Aravinda’s Blog

The mountaineer changing lives in a hill village
by Claude Arpi and Abha Tewari
Rediff News, August 9, 2010 12:05 IST
http://news.rediff.com/slide-show/2010/aug/09/slide-show-1-extraordinary-indian-the-mountaineer-changing-lives.htm#contentTop

Comment:

Congratulations to Malika Virdi and the brave women and men who are standing up and taking steps to build the society they want for themselves, their families, and the future. Their example gives hope to all of us who could do more every day in our own communities to fight the traps of gender, class, caste and poverty.

Below Marathi article reports an atrocity committed against a Dalit woman in Sewri, Mumbai. The woman had apparently been fighting against discrimination in access to a handpump.
While mainstream press is slow to pick it up (maybe it would be make news faster if it fit the stereotype that such incidents happen in the deserts of Rajasthan or the backwoods of Bihar & UP), as it is passed around via social networks people are expressing shock (shock!).   As if to say that “even Bombay” is like this - surely we think too highly of ourselves. We fail to prevent caste discrimination in routine matters like access to water and then act surprised that someone who tries to act is beaten and abused. We must fight caste discrimination AT ALL LEVELS.  Even denial of right to water is an atrocity.  We have to search deep within to understand what is making this discrimination possible and root it out.

Note:  this later came out in DNA , Hindu  .

‘Dow sought to pre-empt judicial outcome’ Narayan Lakshman, Washington, June 15, 2010

Comment:
The CEO of DOW is giving instructions to the Ambassador of India on what the Indian Government must do???  How dare he?   How much history of bribery and corruption must have made this possible?

Yet this relationship is what DOW CEO calls “the appropriate investment climate,” and has demanded in previous letters to the Government of India. By “appropriate investment climate,” DOW Chairman means, a climate in which corporations are never liable.  In case of disaster, exemplary punishment would be meted to residents for the crime of living near the factory.  Complaints would be dismissed, “Bhopalis couldn’t get justice, what hope for you?”  Today in corporate law conferences, people loudly shrug off Bhopal “That was 1984 …” they say, as if any survivors must be dead or the site cleaned up by itself.  With no corporate liability, the path is clear for more investments, industries and escape routes ready in advance.  Same path is being widened by the proposed “Nuclear Liabilities Bill” protecting interests of US nuclear companies that would tap India’s nuclear power market.

This is fancy language for saying that Indians, or “third-world” Indians can be sold  down the river by their first-world compatriots.  If we buy this and call it “investment,” let alone “democracy” we are indeed living in Orwellian 1984.

See also: Somini Sengupta,  25 Years Later, Toxic Waste Torments Bhopal

New York Times, Jul 7, 2008