Monday, January 18, 2010
I Own My Garbage
Nowadays, the awareness on reducing garbage is slowly gaining ground. As far as my town is considered, the municipal corporation is really trying hard to manage garbage effectively. But garbage increases exponentially. And residential areas contribute a lot. We really cant spend much of our time on that. More importantly, we also need to know the options as what to do. If we think different, we can practically do some small but positive things. I realized it when I started doing “Garbage to Fertilizer” project in a basket in my apartment. It takes very less space in my home and takes almost 15-20 min a day to put my kitchen waste and mix with bio-culture. It worked successfully, and in last 10 months I converted more than 300 kg of garbage to fertilizer. So, individual efforts do count. I met a few amazing people working for the same cause. Mrs. Nirmala Lathi from Pune has pioneered this project and implemented in more than 200,000 homes in Maharashtra. Mr. Kaustubh Tamhankar from Thane is implementing zero garbage at home, and he has even gone further to avoid non-degradable plastic from going in dust bin. One society in Thane is implementing a zero garbage project from last 9 years successfully. Many more people are coming up for this cause. A small group of Nyaan Prabodhini in my town helped manage the flower waste during Ganeshotsav.
Few big things to add. Adarsh school of Badlapur implemented Ecosan sanitation system with municipal corporations help and got great recognition. Similarly, in recent news, Municipal Corporation of Navi Mumbai got recognition for its 3 plants for treating waste water. The huge hoardings in South Mumbai constantly bombard on people to stop spreading waste. These measures are good, and will help in long run to fight the ever increasing garbage. But we are apparently addressing the tip of the iceberg. Big projects can handle garbage, but “increasing garbage” is the real nightmare which we are facing. Day after day, garbage is increasing. The land and ocean, both are proving short to accommodate our garbage. Someday, we might start using the Moon and the Mars to dump the garbage.
My garbage to fertilizer efforts are required lifelong, and wont stop now. It has given a cause to my life. It’s a long way to go, and I am trying to mold myself accordingly. The busy life always tries to pull me away from that, but the cause is great enough to keep this going. I believe that whatever nature gives us, we need to give it back in a proper manner. I have been getting a good response from people who adopted this method, and hope that this awareness spreads the new paradigm”I own my garbage”.
Amey Joshi
E-mail - trekamey@yahoo.com
Date – 13th January, 2010
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Mandatory Voting
As we all know that circus of Indian politics revolves around horse trading, money power, muscle power & opportunistic politicians, one of the way to restrict these things is to elevate & promote candidates having good character & strong political will to serve the people. But these candidates would get elected only when maximum number of educated people will vote. Contradictorily the fact says that when voting percentage in educated cities like Pune & Dombivli barely touches figure of 40, villages with enormous illiteracy in Gadchiroli district have done sent percent voting. It means people who are wiser, cleverer, can make decisions by analyzing the ground reality & are less likely to be the victims of baits like alcohol & money remain dormant. On the other side poor, illiterate people who could be easily deceived & could be easily bought are religiously participating in this important democratic process. Passed bill which also seeks to make the negative voting option available for the voters, could prove to be the remedy on this vital problem. But it is yet unknown whether button of negative voting option would be there on the electronic voting board itself or voter will have to suffer & go through some other complex process to cast his negative vote.
In the legislative assembly Congress party has strongly opposed the bill terming it to be the unconstitutional but at the same time has supported to the amendment in the bill which asks to give 33 to 50 % reservation for women in the local governing bodies. Rather they have asked for the two separate bills to be produced in the assembly for ‘compulsory voting’ & ’50 % reservation for women in local authorities’. It has to be taken into consideration that Indian constitution can not be kept unaltered forever. Periodically many changes have already been made in our constitution. So the claim of this bill going beyond the constitution could not be corroborated. Constitution is not the set of rules which is to be followed religiously for infinite amount of time nor does it mandatory that makers of the constitution did not make some law means we should not contemplate for the same today in 2009. Contexts do change as the time proceeds. It is right that as the election commission says there might be practical problems to implement this bill. When countries like Chilli have made it compulsory to cast the vote, people have found the way out by not registering their names in the voters list. With this reality in mind it needs to be noted that people especially Indians will find the way out to get escaped from the constraints implied by the new bill. This does not mean that new laws are not to be made nor does it imply that each new law made would prove to be useless. Every new change or revolutionary decision always appears impossible & impractical to get into reality at the beginning. So rather than criticizing the decision one has to look at the same as an experiment to strengthen the democracy which has to be implemented nation wide in future if turns out to be successful in Gujarat.
SAURABH JOGLEKAR
E-mail - saurabh.a.joglekar@gmail.com
Date
A Big Frenzy for Small States
Soon after the home minister of
We have a heavy bag of experiences from the creation of smaller states. Uttaranchal for e.g. has been able to project & create its own identity in tourism space since it has been balkanized from Uttar Pradesh. As the needs for the region ‘Uttaranchal’ were far too different from that of Uttar Pradesh, it was not able to garner enough resources, access points to spur the tourism which is the mainstay for a region involving such a scenic beauty. On the other side, we have smaller states like Jharkhand,
After seeing the current frenzy of demands for myriad small states made by various groups – outfits-political parties-influential people, it can be said that as a nation we have come a long way. We as a Nation, mature with every passing second. New ideas fill our hearts; we want to have things in different order rather than maintaining a status quo. Due to the current demographics we also get emotional & aggressive quite easily. At the time when we were getting our freedom back, our visionaries thought the criterion for dividing
Factors behind separate statehood may include Population, Culture, Language, Geography, Public Emotions, and Development. It should be looked on case to case basis. Government in centre should come up with a policy which will cater to all these requirements. Nobody should be allowed to take political mileage out of it. Each state must be divided into regions & development models should be implemented accordingly. Also population striving for state government machinery should be considered. As long as
Prasanna Vaidya
Date