Reading 'behind the lines'

My friend happened to show me this poster. And I too liked it! The poem featured on this is really meaningful and soothing. With an intention to simply post it, I googled it out to give due credits to the creator. I succeeded in tracing out its creator (with her help) to a little known person who goes by the name of 'Alto'. But when I dug deeper, the facts behind those lines were disturbing and even shocking!

Communal violence broke out in the Ambon and Maluku areas in the December of 1998 between the 'resident' christians and the 'transmigrated' muslims. The christians had long felt that the govt was slowly and silently pushing muslims into their regions. Muslims were intentionally being included in several civil service positions. The tension that had built up over the year had finally breached the wall. Mahyem, massacre and unrest followed. The freedom of the press during the period was questionable, restrained by the New Order. People took to the internet to express voice their woes and tell what Jakarta did not want to hear. People posted anonymously or under pseudonyms. This is the post by the man himself. Check out the book "The Internet in Indonesia's New Democracy" by David. T. Hill and Krishna Sen. Its an indepth account of how internet and technology at large, helped in the transformation of Indonesia into a democracy that it now is. Pp 129 and pp 130 list this poem.




Its wonderful how much a little poem can say. But what is appaling is what lies behind those lines and remains unsaid...

Be Cool !!

I found a very interesting article the other day on the 'Lighting Energy Efficiency Project'. I thought it would make an interesting read. Before I discuss the article as such, it would not be a bad idea to discuss what are called Carbon Credits. The Kyoto Protocol laid down norms for the use of carbon credits in a way analogous to currency. Every country has a 'cap' on how much carbon (thats greenhouse emissions) it can spew into the atmosphere annually. So business organization like refineries, chemical factories, fertilizer plants and thermal power station within these countries have got set quotas of how much emissions they can afford to have, measured in terms of metric tonnes of C02 (or its equivalent). They have to stay within the allocated quota even with increased demands. Unused quota can be traded those organizations that have exceeded their quota. Thus, carbon credits are an effective means of keeping the worldwide emissions within bounds, irrespective of the pressures of increasing demand.

This article titled "Carbon is now bread & butter business" describes a project by Hyderabad-based technocrats — Nityanand J Agrawal and Gopal Amin. They propose to replace regular bulbs with CFLs for a paltry Rs 10 each; 10 million of them across households in AP and another 2 million in Chattisgarh. Not only does it save power in these households, it reduces greenhouse emissions. The retail price of the bulbs is around Rs 200. So they go to environmental agencies and claim carbon credits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The article says that ... "The country’s potential with such projects, say industry analysts, is roughly around 9 million carbon credits per year, which, at current prices, can earn around Euro 90 million per annum...".


Talking of energy conservation, Blackle is worth a mention. Their motto? Blackle.com - Saving energy one search at a time. I quote from the site - Blackle saves energy because the screen is predominantly black. "Image displayed is primarily a function of the user's color settings and desktop graphics, as well as the color and size of open application windows; a given monitor requires more power to display a white (or light) screen than a black (or dark) screen. They claim that by having a black google homepage the world could be saving 750 MW of power!!

Just remember. At the end of the day, saving energy is as simple as switching of the lights n fan before leaving the room. Kick global warming. Be cool !!

Are we riding the bull or just going to the dogs !?

India has turned round a corner. The economy is brimming with good news. The bulls charged past 19k yesterday, taking just 4 days to cover the last 1000 points!! The dollar is losing its shine against the rupee. The rupee touched a nine and a half year high up against the formidable dollar. The inflation rates are also down after hovering over 6% about the same time last year. I'm no economist, but it doesn't take a maven to get the point.

To me, it all began on the day I picked up the TOI one fine morning 2 years back and read this article "Advantage India: forever young!" on the first page. There had been a transformation. The fact that we support 17% of the world population on just 2.4% of the land suddenly had a brighter side to it. The population boom was now a population boon! In the years to come, our population growth would lead to a surplus of 47 million working age people. Goldman Sachs projected that given the rate of growth of our population, we'd be the only country to sustain growth in excess of 5% till 2050. Thus making us the 3rd strongest economy by 2050, behind China and USA (note the order). Back then, it was hard to swallow. Not now. We are currently the fourth largest in terms of Purchasing Power Parity(PPP) and are poised to outdo Japan in just 10yrs!

But all is not well. When we see beyond all this, the ground realities are pretty grim. This article by the chairman, NIIT group will shake you back to reality. Having a surplus population in the working age bracket just won't do any good. Not unless they can be fruitfully employed. This reveals the darker side of the picture. For starters, institutions across the country churn out almost two million graduate every year and 3,00,000 are engineering graduates. And a meagre 10-15% of them are employable in BPOs and offshore IT companies. Developing countries like ourselves and China are able to tip the scales with high growth rates thanks to the competitive edge provided by the availability of cheap land and labour. But the dearth of skilled and competitive hands will definitely hit us hard as wage rate are bound to sky-rocket. So there is a simple paradox arising out of this.


By 2012, India could have an unemployed population of 19-37 million, the largest share of which will be educated youth. By 2020, India is estimated to have surplus working population of 45-50 million people. The explanation provided by Rajendra S Pawar in the article is simple... While urban India has witnessed a stupendous growth in jobs, in other parts children still drop out from school, girls are still not sent to school and youngsters are forced to take up jobs instead of completing their graduation.

NIIT is undertaking programs of generating skilled manpower. Their programme intends to equip graduated with technical and communication skills. The project appears to be puny going by the number of graduates that they intend to train (200 currently) but the intentions are definitely noble. This is yet another novel attempt by NIIT after the "Hole in the Wall" project. I wonder how many more such programmes these people have launched. Hats off to you NIIT !!

Miss you...

It would never happen. If I were to wait for my notebook to be repaired, so that I could compose posts from the comforts of my desk. It has been months...traumatic, nagging months of solitude. It doesn't cease to surprise me how our relationship has been casted into something so very human. No wonder, every single day without 'her' is so painfully long and here I am....pining. Well, well well... the long promised Jammu Convention Post is finally up. Take a look.