Cyclone Aila relief work

Cyclone Aila struck the coasts of Bangladesh and West Bengal, India killing more than 200 people and destroying 180,000 homes. Over 3 million people have been displaced as per the estimates.

The govt help is as always not adequate. Association for India's Development (AID) is partnering with local NGO partners to provide food, water and shelter. AID has already disbursed $21,000 to one of the partner NGO Baikanthapur Tarun Sangha (BTS) for this work.

If you would like to help the relief work please donate to AID All India Relief Fund.

Click here if you would like to follow the regular updates (from people working right in the middle of it and not from seasoned journalists)

If you would like to go and help in the relief work drop a hint in the comments section.


Cyclone Aila in press : BBC | The Daily Star | CNN | ToI | The Hindu

How much do you know your world?

What if knowing a place can get 10 cups of water to needy, what if knowing a word would mean feeding someone?

Try your knowledge to help someone get food and water.
www.freerice.com
www.freepoverty.com

Power of education

Read this article on Powerful Jews and response on desicritics.

The original article was a bit too long and most of it was repetitive. But if I got it right then there were two important parts in that article.

"Question: So, why are Jews so powerful?
Answer: Education."

and

"So, why are Muslims so powerless?
Answer: Lack of education!"

I would not say that Jews are most powerful and Muslims are most powerless in the world, however I don't see why I should disagree with the two reasoning above. If a religion emphasizes more on education, its bound to have more intellectuals. In today's world you cannot ignore the power of knowledge. Yes you can say that jews or for that christians have english as their basic language which is the language of most part of the knowledge available in the world today. However you cannot ignore the emphasis they put on literacy.

I have always believed in the power of education. All the issues in this world can be settled with proper knowledge transfer. Think of global warming, educate people about it and they would use the resources carefully. Think of international disputes, educate people about the issues and they would come up with an amicable solution. When you see a disease like AIDS which does not have a cure yet, the best option you are left with is educate people about it.

Religious principles might not be the only reason for the growth of people belonging to a particular religion, however these principles can have a huge impact on the social development.

Brain Drain

15 bright students of Indian origin, sitting in a small room in one of the biggest university of USA. Any guesses what they were doing in there?

Discussing the economy? No
Celebrating the rise of India? No
Talking over the rising oil prices? No

They were concerned about the lack of interest of poor dalit children in education. They were discussing how to support a group to take initiative and teach those children in their own homes. These students were discussing the living conditions of the poor people in one of the small village of West Bengal.

I have been hearing about brain drain since I joined IIT Kharagpur. It was hard to convince people that even after coming out of country, people do think about India. A small meeting yesterday evening bolstered my belief in indian brain's worry about their country.

wanna know more?? AID India

Do you like Paan?

You heard of the vibrating ring and the moral police's reaction to it. Since Hindustan Latex couldn't earn much from that product, they have come with a new one. Now this one has got flavor of Paan.
The new product having flavor of betel leaf has been designed mostly for sex workers. The paan flavor was tested with the prototypes of chocolate, banana and strawberry. and guess what, paan flavored one topped the tests!!!

I am waiting for the reaction of our self appointed moral police. Lets see if they like to chew it or spit it!!

Murder weapons of delhi back on the road

The Delhi govt has bowed to the blueline operators again. These are the same buses involved in rash drivings, tripping over and killing people and school kids. After the outcry over several cases in a row, the delhi police started enforcing law in proper way. The next thing you know is that all the blueline buses are on strike.

This is the respect of law in this country. The moment you try to force the law, we will hijack the basic services and disrupt the life of common public and force you to forget all the law and order. We will never tolerate the enforcement of law against us whatever happens. You can't make us follow these stupid laws of drivers license and vehicle insurance. Surprisingly, many people happily put life of their kids in hands of these law breaking drivers.

Can breastfeeding cause HIV infection?

How much do you know about HIV infection. To my knowledge there are four ways of transmission of HIV virus

1. Infusion of infected blood
2. Sexual intercourse with HIV infected person
3. Needles
4. From HIV infected mother on birth.

What would you think of Breast Feeding?

I had this notion that body fluid contact (blood or semen) was necessary for the transmission of HIV, and anything which is taken orally wont transmit the disease. According to this theory breastfeeding wouldn't cause any harm.

I was shocked on seeing this news article, where doctors advised HIV infected mother against breastfeeding. I thought of it as one more case of random behavior of doctors. But when they showed interview with an expert and he quoted some statistics, I felt like googling about this. And the results were totally different then my perception.
There have been studies that breastfeeding do increase the chances of HIV infection in new born. According to this report by UNICEF, WHO, UNFPA etc breastfeeding has cumulative effect on chances of HIV infection. It means more the breastfeeding, more is the chance of virus transmission. There was seen an increase of about 10-20% in the cases of transmission of the disease when breast feeding for 6-24 months.

Link to Report.

Tell me if there are any more fallacies in my thinking about HIV transmission.

Great Bihar Police

Bihar faced communal clash in January this year. Bihar policed filed FIR against 7 people for attack on police force and inciting riots. and guess who is among those 7.
A two year old kid who can't even eat his food on his own (according to his aunt). Now that the matter is in media, police says it might be a clerical error. I wonder how many clerical errors of this kind have gone unnoticed, and how many of those innocent people have been booked for the crimes they never did. If they can book a two year old for rioting then there is no stopping them to book anyone for any crime they want.

Link to the story

I remember a joke, once a police commissioner called inspector that his watch and ring are missing. The inspector gets on work. The commissioner calls back in few minutes saying he found his watch and ring in bathroom, the inspector says, "How is it possible sir, I have five different people locked up here saying they stole those items."

Rang de Basanti

We all saw it, we all liked it.

But someone took it to heart, and went ahead to do their part to the society. I always had a bad impression of the rich kids, but then you don't need a million deeds to change your view. These kids know their forte and are using it in a great way. They know they are rich and have contacts with similar people and they have channeled the effort in a very right way. I know it would be too much to ask for everyone doing their part, but even half of us did it, the world would be a much better place to live.


Link to story

Are you the worst tourist in the world??

A survey among 15,000 European hoteliers says Indians are the most impolite. Why am I not not surprised at all. The way we Indians demand for the value of our hard earned money, no one in the hospitality business is going to be happy with us. But is it wrong to ask for the value of your money ( The true value in indian terms ).
Another point that Indian people like their own food and don't pay big bucks to restaurants for the mostly tasteless food. An Indian is a foodie by birth, same as citizen by birth. You can't force us to eat the food we don't want. Most of the travel operators provide tourist packages inclusive of Indian food. This brings more people in the tourism net. This also makes the hospitality people unhappy.

All in all, we might be impolite but still we are best among the developing world.

Daughters of Bihar

Thanx to Dilip D'Souza for highlighting this.

Bihar ki Betiya, a wonderful festival to get the poorest of poor connected to mainstream. Educating them is the best thing you can give.

Two things I want to say:
1. Will Arjun Singh and other state's chief ministers open their eyes, and try to follow this?
2. Will media stop showing Cho Seung-Hui and give some time to this kind of stories??

tell me if it makes you cry!!

Its a news which made me cry. Could not stop tears in my eyes. The girl committing suicide for a set of text books and Indian govt. spending millions for free education.
I would like to ask Mr. Manmohan Singh, what is he doing with his educational cess when there are kids taking their lives to save their parents from embarrassment of not able to buy books for them.

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