Green Is In!!!!

“You know what, being green is in!!! I do not carry any polythene bags I only carry the jute bags I bought from people tree last month!!!”

What is my point?? Green, my friends is IN!!! Everyone who has least bit of concern for the environment will do their bit and then show it off to the rest of the world as a great service that they did for the green environment around.

This article traces as to how green architecture is getting great reviews......

The writer says The Confederation of Indian Industries is actively involved in disseminating information on sustainable construction practices. The Union housing ministry, in consultation with the environment ministry, is considering a proposal to grant fast-track environmental clearance to green residential housing projects. But this proposal has yet to become a reality. If it becomes a reality, developers will be able to save six to seven months (time spent on getting approvals) ongoing green. Several international standards are already in place in India: GRIHA (via The Energy Research Institute, or TERI) and LEED India (via the Indian Green Building Council, or IGBC). One way to obtain sustainability certification for a building is to take the help of a consultancy that is qualified and has the experience in integrating sustainable practices.

Green buildings offer several benefits. They enhance air quality, provide day lighting in the interiors and help save on energy consumption by at least 30 per cent. Green buildings also provide health benefits to office workers who spend as much as one-third of their lives inside the office. According to a recent survey in Australia, people who work in green buildings have 30 per cent less health problems, are 20 per cent more productive, and have fewer divorces than those working in normal buildings.

In India, the residential segment currently has a very small proportion of green buildings. More such buildings belong to the commercial segment. And even in the latter segment, not more than 18 LEEDS-certified commercial buildings exist in India today. Mumbai tops the list of certified green buildings (17.58 per cent). Next come Hyderabad (16.27 per cent) and Chennai (16.11 per cent) and they are followed by Delhi NCR (13.02 per cent). Ahmedabad’s contribution is a minuscule 0.02 per cent.

While I enjoy myself looking the new green homes.... readers let me know how you provided your green bit to our mother earth.....

A School to watch out for!!!!

Whenever someone asks me, where I completed my schooling from, I happily chant out the names of five schools from five different cities of India that helped me become a decent individual. Education, the brainy ones say, makes an individual....and schools designs the future of a child...opens the gates of childhood into adulthood...

I have read articles like these once in a while in newspapers about education in rural areas but this one recently caught my eye...the article calls itself Rethinking rural education!!

The article talks about schools in remote areas where students who belong to remote tribes are taught.

The writer says, the school is meant for the children of Paradhi and other nomadic tribes, many of which the British had branded “criminal tribes” because they were the most militant in the anti-colonial struggle. Even today, people belonging to these tribes suffer from extreme poverty and social exclusion, and rank lowest in formal school education. However, it would be naïve to think their minds are uneducated. As I discovered during my recent visit to Yamgarwadi, their children have amazing knowledge of the environment around them. These boys and girls knew the medicinal properties of the locally grown “weeds”. They could identify different birds with their sounds. They could name the stars in the night sky. In a little room that served as the “science laboratory” in the school, all the various types of snakes, crabs and scorpions kept in specimen jars had been caught by the children themselves. And how incredibly talented they all were in singing, dancing, playing local sports, and using their magical hands to create things of beauty in wood, mud and grass!

Unlike these schools, other schools, the writer says, bypasses the native skills, traditionally acquired learnings, and the rich artistic-literary heritage of our various “backward” castes and tribes in rural India. No wonder, children belonging to these communities perform poorly in the formal school system and end up swelling the ranks of the “uneducated” and “semi-educated”.

For RTE to become meaningful to these communities, and for it to make its fullest contribution to the realization of a progressive vision for the “Future of India”, big and innovative changes are needed in the school education system, especially in our rural schools. Smart kids like Avinash abound in India’s villages. What they need is not just the right to education, but also the right education.

The writer then says, for RTE to become meaningful to these communities, and for it to make its fullest contribution to the realization of a progressive vision for the “Future of India”, big and innovative changes are needed in the school education system, especially in our rural schools. Smart kids like Avinash abound in India’s villages. What they need is not just the right to education, but also the right education.

I am left to wonder that I wish they taught Marwari in my primary schools so that I could fluently talk to the elders in my family in a language they have grown up speaking in. Alas! My school days are over…..

Water water Everywhere!!!!!

Whenever we talk of water, few lines echo in my head...from the poem The Ancient Mariner....

Water water water....everywhere

No drop to drink...

No!!! Unlike your expectations, I will not talk about how we have floods and water is not channelized properly....It is an important piece of discussion and a lot of brainy people indulge into it....through articles and news channel discussion based shows....Only i we had better implementation of what they say....

This article says how pure water will be sold for 10 paisa per litre!!!!

It says that, Govt plans RO plants for urban areas, seven towns to be covered in first phase

Supply of potable drinking water — a 20-litre can of water purified through reverse osmosis (RO) process at Rs 2 — will soon be reality in urban areas of the state. The government plans to introduces the facility in the seven big towns in the state that have a problem of high salinity in underground water. The project has already been implemented in nearly 400 villages across the state.

Areas in Bathinda, the home turf of the Badals represented in the Lok Sabha by Sukhbir’s wife Harsimrat Kaur, will be covered in the first phase of the project, besides Sangrur, Mansa, Muktsar, Faridkot and Ferozepur. The Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) has been asked to allocate power connections for RO plants on priority, sources in the government said.

According to the decision taken at a recent meeting chaired by Deputy CM Sukhbir Badal, the project will be awarded through competitive bidding.

Safe drinking water is rarity in some parts of the state, especially the Malwa belt. As per official figures, there are over 3,000 villages in the state still to have safe drinking water. In large rural pockets, people believe that unsafe drinking water has caused many water-borne diseases, besides cancer.

Naandi Foundation, a Hyderabad-based NGO, is among some of the service providers in the state offering potable drinking water to consumers. In parts of Gidderbaha town in Muktsar district, where the project first started, residents had little choice but to drink groundwater containing inorganic salts.

Poor Folks!!!

About a month back, few of my juniors at college approached me trotting happily in high heels. The occasion, I was informed was practice for Miss Fresher event at college and I was chosen as the senior of the day who would tell them what kinds of questions were asked at the contest....experienced after watching Miss Universe pageant for years... I asked one of them if genie granted three of her wishes, what would they be???

Having heard the question a zillion times, she answered, with a wide grin on her face...I would ask him to end corruption...I would ask him to remove poverty...and then she sheepishly that’s it didi, I can’t of anything else that sounds nice enough....

With a wry smile on my face, I told her to think over her answers...which she thought was one of my methods to put in heavy philosophy...she sweetly excused me a good bye trotting away peacefully in her expensive 4 inch heels...leaving a large room of thought for me...

What is poverty??? Who decides that every poor person is sad, filthy and cursing every moment of his life??? And after all, isn’t the concept of poverty very relative in nature???

I then came across this article....it talks about how India cannot come out of clutches of poverty before 2015...

The article says South Asian nations including India would not be able to eradicate poverty and ensure minimum education for all by 2015, according to a new poverty index released in Delhi.

The Basic Capabilities Index (BCI) 2009 has found that South Asia will get 80 points on the index by 2015, 10 points higher than the present value of 70. India has got 68 points in the index, an increase of a meagre four points since 2004.

Giving further information, about where do other countries stand…the article says, the index also tells about the increasing gap in the living standards of the rich and poor in the world. The highest BCI value is 97 for Iran and the lowest is 44 for Chad in Africa, followed by Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Nepal. “There is an enormous gap in living conditions between the nations with the highest average BCI (north America) and regions with the worst (Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia),” the report said. Bissio said the index can guide policy makers on the social impact of economic growth and the social progress of nations in comparison to that of others.

Today, about 38 per cent of Indians are poor, says Suresh Tendulkar

Poverty lives in every house where basic amenities are met with great difficulty, a place where people are not necessary filthy but wear the same piece of cloth for years…poverty is not constant….it moves with times…poverty still lives in large parts of India….a serious thought needs to be given for removal of its seeds….

After all nothing is impossible.

Sadly, my junior fumbled in the question answer round as she went blank after listening to the question….she got the best dress award though…

I hope my blog readers would give poverty a thought…a serious one….views awaited

The Basti People

As I was getting down the stairs of a metro station, after a tiresome day working as a volunteer at the commonwealth games, my mind kept cribbing about the kind of food we were given for our services to our country. Frustrated with my mind and a little tired with the commuting stress, I almost bumped into a lady dressed in rags holding a child and waiting for somebody. Inquisitive freak that I am, I couldn’t hold myself from asking her who was she waiting for so expectantly, she replied she was waiting for her husband who was going to come after a 16 hour long shift at a construction site and they would walk back home to their “home in a basti nearby” together. Her home she said constituted of a room and for bathing and other chores, they used a set of common bathrooms in the basti. She refused to tell me where her basti was for some reason unknown to me. I didn’t stress either but…

For almost 5 minutes my mind raced like a Shatabdi Express passing a lot of things. Few of those-

Our first perception of the woman would have been that of a greedy beggar holding the child to get money….who gave air to such prejudices??

A home in the SLUMS nearby…after 16 hour long shift, how justified is this??

Is this her pursuit of happiness, should her contentment be taken for granted and any scope of her development be ignored???

Do she and her husband live here by choice or their poor conditions forced them to take shelter in such a place??

After I came back home playing the picture repeatedly in my head, I came across this article in the Times of India website with an ironical chuckle… DDA asks Delhi govt for land to shelter 30 lakh slum-dwellers

The article informs that our city Delhi is the proud mountain with about 6 LAKH SLUMS with over 30 lakh people residing in them. Their development….Is very important and would be carried out by clearing the unhygienic heap these people reside in and rehabilitate them in cleaner and better homes. Speaking on the same A K Walia, state Finance Minister said, “The only way to improve their living conditions is to either go for in-situ development, for which we require approval from various agencies that own the land, or build new houses. For new development, around 4 lakh flats or land area of approximately 2,700 acres is required. For this purpose, we have asked the DDA to allot more land.

On the issue of the vast gap between supply and demand of housing in the city, the state minister attributed it to the multiplicity of authority structures. “While the DDA falls under the central government, the slum development department falls under the union home ministry. The only development authority which comes under the purview of Delhi state is DSIIDC,” he said.

I put the paper down with a sigh only to see a news channel showing how a group of unhappy and dissatisfied lot of worker employed at CWG residing DIRTY AND STINKY place which the reporter thought was DILLI KA DHAARAAVI….

There is whole tainted circle…the rehabilitated people would have to return to the slums without proper jobs…proper jobs can’t be given unless they have sufficient degrees….what can be done then???

Development, I agree is the need of the hour…but who is responsible for carrying out this development, the Union Ministry, the State Ministry or the People residing in these places??? Or a support structure needs to be panned out between these 3 groups to understand what the best is for them.

Next day, few of my colleagues went up to the Venue Commander and complained Venue commander of the bad food, who said he needed time, and later complained the security officials wouldn’t be very appreciative of the idea, during the games.