums to endorse projects, if what they get paid to play per match was not good enough. So much money that they do not know what to do with it.

Now if I were to devote my self to give good governance and understand legislation and improve on it and ensure better utilization of public tax payers money. What do I get?

Can I please get funds for a working secretariat. Can I please get even one twentieth of the time you give to cricket? Can you please help reach out to people? Publicity?

(And I have along with a very small group been doing yeoman service to the city by questioning the award of the outrageous Rs. 4,500 crores for remedying the Deonar garbage dump when significantly cheaper options are available. All this while even the average governance activist is completely clueless.)

http://mumbaiswm.wordpress.com/2009/09/29/deonar-project-fact-sheet/

The last election left me with three months of lost income and a fair share of expenses from my pocket as well, all of which completely delayed my plans to be into green business and left me financially in dire straits.

Thus if you play cricket well you get rewarded so well that beyond a point you have too much. And if you think about how your city’s taxes are used and how the average man at the railways station feels, or how are the footpaths and the urinals and do our municipal school children deserve a better deal and how our energy efficiency, renewable energy and green buildings policy can be a lot better you dont get as much as a 100 rupee note accidentally.

I think good people get good leaders and deserve good leaders. Opium addicts who would care a damn about the state of things around them – only their daily fix – don’t. That I feel is the state of 99 percent of our citizens today – consumed by cricket and many other worthless wasteful addictions.

And it makes more sense to either spend time on rehabilitating the opium addicts or waiting for their rehab to happen before starting to seek their votes.

[I have been thinking of alternatively naming this post "Politiking in the midst of opium addicts" ]