Healthy India?? Safety India!!??

A kid died on his 4 th birthday playing and Falling inside the bore well!!! When people spend a damn loads o money for alcohol, fags, gold, clothes, vehicles and so on in India.., what puts them down or makes them lazy to have some health and safety!! A few barricades or anything - if they were placed around that bore well area... The 4 year old kid would have been saved!!!

Do your part by paying attention to the open drainages and do something about it rather than just moaning and blaming the government!!! including wearing helmets and seat belts!!!

Do your part... Don't think... Imply it!!!

Politics during Elections

This is a fact....I would say rather than a fact, Any Indian need guts to criticise the rulers!!

I hate it when people say we have good freedom in India!!

A BBC reporter can point her forefinger at David Cameron and ask him "you have not done anything to get this country out of recession!!, what do you intend to do??"

But the same thing cannot be done in India... Because we don't' give  S*** about our country except a handful of people. Yes it is a shame to say that in a billion - there is only a handful to care about our country!!!

A Government cannot give a normal household 24/7 electricity - ambulance is slower than any other vehicle - A whole nation is bribed during the elections!!

When that handful of people wants to stop Bribery and corruption, which END do they need to start?

Do something for your country.., You have to save your country..not the politicians, but from the politicians!!!

Spread this blog!!!

Strong Prey on the Weak!!!

I wanted to understand more specifically just how wide-spread corruption was in the country.


Aside from recent huge scandals including CWG, 2G licenses and the Adarsh Housing scam that have brought to light the ugly disease plaguing this country and stunting its economic growth and credibility, I have discovered some incredible metrics.


Even a cursory look (which is all this is) reveals so much!


See if any of these numbers astound you as much as they did me (btw, it’s a pretty safe assumption that these numbers underestimate the ground reality) -


1. More than 50% of people have first-hand experience of paying bribes to public officials in order to get their work done.


2. Inter-state transport: Truckers in India alone pay $5 billion (yes, US Dollars) in bribes annually.


3. The monetary value of petty corruption in 11 basic services in government (education, healthcare, judiciary, police) amounts to about $5 billion annually.


4. India’s telecom ministry apparently siphoned $30 billion from various projects over the past few years.


5. According to ex-IPS officer Kiran Bedi, about $16 billion is lost to corruption every year in India. Of Rs.100 meant to be spent on infrastructure, only about Rs.16 is used and Rs 84 is lost. Is it in any wonder the state of the infrastructure?


6. A recent report by World Bank showed that only 40% of grain handed out to the poor reaches its target. This report says that aid programs in India are beset by corruption, bad administration and under-payments. Yet another embarrassment for the ruling party.


7. The Bangalore-based website ipaidabribe.com, which encourages citizens to report bribes anonymously they have paid, has so far compiled 11300 reports with a total bribe value of about Rs. 295,000,000. While this is just a fraction of all bribes, the fact that people are taking the trouble to report them tells me how tired and angry they are with the situation. What is the tipping point?


8. Independent reports published through 1991 to 2011 calculated the financial net worth of India’s most powerful and traditionally ruling family to be anywhere between $9.41 billion to $18.66 billion, most of it in the form of illegal monies.


9. India tops the list for black money in the entire world with almost US$1456 billion in Swiss Banks – that is about $1.5 trillion. Staggering!


10. According to the data provided by the Swiss Banking Association Report (2006), India has more black money than the rest of the world combined. To put things in perspective, Indian-owned Swiss bank account assets are worth 13 times the country’s national debt.


Sickened yet?


No doubt about it, this is a debilitating cancer on the nation; it is an affliction of such epic proportion that it impacts everything and everyone. A recent report by KPMG states that “high-level corruption and scams are now threatening to derail the country’s credibility and [its] economic boom”.


Are you a citizen of India (past or present) or a descendant of one?


If you do nothing else after reading these sad facts, read about the anti-corruption movements and find a way – however small* – to support it.


This is the closest we have come to the tipping point.


There is a rage and fury that has built up against the cheating powers that be. It’s way past time for this country to fix itself.


Why not use the current high emotions and wide-spread wrath to start fixing these serious issues? Perhaps then India’s future really will be as bright as everyone says it can be.


The alternative – to let this built-up citizen outcry and ire just slip away into non-action – is much too unfortunate to contemplate. What a pity that would be and what a great missed opportunity!

Human Sex Trafficking in India

Thank to One of my beloved group member Samyuktha Anandakumar who managed to get the full speech of Dr. Sunitha Krishnan from TED talks who is fighting for the cause of sex trafficking in India.

I am not going to highlight any text in this post, as every single word is important and I recommend everyone must  read it.

Dr. SUnitha Krishnan - This lady deserves something more than a standing ovation.

This is how her talk goes:

I'm talking to you about the worst form of human rights violation, the third-largest organized crime, a 10 billion dollar industry. I'm talking to you about modern-day slavery.

I'd like to tell you the story of these three children, Pranitha, Shaheen and Anjali. Pranitha's mother was a woman in prostitution, a prostituted person. She got infected with HIV, and towards the end of her life, when she was in the final stages of AIDS, she could not prostitute, so she sold four-year-old Pranitha to a broker. By the time we got the information, we reached there, Pranitha was already raped by three men.

Shaheen's background I don't even know. We found her in a railway track, raped by many many men, I don't know many. But the indications of that on her body was that her intestine was outside her body. And when we took her to the hospital she needed 32 stitches to put back her intestine into her body. We still don't know who her parents are, who she is. All that we know that hundreds of men had used her brutally.

Anjali's father, a drunkard, sold his child for pornography. You're seeing here images of three years, four-year-olds, and five-year-old children who have been trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation. In this country, and across the globe, hundreds and thousands of children, as young as three, as young as four, are sold into sexual slavery. But that's not the only purpose that human beings are sold for. They are sold in the name of adoption. They are sold in the name of organ trade. They are sold in the name of forced labor, camel jockeying, anything, everything.

I work on the issue of commercial sexual exploitation. And I tell you stories from there. My own journey to work with these children started as a teenager. I was 15 when I was gang-raped by eight men. I don't remember the rape part of it so much as much as the anger part of it. Yes, there were eight men who defiled me, raped me, but that didn't go into my consciousness. I never felt like a victim, then or now. But what lingered from then till now -- I am 40 today -- is this huge outrageous anger.

Two years, I was ostracized, I was stigmatized, I was isolated, because I was a victim. And that's what we do to all traffic survivors. We, as a society, we have PhDs in victimizing a victim. Right from the age of 15, when I started looking around me, I started seeing hundreds and thousands of women and children who are left in sexual slavery-like practices, but have absolutely no respite, because we don't allow them to come in.

Where does their journey begin? Most of them come from very optionalist families, not just poor. You have even the middle class sometimes getting trafficked. I had this I.S. officer's daughter, who is 14 years old, studying in ninth standard, who was raped chatting with one individual, and ran away from home because she wanted to become a heroine, who was trafficked. I have hundreds and thousands of stories of very very well-to-do families, and children from well-to-do families, who are getting trafficked.

These people are deceived, forced. 99.9 percent of them resist being inducted into prostitution. Some pay the price for it. They're killed; we don't even hear about them. They are voiceless, [unclear], nameless people. But the rest, who succumb into it, go through everyday torture. Because the men who come to them are not men who want to make you your girlfriends, or who want to have a family with you. These are men who buy you for an hour, for a day, and use you, throw you.

Each of the girls that I have rescued -- I have rescued more than 3,200 girls -- each of them tell me one story in common ... (Applause) one story about one man, at least, putting chile powder in her vagina, one man taking a cigarette and burning her, one man whipping her. We are living among those men: they're our brothers, fathers, uncles, cousins, all around us. And we are silent about them.

We think it is easy money. We think it is shortcut. We think the person likes to do what she's doing. But the extra bonuses that she gets is various infections, sexually transmitted infections, HIV, AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, you name it, substance abuse, drugs, everything under the sun. And one day she gives up on you and me, because we have no options for her. And therefore she starts normalizing this exploitation. She believes, "Yes, this is it, this is what my destiny is about." And this is normal, to get raped by 100 men a day. And it's abnormal to live in a shelter. It's abnormal to get rehabilitated.

It's in that context that I work. It's in that context that I rescue children. I've rescued children as young as three years, and I've rescued women as old as 40 years. When I rescued them, one of the biggest challenges I had was where do I begin. Because I had lots of them who were already HIV infected. One third of the people I rescue are HIV positive. And therefore my challenge was to understand how can I get out the power from this pain. And for me, I was my greatest experience. Understanding my own self, understanding my own pain, my own isolation, was my greatest teacher. Because what we did with these girls is to understand their potential.

You see a girl here who is trained as a welder. She works for a very big company, a workshop in Hyderabad, making furnitures. She earns around 12,000 rupees. She is an illiterate girl, trained, skilled as a welder. Why welding and why not computers? We felt, one of the things that these girls had is immense amount of courage. They did not have any pardas inside their body, hijabs inside themselves; they've crossed the barrier of it. And therefore they could fight in a male-dominated world, very easily, and not feel very shy about it.

We have trained girls as carpenters, as masons, as security guards, as cab drivers. And each one of them are excelling in their chosen field, gaining confidence, restoring dignity, and building hopes in their own lives. These girls are also working in big construction companies like Ram-ki construction, as masons, full-time masons.

What has been my challenge? My challenge has not been the traffickers who beat me up. I've been beaten up more than 14 times in my life. I can't hear from my right ear. I've lost a staff of mine who was murdered while on a rescue. My biggest challenge is society. It's you and me. My biggest challenge is your blocks to accept these victims as our own.

A very supportive friend of mine, a well-wisher of mine, used to give me every month, 2,000 rupees for vegetables. When her mother fell sick she said, "Sunitha, you have so much of contacts. Can you get somebody in my house to work, so that she can look after my mother?" And there is a long pause. And then she says, "Not one of our girls."

It's very fashionable to talk about human trafficking, in this fantastic A-C hall. It's very nice for discussion, discourse, making films and everything. But it is not nice to bring them to our homes. It's not nice to give them employment in our factories, our companies. It's not nice for our children to study with their children. There it ends. That's my biggest challenge.

If I'm here today, I'm here not only as Sunitha Krishnan. I'm here as a voice of the victims and survivors of human trafficking. They need your compassion. They need your empathy. They need, much more than anything else, your acceptance.

Many times when I talk to people, I keep telling them one thing: don't tell me hundred ways how you can not respond to this problem. Can you ply your mind for that one way that you can respond to the problem? And that's what I'm here for, asking for your support, demanding for your support, requesting for your support. Can you break your culture of silence? Can you speak to at least two persons about this story? Tell them this story. Convince them to tell the story to another two persons.

I'm not asking you all to become Mahatma Gandhis or Martin Luther Kings, or Medha Patkars, or something like that. I'm asking you, in your limited world, can you open your minds? Can you open your hearts? Can you just encompass these people too? Because they are also a part of us. They are also part of this world. I'm asking you, for these children, whose faces you see, they're no more. They died of AIDS last year. I'm asking you to help them, accept as human beings, not as philanthropy, not as charity, but as human beings who deserve all our support. I'm asking you this because no child, no human being, deserves what these children have gone through. Thank you. (Applause)

Saving is sin, and spending is virtue

Japan - Save a lot, Not much spending. Exports are more than Imports. An annual Turnover of $100 Billion, Yet they are considered weak and collapsing

USA - Spend a lot, Not much saving. US imports more than it exports. They have an annual trade deficit of $400 billion. But the American economy is considered strong and trusted to get stronger

But Where do Americans get their spendings from?I believe it is Japan and the BRIC nations..,

Virtually others save for the US to spend!! Global Economic savings are mostly invested in USA, in dollars!!

Whereas, India keeps its foreign currency assets of over $50 billions in US securities. China has sunk over $160 billion in US securities. Japan is in trillions!!"

The US has taken so far $5 tirllion from the world just to spend!!!

The famous phrase ,"Everything is MADE IN CHINA", well considering this phrase --

Who has invested more!! US in China? or China in US? The US has invested in China less than half of what China has invested in US

The world is dependent on US consumption for its growth. By its deepening culture of consumption, the US has habituated the world to feed on US consumption. But as the US needs money to finance its consumption, the world provides the money.

It's like a shopkeeper providing the money to a customer so that the customer keeps buying from the shop. If the customer will not buy, the shop won't have business, unless the shopkeeper funds him. The US is
like the lucky customer. And the world is like the helpless shopkeeper financier.  

Hence, what is the lesson?

That is, a nation cannot grow unless the people spend, not save. Not just spend, but borrow and spend.

Indians wastefully investing on real estate, gold and hiding in the SWISS banks for the next generation. It is time to spend, on imported cars and, seriously, even on cosmetics! This will put India
on a growth curve. This is one of the reasons for MNC's coming down to
India, seeing the consumer spending.

'Saving is sin, and spending is virtue.' 

But before you follow this Neo Economics, get some fools to save so that you can borrow from them and spend!!!

It is very simple to be happy, but very difficult to be simple.