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[1] From: rkurian@bgl.vsnl.net.in Date: Sat Jan 20, 2007 Subject: The Walk to Find Knowledge....A great article on the Realities of India.. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6279 929.stm The walk to find knowledge By Peter Day BBC News, India Although India is experiencing huge economic growth, it is also a place where 700 million people still live in the countryside, a world away from the nation's newly acquired shiny image. But among this vast rural population lies a wealth of wisdom and expertise that has a value all of its own. Professor Gupta has an engaging smile and a compelling interest in everything I have just been on a pilgrimage, on foot, across a bit of rural India. Not to get to a shrine, a saint or a temple. The point of the walk was the villages we encountered on the way, and the traditional skills and knowledge locked up in them. This is not the first time I have talked about a remarkable professor called Anil Gupta, who teaches at the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedebad. It is, by the way, the hardest management school to get into in the whole world. He is the moving spirit behind something called the Honeybee Network, a now vast repository of often clever rural inventions and village wisdom about plants and animals in danger of being forgotten in the new brand name-driven India. Honeybee celebrates this lore and tries to get financial backing for the best ideas. And for the past eight years, Professor Gupta has taken to the dusty roads of rural India on what is called, in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit, a Shodhyatra... a walk to find knowledge. The fanfare of India Twice a year, in searing summer heat or chilly winter, Professor Gupta and 60 or 70 of the inspired, the curious, and veteran rural innovators traipse out to remote places. Villagers show walkers the cow dung patties that are used for fuel The walks last about a week, as the pilgrims journey from village to village along rutted ox cart tracks and noisy main roads, honked at by endless motor horns - the fanfare of India. Being part of the Shodhyatra is an extraordinary experience, a confusion of travelling circus, revivalist meeting and Gandhi brought back to life. At walking pace in a country that lives outdoors, things happen. People who know inventors dash up to the pilgrims. The walkers themselves dive off the path into a field to clip off a twig of an unfamiliar shrub. Warm welcome A farmer diverts the walkers to examine his new discovery, a rogue mustard plant that produces all its seed at once, not frond by frond In the middle of the crowd moves Professor Gupta - tall, bearded, dressed in white - has an engaging smile and a compelling interest in everything. We stop to admire the individual patterns the women create on the walls of the shelters they build to protect the precious store of handmade cow dung patties used for fuel. A few miles further and there is another huddle as the professor launches into an off-the-cuff inquiry into the positive uses of the word "crack", inspired by the parched earth before us. A farmer diverts the walkers to examine his new discovery, a rogue mustard plant that produces all its seed at once, not frond by frond. In every village, we are greeted and garlanded, and then there is a meeting under the spreading neem tree in the schoolyard for two or three hours, in which rural knowledge is praised, inventors speak and local heroes are acclaimed. Then centenarians are rewarded with pashmina scarves to celebrate the wisdom locked up in old age, children are exhorted to listen to their grandparents (and inspired to write down inventions they would like to see), and village drunks pledge to give up drink. One man smashed his full bottle of Mr India spirits in front of the whole gathering. Thriving communities Walking with Professor Gupta is rather like being back in the New Testament - first-century disciples on the move with a great guru. Professor Gupta thinks that the Indian soul resides in the wisdom of the poor Drums greet the Shodhyatra as it enters the village. We eat together from great vats of delicious food whipped up by a family of cooks travelling behind us in a truck. We all sleep on chilly schoolroom floors or in barns. Sanitation is primitive or non-existent, but no more primitive than the villagers experience every day of their lives. Most of these knowledge walks are far from cities, although this one was, at times, only 20 miles from the capital, Delhi. Even so, it was bandit country. In one village there had been dozens of vendetta murders - a place the local police stayed away from. Indian soul To get to the start, I drove out of Delhi on the first Indian highway built by the British. The professor is frightened that in the rush to modernise, the wisdom of the poor will be wiped out and lost Along it, there is now a remarkable explosion of new real estate: multi-storey apartment blocks with alluring names, great shopping malls and new hospitals for medical tourists from abroad. The new India. The gap between the towering developments of this new industrial zone and the villages only a walk away, is of centuries, not miles. Like Gandhi before him, Professor Gupta thinks that the Indian soul resides in the wisdom of the poor, and he is seeking to make it flame up with new purpose. Much of the new India regards this with sympathetic scorn, the past dragging on the country's global future. The professor is frightened that in the rush to modernise, the wisdom of the poor will be wiped out and lost... and not just in India. In an extraordinary move this spring, Professor Gupta will be coming to Britain to do the same thing here. He will walk from Liverpool to Manchester - a Lancashire Shodhyatra. From Our Own Correspondent was broadcast on Saturday, 20 January, 2007 at 1130 GMT on BBC Radio 4. Please check the programme schedules for World Service transmission times. ------------ [2] From: kashif <kaaashif@gmail.com> Date: Sun Jan 21, 2007 Subject: explosives, grenades seized before Republic India two news itmes: Explosives seized in Mumbai, four arrested<http://indianmuslims.info/news/2007/january/20/india_news/explosives_seized_in_mumbai_four_arrested.html>; Police recover two high explosive grenades in Orissa<http://indianmuslims.info/news/2007/january/20/india_news/police_recover_two_high_explosive_grenades_in_orissa.html>; Contrary to what you must be thinking, all arrested are Hindus. ----------- [3] From: rkurian@bgl.vsnl.net.in Date: Sat Jan 20, 2007 Subject: A Tale of Two Elections.. Nepal and Bangladesh J. Sri Raman | A Tale of Two Elections http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011907U.shtml "Seldom have two electoral events anywhere been awaited with such anxiety as in South Asia today. The results of these elections, and even the run-up to them, make all the difference between democracy and destabilization, with region-wide ramifications," writes J. Sri Raman regarding the upcoming elections in Nepal and Bangladesh. ---------------- [4] From: Regi P George <george_regi@yahoo.com> Date: Sat Jan 20, 2007 Subject: Re: [indiathinkersnet] Buddha V/S Basu My humble request to Palash Biswas! Please try to find some time to visit CPM Web site to understand what is a marxist Ideology and what is the approach of Indian communists to Power! before making this kind of junk statments! If CPIM need to take over any position like Prime Minister or Chief Minister without prooving itself have sufficent majority in the electoral body then party need to revise its policy and draft a new policy on that! Why you are talking more about Jyoti Basu's disappointment! EVEN today CPIM can rule India if power game is part of its politics! Within hours we can remove this 160 Congress MPs govt. split the congress party, keeping indian socialist cows like Lalu, Mulayam, DMK, Telungu Desam etc. That is not the policy of a communist party! We are ready to wait until people of India choose CPM with a clear verdict! CPM is not a party of Power greedy and power hungry Mamtas Thrinamul. What is the politics of Thrinamul congress? One night it can sleep with Advani next morning it will be shifted to Sonias toilet you call it a political party? The latest informations coming from SINGUR prooving that Local Congress and Trinamool Congress is supporting Tatat's car factory and the First 100 people who had given their land and received money are Local Trinamool leaders and family members only! On What ground are you opposing Singru Car Factory? Without talking a single word about Sonia Gandhi how can a man make statments against a poor state of India forced to follow that policy? Ambassidor car of Birla is coming from Culcutta! Ambassidor cars running accross india is a product of Culcutta! are you ready to boycott these cars too? regi banga_sss2003 <banga_sss2003@yahoo.co.in> wrote: CAB Turn In SEZ, Buddha V/S Basu Palash Biswas ( Pl Publish the matter with latest update and send a copy. Contact: Palash C Biswas, c/o Mrs Arati Roy, Gostokanan, Kolkata- 700110, India. Phone: 91-33-25659551.) Buddhadev Bhattacharya and Viman Bose led the Bengali comrades in the Polit Bureau and Central Committee of Marxist Communist Party of India to pull the legs of Jyoti Basu, when the Nation wanted him as Prime Minister. subhash Chakrabarti has been leading the Basu supporters. Basu later said that it was a historical blunder. It followed a heated debate nationwide in the party and beyond. ------------------------ |
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January22, 2007 - [India Thinkers Net] Updates Jan 22nd >> |
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