IITs to help Govt. in cleaning up of Ganga~

Finally after 900 crores and 25 years, Government has finally woken up to the idea of cleaning up of Ganga.
Holiest of all rivers Ganges/ Ganga is the lifeline of our Indian subcontinent.
We all grow up listening to the fabulous tale of the journey of Ganga from Shiv ji's locks to the Earth for us. The river epitomizes the heart of India. It is the soul, the culture, the lifeline, the way of living, the reason for existence of millions of Indians. We treat Ganga not just as our National river but as our Mother, our Goddess. Hindu life is incomplete without a dip in the womb of the river. The doors of the Heaven itself do not open if the ashes are not offered to our Mother.
Perhaps it is the very significance of the river, that it has reached its limit after absorbing the sins of the billion Indians.
As per the UECPCB study, the level of coliform in Ganga at Haridwar is at level 5500. The level of coliform in the water for drinking should be below 50 for drinking and below 500 for bathing. 89 million litres of sewage is daily disposed into our Goddess river. 6 million tonnes of chemical fertilizer and 9000 tonnes of pesticides are offered to our deity every year.  Decomposed corpses are also left to float in the river leading to the extinction of important marine life.The soil erosion which is depositing silt at the higher sources in the river is another large threat looming ahead.

The initiatives that have been taken in the past to tackle this issue are:

**The Ganga Action Plan 1985 (GAP) 
# $600 million
#15 years
#Results debatable

**National Ganga River Basin Authority 2009

The recent move to take help form the seven IITs- Delhi, Bombay, Kanpur, Madras, Roorkee, Guwahati and Kharagpur is indeed commendable. Nehru's dream of creating a highly talented, technological workforce that would help our nation to create dams, industries, power plants and research and development is turning out to be true. From being the butt of the jokes ( "One foot in India, other in Air India"), to the drivers of the Indian economy, IITs sure have their brand name. The technical expertise brought by the institutes will surely help the cause if the Government bureaucracy doesn't slow down the cause. IIT Kanpur will monitor the effort, progress of the plan, manage the project and coordinate with the ministry. Kudos to IIT Kanpur foe the initiative.

Turning a blind eye to the situation is blasphemy against our own values, our culture, our traditions, our heritage and most important of all our Mother. Hope that this initiative will do much more than draining the taxpayer's money.

Bharat Bandh

So today 6th July 2010, was "Bharat Bandh" declared by the Opposition parties (read NDA and Left Parties)in opposition to the deregulation of fuels.
CII reported losses on account of this to be $641 million. ASSOCHAM had loss estimate to be $2.1 billion.
Newspapers, trade pundits, managers, B-school grads all were busy calculating the per day loss on the gross domestic product of India. The common man was enjoying a cup of tea in the lovely weather thanks to the unexpected break after the weekend.
We all ignored a "small" issue.

The daily roadside hawker who feeds his family everyday by buying bread earned everyday from his sales. In all these macro calculation, we forgot the heart of India. According to NSSO survey reports, there are over 80 million urban poor living in towns and cities of India. We talk about "Double dip recession", "Double digit growth", "Wholesale Price Index", "Food Inflation" and so on.
But what about the poor man who cannot earn on a working day because we were opposing fuel hike and inflation? That is the paradox of India. We are the country of paradoxes.
**India's rank in Human Development Index is 134 out of 182 countries.We are the eleventh largest economy in the world by nominal GDP
**India ranks fourth in the world by Purchasing Power Parity. Even then nearly two million children in India don't celebrate their sixth birthday.
**410 million Indians are below the poverty line. 126700 Indians are "super duper" rich who can wipe out the trade deficit in one go.

When we talk about millions and indexes and percentages, we lose the human touch. How is the daily worker is concerned if RBI increases repo rate and reverse repo rate? How does the safai wali concerned if the ESI limit is increased? A farmer in debt is not even bothered by BPLR or the Base Rate.
"We" who dream of plush offices, skip a beat on talking about Sensex, Employer of Choice, just turn our backs on these questions.
"How come his salary is more than mine" might
be answered but the agony of 37.2% of the population will not end unless something is done.