Mullaperiyar-Damned Dam,damages and the hapless lives

Mullaperiyar Dam is a damned hot topic in India now-at least in Tamilnadu and Kerala.Politicians are at the game they are best at-making hay while sun shines.But it could well be the sunset for innumerable number of people on both sides of Kumali Check post - nearest boarder check post to the damned dam.
I have no intention of dwelling at length on what has been debated for years.How the dam came into existence,how the rulers mismanaged the issue,unending court cases,monies that have changed hands,who has lands in Kumbom and Theni,etc,etc.My concern is the danger to lives of millions of hapless people.

In the most unfortunate event of a Dam break,what are the possible damages? Nobody till now has addressed the issue.Wild numbers are thrown around-450 as per an affidavit filed by Kerala Government in the High Court,4.5 lakhs according to the Irrigation Minister of Kerala,Zero according to Tamilnadu Chief Minister and Kalainger Karunanidhi(perhaps the only thing these two politicians will agree upon--They collectively refuse to accept that the dam can ever break).Roorkie IIT experts have gone on record to state that in the event of an earthquake to the magnitude of 7.5 on the Ritcher Scale,then the probability of Mullapriyar Dam breaking is very high.Let us hope and pray that this never happens.Nobody in their right senses will ever wish an earthquake to happen anywhere in the world.There is no way to predict where an earthquake can happen,leave alone its magnitude.It is a fact that a number of mild earthquakes happened in the recent times in and around the dam site.The frequency with which the earthquakes happened recently is rather disturbing-it is causing sleepless nights to the people who are living in the close vicinity of the Dam including the irrigation Minister of Kerala who is from Thodupuzha near the Dam.

Certainly anyone in their plight will loose their sleep.Force of the water roaring out at a height of more than 130 feet height is a nightmare for anyone-except perhaps Madame Jaya,Kalainger,Viko and company.To be fair to them it is their firm belief that such a possibility does not exist,at least that is what they have stated in public..Earthquakes are not going to happen,nothing will happen to the Dam,no cause for any worry.A possible mishap after Koodamkulam Atomic Energy plant is commissioned worries them.The will fight tooth and nail to see that Koodamkulam is halted on its tracks.But Mullaperiyar Dam is safe for999years from 1871.But there is danger to the brand new(hopefully)atomic power plant with safeguards as oer the state of the art(again hopefully)

There is human misery waiting on the eastern part of Kumali Check post too.In the event of a Dam wreak,5 districts in Tamilnadu will go back to pre1871 period.There will be no farming possible in these 5 districts,lively hood of millions of people are at stake.It will add to the demand and supply gap of farm products which will have its ramifications felt at least all over south India.

Now, what are the politicians doing about it?One Chief Minister pretends that the problem does not exist and continues with her holidaying in her favourite hill station.The other Chief minister attends everything other than this issue.He has a lot of confidence on the Prime Minister and happily attends to Cinema Award night,his favourite role of Santa clause in district level Dole Melas.He has no time for the hapless people of Idukki district.Yes,the tribe of Nero who fiddled while Rome was burning has not ended.It is on the increase in the Democratic Socialist Republic of India.

What are the steps taken by Kerala state Government to save human lives?Nothing to be precise.It is a fact that it is not possible to estimate where the damages would be and to what magnitude.But has an exercise been done to analyse the possible damages and solutions thereto.Even the Disaster management system is not in place.The Minister for Revenue who is supposed to oversee rescue operations is happily roaming around in Kottayam attending all kinds of functions!!!Media is after sensation,viwership etc.Mullaperiyar will be in their focus until viewer interest flags off.

The hapless potential victims will remain where they are now.Living dangerously,with sleepless nights.

An Apology for Drinkers

Drinking is certainly not something to be encouraged.It has many social,financial,and moral consequences.Nevertheless it is a widespread habit.Everyone who drinks know the consequences,but still they drink.Social drinking is the most prevalent one.Social drinkers are not habitual drinkers or addicts to liquor,but occasionally drinks within limits-physical,social and financial.Habitual and addicted drinking are the extremely dangerous forms of drinking.It ruins the health,wealth and social respect of the person.

Then why do people drink?Not easy to answer.In my view every human being has a kink in his personality-A vicarious way of deriving pleasure.One such thing is drinking,smoking,Tobacco chewing,use of other injurious things like Supari are other examples.Passion for anything more than normal is a form of addiction-be it sports,art,religion and even work(holism) has an element of addiction.But how does one define "normal"level of activity in any such matter?It will vary from person to person.

Smoking,use of tobacco and supari has seen a sharp decline in consumption due to various education programmes,there is no let up in the increase in consumption of Liquor.Spread of drinking among population including woman and young Adults are also on the increase.So there is something in liquor that draws people to it.Social researches have not thrown light on this reason so far.

There are quite a few who argue that total prohibition is the answer to this problem.Is it really so?Experience in Gujarat which is a total prohibition state even as of now,In Tamilnadu where prohibition was in force in 70s Andhrapradessh where NTR introduced prohibition in 90s have shown that prohibition could not contain addiction to liquor.But nobody is bold enough to stand up and argue against the prescription which is deadlier that the decease itself.For political correctness,the governments make some cosmetic changes which adds to the confusion.

Researches to the basic reason of liquor addiction is not something anybody is talking about.For that there has to be realisation that the problem cannot be solved by quick fix solutions.There has to be indeapth researches as to how addiction could be rectified.Today's De addiction centers are not effective.The De addiction therapy is on the premises that the patient has an intense desire to get De addicted.But the fact is that most addicts have no desire to get De addicted.Consequences of a person being addicted is suffered by his immediate family members,those closely associated or involved with the person.The person who is addicted is either unaware of the damage he is causing to himself and to others,or insensitive to it or feels that drinking is the most important thing in life.There could possibly be many other reasons within the unknown dark self of the person.

The problem cannot be solved by strong arm methods like legislation,prohibition etc.What is required is effective ways of change of mindset of addicts who ,in their present state of mind have no intention to change themselves.This requires more insights into the reasons why a person is in such a mental frame.The Government and NGOs concerned have to invest heavily into researches on this.ANY OTHER QUICK FIX SOLUTIONS ARE NOT GOING TO YIELD RESULTS

Again On KGB

There appears to be an orchestrated move to throw mud on K.G.Balakrishnan's reputation by some powerful sections of the society.The real operaters are clever enough not to leave any tracks.Hence at least for now,they remain untraceable.
Latest of the mudslinging game has been from Mr Shamsudheen,a former High Court judge.The mainstream media made a song and dance out of it.Statement of the former judge is like this:
1.Someone,whose name Mr Shamsudheen is not able to remember now,approached him for giving an introduction to relatives of KGB for the purpose of getting favours from KGB who was CJI at that point of time.
2. Mr Shamsudheen now see this as an evidence to show that KGB was an "approachable"person while he was CJI

Let us assume that the 1st part of Mr.Shamsudheen's statement is true.But how did he come to the inference in the second part of the statement?People who wants favours from those who occupy powerful positions will try all avenues to influence them.Some body somewhere wanting to be introduced to KGB's relative for seeking favours can by no stretch of imagination be considered as a reason to suspect KGB to be corrupt.
Motives of Shamsudheen becomes suspect due to the timing of making the allegation.There has been a series of wild allegations against KGB,but none could produce a shred of evidence to support it.It was dieing a natural death and the span of attention of people were getting diverted to other issues.Probably the forces working to discredit KGB must have been desperate to see that their campaign is in the dustbin.So rake up another wild allegation to discredit KGB.

The mainstream media is all willing to celebrate any nonsense that is being uttered against KGB without even applying their commonsense! 

Corperate Bigwigs Caught with Their Pants Down

Parallel Economy has overtaken The Economy long back.In fact "parallel"has become "main": and "The Main"has become trivia .The underworld has ceased to exist-it has become The world.Decisions are taken in the underworld and the rulers implement them religiously, since they came to power with the help of liberal funding from the underworld who controls the parallel economy.As the age old saying goes,The Colonel rules the Army,Colonel's wife rules the Colonel,and therefore Colonel's wife rules the Army.
As per disclosures made by the Government of Germany to GOI,Unaccounted money of certain Industrialists of India has been assessed to tax and roughly 50% of such money has been recovered as tax.There is no news about any enquiry being made as to how the money came into the bank accounts in the first place.Has the money been siphoned out of India by means such as under invoicing or cuts on purchases from abroad etc?,In that case it is a violation of COFEPOSA.Considering the size of turnover the companies involved have,the monies found are nothing but petty cash.It can even be termed as cash kept there for the visiting company Tsars to have a Beer or two at their leisure time.

But the question is,what if it is only a tip of the iceberg?What if there is a constant under invoicing of exported material and cuts on raw material and machinery import?There are enough Tax Havana Islands in Europe and Caribia where the the mammoth Iceberg can hide itself.The mainline media is silent on these issues since they need the advertisement support of these Corporates.Among the ones caught with their pants down,there are corporate satraps who have significant stakes in the media ownership.These media are tools in handling Governments either by support or by coercion.They insulate the corporates from public attention to their evil deeds.

There is Light at the end of a long Tunnel….With Anna Hazare Around

We, the people of India have not lost faith in miracles…Well we almost did. Till Anna Hazare happened, a few weeks ago. A hunger strike, which got little notice at the beginning- Hunger strike, is something that happens everyday, every place for all and sundry causes. The people who have seen a lot of them have become insensitive to them, most of which had hidden agenda or they were down right frauds. This one was different, Anna Hazare with his spotlessly clean track record , so were his close circle of leaders,Kiren Bedi, Swami Agnivesh,Shanthi Bhushan .( I choose to ignore the revelations thru a CD for which nobody wants to own up paternity, as well as the stamp duty allegations-Where were they till Bhushan became a leading light in this movement?)  Slowly but surely, there was an awakening. People who were haplessly watching corruption charges of mind boggling enormity slowly got ignited. And then an avalanche followed .It brought the mighty government to knees. All kinds of silly excuses were thrown around, technicalities, burocratic jargons, rules. Procedures and what not? Yes people like Kapil Sibal have perfected the art of defending corruption and the corrupt –(remember his defense of A Raja in telecom Scam?) As a Lawyer he defended offender all his life, so no need to teach a swan to swim.

People of India has exhibited their ability to rise against injustice a number of times but the weakness appear to be the inability of leaders to sustain the momentum, keep it in the right track, not to allow fortune seekers to hijack the movement . We the people of India also fail to be vigilant be focused to intervene when the movement starts moving on the wrong track. Vested interests are able to bring up emotive issues which overshadows other issues and finally we are back to squire one.

If one attempts to track two of the greatest post independence movements – Total revolution led by Jayaprakash Narain and Jan Morcha of V.P.Singh – this is what precisely happened to them. Anna Hazare’s movement has to learn from the history. At the moment the leaders of the movement like Shanthi Bhushan, Kiren Bedi.Swami Agnivsh are all hope-inspiring. But the people of India have to be vigilant to ensure that politicians with doubtful reputation do not infiltrate and finally hijack the movement.

But for the elections in 5 states happening concurrently with the hunger strike of Anna Hazare, the Government certainly would not have responded the way it has.Now,let us examine the possible scenarios

1. The government representatives in the Lokpal Bill Drafting Committee can raise endless objections to proposals and delay the draft eternally.
2. They may throw up all kinds of arguments to the stringent clauses  that  feature in the draft bill presented by Anna Hazare’s team
3. Smear campaign has already started against Shanti Bhushan..It is only a matter of time before more members of the drafting committee are targeted. Very fact that a Youth Congress leader has come on a TV Channel gives some indication of the possible sources of the fabricated CD maligning Shanthi Bhushan although nobody is willing to own up the CD or its contents in public.
4. Even if the Drafting Committee is able to come out with an acceptable draft, there are many ways of stalling it in the parliament. Look at the fate of women’s reservation bill and a lot of other bills that are presented in Parliament, with no tangible progress.

There has to be constant vigil from the people at large to see that the above possible scenarios are actually not acted on. Pressure of public opinion can be built up via the new generation independent media since the mainstream media

Is hand in gloves with the corrupt. The standard  practice is to raise the corruption related issues up to a point and then slowly take the side of the corrupt and be a party to the hush up.

It is the duty of the independent new generation media to be vigilant on this and ensure the success of such movements

 

     

Well done Comrade Achuthanandan!

The Supreme Court judgment of 10th February 2011 has been a silver lining amidst a pall of gloom that was surrounding the Indian political landscape. We had been haplessly watching the all-round loot of national wealth by politicians, beurocrats, judicial luminaries, mediamen….the list is endless. In such a depressing scenario, conviction of an ex-minister of Kerala by the Supreme Court makes one hope against all logic that things can still be rectified, that some day somewhere punishment will overtake crime. It is possible to book the corrupt and fight for justice can yield result someday, somewhere.

Credit certainly goes to Comrade V.S.Achuthanandan who almost single-handedly fought the political and legal battle for more than 2 decades. He had numerous other battles to fight including his own intra-party struggles, his own ministerial colleagues, party hierarchy and of course the Opposition parties.He also has an image problem-that he is an aniti devolopement,outated, ideological hardliner ...and so on That he could check the loss of focus amidst such a hostile atmosphere is itself a great achievement. He took a stand alone, an attitude among politicians in general who are unwilling to take charges of corruption to its logical end for fear that the hunter may turn out to be the prey someday in some murky deal.

The general trend in politics is to bring out an allegation, mostly without proper homework - like in-depth study, proper documentation, gathering of relevant facts etc.

For some time,  there will be a lot of din and commotion, signifying nothing. Politicians at the receiving and giving end will receive some media attention.. till the media finds a juicier story which can take their rating in the cutthroat competition a notch or two higher. We, the people of India would like to have fresh news along with our freshly brewed bed coffee. So the allegation goes into the garbage, to be raked up at an opportune political timing (if at all) or given a quiet burial.

The la-Balakrishna Pillai affair also would have met with the same fate but for V.S.Achuthanandan. It was all but buried with a High Court verdict in favor of Pillai and the then ministry in which Pillai was a member deciding not to go on appeal. It could well be a judicial and political landmark where the leader of Opposition entered as a party in the legal battle in a corruption case and took the fight to the finishing point.

Yes, even at the grand old age of 85 years and more, he still holds the spirit of never say die, with which he fought the freedom struggle at Punnapra Vayalar against the forces of Imperialism armed with .303 rifles with an untrained revolutionaries armed with makeshift spears of arrocnut tree.

The mainstream media ignored this landmark verdict. They had branded Punnapra Vayalar also as fool hardiness, throwing innocent peasants before the brutal forces of CP, misdirected adventurism and so on. They are busy now scripting the sob stories of Balakrishna Pillai tragic hero of the moment. But the fact is that this is a moment to celibrate for all the interested to see the rampant corruption to have some road blocks 

  

Why this trial by Media on Justice KGB?

The latest whipping boy of the mainstream media is Justice K.G.Balakrishnan.They are projecting him as the icon of corruption in Judiciary.No doubt,there are corrupt Judicial officials in judiciary.A few have come under public scrutiny,but quiet a few have managed to escape the public notice.
But before crucifying a person,whose public conduct has so far been non controversial,should not somebody ask what are the charges against KGB?Nobody seems to have asked that question and hence no answer also has come.The truth is that there is no allegation against KGB as of now. Yes,there are allegations against his son in laws and one of his brothers.They seem to have amassed wealth beyond their declared sources of income.The mainstream media alleges that they acquired this wealth when KGB was the Chief Justice.It resembles the lamb and wolf story of Aessop Tales...If not you,it is your father in law,if not you it is your brother!!!

If the son in laws or brother of KGB has acquired wealth beyond their declared sources of income,let a free and fair investigation take place against them.KGB's son in laws were not  in public service or had anything to do with Government Service.His brother was a Government pleader and hence in government service,in a manner of speaking.There are mechanisms to enquire on both the type of people.Our income tax sleuths are good at their job provided there are no political interference,so is CBI,so is the vigilance.Let them do their jobs and if the threads ultimately lead to KGB or for that matter anywhere else,so be it,let them undergo the punishment at the long arms of Law.

Like any other human being,Human Rights Commission Chairman also has his right to be granted the status of not guilty until he is declared guilty.Media cannot throw innuendo's against a person against whom no concrete allegation is there.If his sons in laws or brother has committed a crime ,merely because he was holding a high position,how can he be held responsible?

Remember the ISRO Espionage case which the media celebrated way back in 80s?(or was it 90s?).There were some loose talk in Trivandrum linking certain Scientists in ISRO,Trivandrum and a Maldivian lady which a "smart" Police officer made the subject of enquiry.Media ever hungry for sensation celebrated it by making a script which can easily qualify for a Hollywood,Bollywood or Kollywood blockbuster!!!! Finally what happened?Nothing.There was no concrete evidence against the scientists.All that could be achieved was that their lives were ruined.The investigations could not prove anything against them.But the social stigma remains.Their respectability in society is gone.All for the fertile imagination of some media men.

Let us not fall into the traps of media men and crucify the innocents.Todays world,truth once burried,hardly surfaces again.

Cricketing Icons Under Auctioner' Hammer

We have witnessed the sight of many Cricketing Icons being placed on auction for IPL.The highest bidder can take a player to his or her team for one season of IPL.The whole world seems to be rejoicing.The players of course have reason to be happy.They are making a lot of hay when the sun is shining....ie when they have bidders who are willing to bid for them.People sympathise with Sourav Ganguly and Brian Lara for whom no bidder bothered.Harsh reality of the market economy, your past doesnot matter,only your current utility matters
But i see a silver lining in the otherwise cloudy scenario.Our own great Sachin Tendulkar who refused to come under the auctioners hammer,holding his dignity up,declaring to the world that he cannot be baught or sold.A counter arguement can be raised that he has plenty of wealth and hence he can be indiferent to the mony which is the prime motivation of IPL.This arguement has no substence,since the others who gladly came under the auctioners hammer were by no strech of imagination lacking in financial resource,match fee,modelling income and even remuneration for attending parties thrown by the fithy rich and enormously snobbish.
Issue that I want to raise is that of the self respect of the players who allow themselves to be bought and sold.They remind me of slaves who were bought and sold in olden days at the slave bazars when slavary was legal in the world.A harsh comparison will be to that of women in the oldest profession who are willing to share the bed with whoever is willing to pay the right price.Their price vary according to their skill,they also face "no bidders syndrome"like Sourav Da and Lara at the end of their career.
I have no confution about the very sound principle that sportsmen(including sportswomen)are the wealth of the universe and as humen beings,they also need to have acess to good things in life.Ther has to be mechanisms to suppotr,encouage and motivate them.My only objection is in making them commodities and subjecting them to humiliation by placing them under the auctioners hammer and other still worse similies