Comments received | Comments
posted
Comments posted by R. P. Subramanian
On
Support the N-deal. or else....!
Thanks for your support and solidarity, Kolipakkam, Avinashjee, Sanghouston...and the Lord bless the Net where voices cannot be silenced!
On
India - World's Nuclear Kooda-wallah?
Thanks so much for your comment, Limo!
Alas, I think you have completely missed the point of my article. It does not 'deplore consumerist culture' as you seem to believe. Indeed, let me declare quite cheerfully and without any guilt whatsoever that I have one AC and no less than four fans! Incidentally, my giving up the AC will not help a farmer irrigate his field. Farmers usually have problems irrigating their fields not because of lack of energy, but because of lack of water! (That's something I've written on in a separate and equally feeble blog...comments would be welcome).
Of course India needs energy, much more energy. So that you, I, and everyone else including the farmers can have all the ACs and fans and cars and malls we want! But is the US N-deal the best way to get all this energy? Leave alone solar and wind energy, India annually generates agri-based biomass residues that can provide more energy (through thermal and power gasifiers) than all our coal-based power plants put together. Biomass can be regenerated and is therefore a renewable energy source. We even have the technology for these biomass gasifiers -- yet, we waste 90% of our biomass residues; literally allow them to rot. Perhaps biomass energy is not as 'upmarket' and 'chic' as N-energy?
Even if we are stuck on the idea of N-power in place of renewables, why must we seek imported uranium when India has the world's largest reserves of thorium and an advanced program to develop thorium-based N-power plants? Incidentally, thanks to the Hyde Act, the N-deal will effectively put India's thorium-based program in deep freeze.
Actually, all my article tried to do was expose the deceitful and hypocritical way in which the N-deal is being sold to us. Two great hypocrisies.
1. N-energy is being called clean and environment-friendly ( it is not).
2. The deal is being trumpeted as a way to bridge India's energy shortfall and help the POOR (that dirty word again!) obtain energy. The facts (which you may readily verify for yourself) are that today N-power makes up barely 3% of India's energy supply; and the proponents of the N-deal themselves admit that if the deal goes through, by 2025 N-energy from new N-power plants will make up around 7% of our total energy supply!
On
North - South identity Crisis
Thanks so much, Great Thinker and Kolipakkam, for your comments. Kolipakkam, I read your post and found it quite delightful. 
Indeed, it begs the question: why should any one of us - lower, upper, top or any other class - have ID cards at all? Why should you or I even have to carry a driver's licence? Why shouldn't our system - the system that 'works' - accept us for what we are, namely, human beings, and just leave it at that? Why do we need ID proof to show that we are Indians, that we were born on this day, that this is our address, our signature/thumb impression? Why do we need this silly ID signed by some faceless bureaucrat to buy a bike or car, to drive, to rent a dwelling, to get a job, to get a kid admitted to school, to open a bank account, to vote?
You and I have plenty of such ID proof...so it's easy for us to speculate thus. But when we don't have ID, life can become pretty insecure. Any havaldar will tell you the standard procedure when a crime takes place and the SHO wants to see results (often aided by a suitable bribe from the actual guilty person)...go out, pick up the nearest available daily-wager you can find, and fling him into the cooler. Sans ID, the man is doomed; guilty unless otherwise proven. And there's no way the poor man can prove he is innocent. Not in our system that 'works'.
He may claim he is from a village 1000 km away, but he has no ID to prove it. He may claim he is not the criminal...but he has nothing to show why he is here in the city at all! He claims he is working at a construction site? Aha! But why is his name not in the muster rolls? The real horror is that even if the man rots in jail for months and years, or even dies, his kin will never even know about it. That's what being without ID means in this our beautiful land.
It's good to take anything anyone in a position of authority (including T Khanna) says with several maunds of salt). Yet the Scriptures do not become tainted merely because the Devil quotes them...
Advertisement
© 1998-2008 Copyright Sulekha.com Connecting Indians Worldwide, All Rights Reserved.
O CNN-IBN, where is thy sting?
:-)) Just watched Rajdeep 'present' the sting tape on CNN-IBN...after making a defense of not airing it for 3 weeks that was as convincing and inspiring as a chicken wearing a safari suit and talking about the urgent need to conserve worms. Cawwwk cawwwwwk!
Block this user | Report AbuseReply