What to do about this???

Great day!!!! Had lots of fun with friends.. Had lots of fun with family.. Yipeee i won a prize!! yahoo i got promoted!! I know people are happy. But is it necessary to express in such way.. well you might be excited, but remember everyone isnt.. I feel like sayin "so wt!! Keep u r happiness in a box" I advice you to change your excitement into something useful. Let me remind you 'something useful' doesnt refer to studies. It might,it might not. Fine!!! Lets come to the point. I find many happy news and many bad news online nd offline. Most of them refer to the first 4 sentences.Hmm!! I say these words coz of 2 incidents which i have seen. I cant really say they changed my way of thinking but they moved me a bit. People are crazy about the internet, parties, gossips, pubs etc etc.. But there s another world where people are suffering. I cant say thery are suffering all the time. But when you compare ourselves with them, they are the worst hit by our deds. I am from a village. Once I went out to get a stamp on some bond paper. To get it you need to pay and sign in a register. I had money but forgot a pen. "Fine, its not a big deal. when did i get a pen.", i thot in my mind. The shopkeeper looks at me nd asks what i am studyin. I reply. He responds 'Hmm.. Look you are a literate person. Dont you know to carry a pen with you while going out.' I know there s nothin about this rubbish incident but when i(my friends too included) go through my village, most of them consider me a literate person. Well its not that im literate. People there are unaware of foolish equations, theory, geographical studies and all that stuff which i consider to know. The fact is that i studied them long back and forgot too. Since i am livin in urban my behaviour might be slightly different. My clothin might be a bit different, but i strongly feel there s no difference between me(literate) and them. Being literate we lack the basic ethics, common sense.In general Who among a slave(illiterate) and a master(literate) behaves in a wierd and arrogant way?? In most of the cases its the master. Great he is a literate and inspite of being literate he takes into consideration, the caste creed and color of the slave. What the hell in this world makes him literate?? Fine lets leave him. Lets talk about people of my age(students). I can still find this slight discrimination among students too. Well it might not be a caste based discrimination, it is actor based discrimination. And the caste to which the actor belongs plays a vital role.. Great work LITERATES!!!! I wonder how we make the future.li8. Yet another greatest quality of literate peoples is about global warming. We are aware of what green house effect is. We know the past, present and the future effects. yet people drive cars with single person in it. I dont recommend you to spend your entire life doing some research which is completely irrelevant to your profession. But atleast being literate be a bit sensible and make proper use of vehicles. The most crazy thing people do is to talk about awareness. In this case i am referring to "Global Warming". People say we gotta create awareness among illiterates about the global warming, we need to make them come out of illusion and help for a greener society. Reallly!!!! What sense doest that make???? Village people are not the ones driving cars, bikes or running industries. Its the urban people. Let me realize you one thing. Most of the pollution is caused by the highly qualified people. A People's representative travels in a canvoy with 10 cars. Think of it. They burn fuel which is 10 times of the fuel consumed by a normal person. Industries play a vital role in pollution. Well , the labour working in those industries might no be literate but doesnt the literate management know about the pollution they are causing. Finally its the most qualified, experienced CEO of the industry running it. Great. And we still blame the "aam aadmi" for the pollution. Peoples representative cause 10 times pollution an "aam aadmi" causes and a CEO of an industry causes pollution equivalent to the pollution caused by 100 or 150 villages. And still we speak about creating awareness. Another foolish thing which most of the people do.. They are good but foolish persons.They plan to planting trees. But the worst part of it is that they donno how to plant a tree.. Fine this problem can be solved. but where to plant a tree. we dont have space in our area(urban). No place for planting.So i wont plant a tree.. huhhh!!!!! What a determination fellas!!! Awesommm!! you need no plant a tree. you can plant a plant too.. cant you do that in a pot?? When i first thot about this i cudnt stop laughing.Yeah we are the literates \m/ I say its not time to create awareness, everyone is aware about it. Lets start implementing some measures. Lets become a bit sensible and start doing things which we can afford to do.. Let me remind you, I AM NOT A ECOLOGIST,SOCIAL REFORMER, PHILOSOPHER,CRITIC OR ANYTHING. I know you would think about all these professions relating me while reading this post.. Thank You for your patience. Lets get united and act for a change. To change the new world to old..

FDA in retail--> UPA retired hurt.

Foreign Direct Investments(FDI) may be on hold, but Hillary Clinton can stop worrying about Anand Sharma and Pranab Mukherjee.

"How does (Commerce minister) Sharma view India's current Foreign Direct Investment guidelines? Which sector does he plan to open further?

Why is he reluctant to open multi-brand retail? Those were among the Questions US Secretary of state posed in one of her cables in September 2009, some months after Prime Minister Manmoha Singh began his second term.

Noted her pointed query on opening up 'multi branded retail' .She had other worries, too. "Why was (Pranab) Mukherjee and chosen for the finance portfoloi over Montek Singh Ahluwalia? How do Mukherjee and Ahluwalia get along?" And "does Sharma get along with Mukherjee and Prime Minister Singh?".They get along fine, Hillary, and they're all in it together, as a team.

Hillary has a reason to be concerned about FDI in retail. There's the tens of thousands of dollars contributed to her 2007-08 campaign by Walmart executives and lobbyists.

An ABC News report on that in 2008 also observed that asa a director, Hillary Clinton remained "a loyal company woman". And she surely knows the UPA's FDI retreat is tactical. Pranab Mukherjee put it with disarming candour: we don't want mid-term polls.yet, Hillary's campaign website of 2007-08, points out the ABC report, omitted "any reference to her role at Walmart in its detailed biography of her". As the race heated up, she recanted:"Now I know that Walmart's policies do not reflect the best way of doing business and the values that I think are important in America."

Perhaps Hillary's FDI concerns are loftier. She must be worried about the poor Indian farmer. The wonderful thing about the FDI -in-retail debate is the explosion of concern for agriculturists. Never have struggling Indian farmers found so many champions. They've been crawling out of the woodwork ever since the FDI announcement. FROM DEEPAK PAREKH TO RATAN TATA, THEY'VE SUFFERED SLEEPLESS NIGHTS, AGONISING OVER THE SMALL FARMER.

They might want to take a look at the American farm population. At their family farms, especially smaller ones, wrecked by corporate monopolies at every level, from giant agri-businesses to mammoth retail chains. Presently less than one million Americans claim farming as their occupation. The figure was over 25 milion in 1950's. WITH WHAT CREDIBILITY DOES OUR REGIME, ON WHOSE WATCH FARM SUICIDES CROSSED THEA QUARTER-OF-A-MILLION MARK, SPEAK OF HELPING FARMERS? wHO KNOWS WHAT WINDFALLS THE DEALS STRUCK WITH REATIAL GIANTS HAVE BROUGHT TO INDIVIDUALS IN THIS MOST CORRUPT GOVERNMENT IN OUR HISTORY? We need to embrace that old journalistic principle: Follow the money.

WHO IT EFFECTS:

Doing away with the "middleman": The first to be devastated will be that poor 'MIDDLEWOMAN'- the vendor who daily provides our towns and cities with fresh produce. She did not push up the prices and has her modest margin squeezed each time they rise. That woman carrying that huge basket to your doorstep, on her feet 14-16 hours a day to feed her family. She's the first 'middleman' target.

The more exploitative middlemen in the chain will be co-opted by giant retail which needs collectors and contractors., though not so many. It will slash their numbers after a while. This is The Mob taking over from the little guys on the block You're looking at massive displacement in the agricultural supply chain. Only, the new 'middlemen' will be Cardin-clad and Gucci-shod, with better access to government than the farmers everyone's dying to save.

That poor woman vendor, whose life we need to improve, not destroy, brings you fresh produce. She has to, or she can't sell it.(Tip: big retail operators pasting the words 'natural' and 'fresh' against their names are selling you stuff that could have been refrigerated, even frozen,for days.)

Ten million jobs: Try not to die laughing. This comes from a school of economics that has gifted the world jobless growth for three decades now. We worked hard for two of those, making a big expansion of jobs impossible within our policy framework.

From the early 1990s, fantastic claims have been made of small farmers gaining from neo-liberal globalisation. For instance: farm incomes would rise 25 per cent if Indian prices were aligned to global prices; purchasing power would shoot up.

Many steps were taken on such claims, including 100 per cent FDI in sectors like seed. All achieved the opposite. These moves helped double the indebtedness of the peasantry and further spurred the worst-ever recorded wave of suicides. Apart from which we've seen seven-and-a-half million people abandon agriculture in a decade, many driven out by policies to ‘benefit the farmer.' Now we should believe that FDI in retail will undo all the damage that these policies — from the very same authors — caused? And these guys predict 10 million jobs within a year?

The UPA wants to open up a sector that for all its awful flaws and hardships presently employs 44 million people and has total sales of close to $400 billion. (That's about 20 times the number Walmart employs on roughly the same turnover.) And gives some sustenance to many millions more if you think families. Small shops and ‘big box retail' can co-exist, so croons the corporate choir. Sure, after wiping out countless thousands of tiny shops, the survivors can ‘co-exist' with the big guys, who might even have minor errands for them to run. India's powerful will run the more important errands. That was clear from 2005 when then Walmart International Division chief John Menzer told his company's annual meeting: “In our six government meetings, we created a very positive image [of Wal-Mart]…” And: “We've energized the FDI lobby and preempted the anti-FDI lobby in India.” (Wal-Mart's Hot in India, CNNMONEY.COM, June 6, 2005)

Efficiency: The giant chains can never match the efficiency of farmers' markets selling food produced locally or nearby. Their sourcing of produce from all over the world, central warehousing systems, giant transport operations — all these are hugely energy intensive. Which means a lot of what you get is old and much-refrigerated or frozen. Know the other costs of what you pay for.

Benefitting farmers: Here's a paradox. Just when we march determinedly towards super markets, people in the homeland of Big Retail are buying more and more from “farmers' markets.” That is, the oldest form of direct marketing by small producers. More and more Americans seek decent produce not drowned in chemicals, pesticides and preservatives. Growing numbers of that nation's small and family farms are selling through farmers' markets each year. In India, every market was once a farmers' market. Over time, farmers have lost control of such markets to traders and moneylenders. Now comes the coup de grace.

The coming of Big Retail is not simply about shops in the towns of over one million. It brings a radical restructuring of the entire agri-supply chain. The kind of investments — above $100 million — will obviously not go towards labour-intensive operations. The new structures that will confront farmers are stronger than any they have ever known. As a paper on the “U.S. Farm Crisis” from the Kerr Center for Sustainable Agriculture, Oklahoma, puts it: “large corporations have in recent years moved to curtail farmer independence through production contracts and other forms of vertical integration. These moves have included establishment of huge corporate-owned Confined Animal Feeding Operations, where animals are raised without farmers.”

The new middlemen the government welcomes have no regard for village and community. Maximising their own profit is their sole concern. As the number of buyers shrinks to a handful of corporations, farmers will have fewer places to sell their produce. What kind of bargaining power will they have against these mega-middlemen, some of whose worth would place them, if treated as nations, amongst the top ten economies in the world? The “contracts” in the new dispensation will reflect that power equation. The National Commission for Farmers headed by Dr. M.S. Swaminathan had observed that rushing into contract farming without ensuring the needs, safety and bargaining power of the farmer would result in major displacement in the sector. But not to worry, Hillary, your team is still out there batting. Only retired hurt for the moment.

The above content has been copied from "THE HINDU" newspaper 12-12-2011(Editorial page). Found it awesommm... Couldn't stop sharing it :) Hope you have liked it..