A Real Problem awaits Attension

As we praise the efforts of Tata's nano and believe that
It is a great boon for the middle class and almost all of us can have a car now and
it will not remain a dream anymore. But the Indian scenario is far more complicated and the advent of one car cannot change it. The nano's success lies not only in its technology and the methods used, but also in making people like me to analyze how common people travel from one place to another in India..From the analysis

India has 12 million cars,
50 million two-wheelers and
6 million trucks and buses
We have a population of 1000 million..!

India has a whooping 55% of its population in the working age (didn’t get the stats for actual working population), Assuming these are the people who has to travel much and often, so a total of at least 400 to 500 million people comes in these catagory...

If the calculations are done sensibly

100 million people travel by their self owned vehicles and the remaining 400 million people has to use public transport daily, no wonder the town buses and trains in the metros are filled with people and not having space to get air for breathing ..

This violent surge in the use of public transport, huge crowds in buses has been a real problem threatening for a number years now..Having used public transport till now, I myself know how difficult it is to travel in peak hours to our destination amidst all the tensions and Crowd…

So, We Indians can be proud of the nano,but taking nothing away from its technical brilliance and the efforts of Mr.Ratan Tata and his team ,the bitter truth is, it cannot be and was never created for being a part of the solution..It is high time that the government put this public transportation system into a serious thinking process and come with a solution so that it satisfies the people who cant afford to own even a bike…(How can they think of Nano?)
A fact:
A 6 million people use the trains in Mumbai alone daily (largest number in the world)..

An Emphatic surge of 'The Rich' over 'The Poorest'

Tired of Global Warming Facts and wondering what actually the reality is .Here is a clear picture regarding India.
The per capita emission of an Indian citizen is lower than that of other countries and dont be suprised it is the rich people who contribute less than 1% of the total population ,are emitting CO2 that can be comparable with the emissionsof the world.

We can neglect the middle class for sometime ,now.

So ,the remaining 800 million people and considerable percentage of whom would have never heard of anything regarding global warming,have become victims to the ruthless activities of the rich.The rich live in those airconditioned rooms with their houses built on favourable ares.It is the poor who live in slums and have houses built out of weaker things,are left homeless and lose their loved ones ,of course not because of their faults.

With the floods coming almost every year,and the government unable to do anything to say these poor people,the onus is on the rich people to cut their emissions at least,if not volunteer in helping the poor to come out of this trouble caused by them..

They are Our Real Heros ,,not our cricketers and Actors

The article here was the one in 'The Hindu ' ,Open page and I certainly beleive that every Indian has to read this one at this point of our bllooming economy.
Not enough to draw youth into armed forces

To say we honour our soldiers and to practise it are two different things

Sonika Uppal

A second generation army wife married to a fourth generation army officer, it is not just a way of life for me, it is my entire life....and that is by no means an understatement. I grew up in this cocooned world, never doubting even once that there was something lacking in it, and there wasn’t!

It was a wonderful way of life, comfortable and secure, drifty, voyaging, invigorating and always peppy. A certain glamour and romance attached to the austere sober side.

Nowadays, I sometimes sit and wonder where that old way of life has gone. Somewhere it got lost or probably left behind in this new world where mind-boggling salaries and unheard of amounts are paid to young boys and girls, who have yet to learn the value and worth of hard earned money.

The old age saying of “simple living and high thinking” has literally flown out of the window. Everybody seems to nurse a wholesome passion for all the “good” things in life ...a monthly six figure salary, a luxurious apartment, latest cars and gizmos and of course vacations abroad. No altruistic desires to change the world, just pursuing one’s own dreams. Frankly, I don’t see anything wrong with it; it is a new changed world with new changed needs. Money is no longer a dirty word.
All pains and no gains?

So why should an army officer feel differently? Or is it that simply by virtue of being in this profession, his dreams should be limited to sacrificing his whole life for the country, all pains and no gains? No wonder our country has a shortage of 13,000 officers at present, a shame considering our burgeoning population. We need to wake up to reality.

To expect a young man to join this profession and stick to it, you have to make it attractive and worthwhile. We all know there is no dearth of talent and brains in our country. But the top lot never opt for the defence services and even if they do, it turns out to be a very dissatisfying vocation for them. It might seem that I am flogging a dead horse here, but the truth is out there for all to see.

Many army officers I know, some of them close friends, have either put up their papers or are in the process of doing so. And let me tell you, among them are mostly the toppers of their respective courses, highly intelligent, self-motivated, and hardworking individuals. And why not? In spite of putting in their best, working undefined ungodly hours, in the worst of living conditions, separated from their families for half the year if not more, no guarantee of promotions and putting their life at risk, these are still among the low paid class A gazetted officers in this country.

Their frustration is inevitable and understandable. To say we honour our soldiers and to practise it are two different things. When our cricketers run around the stadium with our country’s flag after winning a single match, they are treated like god and are gifted crores from the taxpayers’ kitty, and yet what most of us do not know is that the amount paid to a soldier for being awarded a Sena Medal for gallantry is Rs. 250 a month, with lower awards getting no monetary compensation.

A commercial pilot gets paid a few lakhs a month for transporting people safely, and a soldier posted at Siachen gets a few thousands for keeping the tricolour safe. Why would anyone want to do this? The so called “josh,” the thrill of serving your country, does not last long when these frustrations set in and when you know that you have it in you to be the best, and if out there with the corporates, you could be earning your present salary manifold.

We as a nation need to dwell on these issues in detail, to refocus on the criticalities ailing the armed forces, and make becoming an officer an attractive ideal to the youth of today, a youth faced with alternative attractive options as well. For starters, it would serve well to let a good remuneration package and the armed forces be synonymous.

What do u call this?

I was there in the busstand in tirunelveli,waiting for my bus to start to coimbatore.It was around 10.00 pm,it was the scene that would move evryone who sees it to stop for a moment or two and make them pay attension.
A man was packing or i should write closing his so called shop,that he owns in the open area in the platform of the busstand.He was alone,he had a whole lot of materials ranging from biscuit packets to cosmetics.The shop was nothing but a stand,a big piece of synthetic cloth and some ropes.He was putting all the materials in the stand,covering it with his cloth and tieing it neatly as if he was tieing a rollsroyce in a lorry,all alone.It took him nearly one and half hour to complete 75% of his work(my bus came then).His rope fell every now and then on to the ground,none tried to help him.The thing that was so special about the man was he did not have a leg.

Same Place,Same Time:A well built man coming in a taxi directly from his hotel taking with him his waiter from the hotel with his two suitcases that even my grandmother would carry .He asks the waiter to take them to his bus and gives him a fifty rupee note,which i think is what our shopkeeper earn for a day .....

Are we Devoloping?

"WE were sitting in the tent,they tore it down.We kept sitting",the old old Freedon Fighter told us."They threw water on the groung and at us.They tried making the ground wet and difficult to sit on.We remained seated.Then when I went to drink aome water and bent down near the tap,they smashed me on the head fracturing my skull.I had to be rushed to hospital."
Baji Mohammed is one of India'a last living freedom fighters -just one of four or five nationally recogonised ones.He is not talking about british brutality in 1942.

He is describing the vivious attack on him during the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992.
This is what the reality is..
We say that we are devoloping and cheat ourselves and give ourselves into externl forces.We dont want to beleive that we are behind and we dont accept the fact that there are a lot of mistakes on our side....

Why India is still India

We are more concerned about the arrest of Sanjay Dutt than in the pitiful plight of our retires armymen and those innocent men and women those who are affected by the brutal acts of the terrorists and the government.

We show greater importance to a celebrity who fakes charity for fame than to a man who helps the poor to the neighbourhood.

We dont honour our real heros neither do we recogonise them as the one who truly deserve praise and adulation.

We throw garbage into the street,spit in the open places ,try to cheat the government for our benefits,bribe for our comfort but expect the politicians to be honest!

We dicuss the things that can change India but wont come forward to do it ourselves.

We write blogs of what we know and hoping that someday some miracle change this poor old country hesitating to create that miracle...

The Biggest Question

As I mentioned in my previous blog,there are so many big oppurtunities being created by the so called IT boom.But the question that remain yet to be answered is ,Is this boom helping India or the 'Aam Aadmi' really.I recently studied that nearly 90 lakh houses in Tamil Nadu dont have the basic sanitary facilities.The boom,the bubble ,the oppurtunities are all for the one who could afford to study a well respected Under graduate course....

But ,What is in there for those who study in Government schools and come from villages .They may belong to any of the backward classes and they may be the ones who really need the quotas ,But those seats are being plundered by the rich people in the city.....

Even I find scholarships in the college given to people who dont need them and the really needed people are cheated or misled into an illusion..

Indian media doing what it should't be

The people from the media constantly say that the media is exaggurationg and dramatising trivial issues, but the media is continuing to offend us by showing pictures or incidents that we dont want to see.We dont want to see Aish-Abhisek wedding or any other bollywood news for 5 minutes every hour.

Take this news:Subedar Major Bana Singh of the Eighth Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry was the only serving personnel of the Indian defence establishment with a Param Vir Chakra till the Kargil operations.

Do u know what he is doing now?He is denied a loan for a petrol bunk and a liquor shop.He is doing agriculture to manage his family.And is this the credit that the nation give to a man who has got the greatest medal for patriotism in the country.

And Is this not the important news that the media has to bring to notice.We dont want to kisses in news channels.We need you to improve India's status not the opposite.

The Outburst

I was in a Village near Coimbatore some days ago.I was nearly shocked and stunned by the plight of the poor children out there.There was no future for those small kids.It had a school ,just for the sake of having one.I was able to see hopelessness ,fear ,anger ,inability ,disappoinment in the eyes of those pitiable small kids.Is 'Being Child to a poor man 'is a very big crime.
We just boast ourselves to be among the devoloping countries and talk of GDPs and other stuffs.The poor and the villagers dont want these stuff .All they need is a life where there is hope,where there is security,where they can see their children grow with knowledge of the world.I cant see any of these things happening in the near future ,making their lives the biggest Question mark to be answered.