1 India a doubtful superpower (Deccan Chronicle editorial) A London School of Economics and Political Science’s report — India the next super power? — recently questioned India’s aspirations of being the next super power. This is for the first time that anyone has come up with a serious dissertation actually questioning the capability of India to achieve this super power status. The paper concludes that it cannot, because of various negative realities that run parallel to the undoubtedly huge achievements of the country. These realities include corruption and poor leadership, extreme social divisions and internal security threats, particularly from the Maoists, and religious extremism.
Much of India’s achievements have been at the cost of environmental degradation and the millions of poor of the country and the point has been made quite succinctly in a series of essays that make up the report written by eminent people like Mr Ramachandra Guha. Mr Guha says that even the press has let India’s struggling poor down. The report should be a cause for introspection as to how the huge disparities can be bridged and how the political, economic and social system can be steered from its present feudal overtones towards being truly democratic and inclusive. This, however, will take time and till then India can only dream of being a super power and this hopefully will be the spur to reality.
2 Commodifying humanity (Dawn) There were times when seals and insignias were used by the Indus valley and Babylonian people to demonstrate the pomp and prosperity of their civilisations. This scenario has now changed, as object-making and commodity-making have moved beyond civilisations and cultures. There are three historical forces that have transformed the notion of commodity beyond all bounds of imagination today: Free market economy, electronic capital and information junk.
Take free market economy first. There were times when charity was part of almost all known human societies in the world. Charity is now marketed by huge organisations engaged by the social corporate sector. Awards, scholarships, loans and all sorts of monetary contributions are marketed by marketing agents of the mighty social corporate conglomerates. Electronic capital is another glaring force of the commodified global culture. There were times when gold coins standardised economic and religious exchanges. Now capital moves impersonally in huge cycles of electronic exchanges between agents who even do not know each other’s identities and origins.
The third aspect is the Troy of information junk. There were times information was considered a sacred trust to be shared amongst human and humane societies. People would die guarding this sacred trust of information. Now we face a different case. If one monitors the Internet information junk sites, one can discern a social pattern in the usage of Internet and social networking websites. The pattern includes hate-preaching of all sorts, ethnic, religious, political, sexually gratifying stuff, followed equally by religious and political hate consumption materials. Knowledge and its dissemination no more constitute a sacred trust.
3 In the US, 8,00,000 Alzheimer’s-hit live alone (San Francisco Chronicle) Roughly 800,000 people in the United States have Alzheimer's and live alone, according to an Alzheimer's Association report. That's about 1 in 7 people who have Alzheimer's - and the rate is probably higher in big cities, where elderly adults are more likely to live alone. Without someone to watch over them, these patients are at increased risk for malnutrition, accidents at home, and complications from misusing or overdosing medications. They tend to be diagnosed later than those who live with a spouse or other family member and they tend to end up in nursing homes earlier. As Baby Boomers get older, and as more Americans live alone - often separated from families that have long departed for other cities - doctors and public health experts expect the number of people facing dementia on their own to increase.
4 Osama bin Laden undone by his wives (San Francisco Chronicle) Osama bin Laden spent his last weeks in a house divided, amid wives riven by suspicions. On the top floor, sharing his bedroom, was his youngest wife and favorite. The trouble came when his eldest wife showed up and moved into the bedroom on the floor below. Others in the family, crammed into the three-story villa compound where bin Laden would eventually be killed in a May 2 US raid, were convinced that the eldest wife intended to betray the al Qaeda leader. The picture of bin Laden's life in the Abbottabad compound comes from Brig. Shaukat Qadir, a retired Pakistani army officer who spent months researching the events and says he was given rare access to transcripts of Pakistani intelligence's interrogation of bin Laden's youngest wife, who was detained in the raid.
5 Kony 2012 video shocks, provokes thought (The Guardian) Few had heard of Joseph Kony, leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, before the video Kony 2012 went viral on the internet. But now teenagers all over the world can tell you how his army, which has wreaked havoc for 26 years, rapes little girls and forces child soldiers to murder their parents. But if this film tells us anything about the 21st century it is about the power of celebrity and social networks. By 7pm on Thursday, nearly 50 million people had watched it – mostly because their friends had shared it with them on Facebook or their heroes on Twitter had alerted them to it.
6 Britain completes 3 year at 0.5% interest (The Guardian) Britain has entered a fourth year of record low interest rates following the Bank of England’s decision to hold borrowing costs. The move comes almost three years to the day after policy makers took rtes down to 0.5% the lowest since the Bank was founded in 1694, and embarked on the process of pumping electronic cash into a shrinking economy. In the face of a sluggish recovery it has gone on to expand that programme of quantitative easing (QE) to £325bn, going into markets to buy up UK government bonds, known as gilts, and thereby injecting newly printed money into the financial system.
7 India’s most dangerous crossroads (The Times of India, The Wall Street Journal) At first glance, the Kayampur bend, the curve of road on the outskirts of the city of Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh, looks ordinary and peaceful. But in 2011, this turn recorded the highest number of traffic deaths for any single spot in the 12 Indian states where 90% of India’s road fatalities occur, according to a Times of India report. It cited data compiled by the Ministry of Road Transportation and Highways, which put the number of traffic fatalities in India last year at 134, 000. India recorded the highest number of deaths from road accidents in 2007, according to the Global Status Report on Road Safety, 2009.
Last year, 169 deadly accidents occurred at Kayampur. According to the road transportation and highways ministry report, the Hero Honda Chowk in Gurgaon, in the state of Haryana, recorded 105 deaths, the second highest number; and the Jaiguru Ashram in Mathura saw the third highest number, at 100. Bahalgarh Chowk in Sonipat came in fourth, with 67 deaths, and Shivdaspura in Jaipur was fifth with 65 fatalities.
8 Horror tale of India ‘kidney village’ (The Times of India) In these arid, impoverished parts, Bindol has another name – kidney village. The wasted, skeletal men and women you would see slumped under the shade of trees are awaiting death with feeble breaths. Every second home here has someone who has sold his kidney to escape starvation. Many die within years. Now, the dying men have started forcing their wives to give up a kidney.
The name of Razzak perks them up. They lead you to his mansion in the Bajbindol area stands in sharp contrast to the hapless backdrop. Razzak is the 'dalal' (agent) you meet if you are desperate for a kidney. The price: Rs 3-4 lakh. Razzak has no problem finding donors. The villagers know they may be signing their death warrant if they accept Razzak's offer, but the payout - Rs 60,000 to Rs 1 lakh - is impossible to ignore. Lakshmiram Hansda sold his kidney - and his life - for Rs 80,000. On Wednesday, he was seen lying under a tree near his hut, gaunt, emaciated and hapless. He says he is 35 but looks 60. In the last couple of years, the tragedy has taken an ominous turn with the men forcing their wives to sell their kidneys. Astomi Malakar, who was married to Dilip Burman four years back when still in her teens, says: "My husband took me to Kolkata with another person two years ago. I already had a child by then. I was admitted to a hospital. I don't know what happened there but I have a surgery scar in my back."
9 Giving sparrows back their homes (Business Line) Somebody who builds earthy homes for us is also trying to give its home back to old Bangalore's forgotten resident, the house sparrow. Bangalore's homes stopped being sparrow-friendly some 20 years ago, according to Dr Harish Narayan, dentist-turned Chief of Social Engineering at ZED Foundation. Then, most families lived in homes with open yards where grains were regularly picked. Gone are the spaces, the fruit trees and with them the sparrows. Now you don't see these birds until you travel 40-50 km away from the city. The foundation, which is the non-business face of green homes builder, BCIL-ZED Habitats, is trying to reverse the bird's flight and “bring sparrows back to Bangalore.” Under its “Gubbi Goodu” (sparrow's nest) campaign, ZED Foundation distributed 14,000 bird boxes to people across Bangalore and South India. According to Dr Harish, “From 650 sparrows per sq. km in 1990, they are now a mere 25 per sq km.
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