Building Bridges….. 21 December 2007

Recently somebody forwarded to me pictures of a dozen complicated and neat road bridge clusters from different cities of Europe and the Gulf region and contrasted the same with our own Indian roads.

On yet another day an Indian immigrant from the US, who was on a visit to Bangalore, remarked that India can never even dream of building in next fifty years, such good roads and bridges as in the US.

Let me emphasise that I am not against urban roads and bridges. I am concerned with the fixation of the rich with such structures and equating the same with development. We must understand that there is a larger country beyond our limited urban vision.

The need of the times is to build bridges of the other kind, many small ones that remove the urban-rural disconnect. These have to be physical structures as well as emotional ones. Let’s not forget the Indian rural underprivileged and the disadvantaged, who form the majority and who feed the nation. The earlier we realise this, the better it is!

S .Gopal ….Keying in is better than idling

Bitter Medicines… 19 December 2007

Recently the World Health Organisation (WHO) conducted an international conference. Two independent pharma experts from India attended the same. They have summarised what other speakers had to say about the quality of medicines manufactured in India. Please read on.

· First the good news: Pharma company CIPLA scored 100 percent quality success.

· More than 50 percent of Indian medicines were accepted. Others failed to qualify.

· Another pharma company Ranbaxy qualified in around 54 percent of the applications it submitted. Rest failed.

· One of the Indian medicines did not show any efficacy at all. It was useless.

· Some of the Indian medicines including anti retroviral drugs used for treatment of AIDS sold in African countries were of poor quality.

· In quality, China was ahead of India (and we doubt the Chinese quality!)

Medicines which were rejected by WHO, were approved earlier by the Indian drug authorities. Why they failed to qualify at the international level? What are we hiding? Who is responsible? It is time the country did something about it. Wake up, please.

S .Gopal ….Keying in is better than idling

Whose money, flowing where to? 19 October 2007

The price of crude oil in the internatonal market is rising, but there is no corresponding increase in the sale prices of its end products. The users (mainly the urban population) are being indirectly subsidised by the government.

Product Subsidy in Rupees

Petrol 2.79 per litre

Diesel 4.65 per litre

LPG 178.15 per cylinder

Rupees 80 000 crores are spent every year towards agricultural subsidy but most of it goes to the fertiliser, power and irrigation sectors. It hardly trickles down to small farmers.

31 percent of grains and 36 percent of sugar meant for the poor through public distribution system are being sold in black market for huge profit.

The elected representatives of one political party were lodged for two days in a reosrt in Bangalore to prevent them from meeting their rivals. Estimated expenditure: Rupees Ten lakhs .

If elections are held in Karnataka earlier than scheduled, the government will have to spend immediately about Rs. 75 crores.

Moot questions are: Whose money? And where is it flowing to ?

S. .Gopal …keying in is better than idling

Outsourcing..with a vengeance.. 9 October 2007

Outsourcing is the buzzword of the modern day. From maintenance of computers to housekeeping to catering to account-keeping to logistics everything is being outsourced now-a-days.

However, I was shocked when I read in a newspaper that United States has been outsourcing their war for the past four years ! The report says the Pentagon (War department of the US) has outsourced part of its war efforts in Iraq to 100 private security contractors. One of them is Blackwater USA.

Blackwater

• has 20 000 soldiers, 20 aircrafts, and many armoured troop carriers and its own military base.
• gets USD 1 222 a day for each gunman it employs which is six to nine times higher than what the US government would pay to an US army sergeant.
• is alleged to operate without any legal supervision
• soldiers, it is alleged, have been responsible for many unprovoked killings.

Outsourcing and privatisation with a vengeance, indeed.

I wish the huge money spent in war efforts are used to combat hunger and disease.

Gopal …..keying in is better than idling