Obama signs bill on equal wages

US President Barack Obama has signed a law banning descrimination on the grounds of sex, age, race, religion or physical disability. He said that its not only an economic issue but it related to the fundamental principles of united states.

He also changed the time limit of going to court against descrimination. Earlier there was a time limit of 180 days from the time when such descrimination started. Now it relates to every cheque a person receives.

Writer P Sainath refses highly respected government award

P Sainath prefers to call himself 'rural reporter'. He is rural affairs editor for 'The Hindu' newspaper. He spends 270 to 300 days every year in rural interiors. He is the 2007 winner of Ramon Magsaysay award for litreature, journalisma nd creative communication. He is the author of 'Everybody Loves A Good Draught'. Through his work on Indian\'s social problems he has changed the nature of developement debate. His current project is on agrarian crisis nationwide.

This year he was confered with one of the highest Padma award by government of india. He has been consistently refusing any goverment awards for past 20-30 years saying that government should be judging literature and journalism.

Scarf for blind girls

Children of Swaranjali Society have done some exemplary act. Children aged between 10 to 15 have started collecting part of their pocket money etc for this project. Once the needed amount was collected they donated scarfs to blind girls to protect from cold.
Last year they gifted a DVD player to the partially visually handicapped girls of the same blind-school. This they went a step ahead and gifted a Dish TV connection.

Kashmir on the path to peace

Militant incidences in Kashmir have gone down significantly. They were never so low since 1989. In 2008, there was 40% reduction in militant incidences in Kashmir. Compared to figures 5 years ago there is 80% reduction. Reduction in civilian deaths has been even more, nearly 90%. This is due to precision techniques used by militiray, widepsread dialogue, peace process initiated by government and presence of multiparty politics and genuinely elected government in Jammu & kashmir.

The newly elected Chief Minister Omar Abdullah of Jammu & Kashmir has done something that no politician had done in past twenty years.Fearing militant attackes on them politicians move around in dark glassed cars with security vehicles accompanying in plenty. He went on a celebration rally sitting atop a sedan with his son.

Long live peace and happiness on this heaven on earth called Jammu-Kashmir-Ladakh.

Sikkim achieves total sanitation

Sikkim has become first state of India to achieve total sanitation under government's total sanitation campaign (TSC). Though there seems to confusion in figures as to what 'total sanitation' means, the central minister for rural developement has announced this while honoring the gram panchayat presidents who had received Nirmal gram Puraskar. He said that Tripura would soon be the second state after Sikkim.

In order to implement TSC, the minister has written to state goverments to amend their respective Panchayat Raj Acts that only those panchayat presidents would be allowed to re-contestwho achieve total sanitation standards in their respective villages. Only Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have so amended their Acts.

Women wage peace in war on terror

Women Without Border (WWB) have launched a peace initiative SAVE (Sisters against violent extremism). Its India chapter is scheduled to be launched in Delhi on 29th January.
Women could be starting points of an early warning system as they are strategically positioned at the heart of every family. They are the first to recognize resignation and anger in their children and critical group of adolescents. SAVE recently arranged for women from Isreal and palestine to share peace and understand that conflict causes both sides to suffer.

Mobile Number Portability in India

Indian government has invited bids from experienced global players for commissioning mobile number portability (MNP) in India. If all goes well users can expect to have MNP in place in India by second half of 2009. Initially government has suggested a price range of INR 200-300 for a change of operator, but now it has said that TRAI will decide in pricing.

MNP enables users to avail change of mobile operator without having to mobile number. This brings in fair amount of fair competition. Many countries already have such system in place.

Parent Thesis, with a difference

Achyut and Jayashree Phadake of Pune are mentoring over a dozen schoolgoing childen from nearby slum. It began in 1980 when Jayashree began helping children hoem work and taught some skills and personal manners. Her activities still continue after 28 years and a attack of mild paralysis. Children help the couple in some houselhold activities while the couple pays for school fees, uniforms, study material, books. Part of the monthly pension goes in this. They also get funding from corporates for doing simple job work like folding dividend warrants and putting those into envelopes. Word-of-mouth has heped garner some funds. Help also comes from people who can guide students in their studies. Over 50 children have passed through with Phadakes.

One of Phadake's daughter Maulabi Shaikh, is continueing Phadake legacy in a far awayf place of Bijapur, where she has taken up the same activity for deprived children.

Parliamentary committee seeks to withdraw writ petition it had filed

Parliamentary Standing committee has urged Indian Supreme court registry not to press the writ petition it had filed in Delhi High Court in the case related to declaration of assets by judges.Pressing the petition would harm the intent of Right to Information Act.

The committee has also made following observations and recommendations:
- it is recommending parliament to do away with application fee for RTI application
- it has asked Public Sector Undertakings to clear backlog in recruitment and promotion in resevations for SC/STs, OBCs and physically challanged.
- It has observed that corrcuption control and vigilance mechanism in banks is doing well upto the level of genral manager. It is now requesting government of indian to take it further up
- The committee held discussions on amendments to Representation of People Act and constitutional amendments on women's reservation

Barter System

I met a poor rural guy living in the backwaters of Mulshi lake near Pune. He was saying that he was not getting kerosene from the government shop till he builds a WC of his own and stop clearing in the open. But he did not have money to build one. But he desperately needed to get kerosene. He needs kerosene to to light his home lamps (there is no electricity to his house though he lives near the lake which is built for generating electricity!) and as fuel for his cooking. These days there is hardly any forest left around and firewood is not easy to gather. He does not have money to buy material required to build a WC, neither he had money to employ a meson to actually build it. He somehow got a old WC pot from a urban relative and could uste little money buy little cement etc. Then he brokered a deal with a local meson. The meson does not get a lot of work to fully employ him as a meson. When he does not have work as meson he is employed for some petty work. So our man made a barter arrangement with the meson. When the meson is building our man's WC. our man goes to work for the meson on his petty jobs.

I find this interesting. I had heard of barter system only in terms of exchange of goods. But here manual labour and skills are being exchanged, or you can even say, traded, one skill for another, one's time for something with other's time for some other thing etc.

Barefoot College of Tilonia (Rajasthan, India)

In 1972 Bunker Roy formed Social Work and Research Centre (SWRC) at Tilonia, Rajasthan. He believed that education system of today is biased towards urban elites and has no place for rural poor. He decided to delink education from literacy and experience from qualification. Illiterate or semi-literate, socially and economically backward and vulnerable can apply and are accepted in Bearfoot College (BC).

Experiment started with groundwater survey of the region, fitting of hand-pumps and gradually developed health and education programmes. It believed that villagers themselves can decide their path of developement. All decisions are taken jointly. Everybody is equal irrespective of class, sex, cast, religion. Puppetry is extensively used as means of communication and education.

40% of the funding is given by Rajasthan government, 40% by institutions like UNSECO and 20% comes for sale of handcraft products and solar energy kits.

BC now operates in area of more 500 sq, miles with 1500 night schools.

Descrimination Commission in J&K

Omar Abdullah, the new Chief minister of Jammu & kashmir, India has proposed forming of Descrimination Commission. He said that all the three regions of the state, viz. Kashmir valley, Jammu, and Leh-Ladakh feel that they are being discriminated against. He said that would like to remove these feelings and get all the regions together for betterment of J&K. He said he would like to the commission to be headed by a retired Chief Justice of Supreme Court and preferably should be from outside of J&K.
He also referred to the Amranath Yatra Land Transfer agitation and said that he would like to get people to talk and resolve the issue. He would like to come traders from both Jammu and valley to come together and work out mutually benefitial ways.
He said he would be leading a coalition government and is aware of realities of sucha situation. In addition, he said, he is aware that he would have to deal with the strong oppostion with diametrically opposite views, PDP on one hand and BJP on the other.

All in all the new young chief minister seems to be deeply routed in ground and at the same time having courage to state his dreams and vision. What he is actually able to deliver we are yet to see. Lets all wish him all the luck and cooperation from all factions.

Measles dying?

WHO has announced that measle deaths has come down by 74% since 2000. There has been major contribution from eastern mediterranean region including somalia, afganistan, pakistan. There has been a big success in measles vaccination.

Bio-Happiness and 'Evergreen Revoultion'

Noted agricultural scientist Swaminathan was addressing the 96th Indian Science Congress in Shilong. He underlines the need for conserving the rich bio-diversity of the north-east region of India and called for ushering revolution in the region. He gave thrust on soil health care, harvesting, efficient use of water, technology and appropriate inputs, credit and insurance, and assured renumerative marketing. The north-est region is one of the 12 mega-biodiversity regions in the world. He emphasised on linking bio-diversity, biotechnology and business in mutually reinforcing manner. he called for saving genes for posterity. Loss of every species and genes limit our options for the future. Cultural traditions of tribal people have important role in understanding bio-diversity conservation and management issues. Efforts should be directed at promotion of bio-happiness among tribal people.

Woman of Steel

On 26.11.2008 Dayamani Barla was awarded Chingari Award for Women Against Corporate Crime 2008. This award iitself is instituted by two women who took on UC after Bhopal Tragedy. They, Rasheeda Bee and Champa Devi Shukla, won Goldman Environmental Prize in 2004.They put the prize money into a trust which would choose every year a woman working for the same cause.

Dayamani Barla is 44 years old tribal dalit woman, born to an extremely poor landless laborer and wen on to become journalist and activist. She is leading the fight against the giant steel plant coming up in Jharkhand, because she belives that the prices tribals will have to pay when they are displaced from their land can not be compensated by a few jobs or money.

Through her writting, Dayamani has set a standard for the kind of relevant journalism that is rare at a time when celebrity and sensation dominates media.

In Jharkhand, as in other tribal dominated states, local people are organising resistance gaisnt giant industrial and minning projects. The outcomes of these struggles may well shape the economics and politics of our country. These battles actually represent opportunities to devise developement that is inclusive, participative, sustainable, respects limited availability of natural resources.

It is with help of women and men like Dayamni Barla that governments and administrations are being forced to consider alternatives to their immediate limited perspective and vestsed interests. Only in the availability of such space for view and counterview, to offer and accept that democracy can survive, let alone flourish.

My salute to all these crusaders because of whom we can express whatever we wish to.