Personal Growth - Internal and External Fear
by Devansh Mittal
When we understand various types of fear, we will be able to deal with it
Lets try to understand what Internal Fear is? Here I am not going to talk much about external fears like fear of losing money, fear of being killed, fear of loosing job, fear of not having food to eat, fear of natural calamity, fear of wild animals etc. Do you have any more fears than these external fears? If we look within then we will realize how many fears we have inside us, how much troubled our internal state is, to what extent we are doing slavery of others, how much partantra we are. Till the time we do not do this exploration we feel that we are already swatantra or we do not have any such kind of fear within us. In this process of exploration we also begin to realize that the external fears which we have, which we face are the consequences of these internal fears only, which are residing inside a human being, to which he is not aware of, to which he has never paid attention, from which he has always been running away in one form or the other.
What are those internal fears? Fear of losing acceptance of people around, fear of losing respect, fear of being wrongly interpreted, fear of losing trust of people around, fear of being considered “less”, fear of losing importance, fear of losing psychological security, fear of losing dear ones and many more. Do you feel that you have these fears? You might say no, but in reality you might find many. Till the time we do not do this exploration we feel that we are free from these fears and others have them and we keep judging them and criticizing them. With more and more exploration we begin to realize that we are no different from a rapist, terrorist, murderer, criminal, a office goer, a corporate leader, a labor or any other man. It just requires a bit more of exploration within. Lets talk about some internal fears in different sections.
Fear in Relationships:-
Generally what we call Relationships in general language are based on our Attachments/Attractions. We make a image of other person is our mind. If that image suits/matches to our imagination of a good person then we start liking that person. With more and more time with that person dependence of our Happiness on that person keeps increasing. This what is Attachment. It always comes with fears. Fear of losing acceptance of other person, fear of change in thinking, feelings and behavior of other person towards us. As soon as it changes we get hurt and then blame other person that he/she breached my trust. We want his acceptance back on any cost. We want him to be same with us on any cost. We get angry if that doesn’t happen.
This kind of fear is coming out of dependence. In such kind of dependence we are always uncertain about other person’s feeling, thinking and behavior towards us. We want consistency in other person’s feelings, thinking and behavior towards us in this case. If this doesn’t happen then we get hurt. This uncertainty, this fear, this contradiction within, these arguments which keep happening within us keep troubling us continuously.
We are lonely inside. We want to get rid of this loneliness. We keep searching for somebody who can quench this thirst in us which is manifesting itself as loneliness. When we get that person we get attached. Parellely we get fears of loosing. When other person with whom we are attached changes with us, we get hurt. A feeling of opposition, hatred, jealousy start coming in us. We keep troubling ourselves.
Fears of losing value:-
Generally we recognize our value with association of something with us. If I have something which makes me valuable then I feel that “I am” if I do not have any such thing then I feel “I am not”. I like to feel that “I am” but it comes with several, several fears along with it. Like I say that I am beautiful, I am intellectual, I am intelligent, I am at a very high position, I am powerful, I am knowledgeable, I have contacts with many great people, I have good English, I am of a particular religion, I am associated with a particular thought etc. We recognize our value in association with something. We feel comfortable and good with those who give value to us for the thing for which we consider ourselves valuable and we feel uncomfortable with those who look down at us for the thing with which we recognize our value. Like if I feel that I am a knowledgeable person then those who also consider me a knowledgeable person, I feel comfortable and good with them. Those who do not I feel uncomfortable with them. I start getting a feeling of opposition for them. If they look down at me and show me that I do not know anything then I start feeling jealous, a feeling of hatred start coming into my mind for them, I even become violent. Similar may be the case if I recognize my value on the basis of say, power, beauty, money, intellect, contacts etc.
If I meet a person who is “more” than me in the thing for which I recognize my value, then I start feeling “less” and I want to become “more”. This gives rise to a rat race, competition, jealousy, hatred and violence. Unfortunately we all are into it. All the religious wars, other wars, competitions, rivalries have their root cause in this.
What we also generally try to do is to use our “Will Power” to control this fear, but it doesn’t control it rather it creates an environment of suffocation within. Like I say, “I will not have fear of loosing value or I will not get attached now” but this doesn’t happen. “Will Power”, Suppression don’t control fears rather creates suffocation within.
Consequences of Internal Fears:-
All these rivalries, quarrels, wars, religious riots, altercations, oppositions, hatred, jealousy, competitions, violence are the outcome of this internal fear only. Due to this internal fear only we make an environment which causes external fears like wars between countries, insecurities in countries, wars and insecurities within the countries, lack of production, more and more of consumption, lack of assurance in continuity of production, lack of assurance in distribution, insecure environment, insecurity in job, insecurity in living, insecurity in relationships, lack of assurance in relationships, altercations in family, unhappiness within, fear within, insecurity within.
This all starts with this internal fear. What we are currently trying to do is to change the external environment to get rid of this fear, but in reality it is the internal environment which need to be changed to get rid of internal as well as external fears. Like what we do is we accumulate more and more weapons so that we are secure from other country, we accumulate more and more power and resources so that we have the assurance of security and resources needed in future. We make rules and regulations, law and order to control the society and individual to maintain harmony, we do division of property and several judicial activities in family to maintain the harmony and several more thing in which instead of making the place harmonious we are making it more and more fearful. At the level of individual we try to get associated with something so that we are valued by others and we become psychologically secure. Change has to come inside the human being and not in the system which human has made. Without the change inside the human being the change which is made outside is not going to be sustainable. It is not going to make a human being fearless.
Escapism:-
If we see ourselves then almost all our activities are happening for the sake of escaping from fear rather than to understand it. When we are lonely we go to some restaurant, to a movie, to some amusement park or to some other place where we feel we will have fun. We make new friends or we keep searching for somebody who can make us feel good to get rid of this loneliness which is residing within us and is killing us continuously. We leave the friends who are now unable to make us feel good and make new friends. We get associated with a new group, get associated with a new thought, new set of people, make a new guru, start reading new books and other things. Most of the time the thing which we are doing is the escapism from the fear. We try to substitute fear with a thing which can not be substituted by that and it rather gives rise to many other problems which we have already seen. We see that there is something missing in our lives which we do not know what that is and we search that thing in those things which can give us that. This is what is escapism.
Cause of Fear and a word towards solution:-
In one line it can be said that cause of internal fear in a human being is lack of understanding of him himself in him and ultimately this internal fear itself becomes the cause of all the external fears, insecurities, lack of peace, wars, world wars etc.
Due to lack of understanding in a human being of him himself, he recognizes himself in association with something like power, position, beauty, intellect, contacts with others, others perception towards him etc. This is what becomes the cause of attachment, cause of wrong evaluation of oneself, ego in oneself and expectation from others to keep the evaluation consistent, right and good. When others do that a human being feels good other wise bad and start getting a feeling of opposition for other person. This feeling of opposition for other person comes due to lack of understanding of oneself only. This feeling of opposition within ultimately becomes the cause of violence outside, so it is the internal environment which needs to be changed in a human being.
Ultimately the content of study for a human being is him himself. Due to lack self knowledge we blame others for this feeling of breach of trust, disrespect, opposition, hatred, jealousy and many others and then want to change them. This process leads to violence.
In our entire education system we give only technical education, trained to compete, trained to become violent, trained for race, trained to become more and more successful and accumulate more and more. The more one accumulates the more is given respect, recognition. The more is one valued. Current education system is generating violent literates rather than responsible educated people. In this education the thing which is taught is, “How to earn a living?” but there is no education on “How to live?”. Effectively we training people how to make a knife without teaching them what it is used for and what is its purpose, so it is being used for murders.
At this point it is clear that there is a need for increase in human understanding of himself. What is the content of this understanding? There are only two questions which a human being has in his life. What he wants and How can he achieve it?
What does he want? Happiness, Prosperity, Relationships, Fearlessness in Society and Co-existence in Nature.
How can he achieve it? With increase in understanding in every individual about Self, Relationships, Trust, Respect, Prosperity, Family, Fearlessness, Society and Nature. This entire thing need to be included in the course of study in education system.
source:lifepositive
Saturday, February 5, 2011
The coming conflicts that Governments will face
by J Mulraj
All over the world political leaders are facing issues which will get even more tough to resolve. As unfolding events in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen reveal, people, especially the youth, are increasingly intolerant to bad governance and lack of planning for the future.
These issues and how they are tackled, would be of great interest to investors, since the direction of Government views and spending would determine the direction of various sectors.
Public v/s Private Transport is one such conflict. As the world runs out of fossil fuels, and it is, political leaders, together with scientists, would have to find alternatives. Crude oil costs will sharply rise and these form the chunk of India's import bill. There has been little effort to build up an efficient public transportation system, especially in India's commercial capital, Mumbai. There should be planning for a variety of public transport systems including more buses, both airconditioned and non, an overhead rail system (Bangkok has established one to take care of once horrible gridlocks) and maybe some other options such as bringing back electric trams.
Simultaneously, alternate fuels would need to be developed, be they hydrogen, or compressed air (the Tata group is planning to introduce a vehicle, together with French inventor Guy Negre, which will run on compressed air), or electric vehicles or CNG.
Now if we focus on CNG, as we have discovered natural gas in the KG basin and others, we would need to have transparent procedures which encourage risk takers by rewarding them adequately whilst simultaneously giving Government, the owner of the resource, a fair value for its exploitation. The Comptroller & Auditor General is now investigating whether the increase in capex approved for RIL's KG 6 basin, from $ 2.4b. to $ 8.8b., was justified, since gas production seems to have plateaued at 55 mmscmd. The hunt for gas is a risky and very expensive proposition that few players can afford to undertake. It needs financial resources and skillsets, especially since a lot of the discoveries are deep sea. The floating rigs needed to scout for, and evaluate, the oil and gas blocks, need to be hired at costs of $ 500,000 or more per day, not a sum that more than a handful of companies, with strong cash flows, can afford.
If the Government were to focus on public transport and dissuade private transport, as the island state of Singapore does, the set of policies that emanate would be different. Singapore has no car manufacture; all vehicles are imported. Import duty is exorbitant, and proof of a parking spot necessary before being allowed to import one. India is a huge country where private transport is necessary until more efficient public transport is built up. But some day in the future, the capacities being set up for car manufacture will need to shut, as demand tapers, as it has in America.
Too big to fail v/s too small to matter: This applies more to financial institutions and banks. UK has set up a committee called the Vickers Commission, which will submit its report in April. It is expected to suggest ring fencing the banks in a manner that would protect individual savers. Since banking is a global industry that may be difficult. Economist Barrie Wilkinson expects another banking crisis by 2015.
This conflict essentially emanates from the fact that the global finance industry is more powerful than all Governments. The stock of global financial assets are around 4 times global GDP! Of the 4 factors of production, viz. men, material, machines and money, it is only money that has been digitized, thus enabling it to travel at the click of a mouse. Velocity of money is thus infinitely greater than velocity of other factors of production, thus making its impact greater than other factors. Banks grow in size both organically and inorganically, and often become 'too big to fail'. They do this because they do not want to be too small to matter. Size, however, imposes the burden of getting increasing returns for investors which, in turn, causes them to take unnecessary risks. That's why the crisis happened in 2007. Governments thus have a conflict on whether to let banks and financial institutions grow to a point where they would be too big to let fail or not.
In India we have 19 public sector banks, other than SBI. None of them rank even amongst the top 100 globally, which is a sad comment for a BRIC country. The Government should let go majority control in all but, say 2 or 3 large PSU banks, and allow them to grow, perhaps through mergers. But will this be politically possible?
Growth v/s Environment: This conflict is centre stage now. Last week the Environment Ministry cleared, with riders, the 6 year old application of Korean steel company Posco, to set up a large steel complex in Orissa and is likely to clear some UMPPs too. These pose both environmental issues as well as dislocation and loss of livelihood issues. People whose land is acquired for the purpose of setting up these projects need to be provided both adequate compensation and jobs to secure their future; else they will continue to oppose it and will continue to find political support by self centred politicians seeking vote banks.
To sustain their economic growth stories, countries like China and India would have to expand power capacities in a big way. Coal based power plants are popular in both countries, as they are blessed with coal reserves. Coal is, however, environmentally harmful. Yet, as mentioned in the Economist, Nomura of Japan thinks China will add 500 GW of coal fired power plants by 2015 and double capacity by 2020. India, too, will depend on coal, but move slower.
Security v/s personal freedom:? This is increasingly becoming a challenge of governance, as brought out in the Niira Radia tape leaks. Mr Ratan Tata has gone to court, rightly so, for the invasion of his privacy. Yet we will see more invasions of it, in the name of security. The risk is that such intrusions of privacy would be used by politicians to silence others.
These are some of the conflicts political leaders will face. Alas, we do not seem to have political vision or cohesiveness of different parties to sit and discuss these conflicts and try and resolve them. Instead politicians are too busy setting fires in the others' camps and fighting them in their own.
by J Mulraj
All over the world political leaders are facing issues which will get even more tough to resolve. As unfolding events in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen reveal, people, especially the youth, are increasingly intolerant to bad governance and lack of planning for the future.
These issues and how they are tackled, would be of great interest to investors, since the direction of Government views and spending would determine the direction of various sectors.
Public v/s Private Transport is one such conflict. As the world runs out of fossil fuels, and it is, political leaders, together with scientists, would have to find alternatives. Crude oil costs will sharply rise and these form the chunk of India's import bill. There has been little effort to build up an efficient public transportation system, especially in India's commercial capital, Mumbai. There should be planning for a variety of public transport systems including more buses, both airconditioned and non, an overhead rail system (Bangkok has established one to take care of once horrible gridlocks) and maybe some other options such as bringing back electric trams.
Simultaneously, alternate fuels would need to be developed, be they hydrogen, or compressed air (the Tata group is planning to introduce a vehicle, together with French inventor Guy Negre, which will run on compressed air), or electric vehicles or CNG.
Now if we focus on CNG, as we have discovered natural gas in the KG basin and others, we would need to have transparent procedures which encourage risk takers by rewarding them adequately whilst simultaneously giving Government, the owner of the resource, a fair value for its exploitation. The Comptroller & Auditor General is now investigating whether the increase in capex approved for RIL's KG 6 basin, from $ 2.4b. to $ 8.8b., was justified, since gas production seems to have plateaued at 55 mmscmd. The hunt for gas is a risky and very expensive proposition that few players can afford to undertake. It needs financial resources and skillsets, especially since a lot of the discoveries are deep sea. The floating rigs needed to scout for, and evaluate, the oil and gas blocks, need to be hired at costs of $ 500,000 or more per day, not a sum that more than a handful of companies, with strong cash flows, can afford.
If the Government were to focus on public transport and dissuade private transport, as the island state of Singapore does, the set of policies that emanate would be different. Singapore has no car manufacture; all vehicles are imported. Import duty is exorbitant, and proof of a parking spot necessary before being allowed to import one. India is a huge country where private transport is necessary until more efficient public transport is built up. But some day in the future, the capacities being set up for car manufacture will need to shut, as demand tapers, as it has in America.
Too big to fail v/s too small to matter: This applies more to financial institutions and banks. UK has set up a committee called the Vickers Commission, which will submit its report in April. It is expected to suggest ring fencing the banks in a manner that would protect individual savers. Since banking is a global industry that may be difficult. Economist Barrie Wilkinson expects another banking crisis by 2015.
This conflict essentially emanates from the fact that the global finance industry is more powerful than all Governments. The stock of global financial assets are around 4 times global GDP! Of the 4 factors of production, viz. men, material, machines and money, it is only money that has been digitized, thus enabling it to travel at the click of a mouse. Velocity of money is thus infinitely greater than velocity of other factors of production, thus making its impact greater than other factors. Banks grow in size both organically and inorganically, and often become 'too big to fail'. They do this because they do not want to be too small to matter. Size, however, imposes the burden of getting increasing returns for investors which, in turn, causes them to take unnecessary risks. That's why the crisis happened in 2007. Governments thus have a conflict on whether to let banks and financial institutions grow to a point where they would be too big to let fail or not.
In India we have 19 public sector banks, other than SBI. None of them rank even amongst the top 100 globally, which is a sad comment for a BRIC country. The Government should let go majority control in all but, say 2 or 3 large PSU banks, and allow them to grow, perhaps through mergers. But will this be politically possible?
Growth v/s Environment: This conflict is centre stage now. Last week the Environment Ministry cleared, with riders, the 6 year old application of Korean steel company Posco, to set up a large steel complex in Orissa and is likely to clear some UMPPs too. These pose both environmental issues as well as dislocation and loss of livelihood issues. People whose land is acquired for the purpose of setting up these projects need to be provided both adequate compensation and jobs to secure their future; else they will continue to oppose it and will continue to find political support by self centred politicians seeking vote banks.
To sustain their economic growth stories, countries like China and India would have to expand power capacities in a big way. Coal based power plants are popular in both countries, as they are blessed with coal reserves. Coal is, however, environmentally harmful. Yet, as mentioned in the Economist, Nomura of Japan thinks China will add 500 GW of coal fired power plants by 2015 and double capacity by 2020. India, too, will depend on coal, but move slower.
Security v/s personal freedom:? This is increasingly becoming a challenge of governance, as brought out in the Niira Radia tape leaks. Mr Ratan Tata has gone to court, rightly so, for the invasion of his privacy. Yet we will see more invasions of it, in the name of security. The risk is that such intrusions of privacy would be used by politicians to silence others.
These are some of the conflicts political leaders will face. Alas, we do not seem to have political vision or cohesiveness of different parties to sit and discuss these conflicts and try and resolve them. Instead politicians are too busy setting fires in the others' camps and fighting them in their own.
India’s green past, barren present
by Mahesh Rangarajan
Stuck for an answer about the policies of a king or queen in the dim and distant past, students of history across India fall back on a stock refrain: The ruler is praised for remitting revenues, promoting the arts, setting up rest houses, and yes, planting trees along the roadside.
Pressed for an instance, they could come up with responses that vary depending on where they live in this vast land. In the north, it would be Sher Shah Suri (1540-45) and the trees along the Grand Trunk Road. In deep south, it could well be the Mangammal Salai, planted by the Nayaka queen who died in 1706. Even when little else — save for architectural monuments and legacies — survives from the past, trees remain a living link with it. The word “salai” in its original rendering specifically can mean “a tree lined avenue or road”.
For once, the laziest of school girls or boys is right. Travellers of the past record how central certain trees were, not just to the landscape but in the way it was recorded and remembered. Bishop Reginald Heber in the 1820s wrote of a giant banyan tree on an island in the Narmada which, it was said, could provide shelter and shade to as many as 7,000 people. Though he reverentially called it “one of the noblest groves in the world”, it was diminished in size a hit by a storm.
This was a giant of a tree, a veritable mammoth among its companions. Upstream of Bharuch, it even had a name: Kabirbadh. Its 320 trunks were additionally supported by over 3,000 prop roots. Even the floods that reduced it in size could not mar its majesty.
Later in the century, the Gazetteer of the Central Provinces refered to another such tree on the way from the provincial capital of Nagpur to Betul. This one could provide shade from the sun to as many as 500 horses.
Yet, it was in the southern peninsula that the ace historian of trade and transport routes in India, Professor Jean Deloche, finds tree-lined avenues the norm across centuries. Trees were the saving grace of road journeys from Vellore (scene of the famous Blue Mutiny of 1806, a dress rehearsal almost for the Revolt of 1857) to Bengaluru or from Ranipettai on the other bank on the Palar to Chittoor in Rayalseema (literally, the land of stones).
Banyans were not alone: there was the tamarind, with its fruit much loved by monkeys, children and housewives. Both trees cast a deep shade, which while much beloved of travellers, peddlers and mendicants, does not allow even grass or shrubs to grow. What stands out in this choice of trees is the priority given to those that gave good shade, and also those that provided a harvest of fruit.
The intrepid and tireless historian of Delhi’s trees, Pradeep Krishen, provides deep insight into where the British planner of the new imperial city got it wrong. The tree species labelled as “Avenue First Class” included the Ashok and imli, anjan and philkan, Arjun and Maulshree. What mattered was “the evergreeness” of a tree. Of course, the trees played truant. Given Delhi’s semi arid climes, they did and do shed leaves. But these species were not the best suited to the place: the British had, unlike earlier rulers, not planted with the ecology of the region.
Yet, Lutyens and forester Peter Clutterbuck, like Sher Shah or the Nayaka queen, did create a legacy that is green. But how will the future judge us in 21st century India? Not very kindly, it seems. The four-laning of highways and the widening of roads within metros and cities are playing havoc with roadside trees. When this takes place in cities such as Bengaluru or Delhi (both with a fast growing number of private cars), the issue receives attention and provokes debate.
But the trees along roads that link different centres do deserve a closer look. Dr T.R. Shankar Raman, an ecologist and wildlife biologist who himself spends much time re-growing rainforests on abandoned tea estate on the Valparai plateau of Tamil Nadu, has recently drawn attention to the slaughter of roadside trees. Banyans that date back centuries are being felled along several key roads in Karnataka and he warns that unless preventive measures are taken hundreds of trees will be chopped down and transformed into charcoal. There is a way out: not only to plant more trees but to reconsider whether these roads ought to be widened. In addition to the money earned by contractors who sell the wood, there are state governments eager to avoid the hassles of land acquisition. Were the latter to be done, the trees could survive in a central verge, a model tried out for tree planting in Haryana by former chief minister Bansi Lal.
Only time will tell whether the school kids of the future will look back on our age not for the green legacy it created but for the heritage it left impoverished. The old banyans and peepal, mangoes and tamarind trees are no less worth keeping than human made monuments. Will we learn from the past and sensibly so?
by Mahesh Rangarajan
Stuck for an answer about the policies of a king or queen in the dim and distant past, students of history across India fall back on a stock refrain: The ruler is praised for remitting revenues, promoting the arts, setting up rest houses, and yes, planting trees along the roadside.
Pressed for an instance, they could come up with responses that vary depending on where they live in this vast land. In the north, it would be Sher Shah Suri (1540-45) and the trees along the Grand Trunk Road. In deep south, it could well be the Mangammal Salai, planted by the Nayaka queen who died in 1706. Even when little else — save for architectural monuments and legacies — survives from the past, trees remain a living link with it. The word “salai” in its original rendering specifically can mean “a tree lined avenue or road”.
For once, the laziest of school girls or boys is right. Travellers of the past record how central certain trees were, not just to the landscape but in the way it was recorded and remembered. Bishop Reginald Heber in the 1820s wrote of a giant banyan tree on an island in the Narmada which, it was said, could provide shelter and shade to as many as 7,000 people. Though he reverentially called it “one of the noblest groves in the world”, it was diminished in size a hit by a storm.
This was a giant of a tree, a veritable mammoth among its companions. Upstream of Bharuch, it even had a name: Kabirbadh. Its 320 trunks were additionally supported by over 3,000 prop roots. Even the floods that reduced it in size could not mar its majesty.
Later in the century, the Gazetteer of the Central Provinces refered to another such tree on the way from the provincial capital of Nagpur to Betul. This one could provide shade from the sun to as many as 500 horses.
Yet, it was in the southern peninsula that the ace historian of trade and transport routes in India, Professor Jean Deloche, finds tree-lined avenues the norm across centuries. Trees were the saving grace of road journeys from Vellore (scene of the famous Blue Mutiny of 1806, a dress rehearsal almost for the Revolt of 1857) to Bengaluru or from Ranipettai on the other bank on the Palar to Chittoor in Rayalseema (literally, the land of stones).
Banyans were not alone: there was the tamarind, with its fruit much loved by monkeys, children and housewives. Both trees cast a deep shade, which while much beloved of travellers, peddlers and mendicants, does not allow even grass or shrubs to grow. What stands out in this choice of trees is the priority given to those that gave good shade, and also those that provided a harvest of fruit.
The intrepid and tireless historian of Delhi’s trees, Pradeep Krishen, provides deep insight into where the British planner of the new imperial city got it wrong. The tree species labelled as “Avenue First Class” included the Ashok and imli, anjan and philkan, Arjun and Maulshree. What mattered was “the evergreeness” of a tree. Of course, the trees played truant. Given Delhi’s semi arid climes, they did and do shed leaves. But these species were not the best suited to the place: the British had, unlike earlier rulers, not planted with the ecology of the region.
Yet, Lutyens and forester Peter Clutterbuck, like Sher Shah or the Nayaka queen, did create a legacy that is green. But how will the future judge us in 21st century India? Not very kindly, it seems. The four-laning of highways and the widening of roads within metros and cities are playing havoc with roadside trees. When this takes place in cities such as Bengaluru or Delhi (both with a fast growing number of private cars), the issue receives attention and provokes debate.
But the trees along roads that link different centres do deserve a closer look. Dr T.R. Shankar Raman, an ecologist and wildlife biologist who himself spends much time re-growing rainforests on abandoned tea estate on the Valparai plateau of Tamil Nadu, has recently drawn attention to the slaughter of roadside trees. Banyans that date back centuries are being felled along several key roads in Karnataka and he warns that unless preventive measures are taken hundreds of trees will be chopped down and transformed into charcoal. There is a way out: not only to plant more trees but to reconsider whether these roads ought to be widened. In addition to the money earned by contractors who sell the wood, there are state governments eager to avoid the hassles of land acquisition. Were the latter to be done, the trees could survive in a central verge, a model tried out for tree planting in Haryana by former chief minister Bansi Lal.
Only time will tell whether the school kids of the future will look back on our age not for the green legacy it created but for the heritage it left impoverished. The old banyans and peepal, mangoes and tamarind trees are no less worth keeping than human made monuments. Will we learn from the past and sensibly so?
Turning Waste into Gas
Atomising trash eliminates the need to dump it, and generates useful power too
DISPOSING of household rubbish is not, at first glance, a task that looks amenable to high-tech solutions. But Hilburn Hillestad of Geoplasma, a firm based in Atlanta, Georgia, begs to differ. Burying trash—the usual way of disposing of the stuff—is old-fashioned and polluting. Instead, Geoplasma, part of a conglomerate called the Jacoby Group, proposes to tear it into its constituent atoms with electricity. It is clean. It is modern. And, what is more, it might even be profitable.
For years, some particularly toxic types of waste, such as the sludge from oil refineries, have been destroyed with artificial lightning from electric plasma torches—devices that heat matter to a temperature higher than that of the sun’s surface. Until recently this has been an expensive process, costing as much as $2,000 per tonne of waste, according to SRL Plasma, an Australian firm that has manufactured torches for 13 of the roughly two dozen plants around the world that work this way.
Now, though, costs are coming down. Moreover, it has occurred to people such as Dr Hillestad that the process could be used to generate power as well as consuming it. Appropriately tweaked, the destruction of organic materials (including paper and plastics) by plasma torches produces a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called syngas. That, in turn, can be burned to generate electricity. Add in the value of the tipping fees that do not have to be paid if rubbish is simply vaporised, plus the fact that energy prices in general are rising, and plasma torches start to look like a plausible alternative to burial.
An electric atmosphere
The technology has got better, too. The core of a plasma torch is a pair of electrodes, usually made from a nickel-based alloy. A current arcs between them and turns the surrounding air into a plasma by stripping electrons from their parent atoms. Waste (chopped up into small pieces if it is solid) is fed into this plasma. The heat and electric charges of the plasma break the chemical bonds in the waste, vaporising it. Then, if the mix of waste is correct, the carbon and oxygen atoms involved recombine to form carbon monoxide and the hydrogen atoms link up into diatomic hydrogen molecules. Both of these are fuels (they burn in air to form carbon dioxide and water, respectively). Metals and other inorganic materials that do not turn into gas fall to the bottom of the chamber as molten slag. Once it has cooled, this slag can be used to make bricks or to pave roads.
Electric arcs are a harsh environment to operate in, and early plasma torches were not noted for reliability. These days, though, the quality of the nickel alloys has improved so that the torches work continuously. On top of that, developments in a field called computational fluid dynamics allow the rubbish going into the process to be mixed in a way that produces the most syngas for the least input of electricity.
The first rubbish-to-syngas plants were built almost a decade ago, in Japan—where land scarcity means tipping fees are particularly high. Now the idea is moving elsewhere. This year Geoplasma plans to start constructing a plant costing $120m in St Lucie County, Florida. It will be fed with waste from local households and should create enough syngas to make electricity for more than 20,000 homes. The company reckons it can make enough money from the project to service the debt incurred in constructing the plant and still provide a profit from the beginning.
Nor is Geoplasma alone. More than three dozen other American firms are proposing plasma-torch syngas plants, according to Gershman, Brickner & Bratton, a waste consultancy based in Fairfax, Virginia. Demand is so great that the Westinghouse Plasma Corporation, an American manufacturer of plasma torches, is able to hire out its test facility in Madison, Pennsylvania, for $150,000 a day.
Syngas can also be converted into other things. The “syn” is short for “synthesis” and syngas was once an important industrial raw material. The rise of the petrochemical industry has rather eclipsed it, but it may become important again. One novel proposal, by Coskata, a firm based in Warrenville, Illinois, is to ferment it into ethanol, for use as vehicle fuel. At the moment Coskata uses a plasma torch to make syngas from waste wood and wood-pulp, but modifying the apparatus to take household waste should not be too hard.
Even if efforts to convert such waste into syngas fail, existing plants that use plasma torches to destroy more hazardous material could be modified to take advantage of the idea. The Beijing Victex Environmental Science and Technology Development Company, for example, uses the torches to destroy sludge from Chinese oil refineries. According to Fiona Qian, the firm’s deputy manager, the high cost of doing this means some refineries are still dumping toxic waste in landfills. Stopping that sort of thing by bringing the price down would be a good thing by itself.
Waste disposal
source: The Economist
For years, some particularly toxic types of waste, such as the sludge from oil refineries, have been destroyed with artificial lightning from electric plasma torches—devices that heat matter to a temperature higher than that of the sun’s surface. Until recently this has been an expensive process, costing as much as $2,000 per tonne of waste, according to SRL Plasma, an Australian firm that has manufactured torches for 13 of the roughly two dozen plants around the world that work this way.
Now, though, costs are coming down. Moreover, it has occurred to people such as Dr Hillestad that the process could be used to generate power as well as consuming it. Appropriately tweaked, the destruction of organic materials (including paper and plastics) by plasma torches produces a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called syngas. That, in turn, can be burned to generate electricity. Add in the value of the tipping fees that do not have to be paid if rubbish is simply vaporised, plus the fact that energy prices in general are rising, and plasma torches start to look like a plausible alternative to burial.
An electric atmosphere
The technology has got better, too. The core of a plasma torch is a pair of electrodes, usually made from a nickel-based alloy. A current arcs between them and turns the surrounding air into a plasma by stripping electrons from their parent atoms. Waste (chopped up into small pieces if it is solid) is fed into this plasma. The heat and electric charges of the plasma break the chemical bonds in the waste, vaporising it. Then, if the mix of waste is correct, the carbon and oxygen atoms involved recombine to form carbon monoxide and the hydrogen atoms link up into diatomic hydrogen molecules. Both of these are fuels (they burn in air to form carbon dioxide and water, respectively). Metals and other inorganic materials that do not turn into gas fall to the bottom of the chamber as molten slag. Once it has cooled, this slag can be used to make bricks or to pave roads.
Electric arcs are a harsh environment to operate in, and early plasma torches were not noted for reliability. These days, though, the quality of the nickel alloys has improved so that the torches work continuously. On top of that, developments in a field called computational fluid dynamics allow the rubbish going into the process to be mixed in a way that produces the most syngas for the least input of electricity.
The first rubbish-to-syngas plants were built almost a decade ago, in Japan—where land scarcity means tipping fees are particularly high. Now the idea is moving elsewhere. This year Geoplasma plans to start constructing a plant costing $120m in St Lucie County, Florida. It will be fed with waste from local households and should create enough syngas to make electricity for more than 20,000 homes. The company reckons it can make enough money from the project to service the debt incurred in constructing the plant and still provide a profit from the beginning.
Nor is Geoplasma alone. More than three dozen other American firms are proposing plasma-torch syngas plants, according to Gershman, Brickner & Bratton, a waste consultancy based in Fairfax, Virginia. Demand is so great that the Westinghouse Plasma Corporation, an American manufacturer of plasma torches, is able to hire out its test facility in Madison, Pennsylvania, for $150,000 a day.
Syngas can also be converted into other things. The “syn” is short for “synthesis” and syngas was once an important industrial raw material. The rise of the petrochemical industry has rather eclipsed it, but it may become important again. One novel proposal, by Coskata, a firm based in Warrenville, Illinois, is to ferment it into ethanol, for use as vehicle fuel. At the moment Coskata uses a plasma torch to make syngas from waste wood and wood-pulp, but modifying the apparatus to take household waste should not be too hard.
Even if efforts to convert such waste into syngas fail, existing plants that use plasma torches to destroy more hazardous material could be modified to take advantage of the idea. The Beijing Victex Environmental Science and Technology Development Company, for example, uses the torches to destroy sludge from Chinese oil refineries. According to Fiona Qian, the firm’s deputy manager, the high cost of doing this means some refineries are still dumping toxic waste in landfills. Stopping that sort of thing by bringing the price down would be a good thing by itself.
Let us join hands to fight cancer
Each year 127 lakh people discover that they have cancer and of them, 76 lakh die. Two-thirds of these distressing deaths occur in low and middle income countries.
The World Health Organization projects that unless immediate action is taken, deaths from cancer will increase by nearly 80 per cent by 2030; most of them occurring in low and middle income countries. That translates to nearly 260 lakh newly diagnosed cases and about 170 lakh deaths every year! In fact, cancer kills more people than do AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
Research suggests that “one-third of cancer deaths can be avoided through prevention” and “one-third through early detection and treatment”. The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) states that the world's cancer burden is rising and, without action, the poorest countries — those currently least equipped to cope — will witness the largest increases in mortality by 2015. As per the UICC, whose headquarters is in Geneva, Switzerland, the number of deaths due to cancer every year is more than the population of the whole of Switzerland.
There are so many known causes acting directly or indirectly on the systems to produce cancer. Many of them are related to “lifestyle” and avoiding these can prevent or protect against cancer.
Measures to prevent cancer include eschewing tobacco, having good dietary habits, physical activity, maintaining a healthy diet, environmental health, prevention of cancer causing infections and limiting alcohol intake.
Tobacco
Many people relate tobacco to cardiac and respiratory diseases. But beyond that, smoking is the single biggest cause of cancer in the world. It is responsible for more than 25 per cent of all cancer deaths; it kills one person every six seconds.
It also accounts for one in 10 adult deaths and kills more than 50 lakh people every year.
Smoking not only affects the person who smokes but also people around him through second-hand smoke. Children born to mothers who smoke are also affected.
The risk of oral cancer increases 27 fold in men and six fold in women who smoke. Laryngeal cancer is 10 times more common in men and eight times more common in women. There is an eight to 10 fold increase in oesophageal cancer and 50 per cent increase in gastric cancer in tobacco users compared to non-smokers.
It has been noticed that there is a two-fold increase in pancreatic cancer among smokers. If they smoke more than 40 cigarettes a day, there is a five-fold increase.
The risk increases significantly if the individual has the habit of drinking also.
In many situations we find that many cancer patients have been smoking and drinking for years.
Diet
This is a factor that concerns everyone. Diet plays a significant role in the prevention of certain cancers, not necessarily in the Gastro-Intestinal system.
A “Healthy Diet” can prevent many cancers, more so if it is combined with physical activity. Many medical societies fighting cancer recommend the following:
— Be as lean as possible without becoming underweight
— Be physically active for at least 30 minutes every day
— Avoid sugary drinks
— Eat plenty of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and pulses
— Limit consumption of red meat and avoid processed meat
— Limit consumption of alcohol
— Limit salty food
It is also better to avoid reheated oil for cooking.
Cancer-causing infections
An estimated 22 per cent of cancer deaths in the developing world and six per cent of deaths in industrialised countries are related to cancer-causing infections.
Significant among these are Human Papilloma Virus causing cancer of the cervix and Hepatitis B and C causing liver cancer.
Environmental carcinogens
Environmental factors do play a role in certain cancers; poor air quality indoors and chemical pollutants can cause lung cancer. Similarly, food chemicals can be responsible for gastro-intestinal cancers.
Research done by the Department of Surgical Gastroenterology, Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital, along with the Department of Clinical Nutrition, Ethiraj College for Women, on gastric cancer produced revealing insights.
Of 100 patients analysed, 98 had the habit of consuming preserved food in the form of leftover rice, dried fish, pickle, or — for a majority — a combination of leftover rice and pickle. Moreover, 97 patients had the habit of reusing oil — 77 people reused oil more than three times; 88 were non-vegetarians; 78 consumed 25-30 grams of salt per day; and 74 consumed about 20 grams of chilli in their meal every day. In addition, 73 were smokers, 37 had the habit of tobacco chewing, 33 consumed alcohol every day, only 21 had the habit of exercising, and only two out of 100 consumed fresh fruits and vegetables regularly.
Indian scenario
As per results published by the Tumour Registry, in men, lung cancer tops the list followed by cancers of the stomach, oral cavity, oesophagus and oro-pharynx.
In women, breast cancer leads, followed by cancer of the cervix, ovary, oral cavity and stomach. Also, if reproductive organs are excluded, stomach cancer is the second most common cancer affecting people living in Tamil Nadu.
Similarly, oesophageal cancer is the fourth most common in men and in women [third if reproductive organs are excluded]. As per a publication by the Registry in 2010, cancers from the oral cavity to the stomach constitute 25.4 per cent of all cancers in men and 14.4 per cent in women.
Of these “Tobacco Related Cancers” — namely cancers of the oral cavity, oro-pharynx, larynx, lung, oesophagus, pancreas and urinary bladder — constitute 44 per cent of all cancers in men and 16 per cent in women.
What is being done ?
The Union for International Cancer Control is aiming for a “World Cancer Declaration”. The declaration outlines 11 targets to be achieved by 2020, which include:
— Significant drop in global tobacco consumption, obesity and alcohol intake
— Universal vaccination programmes for Hepatitis B and Human Papilloma Virus to prevent liver and cervical cancer
— Universal availability of effective pain medication and
— Dispelling myths and misconceptions about cancer
Every year February 4 is observed with a focus and for 2011 it is “teach children and teenagers to avoid UV exposure by being “Sun Smart.”
What do we have to do?
It is a common observation that many people in our society present cancer at an advanced stage. Various studies done across India shows that 60-70 per cent of the patients present at an advanced stage where cure may be impossible.
The main factors which contribute to this include: Myths and misconception about cancer, lack of awareness, negligence and dietary and lifestyle modifications including tobacco use and regular consumption of preserved foods.
The major task before the health authorities is to create awareness, dispel myths and misconceptions and provide the best advice to people on healthy lifestyle, eating habits and the need for exercise. More importantly, people should not “ignore the symptoms” and must consult a doctor to get the appropriate treatment without delay. All of us can play a role to create a cancer-free world. You need not to be a doctor to spread this message. Let us all join hands to fight against cancer.
(The writer is Head of the Department of Surgical Gastroenterology, Centre of Excellence for Upper GI Surgery, Rajiv Gandhi General Hospital and Madras Medical College, Chennai.)
World Cancer Day is an occasion to dispel myths and spread awareness of cancer.
Birds back in Chhangu to nest
Ruddy Shelducks at the Chhangu Lake on Wednesday. Picture by Prabin Khaling
Gangtok, Feb. 3: Migratory waterfowl like Ruddy Shelduck and Mallard have again started flocking to the Chhangu Lake to rest and nest, with the waterbody regaining its pristine glory after years of environmental degradation caused by tourism.
The lake in East Sikkim has been revived after three years of protective measures taken up by the local people under the guidance of the WWF-India.
“Chhangu was an important transit point for migratory waterfowl. They used to flock the lake in large numbers to rest and nest. But in recent years, they would halt at the lake for a few days and then fly away because of disturbances around,” said Usha Lachungpa, a senior research officer (wildlife) of the Sikkim forest department.
“But we are again seeing the migrants thronging the lake and resting in pristine conditions free from disturbances,” she added.
More than 30 wild ducks were spotted resting on the frozen surface of the 1.5km X 0.5km lake yesterday. The local people said the birds had been at the lake since December.
Chhangu is a nesting point for Mallards before they fly to the Tibetan plateau. Bevies of Ruddy Shelduck also flock the lake for breeding.
The lake at 12,400ft, 35km from here, is a famous tourism destination with more than 400 vehicles carrying visitors to the spot daily during the peak season.
“Over the years, the tourism boom degraded the lake and the surrounding bio-diversity. Garbage dumped by households and shops, lack of drainage system and vehicular pollution among other things threatened the very existence of the lake,” said an official of the WWF-India.
Awaken by the gravity of the environmental degradation, the government dismantled more than 50 huts located along the lake and shifted the families to a newly constructed building below the waterbody in 2007. A parking yard was also constructed below the lake to put an end to the fuel seepage from vehicles.
The same year, WWF-India stepped in and formed the Tsomgo (Chhangu) Pokerhi Sanrakshan Samiti in association with the forest department. Residents of Chhangu and Cheepu were made members of the samiti.
“We help the samiti in garbage management, de-siltation of the lake,” said WF-India senior project officer Lak Tsheden Theengh. “Earlier, there used to be lot of garbage accumulation in the area. But after 2009, we did a survey and found that the trash deposit has gone down drastically.”
The residents of Chhangu and Cheepu, who are the main beneficiaries of the lake’s tourism potential as shop owners and drivers, want the waterbody to remain as the source of livelihood for future generations also.
“There has been a huge difference as far as the protection of the lake is concerned compared to five years ago. Earlier, people used to litter everywhere but with the shops and parking lot being shifted and people becoming aware of the need to preserve the lake, there are tangible results of the waterbody’s revival. We want the lake to remain in good shape forever and sustain the livelihood of the families here,” said Chewang Norbu Bhutia, the president of the samiti.
The lake in East Sikkim has been revived after three years of protective measures taken up by the local people under the guidance of the WWF-India.
“Chhangu was an important transit point for migratory waterfowl. They used to flock the lake in large numbers to rest and nest. But in recent years, they would halt at the lake for a few days and then fly away because of disturbances around,” said Usha Lachungpa, a senior research officer (wildlife) of the Sikkim forest department.
“But we are again seeing the migrants thronging the lake and resting in pristine conditions free from disturbances,” she added.
More than 30 wild ducks were spotted resting on the frozen surface of the 1.5km X 0.5km lake yesterday. The local people said the birds had been at the lake since December.
Chhangu is a nesting point for Mallards before they fly to the Tibetan plateau. Bevies of Ruddy Shelduck also flock the lake for breeding.
The lake at 12,400ft, 35km from here, is a famous tourism destination with more than 400 vehicles carrying visitors to the spot daily during the peak season.
“Over the years, the tourism boom degraded the lake and the surrounding bio-diversity. Garbage dumped by households and shops, lack of drainage system and vehicular pollution among other things threatened the very existence of the lake,” said an official of the WWF-India.
Awaken by the gravity of the environmental degradation, the government dismantled more than 50 huts located along the lake and shifted the families to a newly constructed building below the waterbody in 2007. A parking yard was also constructed below the lake to put an end to the fuel seepage from vehicles.
The same year, WWF-India stepped in and formed the Tsomgo (Chhangu) Pokerhi Sanrakshan Samiti in association with the forest department. Residents of Chhangu and Cheepu were made members of the samiti.
“We help the samiti in garbage management, de-siltation of the lake,” said WF-India senior project officer Lak Tsheden Theengh. “Earlier, there used to be lot of garbage accumulation in the area. But after 2009, we did a survey and found that the trash deposit has gone down drastically.”
The residents of Chhangu and Cheepu, who are the main beneficiaries of the lake’s tourism potential as shop owners and drivers, want the waterbody to remain as the source of livelihood for future generations also.
“There has been a huge difference as far as the protection of the lake is concerned compared to five years ago. Earlier, people used to litter everywhere but with the shops and parking lot being shifted and people becoming aware of the need to preserve the lake, there are tangible results of the waterbody’s revival. We want the lake to remain in good shape forever and sustain the livelihood of the families here,” said Chewang Norbu Bhutia, the president of the samiti.
source;voice of sikkim
Government sends notices related to Swiss black money trail
The Hindu Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee addresses the media on the issue of black money, in New Delhi
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee today said the government has served notices to 17 persons related to the Swiss Banks black money trail, but it is not possible to reveal their names.
“We have received a few names and already served notices on 17 persons and prosecution has begun,” he said.
He said the government cannot reveal the names of account holders who have stashed their money away in Swiss banks as the information can only be used for taxation purposes.
“The government, suo motu, cannot reveal the names because according to treaty we can only use the information for taxation purposes. We can only reveal the details in the open court when the matter comes up for hearing,” Mr. Mukherjee said.
STRESS
INTRODUCTION
The word `stress` is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "a state of affair involving demand on physical or mental energy". A condition or circumstance (not always adverse), which can disturb the normal physiological and psychological functioning of an individual. In medical parlance `stress` is defined as a perturbation of the body`s homeostasis. This demand on mind-body occurs when it tries to cope with incessant changes in life. A `stress` condition seems `relative` in nature. Extreme stress conditions, psychologists say, are detrimental to human health but in moderation stress is normal and, in many cases, proves useful. Stress, nonetheless, is synonymous with negative conditions. Today, with the rapid diversification of human activity, we come face to face with numerous causes of stress and the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
—Thomas Jefferson
The Dyanamics of Stress
In a challenging situation the brain prepares the body for defensive action—the fight or flight response by releasing stress hormones, namely, cortisone and adrenaline. These hormones raise the blood pressure and the body prepares to react to the situation. With a concrete defensive action (fight response) the stress hormones in the blood get used up, entailing reduced stress effects and symptoms of anxiety.
When we fail to counter a stress situation (flight response) the hormones and chemicals remain unreleased in the blood stream for a long period of time. It results in stress related physical symptoms such as tense muscles, unfocused anxiety, dizziness and rapid heartbeats. We all encounter various stressors (causes of stress) in everyday life, which can accumulate, if not released. Subsequently, it compels the mind and body to be in an almost constant alarm-state in preparation to fight or flee. This state of accumulated stress can increase the risk of both acute and chronic psychosomatic illnesses and weaken the immune system.
Stress can cause headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, eating disorder, allergies, insomnia, backaches, frequent cold and fatigue to diseases such as hypertension, asthma, diabetes, heart ailments and even cancer. In fact, Sanjay Chugh, a leading Indian psychologist, says that 70 per cent to 90 per cent of adults visit primary care physicians for stress-related problems. Scary enough. But where do we err?
Just about everybody—men, women, children and even fetuses—suffer from stress. Relationship demands, chronic health problems, pressure at workplaces, traffic snarls, meeting deadlines, growing-up tensions or a sudden bearish trend in the bourse can trigger stress conditions. People react to it in their own ways. In some people, stress-induced adverse feelings and anxieties tend to persist and intensify. Learning to understand and manage stress can prevent the counter effects of stress.
Methods of coping with stress are aplenty. The most significant or sensible way out is a change in lifestyle. Relaxation techniques such as meditation, physical exercises, listening to soothing music, deep breathing, various natural and alternative methods, personal growth techniques, visualization and massage are some of the most effective of the known non-invasive stress busters.
Stress Can Be Positive
The words `positive` and `stress` may not often go together. But, there are innumerable instances of athletes rising to the challenge of stress and achieving the unachievable, scientists stressing themselves out over a point to bring into light the most unthinkable secrets of the phenomenal world, and likewise a painter, a composer or a writer producing the best paintings, the most lilting of tunes or the most appealing piece of writing by pushing themselves to the limit. Psychologists second the opinion that some `stress` situations can actually boost our inner potential and can be creatively helpful. Sudha Chandran, an Indian danseus, lost both of her legs in an accident. But, the physical and social inadequacies gave her more impetus to carry on with her dance performances with the help of prosthetic legs rather than deter her spirits.
Experts tell us that stress, in moderate doses, are necessary in our life. Stress responses are one of our body`s best defense systems against outer and inner dangers. In a risky situation (in case of accidents or a sudden attack on life et al), body releases stress hormones that instantly make us more alert and our senses become more focused. The body is also prepared to act with increased strength and speed in a pressure situation. It is supposed to keep us sharp and ready for action.
Research suggests that stress can actually increase our performance. Instead of wilting under stress, one can use it as an impetus to achieve success. Stress can stimulate one`s faculties to delve deep into and discover one`s true potential. Under stress the brain is emotionally and biochemically stimulated to sharpen its performance.
A working class mother in down town California, Erin Brokovich, accomplished an extraordinary feat in the 1990s when she took up a challenge against the giant industrial house Pacific Gas & Electric. The unit was polluting the drinking water of the area with chromium effluents. Once into it, Brockovich had to work under tremendous stress taking on the bigwigs of the society. By her own account, she had to study as many as 120 research articles to find if chromium 6 was carcinogenic. Going from door to door, Erin signed up over 600 plaintiffs, and with attorney Ed Masry went on to receive the largest court settlement, for the town people, ever paid in a direct action lawsuit in the U.S. history—$333 million. It`s an example of an ordinary individual triumphing over insurmountable odds under pressure. If handled positively stress can induce people to discover their inherent talents.
Stress is, perhaps, necessary to occasionally clear cobwebs from our thinking. If approached positively, stress can help us evolve as a person by letting go of unwanted thoughts and principle in our life. Very often, at various crossroads of life, stress may remind you of the transitory nature of your experiences, and may prod you to look for the true happiness of life.
Stress Throughout Evolution
Stress has existed throughout the evolution. About 4 billion years ago, violent collision of rock and ice along with dust and gas, led to the formation of a new planet. The planet survive more than 100 million years of meltdown to give birth to microscopic life . These first organisms endured the harshest of conditions—lack of oxygen, exposure to sun`s UV rays and other inhospitable elements, to hang on to their dear life. Roughly 300,000 years ago, the Neanderthals learnt to use fire in a controlled way, to survive the Glacial Age. And around 30,000 years, Homo sapiens with their dominant gene constitutions and better coping skills, won the game of survival. Each step of evolution a test of survival, and survival, a matter of coping with the stress of changing conditions.
Millions of trials and errors in the life process have brought men to this stage. Coping with events to survive has led men to invent extraordinary technologies, beginning with a piece of sharpened stone.
From the viewpoint of microevolution, stress induction of transpositions is a powerful factor, generating new genetic variations in populations under stressful environmental conditions. Passing through a `bottleneck`, a population can rapidly and significantly alters its population norm and become the founder of new, evolved forms.
Gene transposition through Transposable Elements (TE)—`jumping genes`, is a major source of genetic change, including the creation of novel genes, the alteration of gene expression in development, and the genesis of major genomic rearrangements. In a research on `the significance of responses of the genome to challenges,` the Nobel Prize winning scientist Barbara McClintock, characterized these genetic phenomena as `genomic shock`.This occurs due to recombinational events between TE insertions (high and low insertion polymorphism) and host genome. But, as a rule TEs remain immobilized until some stress factor (temperature, irradiation, DNA damage, the introduction of foreign chromatin, viruses, etc.) activates their elements.
The moral remains that we can work a stress condition to our advantage or protect ourselves from its untoward follow-throughs subject to how we handle a stress situation. The choice is between becoming a slave to the stressful situations of life or using them to our advantage.
source;lifepositive
The word `stress` is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as "a state of affair involving demand on physical or mental energy". A condition or circumstance (not always adverse), which can disturb the normal physiological and psychological functioning of an individual. In medical parlance `stress` is defined as a perturbation of the body`s homeostasis. This demand on mind-body occurs when it tries to cope with incessant changes in life. A `stress` condition seems `relative` in nature. Extreme stress conditions, psychologists say, are detrimental to human health but in moderation stress is normal and, in many cases, proves useful. Stress, nonetheless, is synonymous with negative conditions. Today, with the rapid diversification of human activity, we come face to face with numerous causes of stress and the symptoms of anxiety and depression.
"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."
—Thomas Jefferson
The Dyanamics of Stress
In a challenging situation the brain prepares the body for defensive action—the fight or flight response by releasing stress hormones, namely, cortisone and adrenaline. These hormones raise the blood pressure and the body prepares to react to the situation. With a concrete defensive action (fight response) the stress hormones in the blood get used up, entailing reduced stress effects and symptoms of anxiety.
When we fail to counter a stress situation (flight response) the hormones and chemicals remain unreleased in the blood stream for a long period of time. It results in stress related physical symptoms such as tense muscles, unfocused anxiety, dizziness and rapid heartbeats. We all encounter various stressors (causes of stress) in everyday life, which can accumulate, if not released. Subsequently, it compels the mind and body to be in an almost constant alarm-state in preparation to fight or flee. This state of accumulated stress can increase the risk of both acute and chronic psychosomatic illnesses and weaken the immune system.
Stress can cause headaches, irritable bowel syndrome, eating disorder, allergies, insomnia, backaches, frequent cold and fatigue to diseases such as hypertension, asthma, diabetes, heart ailments and even cancer. In fact, Sanjay Chugh, a leading Indian psychologist, says that 70 per cent to 90 per cent of adults visit primary care physicians for stress-related problems. Scary enough. But where do we err?
Just about everybody—men, women, children and even fetuses—suffer from stress. Relationship demands, chronic health problems, pressure at workplaces, traffic snarls, meeting deadlines, growing-up tensions or a sudden bearish trend in the bourse can trigger stress conditions. People react to it in their own ways. In some people, stress-induced adverse feelings and anxieties tend to persist and intensify. Learning to understand and manage stress can prevent the counter effects of stress.
Methods of coping with stress are aplenty. The most significant or sensible way out is a change in lifestyle. Relaxation techniques such as meditation, physical exercises, listening to soothing music, deep breathing, various natural and alternative methods, personal growth techniques, visualization and massage are some of the most effective of the known non-invasive stress busters.
Stress Can Be Positive
The words `positive` and `stress` may not often go together. But, there are innumerable instances of athletes rising to the challenge of stress and achieving the unachievable, scientists stressing themselves out over a point to bring into light the most unthinkable secrets of the phenomenal world, and likewise a painter, a composer or a writer producing the best paintings, the most lilting of tunes or the most appealing piece of writing by pushing themselves to the limit. Psychologists second the opinion that some `stress` situations can actually boost our inner potential and can be creatively helpful. Sudha Chandran, an Indian danseus, lost both of her legs in an accident. But, the physical and social inadequacies gave her more impetus to carry on with her dance performances with the help of prosthetic legs rather than deter her spirits.
Experts tell us that stress, in moderate doses, are necessary in our life. Stress responses are one of our body`s best defense systems against outer and inner dangers. In a risky situation (in case of accidents or a sudden attack on life et al), body releases stress hormones that instantly make us more alert and our senses become more focused. The body is also prepared to act with increased strength and speed in a pressure situation. It is supposed to keep us sharp and ready for action.
Research suggests that stress can actually increase our performance. Instead of wilting under stress, one can use it as an impetus to achieve success. Stress can stimulate one`s faculties to delve deep into and discover one`s true potential. Under stress the brain is emotionally and biochemically stimulated to sharpen its performance.
A working class mother in down town California, Erin Brokovich, accomplished an extraordinary feat in the 1990s when she took up a challenge against the giant industrial house Pacific Gas & Electric. The unit was polluting the drinking water of the area with chromium effluents. Once into it, Brockovich had to work under tremendous stress taking on the bigwigs of the society. By her own account, she had to study as many as 120 research articles to find if chromium 6 was carcinogenic. Going from door to door, Erin signed up over 600 plaintiffs, and with attorney Ed Masry went on to receive the largest court settlement, for the town people, ever paid in a direct action lawsuit in the U.S. history—$333 million. It`s an example of an ordinary individual triumphing over insurmountable odds under pressure. If handled positively stress can induce people to discover their inherent talents.
Stress is, perhaps, necessary to occasionally clear cobwebs from our thinking. If approached positively, stress can help us evolve as a person by letting go of unwanted thoughts and principle in our life. Very often, at various crossroads of life, stress may remind you of the transitory nature of your experiences, and may prod you to look for the true happiness of life.
Stress Throughout Evolution
Stress has existed throughout the evolution. About 4 billion years ago, violent collision of rock and ice along with dust and gas, led to the formation of a new planet. The planet survive more than 100 million years of meltdown to give birth to microscopic life . These first organisms endured the harshest of conditions—lack of oxygen, exposure to sun`s UV rays and other inhospitable elements, to hang on to their dear life. Roughly 300,000 years ago, the Neanderthals learnt to use fire in a controlled way, to survive the Glacial Age. And around 30,000 years, Homo sapiens with their dominant gene constitutions and better coping skills, won the game of survival. Each step of evolution a test of survival, and survival, a matter of coping with the stress of changing conditions.
Millions of trials and errors in the life process have brought men to this stage. Coping with events to survive has led men to invent extraordinary technologies, beginning with a piece of sharpened stone.
From the viewpoint of microevolution, stress induction of transpositions is a powerful factor, generating new genetic variations in populations under stressful environmental conditions. Passing through a `bottleneck`, a population can rapidly and significantly alters its population norm and become the founder of new, evolved forms.
Gene transposition through Transposable Elements (TE)—`jumping genes`, is a major source of genetic change, including the creation of novel genes, the alteration of gene expression in development, and the genesis of major genomic rearrangements. In a research on `the significance of responses of the genome to challenges,` the Nobel Prize winning scientist Barbara McClintock, characterized these genetic phenomena as `genomic shock`.This occurs due to recombinational events between TE insertions (high and low insertion polymorphism) and host genome. But, as a rule TEs remain immobilized until some stress factor (temperature, irradiation, DNA damage, the introduction of foreign chromatin, viruses, etc.) activates their elements.
The moral remains that we can work a stress condition to our advantage or protect ourselves from its untoward follow-throughs subject to how we handle a stress situation. The choice is between becoming a slave to the stressful situations of life or using them to our advantage.
source;lifepositive
Black money list out, mystery accounts revealed
Sumon K Chakrabarti , CNN-IBN
New Delhi: CNN-IBN has accessed the list of Indians who hold accounts with Bank of Lichtenstein. The list which was officially handed over to the Indian Government on March 18, 2009 includes 12 trusts and 26 beneficiaries. The money in the 12 accounts totals to nearly Rs 52 crore.
The list that Germany shared with India had 12 trusts out of which four belong to Indians.
CNN-IBN has accessed the details of 13 beneficiaries in the four trusts which are the Ambrunova Trust, Marline Management SA, Marnichi Trust and Socalo Stiftung.
And list the beneficiaries include Hasmukh Gandhi, Ishwerlal Gandhi, Madhu Gandhi, Chintan Gandhi, Mirav Gandhi, Manoj Dhupelia, Rupal Dhupelia, Mohan Dhupelia, Chintan Gandhi, Dilip Mehta, Arun Mehta, Arun Kochar, Gunwanti Mehta, Rajnikant Mehta, Prabodh Mehta and Ashok Jaipuria.
Enforcement Directorate sources have told CNN-IBN that the accounts are fronts for some powerful people.
According to sources, there are 14 more banks in Lichtenstein and many more Indians have accounts in these banks.
Sumon K Chakrabarti , CNN-IBN
New Delhi: CNN-IBN has accessed the list of Indians who hold accounts with Bank of Lichtenstein. The list which was officially handed over to the Indian Government on March 18, 2009 includes 12 trusts and 26 beneficiaries. The money in the 12 accounts totals to nearly Rs 52 crore.
The list that Germany shared with India had 12 trusts out of which four belong to Indians.
CNN-IBN has accessed the details of 13 beneficiaries in the four trusts which are the Ambrunova Trust, Marline Management SA, Marnichi Trust and Socalo Stiftung.
And list the beneficiaries include Hasmukh Gandhi, Ishwerlal Gandhi, Madhu Gandhi, Chintan Gandhi, Mirav Gandhi, Manoj Dhupelia, Rupal Dhupelia, Mohan Dhupelia, Chintan Gandhi, Dilip Mehta, Arun Mehta, Arun Kochar, Gunwanti Mehta, Rajnikant Mehta, Prabodh Mehta and Ashok Jaipuria.
Enforcement Directorate sources have told CNN-IBN that the accounts are fronts for some powerful people.
According to sources, there are 14 more banks in Lichtenstein and many more Indians have accounts in these banks.
Breakthrough in Nepal
The election of Jhalanath Khanal as Prime Minister of a majority Left coalition government in Nepal offers the young republic the best chance it has had in 20 months to finish the task of writing a new Constitution and completing its peace process. It is also a virtual slap in the face of those within the Indian establishment who spent the better part of a year working behind the scenes to keep the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) out of power even at the cost of political stability. Nepal's promising political journey, which began five years ago with the signing of the historic 12-point understanding between the Maoists and the other parties, went through twists and turns before and after the 2008 Constituent Assembly elections — and lost its way in the aftermath of the resignation of Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal or ‘Prachanda' as Prime Minister in May 2009. Madhav Kumar Nepal of the Unified Marxists-Leninists became Prime Minister with the support of the Nepali Congress and a number of smaller parties but the coalition's adversarial stance towards the Maoists made the new dispensation dysfunctional from the start.
Mr. Nepal's resignation last year should have paved the way for a national consensus government led by the Maoists, the largest party by far in the Constituent Assembly. However, the personal political ambitions of various leaders within the UML, the NC, and the Madhesi factions, the Interim Constitution's rigid rules of business, and the unhelpful attitude of New Delhi combined to produce a repeatedly enacted farce. This involved the CA being asked to vote over and over again for the NC's Ramchandra Poudel, who was never able to muster support from more than half of the required 300 legislators. On Thursday, Prachanda withdrew his name and announced that the Maoists were joining hands with the UML of Mr. Khanal and the new coalition won easily. Top priority must now be given to crafting the new Constitution, which effectively means resolving key issues, notably the new state's federal structure and political system. Of equal importance is the peace process. With the departure of the United Nations from Nepal, the fate of the Maoist cantonments is now entirely in the hands of a special all-party committee headed by the Prime Minister. The fact that the Prime Minister is a leader the Maoists have backed opens a door for the speedy resolution of the integration question. It is in the interests of democracy that Maoist combatants be either integrated into a democratised Nepal army and into the security forces or demobilised and suitably rehabilitated. The NC and some UML leaders opposed integration. The expectation is that Prime Minister Khanal will have a more rational and helpful approach to this vital question.
The Hindu Editorial
The election of Jhalanath Khanal as Prime Minister of a majority Left coalition government in Nepal offers the young republic the best chance it has had in 20 months to finish the task of writing a new Constitution and completing its peace process. It is also a virtual slap in the face of those within the Indian establishment who spent the better part of a year working behind the scenes to keep the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) out of power even at the cost of political stability. Nepal's promising political journey, which began five years ago with the signing of the historic 12-point understanding between the Maoists and the other parties, went through twists and turns before and after the 2008 Constituent Assembly elections — and lost its way in the aftermath of the resignation of Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal or ‘Prachanda' as Prime Minister in May 2009. Madhav Kumar Nepal of the Unified Marxists-Leninists became Prime Minister with the support of the Nepali Congress and a number of smaller parties but the coalition's adversarial stance towards the Maoists made the new dispensation dysfunctional from the start.
Mr. Nepal's resignation last year should have paved the way for a national consensus government led by the Maoists, the largest party by far in the Constituent Assembly. However, the personal political ambitions of various leaders within the UML, the NC, and the Madhesi factions, the Interim Constitution's rigid rules of business, and the unhelpful attitude of New Delhi combined to produce a repeatedly enacted farce. This involved the CA being asked to vote over and over again for the NC's Ramchandra Poudel, who was never able to muster support from more than half of the required 300 legislators. On Thursday, Prachanda withdrew his name and announced that the Maoists were joining hands with the UML of Mr. Khanal and the new coalition won easily. Top priority must now be given to crafting the new Constitution, which effectively means resolving key issues, notably the new state's federal structure and political system. Of equal importance is the peace process. With the departure of the United Nations from Nepal, the fate of the Maoist cantonments is now entirely in the hands of a special all-party committee headed by the Prime Minister. The fact that the Prime Minister is a leader the Maoists have backed opens a door for the speedy resolution of the integration question. It is in the interests of democracy that Maoist combatants be either integrated into a democratised Nepal army and into the security forces or demobilised and suitably rehabilitated. The NC and some UML leaders opposed integration. The expectation is that Prime Minister Khanal will have a more rational and helpful approach to this vital question.
The Hindu Editorial
Friday, February 4, 2011
Dalai Lama: Be Realistic, Transform Tragedy into Strength
January 10th 2011
New Delhi, India, 9 January 2011 (by Tsering Tsomo) - By adopting a realistic approach to problems, His Holiness the Dalai Lama said one can transform tragedy into strength no matter how big the obstacle is.
“With a calm mind, we see reality more clearly but a disturbed mind destroys inner peace because it cannot utilize human intelligence properly,” His Holiness said. “The enemies, the destructive emotions, are inside you and only you can destroy your inner peace.”
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| His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaking at the Modern School in New Delhi, India, on January 9th, 2011. Photo/Tenzin Taklha/OHHDL |
His Holiness was speaking to a crowd of over 3,000 on the different levels of happiness at the 19th Tushita Dharma Celebrations organized today at Shanker Lal Hall in Modern School.
Defining happiness as the state of deep satisfaction, His Holiness said happiness can be achieved on sensorial as well as mental level. Even animals experience sensorial satisfaction which is physically-attuned and therefore short-lived. But human beings can achieve a deeper, genuine sense of satisfaction on the mental level by using human intelligence.
Sometimes listening to devotional music or looking at holy images provide sensorial satisfaction that complement the deeper practice of attaining deeper satisfaction on the mental level, said His Holiness.
He said he has always found the image of Mother Mary carrying a baby (?) in her arms as a very powerful symbol of compassion, love and kindness. Once when he was on a pilgrimage to visit a small Mary statue in Fatima, His Holiness had a very profound experience. “We were coming back after holding a silent meditation and for no apparent reason I looked back and saw Mary’s statue smiling at me,” His Holiness said.
Different religious traditions whether theistic or non-theistic practice different methods to reduce extreme self centeredness or ego. Theistic traditions such as Christianity believe in total submission to God which in some ways reduce self-centered acts. Non-theistic traditions such as Buddhism and Jainism believe in the law of causality which essentially means cultivating positive Karma or actions to achieve long-term satisfaction. Buddhists believe that through positive actions, one can prevent future negative actions without relying on external factors.
Cultivating positive qualities of warmheartedness and a genuine sense of concern for other’s well-being has nothing to do with being a believer or a non-believer, His Holiness said. These are inner secular qualities necessary for a happy life, not some abstruse concepts of next life or heaven and hell, he added.
Dr. Renuka Singh, director of the New Delhi-based Tushita Mahayana Meditation Center said His Holiness’ teachings have immense relevance to today’s violence and pollution-ridden globalized world.
His Holiness released a book Becoming Buddha published by the Center to coincide with its 30th anniversary.
The fallacy of Karmapa's Chinese links
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The assumption that the Karmapa will create a China-friendly chain of monasteries in the Himalayas by using Himachal Pradesh as a staging point for anti-India campaigns is a fallacy.
The monasteries which dot the Himalayan region from Arunachal to Sikkim, West Bengal, Uttaranchal to Himachal Pradesh & Ladakh belong to different sects of the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism. There is no homogeneity as each of the four schools have their own spiritual leader and are not dependent on each other. However, all schools by and large owe allegiance to the Dalai Lama, the supreme spiritual and temporal head of Tibet.
To take the analysis a little further: Arunachal, our eastern most border state has a large Buddhist following belonging mostly to the Geluk sect (known widely as the "Yellow Hat Sect"). The Geluk sect is headed by the Ganden Tri Rinpoche who is elected to this position. (The Dalai Lama is a member of the Geluk sect but is not the Head of the Geluk sect).
Arunachalis have time and again protested China's claim to their land as part of China's territory and protested the Chinese claims vociferously, even as the mandarins in South Block have made meek diplomatic noises but have not told the Chinese to lay off in no uncertain terms.
The next important state, Sikkim, has been a part of India since 1975. The Karmapa lineage's relations with the Sikkimese people date back to the time of the 12th Karmapa, Changchub Dorji (1703-1732) when the two Karma Kagyu monasteries of Ralang in South Sikkim and Phodang in North Sikkim were established. The Old Rumtek monastery was established thereafter. The Karmapa has overwhelming support here but the people have been peacefully and patiently waiting for over 10 years for the Karmapa's return to Rumtek. Scores of representations have been made to all manner of constitutional authorities.
Finally, on 26th September, 2010 a spontaneous, peaceful rally was attended by tens of thousands in the capital city of Gangtok. Accompanied by mantra-chanting monks, the rally reverberated with lilting and soulful tune of ritual musical instruments and the robust sound of the kettledrums. Perhaps the sound has still not reached the ears of our fate deciders in New Delhi. Yet, no anti-India slogans have been raised and Sikkim continues to be one of the most peaceful states in India.
In the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, there are monasteries belonging to the Drukpa Kagyu, Nyingma, Sakya, and the Karma Kagyu schools. While Darjeeling may be seeking statehood separate from the State of West Bengal, they are not seeking separation from India.
While other monasteries in Uttarachanchal, Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh may profess the Tibetan Vajrayana tradition, they are not exactly hotbeds of anti-India elements. They are a peace-loving, compassionate lot, proud to be part of this vast nation called India.
To those in the security establishment who perceive a larger conspiracy and a China-sponsored hand in the Karmapa's activities, as a proud Indian, who belongs to the border State of Sikkim, I would say: please apply your minds to protecting India in other ways. We are not gullible enough to promote or appreciate your fantasies borne out of paranoia. Indians in the Himalayan region are not treacherous beings and to see them as willing allies in an effort to destabilize India is simply preposterous. The Karmapa is not running the local office of the Chinese security establishment.
The Karmapa lineage is 900 years old this year. The 17th Karmapa, Ugyen Trinlay Dorji, is a shining beacon and hope for the present age. Let us not trash his character and destroy our own moral fibre. If we do that, we are no better than the people who attempted to destroy the Tibetan nation and her people and committed untold misery.
The sooner our security agencies recognize the fallacy in the assumption that the Karmapa is an agent of our adversary, the better for our country.
source:http://ibnlive.in.com/blogs/thinlaytopgay/2914/62196/the-fallacy-of-karmapas-chinese-links.html
An eye on the northeast
Trinkets typical of the region.
The northeast is mostly a mystery to us — geographically and culturally. Tucked away on Indiranagar 100 ft Road is a quaint store that helps shed light on its rich culture.
The Ants store, a not-for-profit undertaking of The Ants Craft Trust, deals exclusively with products made by artisans from the northeast.
The aim, says designer Smitha Murthy, is to generate livelihood for the artisans and to promote the region here.
In addition, the organisation organises frequent interactions, bringing the artisans to the city to show them how their products are marketed here.
Art lovers with a nose for the unique can choose from garments, home furnishings, bamboo baskets, kauna mats, eri silk and the famed black pottery from Manipur.
The latter can even be used for cooking.
“It is stronger than terracotta as it is made from clay and stone.
It is also safe since there is no artificial coating or polish used. It can also be used in the microwave,” says Smitha.
On the top floor of the store is a café where brunch is served for the tired shopper.
Contact Ants at 41715639
The statement from the Karmapa Office of Administration
The statement from the Karmapa Office of Administration, issued yesterday is reproduced below:
“The Karmapa Office of Administration adamantly denies the baseless fabrications touted by some media claiming that His Holiness the Karmapa is a Chinese spy or agent. Specifically, reports have circulated recently claiming that His Holiness the Karmapa has acquired lands along the Sino-Indian border. We state categorically that His Holiness owns no such property whatsoever, nor does the Karmapa Office of Administration.
Additionally, some reports cite an unnamed source claiming that the Enforcement Directorate seized Chinese SIM cards and possess records of conversations between His Holiness the Karmapa and Chinese government officials. Such inaccurate reports constitute fiction masquerading as journalism and slander one of the most highly revered figures in Tibetan Buddhism. Therefore, the Karmapa Office of Administration respectfully requests these media sources to cease and desist its defamation of character of His Holiness the Karmapa.
We reiterate that the presence of Chinese Yuan among the 20-plus other currencies found by police has been put forward by some media stories as indicative of spy activity. In response to this preposterous claim, we wish to point out that the currency used in Tibet is the Chinese Yuan, and therefore Tibetans from Tibet often make donations in Yuan, as do Buddhists from mainland China. We further stress that the donations in Yuan formed less than 10% of the total cash amount.
The notes came in multiple denominations, ranging from one-Yuan notes upward, clearly reflecting their origin as donation from multiple individual sources. Some of the Yuan were new notes bundled together, reflecting a practice among Chinese and other cultures of offering only new currency notes to high abbots or spiritual leaders. Furthermore, disciples from Chinese cultures often visit India in groups, pool their offerings and make a single collective donation.
The Karmapa Office of administration maintains records of all visitors who receive private audience with His Holiness the Karmapa, and these lists record numerous groups of individuals visiting together from Tibet as well as from mainland China.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama has publicly expressed his confidence in His Holiness the Karmapa. The Tibetan government itself unequivocally demonstrated its support of His Holiness the Karmapa, who is the revered head of a 900-year old order within Tibetan Buddhism. Members of groups across Tibetan society have voiced unwavering support for His Holiness the Karmapa. His Holiness himself stated yesterday in public that he had faith in the Indian rule of law and that the truth will prevail in time. He emphasized that India is a second homeland to Tibetans.”
Public Meeting to be held tomorrow at Guards ground
source:iSikkim
Joint action committee, Karmapa reception committee and All Sikkim Buddhist association is organizing a mass public meet at Guards ground in Gangtok.
The General Secretary of Joint action committee Sonam Topden said “The meeting is being conducted to clear the air on the allegations leveled against His Holiness Karmapa and to condemn the accusation and hype created by the media”.
The meeting will start at 10am and around 5 to 6 thousand people are expected to attend. The other agenda of meeting is to disclose the two letters written by the office of His Holiness to Shamar Rinpoche on why his candidate Trinley Thay Dorje cannot be recognized as Karmapa. This would be the first time that these letters would come in public.
DSCN0307arrangements for the public meet on ts full swing at Guards ground
It is to be noted that Shamar Rinpoche has declared Trinley Thay Dorje as the 17th Karmapa. But many Buddhist followers do not accept Sharmar’s recognition. They believe Ugyen Trinley Dorje as the real incarnation of Karmpa.
The public meet will also witness the symbolic burning of a controversial book “Buddha’s Not Smiling” written by Erik D. Curren. In that book author Curren, who is also a student of Shamar Rinpoche describes the controversy over the Karmapa’s succession that still rages today.
DSCN0304“The content of the book is all cooked up, and facts have been twisted. Joint action committee was never contacted for their comments and everything mentioned in that book is all one sided” asserted K. Sherab, President of Joint action committee.
The Joint action committee also requested government of India to conduct a thorough and a fair investigation in the matter. “We are very sure that Karmapa is innocent and all the charges by the media are baseless added K. Sherab.
The committee also resonated that there was no need of buying a land in Dharmasala had the government of India allowed Karmapa to come to Rumtek where he have his own monastery.
The Joint action committee, Karmapa reception committee and All Sikkim Buddhist association also requested people to come and join the meeting on 5th February
source:iSikkim
Joint action committee, Karmapa reception committee and All Sikkim Buddhist association is organizing a mass public meet at Guards ground in Gangtok.
The General Secretary of Joint action committee Sonam Topden said “The meeting is being conducted to clear the air on the allegations leveled against His Holiness Karmapa and to condemn the accusation and hype created by the media”.
The meeting will start at 10am and around 5 to 6 thousand people are expected to attend. The other agenda of meeting is to disclose the two letters written by the office of His Holiness to Shamar Rinpoche on why his candidate Trinley Thay Dorje cannot be recognized as Karmapa. This would be the first time that these letters would come in public.
DSCN0307arrangements for the public meet on ts full swing at Guards ground
It is to be noted that Shamar Rinpoche has declared Trinley Thay Dorje as the 17th Karmapa. But many Buddhist followers do not accept Sharmar’s recognition. They believe Ugyen Trinley Dorje as the real incarnation of Karmpa.
The public meet will also witness the symbolic burning of a controversial book “Buddha’s Not Smiling” written by Erik D. Curren. In that book author Curren, who is also a student of Shamar Rinpoche describes the controversy over the Karmapa’s succession that still rages today.
DSCN0304“The content of the book is all cooked up, and facts have been twisted. Joint action committee was never contacted for their comments and everything mentioned in that book is all one sided” asserted K. Sherab, President of Joint action committee.
The Joint action committee also requested government of India to conduct a thorough and a fair investigation in the matter. “We are very sure that Karmapa is innocent and all the charges by the media are baseless added K. Sherab.
The committee also resonated that there was no need of buying a land in Dharmasala had the government of India allowed Karmapa to come to Rumtek where he have his own monastery.
The Joint action committee, Karmapa reception committee and All Sikkim Buddhist association also requested people to come and join the meeting on 5th February
Thursday, February 3, 2011
SIKKIM'S NGO'S WERE FIRST TO RAISE THIS ISSUE 3 YEARS BACK
Mobile phone health hazard: call for changes in radiation norms
The Hindu The health hazards are -- slowing down of reaction time, loss of memory, headache, disturbance in digestive system and heart palpitation. File Photo.
Taking a stringent view of the health hazards posed by radiation from mobile phones, towers and base stations, a high-level inter-ministerial committee (IMC) has called for revision of radiation norms according to Indian needs.
According to the report submitted by the IMC, radiation from mobile phones and towers could lead to symptoms like fatigue, sleep disturbance, dizziness and lack of concentration.
It said it could also lead to slowing down of reaction time, loss of memory, headache, disturbance in digestive system and heart palpitation.
As a sequel, the committee has called for imposing strict restrictions on installation of mobile towers near high-density residential areas, schools, playgrounds and hospitals.
Though the impact of long term exposure to such emissions is unclear, the panel suggested conducting scientific research on its effect, especially among children, pregnant women and elderly persons.
Following reports that electromagnetic radiation emitted by the mobile towers were threating the movement and breeding of bees and birds (which are the best indicators of the status of the ecology), the government had set up a panel to study the impact and formulate guidelines for regulating installation of such structures.
The report suggested that since the Indian weather conditions were different compared to European countries, revision of radiation norms may be considered.
“The radiation limits in India may be lowered to 1/10th of the existing level keeping in view the data submitted by COAI/ AUSPI,” it added.
The report suggested methods like use of wireless hands-free system, keeping calls short or sending text messages (SMS) and using mobile phones when the signal quality is good.
“People having active medical implants should keep their cell phone at least 30 cm away from the implant,” it added.
The panel said some studies had indicated that radiation from cell phone towers may probably be the reason for vanishing butterflies, bees, insects and sparrows.
The eight-member committee, which included personnel from health ministry and department of biotechnology, also recommended that mobile phones not adhering to standard levels of specific absorption rate (SAR) be barred.
SAR is a measure of the amount of radiation absorbed by the body while using a phone.
India currently follows World Health Organisation-approved International Commission on Non-ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) guidelines.
Asia's century?
Asia's century? Yes. But not its decade
There is a sell-off across Asian emerging markets and renewed confidence in developed markets
by Abheek Barua / February 2, 2011, 0:26 IST
Before all of us get terribly spooked by the sharp sell-off in the stock markets, it might help to keep a few things in mind. The markets haven’t suddenly woken up to the fact that there is a problem with governance in India; nor do investors believe that growth is about to fall off a cliff. The ripple here is part of a bigger wave. There is a sell-off across Asian emerging markets and renewed confidence in the so-called developed markets, particularly the US. So the carnage in the markets could be more the result of the re-allocation of funds than a “thumbs down” for India’s domestic issues.
The underlying problem has, of course, been the phenomenon of two-track growth that the global economy found itself in since the end of 2009. Emerging markets like China and India led the global recovery and the US and Europe lagged. The cost of high growth has been rising inflation in Asia abetted partly by the easy monetary policy followed by the developed markets that ramped up global commodity prices. To cut a long story short, the dominant view among global investors is that Asian central banks need to hike rates a lot more. That, in turn, will adversely impact growth and profits of companies. The US, on the other hand, finds itself in a sweet spot. There is increasing evidence that growth is beginning to pick up – an unemployment rate of 9.4 per cent notwithstanding – as the effect of monetary and fiscal stimulus kicks in. Though the initial traction, quite surprisingly, is in consumer spending, investment expenditure could also pick reflecting in part the impact of a liberal depreciation allowance announced by the Obama administration.
The fact that US assets are relatively cheap isn’t quite helping the emerging markets’ case either. A senior hedge fund manager who runs money both in the emerging markets and the developed markets told me recently that he had bought a “synthetic” stock, which is basically a bundle of stocks of 15 of the bluest chip US companies. Its valuation was roughly half that of the Indian market. Thus, the new trade that seems to have emerged in global markets appears to be “sell emerging markets, buy US”.
Solace lies in the fact that these trades are unlikely to go on forever. As the emerging markets correct, their stocks will seem attractive again. The supply of liquidity for the US and Europe is likely to be easy across markets and neither the Fed nor the European Central Bank is likely to reverse monetary policy soon. As Indian stocks begin to look cheap, fund managers will again focus on the fact that, the US’ recovery notwithstanding, India’s growth is likely to beat the US by a mile. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) rate hikes will have to stop at a point as inflation gets on a leash sometime in 2011. Markets are, mercifully, known to be fickle. Interest could return to the emerging markets by the middle of the year.
The niggling worry is if investors use this phase of bearishness on the emerging markets as an opportunity to re-evaluate the China-India story. Let me start with China. I hear a growing murmur of voices that seem convinced that China and its markets will see a major correction, if not a crisis, in the next few years. Ken Rogoff, former International Monetary Fund chief economist, explained the China risk rather succinctly in a television interview from Davos. China, he claimed, is becoming a more “normal” economy as the government and central bank find it imperative to use conventional economic policies and market-based policy instruments to manage their economy. Normal economies, Rogoff pointed out, have rarely seen decade after decade of uninterrupted high growth. Thus, it is quite likely that China will enter a slowdown if not an outright recession in the foreseeable future.
Besides, one has to be blind not to notice asset bubbles in the Chinese economy. In Beijing, the ratio of house price to average income in the city (a common measure of affordability) is over 25. The norm in most developed markets is four to five. An email circulating in China’s cyberspace and reported in the Financial Times presents some interesting calculations. I quote the Financial Times, “Prostitutes, the e-mail says, would have to entertain 10,000 customers — a marathon feat requiring them to service one customer a night from the age of 18 until the age of 46 without an evening off to afford a place of their own.” The problem with bubbles is the fact that they are known to burst suddenly without notice or warning — investors will have to factor in this risk in their decisions.
As far as India goes, inconsistencies in the “double-digit growth soon” view of the future are becoming somewhat starkly visible. I have argued in a number of places that the current episode of food inflation should be treated as a symptom of “overheating” rather than as a series of supply shocks. The implication is that the Indian economy might not be able to cross the 8 to 8.5 per cent growth threshold without spawning some pretty serious imbalances that can manifest either as consumer price inflation, escalating white collar wages, or the shortage of key infrastructure (clogged ports, power outages). The efficacy of jugaad or on-your-innovation to circumvent some of these problems seems to be diminishing as the pressure of growth builds up. The relentless parade of scams and exposé of graft seem to suggest that the robust institutions that we keep touting (“China might have the hard infrastructure but we have the soft infrastructure” is mandatory in all India investment spiels) might not be so robust after all.
These problems are unlikely to disappear overnight and will impinge on growth in the medium to near term. I won’t be surprised if investors slowly begin to price in some of these risks of investing in Asian markets. This might well be Asia’s century. But will it necessarily be Asia’s decade?
The author is chief economist, HDFC Bank
source;Business Standard
There is a sell-off across Asian emerging markets and renewed confidence in developed markets
by Abheek Barua / February 2, 2011, 0:26 IST
Before all of us get terribly spooked by the sharp sell-off in the stock markets, it might help to keep a few things in mind. The markets haven’t suddenly woken up to the fact that there is a problem with governance in India; nor do investors believe that growth is about to fall off a cliff. The ripple here is part of a bigger wave. There is a sell-off across Asian emerging markets and renewed confidence in the so-called developed markets, particularly the US. So the carnage in the markets could be more the result of the re-allocation of funds than a “thumbs down” for India’s domestic issues.
The underlying problem has, of course, been the phenomenon of two-track growth that the global economy found itself in since the end of 2009. Emerging markets like China and India led the global recovery and the US and Europe lagged. The cost of high growth has been rising inflation in Asia abetted partly by the easy monetary policy followed by the developed markets that ramped up global commodity prices. To cut a long story short, the dominant view among global investors is that Asian central banks need to hike rates a lot more. That, in turn, will adversely impact growth and profits of companies. The US, on the other hand, finds itself in a sweet spot. There is increasing evidence that growth is beginning to pick up – an unemployment rate of 9.4 per cent notwithstanding – as the effect of monetary and fiscal stimulus kicks in. Though the initial traction, quite surprisingly, is in consumer spending, investment expenditure could also pick reflecting in part the impact of a liberal depreciation allowance announced by the Obama administration.
The fact that US assets are relatively cheap isn’t quite helping the emerging markets’ case either. A senior hedge fund manager who runs money both in the emerging markets and the developed markets told me recently that he had bought a “synthetic” stock, which is basically a bundle of stocks of 15 of the bluest chip US companies. Its valuation was roughly half that of the Indian market. Thus, the new trade that seems to have emerged in global markets appears to be “sell emerging markets, buy US”.
Solace lies in the fact that these trades are unlikely to go on forever. As the emerging markets correct, their stocks will seem attractive again. The supply of liquidity for the US and Europe is likely to be easy across markets and neither the Fed nor the European Central Bank is likely to reverse monetary policy soon. As Indian stocks begin to look cheap, fund managers will again focus on the fact that, the US’ recovery notwithstanding, India’s growth is likely to beat the US by a mile. The Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) rate hikes will have to stop at a point as inflation gets on a leash sometime in 2011. Markets are, mercifully, known to be fickle. Interest could return to the emerging markets by the middle of the year.
The niggling worry is if investors use this phase of bearishness on the emerging markets as an opportunity to re-evaluate the China-India story. Let me start with China. I hear a growing murmur of voices that seem convinced that China and its markets will see a major correction, if not a crisis, in the next few years. Ken Rogoff, former International Monetary Fund chief economist, explained the China risk rather succinctly in a television interview from Davos. China, he claimed, is becoming a more “normal” economy as the government and central bank find it imperative to use conventional economic policies and market-based policy instruments to manage their economy. Normal economies, Rogoff pointed out, have rarely seen decade after decade of uninterrupted high growth. Thus, it is quite likely that China will enter a slowdown if not an outright recession in the foreseeable future.
Besides, one has to be blind not to notice asset bubbles in the Chinese economy. In Beijing, the ratio of house price to average income in the city (a common measure of affordability) is over 25. The norm in most developed markets is four to five. An email circulating in China’s cyberspace and reported in the Financial Times presents some interesting calculations. I quote the Financial Times, “Prostitutes, the e-mail says, would have to entertain 10,000 customers — a marathon feat requiring them to service one customer a night from the age of 18 until the age of 46 without an evening off to afford a place of their own.” The problem with bubbles is the fact that they are known to burst suddenly without notice or warning — investors will have to factor in this risk in their decisions.
As far as India goes, inconsistencies in the “double-digit growth soon” view of the future are becoming somewhat starkly visible. I have argued in a number of places that the current episode of food inflation should be treated as a symptom of “overheating” rather than as a series of supply shocks. The implication is that the Indian economy might not be able to cross the 8 to 8.5 per cent growth threshold without spawning some pretty serious imbalances that can manifest either as consumer price inflation, escalating white collar wages, or the shortage of key infrastructure (clogged ports, power outages). The efficacy of jugaad or on-your-innovation to circumvent some of these problems seems to be diminishing as the pressure of growth builds up. The relentless parade of scams and exposé of graft seem to suggest that the robust institutions that we keep touting (“China might have the hard infrastructure but we have the soft infrastructure” is mandatory in all India investment spiels) might not be so robust after all.
These problems are unlikely to disappear overnight and will impinge on growth in the medium to near term. I won’t be surprised if investors slowly begin to price in some of these risks of investing in Asian markets. This might well be Asia’s century. But will it necessarily be Asia’s decade?
The author is chief economist, HDFC Bank
source;Business Standard
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