AID conference - 2 days well spent

In the middle of last week, a friend of mine asked me for the route to Benson Road. The place she had asked for was Indian Social Institute and it was the venue for the 11th AID(Association for India's Development) conference scheduled for 26th, 27th and 28th december. There were a few talks scheduled as part of the conference and I decided to attend the talks as I had pretty much nothing else to do.

The first topic was about agriculture and food security. 3 people spoke about the various challenges and probable solutions for agriculture in India. A lady spoke about GM crops and their possible unknown effects on humans , where in I also came to know about this "I am no lab rat" campaign. Also, another gentleman spoke about organic farming and how a co-operative movement has been started for direct produceer-consumer interaction. Also, another speaker told us about AID's work in agriculture in various regions of the country based on the type of water source, the type of soil etc. The next topic was on women's rights. This was more a kind of discussion and what I found really interesting in this was that there were delegates from various parts of the country and I got to know their take on this topic(most interesting being that dowry in a non-cash form could actually be good). Also touched upon was the topic of women panchayat members forming a group, discussing various issues and getting the work done whcih was a healthy change from something I had known earlier where men who were panchayat members would get their wives/daughters elected when their constituency was declared reserved for women and then rule in proxy. The third topic of the day was Copyrights. The speaker, a lawyer(I guess he's chinese and has settled down here), made a really good presentation on what copyrights, trademarks, piracy etc are all about and also touched a bit upon free software, GPL etc. Also there was a small presentation by a community computer centre which uses free/opensource softwares and Richard M Stallman had visited them recently(yes.. you have read it right). The last topic of the day was related to climate change. A representative from Greenpeace made a presentation on how we are, led by the highly industrialised countries, are screwing up nature and how ill prepared we are for facing the back lash. From an individual prospective, I believe that though it is for everyone to reduce carbon content pollution, its for the developed and highly industrialised nations to take the lead. We were also shown a video about the unfortunate disparity with respect to the scarcity of water in rural areas and the way it wasted in water theme parks and in clubs/resorts where people dance shamelessly under falling water(It's rain dance.. I was informed). This ended my day at the conference.

The next day(my second day there and the 3rd day of the conference) was supposed to be a short one. It started with a talk on communalism and terrorism by a prof from CSCS, Bangalore. He touched upon various issues, but one thing that struck me was that we need to understand the 'psyche of the other'. Again I found out what the people from various parts of the country(especially Bihar and TN) think about this topic. The discussion went on and continued on the other side of the lunch break. This was followed by a presentation done by an organisation called 5TH PILLAR which is fighting corruption. It was again a good presentation where the organisation showcased some of its success stories. I probably would be contacting them again to gain a good understanding on how to draft a RTI petition. The day ended with a demonstration of a solar powered LED lamp which could be very useful in villages where power cuts are rampant or there is no electricity at all. That ended my day at the conference and I left the venue thanking my friend for getting me there and satisfied that the two days were well spent.

Jaagore

A dear friend of mine sent me a mail today morning about the TATA tea's JAAGORE campaign. As, I was telling her that I have been voting eversince I turned 18 and that just voting is not enough, we also need to keep in touch with our elected representitives to make sure they do the work we have elected them for, I saw this news that 8 bills had been passed in the LokSabha in 17 minutes yesterday(which was the last day for this session)

I am stunned, to say the least. 8 bills be passed in 17 minutes? which means that each bill got an average time of just over a couple of minutes to be tabled, debated and voted. I also read that the parliament sessions were only held for 46 days this year. These guys, whom we elect and send to the parliament in an exercise which costs hundreds of crores of rupees, have made a mockery out of parliamentary democracy, made us, citizens who elect them, look like complete idiots and still have the guts to come on TV interviews and blame all others for that.

I think its now time for a JAAGORE campaign not only to awaken the citizens to vote, but also our parliamentary system, which seems to be in deep slumber, and make sure it works as it is supposed to, each and every rupee(collected from honest tax payers) is properly used. Its time for us to really wake up.. Jaagore India Jaago.