Dumping US Toxic Waste in India...

The port city of Tuticorin, where my maternal grandfather is from, is
one of the loveliest towns I have been to. With it's salt pans and
period housing and charming people it is a laid back little town, and
now here we go polluting it with toxic waste.

The Times Of India reports that, "Thousand tonnes of hazardous
American waste have been dumped at Tamil Nadu's Tuticorn Port, where
almost 35 large containers conceal the waste, that has been lying
untouched for the past three years. There is reportedly an amount of
890 tonnes of harmful waste that has been brought all the way from New
Jersey. The biggest question though is if it is a case of civic apathy
or a classic case of the West treating India as a dumping ground.

Since the past three years, contaminated municipal waster such as
polythene bags, crushed soft drink cans, pesticide containers, used
batteries, metal wires and others more have been rotting away at the
port. The cargo reportedly reached India as a part of wastepaper
imported by an Indian company back in 2005. However, during the
routine checks, port authorities -- much to their shock -- discovered
that the cargo did not have only paper but carcenogenic waster
discarded by America.

However, the fact that has been interesting is that in September 2007,
a committee constituted by the Madras High Court had certified that
the American garbage posed a threat to the people of India and the
environment. Following this, the Madras High Court demanded that this
trash be sent back to New Jersey immediately. But, much to the horror
of environmentalists, the scrap still lies around the area and the
Indian company is unwilling to take responsibility of the cargo. The
Americans also are refusing to take the waste back. BP Shukla, Zonal
Officer - South Central Pollution Control Board said, "This
consignment has municipal waste that cannot be allowed inside India."

In all probabilities , most of the townsfolk, innocent and naive as
they are would probably not even be aware of this and would have been
affected by the toxic waste already! Earlier a similar incident
occurred when toxic waste from New York was dumped in another charming
port city, Kochi!!!

Read the full Times of India article at--
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India_dumping_ground_for_US_toxic_waste/articleshow/3119228.cms

Two Worlds, Just Across The Street

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer saga continues... What
better place to see this today, than in the booming techno towns of
India. "India has always had its upper classes, as well as legions of
the world's very poor. But today a landscape dotted with Hamilton
Courts, pressed up against the slums that serve them, has underscored
more than ever the stark gulf between those worlds, raising
uncomfortable questions for a democratically elected government about
whether India can enable all its citizens to scale the golden ladders
of the new economy, says an article in the New York Times.

According to this article, "In India, poverty has also dropped
appreciably in the last 17 years of economic change, even as the gulf
between the rich and poor has grown. More than a quarter of all
Indians still live below the official poverty line (subsisting on
roughly $1 a day); one in four city dwellers live on less than 50
cents a day; and nearly half of all Indian children are clinically
malnourished.
At the same time, the ranks of dollar millionaires have swelled to
100,000, and the Indian middle class, though notoriously hard to
define and still small, has by all indications expanded.
For those with the right skills, the good times have been very good.
Mr. Chand, 34, a business school graduate who runs the regional
operations for an American manufacturing firm, has seen his salary
grow eightfold in the last five years, which is not unusual for upper
class Indians like him."

This widening gap became very obvious to me when I visited Bangalore,
a little over a year ago. Rising sky scrapers, huge wallets,
increasing poverty and lack of infrastructure to keep with the
phenomenal growth. Similarly according to the article, "Gurgaon, a
largely privately developed city and a metonym for Indian ambition,
has seen a building frenzy to satisfy people like the Chands. The
city's population has nearly doubled in the last six years, to 1.5
million. The skyline is dotted with scaffolds. Glass towers house
companies like American Express and Accenture. Not far from Hamilton
Court, Burberry and BMW have set up shop. State services, meanwhile,
have barely kept pace. The city has neither enough water nor
electricity for the population. There is no sewage treatment plant
yet; construction is scheduled to begin this year."

"India has long lived with such inequities, and though a Maoist
rebellion is building in the countryside, the nation has for the most
part skirted social upheaval through a critical safety valve: giving
the poor their chance to vent at the ballot box. Indeed, four years
ago, voters threw out the incumbent government, with its "India
Shining" slogan, because it was perceived to have neglected the poor.
It is little wonder then that the current administration has seized on
"inclusive growth" as its mantra, and as elections approach in less
than a year, it is spending heavily on education, widely acknowledged
as a key barrier to upward mobility for the poor," says this article.

Read the full article at --
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/world/asia/09gated.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

Now An Indian Napa Valley?

First it was the city of Bangalore, becoming India's Silicon Valley,
now is the city of Nasik in the state of Maharashtra becoming the
Indian Napa Valley?

According to this article in the New York Times, "Eight years ago, Mr.
Dhuru, who made his fortune in the software business, bought land
outside Nasik, a city about 100 miles northeast of Mumbai that has
become the center of India's rapidly expanding wine industry.

This year, with the help of a consulting oenologist from Bordeaux, Mr.
Dhuru expects to produce about 300,000 bottles of white and red wines.
By next year, he estimates that a million bottles will bear the
Chateau d'Ori label.

The aggressive optimism of entrepreneurs like Mr. Dhuru is easy to
understand. In Maharashtra state in central and western India, where
Nasik is, more than 40 wineries are in varying stages of development.
Government officials say that investment in wine increased by 74
percent over the last year.

"In the next 10 years there will be 300 million upwardly mobile
Indians who can afford wine and for whom it will be a lifestyle
choice," Mr. Dhuru said. "A lot of them will be drinking Indian
wines."

Read the full article at--
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/dining/04india.html?emc=tnt&tntemail0=y

How The Richest Of The Rich Will Live...

Have we forgotten that the world is going through a food crisis and
people are starving in the same country where this home is being
built?

Mukesh Ambani the fifth richest man in the world is building this $2
billlion home in Mumbai, when right across town exists the largest
slum in the world, Dharawi.

"The only remotely comparable high-rise property currently on the
market is the $70 million triplex penthouse at the Pierre Hotel in New
York, designed to resemble a French chateau, and climbing 525 feet in
the air. When the Ambani residence is finished in January, completing
a four-year process, it will be 550 feet high with 400,000 square feet
of interior space. The home will cost more than a hotel or high-rise
of similar size because of its custom measurements and fittings: A
hotel or condominium has a common layout, replicated on every floor,
and uses the same materials throughout the building (such as door
handles, floors, lamps and window treatments)," says an article in
Forbes magazine.

"The Ambani home, called Antilla, differs in that no two floors are
alike in either plans or materials used. At the request of Nita
Ambani, say the designers, if a metal, wood or crystal is part of the
ninth-floor design, it shouldn't be used on the eleventh floor, for
example. The idea is to blend styles and architectural elements so
spaces give the feel of consistency, but without repetition," reports
Forbes, "Antilla's shape is based on Vaastu, an Indian tradition much
like Feng Shui that is said to move energy beneficially through the
building by strategically placing materials, rooms and objects."

Apparently, "Ambani plans to occasionally use the residence for
corporate entertainment, and the family wants the look and feel of the
home's interior to be distinctly Indian; 85% of the materials and
labor will come from outside the U.S., most of it from India," so one
may argue that this is creating a mini industry in India adding to the
economy. However, to most, there are better ways to revitalize the
down trodden than spend $2 billion on an extravagant home for oneself.

Read the full article and see pictures at--
http://www.forbes.com/2008/04/30/home-india-billion-forbeslife-cx_mw_0430realestate.html?feed=rss_popstories

Monkeying Around

Growing up in Secunderabad, one of the biggest pests even today are monkeys. Even in extremely urban areas, when all is quiet and everyone is enjoying a warm breeze out in their balconies, the monkeys invade, all of a sudden. They come in huge groups of about 50, and just barge into your homes, and grab whatever edible things they can find, bananas, fruits, food, utensils and if you try to stop them, even god can't help you... Much as I am alover of animals, these monkeys are a menace.

"Forest officials in India have come up with an unusual way of controlling pesky monkeys - they've set up a park to protect them," reports Reuters, "The primate protection park in India's northern Himachal Pradesh will house more than 2000 Simian monkeys and hopefully keep a check on the growing monkey menace in the hilly state. Estimates say over the last three years, the monkey population has grown by 50 percent."



I am keeping my fingers crossed for the people of the twin cities of Secunderabad and Hyderabad and hoping that this works.

World's Densest Cities

India and China account for 9 of the world's top densest cities according to Forbes magazine. From South Asia, Mumbai is #1, Kolkata is #2, Karachi is #3, Chennai is at #8, Delhi is at #13, Jakarta, Indonesia is #17, and Bangalore is #19.

An excerpt --

"Where are cities most dense? Look no further than Asia, where concentrated economic growth has spawned 16 of the 20 densest urban areas in the world, according to 2007 statistics from citymayors.com. Leading the way are Mumbia and Kolkata, both in India, each of which pack in over 23,000 people per square kilometer. Both cities, along with those close behind like Karachi, Pakistan, Lagos, Nigeria and Shenzhen, China, hold about as many people within a handful of square blocks as live in U.S. metros like Charleston, S.C., Green Bay, Wis., or Berkeley, Calif."

Read the full story at --

http://www.forbes.com/2007/12/14/cities-pollution-asia-biz-logistics-cx_tvr_1214densecities.html

Two Indian Cities on Forbes List of Top 25 Dirtiest

Forbes lists the top 25 worlds dirtiest, and you bet South Asia has
entries in this list.
New Delhi is at #24
Mumbai is at # 7
and Dhaka, Bangladesh is at #2

An excerpt --
"To see which cities in the world were dirtiest, we turned to Mercer
Human Resource Consulting's 2007 Health and Sanitation Rankings. As
part of their 2007 Quality of Life Report, they ranked 215 cities
worldwide based on levels of air pollution, waste management, water
potability, hospital services, medical supplies and the presence of
infectious disease.

All cities are positioned against New York, the base city with an
index score of 100. For the Health and Sanitation Rankings, the index
scores range from the worst on the list--Baku, Azerbaijan, with a
score of 27.6--to the best on the list--Calgary, Canada, with a score
of 131.7."

Also on Forbes ;ist of the 10 most polluted cities in the world India, has two listings, Sukinda and Vapi.

Read the full story on the world's dirtiest cities at --
http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/26/pollution-baku-oil-biz-logistics-cx_tl_0226dirtycities.html

Read about the world's top 10 polluted cities at -- http://www.forbes.com/2007/11/29/environment-green-blacksmith-biz-man-cx_db_1129pollute.html?feed=rss_news

Picking Up Trash by Hand, and Yearning for Dignity

It's good to see that the media is talking about things Indian, other than outsourcing, Bollywood and the economy!!!
Read the full NYT article at --
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/world/asia/27ragpickers.html?ex=1191556800&en=6cf4fc619c053500&ei=5070

From the New York Times
By AMELIA GENTLEMAN
Published: September 27, 2007
NEW DELHI — After a bad day at work, Manorama Begum can hardly keep from vomiting. After a good day, she is merely disinclined to eat for a few hours, until the stench has receded from her nostrils and her fingernails have been scrubbed clean.

A garbage collector in India’s capital, Ms. Begum is one of 300,000 little-seen workers who perform a vital role for the city: rifling through the detritus of modern life, recycling anything of worth and carefully disposing of the rest.

More than 95 percent of New Delhi has no formal system of house-to-house garbage collection, so it falls to the city’s ragpickers, one of India’s poorest and most marginalized groups, to provide this basic service. They are not paid by the state, relying instead on donations from the communities they serve and on meager profits from the sale of discarded items.

But after centuries of submissive silence, the waste collectors are beginning to demand respect.

On Oct. 2, Gandhi’s birthday, the Delhi state government will make a small but significant concession. In response to pressure from a ragpickers’ union, it will supply about 6,000 with protective gloves, boots and aprons.

Megacities of the Future

Forbes magazine lists the megacities of the future. Among the top 10 are Mumbai, Delhi and Calcutta!!!

http://www.forbes.com/2007/06/11/megacities-population-urbanization-biz-cx_21cities_ml_0611megacities_slide_2.html?thisSpeed=20000

Other related articles are 21st century cities and Ghost cities of 2100 which are also very interesting lists.