An economicCRISIS primer

Econmists define a recession as "two negative quarters"the economy produces less output--fewr goods and services --for two consecutive three-month periods.
India's slowdown
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Since the world economic crisis started ,India has fared better than the United States did .We didn't have the real-estate bubble that the Americans did ,even if our house prices have come down recently .And our banks have held up better.
Many experts believe that China and India will be the countries that will lead the rest of the world pit of the present crisis---hopefully by the start of 2010.

movers and shakers:2008

CERN:for creating a global black hole scare on a particle collider27km.long
BARACK OBAMA
B.RAMALINGA RAJU
AMIR AJMAL KASAB
MICHAEL PHELPS FOR A DAILY CALORIE CONSUMPTION OF OF120000
USAIN BOLT FOR BREAKING 9.5 SECOND MARK (WORLD RECORD FOR 100&200m)
JERRY YANG TO TAKE ON THE RUTHLESS MONEY POWER OF Google............yahoo!
ISRAEL AND HAMAS
RATAN TATA
CORUS,JAGUAR AND LAND ROVER Deals
robert mugabe and ln mittal
slumdog millionaire ar rehman ...jai ho..
benazir bhutto

APJ Abdul Kalam:indomitable spirit

Digital Library Initiatives
There is a mission to create a portal for a Digital Library of India piloted by the Ministry of of IT with the IISc and Carnegie MELLON University as partners for fostering creativity and free access to all human knowledge.
Books by Kalam:India2020:A Vision for the New Millennium
Wings of Fire
Ignited Minds
Envisioning An Empowering Nation

MP:SHIVRAJ MALADMINISTRATION

sENSITIVE POLITICAL LEADERSHIP OR MERE ADULATION
60 per cent of MP's children are malnourished

iPad kindles a new war in Digital Age

iPad :key features
multi-touch screen
works in any orientation
LED backlit glossy widescreen
Display resolution
1024-by -768-pixel at 132 pixels per inch
Gizmo vs gizmo
Display 9.7 inches
Weight:680g
eBook format:open ePub format
upfront cost:$499

Swamy and friends:cypress

A former clerk leads a global team of engineers in a state crippled by bad goverance.How passion and innovation keep Bangalore going

He doesn't hide his 13-year careeer as government clerk and cashier ,the spartan 2-room flat he shares with a friend ,the Idon't-really-care attitide to travels that trake him to Ukraine,Japan,and Taiwan,and an ambition that involves quitting his job leading a team of8 engineers on the cutting edge and technology.
At his company ,Narayana Swamy MK(35 year-old)---Cypress Semiconductor India Pvt.Ltd.,he rubs shoulders with IIT&IIM graduates,his intuitive ability and passion valued over his lack of educational pedigree(his only qualification is a one -year course in data and software).
Over2003&2004,they combined talents to win competitions building coputer systems (a traffic light controller&a digital front-panel for motorcycles)around a bunch of microscopic silicon circuits carved onto a Cypress chip called a P-SOC,or programmable system-on-chip.
His aMBITION REVOLVE AROUND THEIR CHIP ."I want to give employment to at least 500 people,based on P-SOC," says Swamy.

Essay

What Unites India: Freedom abhors perfection.In the history of nations,it isa narrative in which idealism is in combat with ideology ,and the romance of struggle gives in to the reality of compatibility.Old demons in tattered but still colurful clothes of ethnicity and tribalism that have the habit of gate-crashing the freedom party .Hate Rearmed patrols the liberated streets.In the evening of the last century ,when the idyll of communism was shattered ,when the Lie was finally laid to rest ,we saw how the poignancy of freedom was accomplished by the agony of separation .Those were the days when the punsters of journalism could stretch their creativity ,ranging from Mikhailangelo(Gorbachev)to check -oSlovakia.The story of 1989,Europe's annus mirabilis,would outgrow the beauty of the magic lanternand the second Prague Spring .In Central Europe ,the phraseology of liberation would be expanded to include the Second Holocaust "and ethnic cleansing".Today ,as Mesopotamia stages the new century's passion play of freedom,we know the world hasn't gone too far.Freedom divides the mind,and it kills.

Conratulatioins

To...Priya Budholia,engg grad.from SATI,selected by Tata Consultancy Services(TCS)as IT Consultant .

She is an elder daughter of my dear friend Uday Bhanu Budholia,sub engineer Water Resources Deptt,Halali Project Vidisha. Wow ! you achieved!

LASER TURNS 50

ray of light:what was put down as a'parlour trick'is today set to ignite nuclear fusion.And of course it writes your CDs too
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the most portentous events in the history of science:the creation of laser.Like many a transformative development ,it was met initially with thunderous public indifference,although there were a few mutteringsabout'death rays'.Anumber oif techno-pundits regarded the upstart gizmo as basically a parlour trick ,a solution l0ooking for a problem",as Charles Townes ,who won the Nobel Prize for pioneering the idea ,later wrote.
Half a century later ,lasers m,check out our groceries,read and write CDs&DVDs,guide commmercial aircraft ,enable eye surgergy &dental repairs,target weapons,provide worldwide communications,survey the planet,print documents,cut fabric for clothing &metal for toolsmake powerful pointers for PowerPoint slides&are now poised to ignite nuclear fusion,among scores of uses.
Finally ,the beam's coherence makes it stunningly powerful.Alaser drawing a couple of kilowatts(slightly more than your home hair dryer)can cut through an inch of carbon steel .Out in California,researchers at the Department of Energy's National Ignition Facility are about to concentrate192 laser beams totalling 500 trillion watts on a capsule of hydrogen ,the size of a p[encil eraser.If it works ,the power of the lasers wilol shove the hydrogen atoms together hard enough to ignite nuclear fusion,creating a microscopic star and with it ,some people believe ,the prospect of limitless energy for society using the same source that fires up the sun.
On eof these days ,Perhaps.

Oh!The Koreans

Korean companies in India....
Hyndai Motor India
LG Elecronics India
Samsung India...
Having seen the success of three chaebols ,Korea is looking at India differently.
At a glance :Two nations
In2002 India Korea
Pop[ulatio0n 1 billion 47.6million
GDP $1.25 bILLION $1.38 BILLION
fdi $ 2.6 b $5 million
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They always think big and take risks .Compred to the Japanese ,they are very fast in decision making---SG Awasthi ,ex -chairman Daewoo Motor India

Bookmark:Return to Almora

An environmentalist takes a detour via his novel to bring us close to nature

Much like climate change ,spritualism is much in demand these days .It turns out that both these subjects are close to RK Pachauri's heart .So ,here's a book from the chairman of the Nobel prize -winning IPCC in his avatar as awriter of fiction.
Return to Almora succeeds in establishing a certain creative faith in matters spiritual .You could say that Pachauri has brought us closer to nature once again,but this time through a different route.

Pole Star

South explored ,Reena fixes gaze on North Pole
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Grit and a bit of fortune is how Reena Kaushal Dharmshaktu describes her maiden expedition to the Southn Pole.The first Indian woman to ski to the pole ,Reena however emphasise on the larger issue that the entire expedition sought to raise---that of global warming.
THE 38-year-old mountaineer spent 38 days skiing on the polar ice cap to raise awareness of environmental issues.

US climate change bill in trouble

An ambitious climate change bil has been sliding down President B.Obama's to-do list even before the Republican upset in Massachusetts that saw Scott Brown take Ted Kennnedy's Senate seat.

Netaji,not netas

Subhash Chandra Bose was the practitioner of the antithesis of today's identity -based politics.More than ever before ,on his 113th birthday,we need Bose's pan-Indian vision.

serching u desperately...KR Basson

My old friend Basson .....Wher are you ?
KULDEEP RAI BASSON :Diploma in mECHANICAL engineering
BE{Mech } Jabalpur Engg. Coll\ege
Asstt.EXECUTIVE eNGG
HAL RIG MANUFACTURING DIVISION
lucknow

The polluters say they will not pay

The top-billed Copenhagen climate conference ended with nothing more than a disgraced accord,now rejected.We know what the conference was supposed to agree upon:drastic emission reduction targets by industrialized countries and actions supported by finance and technology by emerging countries such as India.After 2 years of intense negotiations and heightened concerns related to the growing impacts of climate change,the world was supposed to be ready to sign a deal to save the planet.That didn't happen.Worse ,the world showed it was ready for a slugfest,with top leaders participating in dirty ,deceitful and underhand moves to get an accord which was neither effective nor fair.They supprted law ,bur didn't conquer,because the rest of the world showed them might was not right.
As the conference opened in Copenhagen ,a different game emerged .A group of countries -led by the US and Australia assisted by the host government of Denmark -had every intention to subvert the ongoing proces and replace the agreements with a framework of their own.In the very first week ,even as negotiators stuggled to find consensus on issues in the meeting rooms,the UK daily Guardian leaked that the Danish government had a 'paper' ready to spring on the process.This paper contained the elements of the new coalition of the willing.It proposed weak targets for the rich countries ,changed the global, legally -binding nature of the pact to a voluntary stategy based on domestic actions and rejected all principles of equity.As news broke of this 'Dansh proposal' the hosts played dumb.The proposal went underground.
After a long wait,the meeting was reconvened .The UN secretary general was called in for help.But to no avail,as countries refused to allow the accord to be passed with consensus.It was agreed that it would be 'noted and that countries which wanted to associate with itwould write to the secretariat and get themselves listed on friends,supporters and ,Iguess,recipients of the money promised .
The story isn't over.Let us be cler.Copenhagen is the point at which the world has shown its true colurs--the polluters will not reduce and will not pay.
We are all poorer for it.The question now is --what can and must we do?

Destination Jaipur:biggest lit fest

Come ye all to Asia's biggest lit fest
co-directors: William Dalrample and Namita Gokhale
Tina Brown of the New Yorker who visited for the first time ,dubbed us"the greatest literary show on earth."

congratulations

To....Shri Shailendra Chauhan,kavi-aalochak,for his promotion as Deputy General Manager ,Power Grid Corporation ,Baran{Rajasthan}
his profle at:www.siliconindia.com/blogs/shailendrachauhan

Ruchika's toons............

Ruchika's toons robbed Rathore's smile
Top Cop said she had drawn his caricature instead of apologizing

Wage a Kurushetra

Ruchika Girhotra did not die in vain.She has energised the moral imagination of a new and assertive India,disposing the lazy ,unthinking belief that our middle-class is purely self-absorbed ,consumerist and callous.It says something about our changing society that an event that took place 19 years ago has become the source of outrage today and catharsis.Oddly enough ,dharma may be rising rather falling in our country.
It began on Dec.22 when I read about a police official sentenced to six months in jail for molesting a 14 year old girl.That evening I remarked cynically to a friend that this was just one of those stories that would soon die .He shook his head sadly and asked ,"What will it take to improve government?A Kurushetra-like war?"
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may I suggest a must read by Gurcharn Das:The Difficulty of Being Goood :On the subtle Art of Dharma"
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MS Pandher :A Monster

Alllegations
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child sexual abuse
serial killing
cannibalism
flesh trade
organ trade
paedophilia
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add.D-5,sector Nithari ,Noida ,near Delhi
alumni: Bishop Cotton School
St.STEPHEN'S cOLLEGE dELHI
DEALER : JCB equipment
The mind of a serial killer:Sexual sadism is a type of sexual perversion and is also called paraphilias.
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JUSTICE DELAYED IS JUSTICE DENIED

Pollution :stench of failure

rivers of poison
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with more than 45%of the total of the total sewage released in the country emanating from Maharashtra alome,its rivers are now among the most polluted.

E-music to the ears

According to a soundbuzz PricewaterhouseCoopers report on entertain ,the mobile music industry in India will be the largest at Rs. 3600 croreby 2009-10.

Bookmark:The Ascent of Money

A Controversial Account
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this book authored by:Niall Ferguson,one of the world's hundred most influential people by Time" magazine.He teaches history at Harvard University.
The Ascent of Money is Ferguson's attempt to mistify the world of finance.And he does so well by showing how finance has evolved from basic recordsof the annual harvest on clay tablets in Mesopotamia to modern day hedge funds that operate everywhere,yet exist nowhere.
Along the way ,he makes important periods to explain how the idea of wealth has evolved over time from the possession of solid pieces of silver under the Spanish empire to the ownership of relatively complex financial instruments such as equity shares,bonds and insurance.
Ferguson's this book too is likely to be controversial .In one chapter .He describes the 17th century Scottish economist John Law as little more than a genius-rogue,responsible for creating one of the earliest stockmarket bubbles,while he served the emperor of France.
There are also moments when Ferguson leaves the lay reader confused :he introduces the concept of hedge funds early in the book but does not fully explain them for another 200 pages.
A writer ,researcher,political activist,or teacher does not always have to be right to be judged important.To be sure ,Chomsky has beeen right about issues just as often as he has been wrong .
However,Chomsky can sometimes be very callous with his facts .While writing about the 9ILLEGAL AND IMMORAL) invasion of East Timor by Indonesia ,he claims the US supplied 90 per cent of arms used .However ,he does not provide any reference for this assertion .For those who wish to think critically about America and the world ,this collection of Chomsky's writrings is truly essential.

Actions tweet louder

If the twitterati were India's voting class,then Shashi Tharoorwould be the Supreme Leader.A few weeks ago ,when Tharoor's tweet on the government's visa policies generated much fuss among his ministerial colleagues,I had jocularly tweeted,"Maybe ,Tharoor should quit politics to and join journalism.He would have greater freedom as an edit page writer than as a neta!Within minutes I was hit by an avalanche of angry Tharoor followers on Twitter,suggesting that I had committed the ultimate "sin" by questioning their Twitter icon's credentials to hold public office.
Unfortunately for Tharoor ,his parliamentary contituency of Thiruanathapuram isn't quite the Twitter universe while his Congress party workers reserve their adoration for only one Family which is why Tharoor the politician is at odds with Tharoor the Twitterer.The success of Twitter is built on the idea of having an open and constant conversation among a mix of anonymous and influential peole and is designed to bridge social divides .Indian politics ,by contrast thrives on being an exclusive club of the power elite,with minimal contact with the masses.
Tharoor ,of course ,faces another peculiar problem.As a first-time MP who has catapulted into a ministership,he arouses envy and insecurity among his conteporaries.For the many netas waiting in the queue ,the fact that a 53 year-old electoral debutante has taken the elevator to political success is enough for them to look for ways to cut him down to size.An angelicised ,accented ,foreign returnedTharoor is almost a caricature for a vast majority of netas who derive their legitinacy by claiming to be genunine desi 'sons of the soil '.
Just as a candle has become the preferred symbol of middle class activism ,the 140-character limit of Twitter is perfect to express a strong opinion without having to actually get involved into the fuss of public life.
Post script: Tharoor and I come from the same school .He has over six lakh followers,I have a little over 30000 .Since Twitter can be one giant ego massage,must confess to being a little envious!

On Top of the World

Women are moving into positions of power at some of the world's biggest corporations.But for many it's still a long way to the top.

Ten years ago,when we first ranked the world's50 Most Powerful Women ,finding female leaders at Fortune Global 500 companies based outside the USwas an impossible task .There weren't any.And of the 82 women we recognized prior to to this year ,only one --Xie Qihua ,chairman of China's Shanghai Baosteel ---occupied the corner office of a non-US Global chain Daiei and Sanyo.

Biotech Queen

K
ir
an Mazumdar Shaw started a biotech revolution in a Bangalore garage.

Remodeling Martha

MLSO :CEO Susan Lyne says ,she is No.21 in our2005 on our Most Powerful Women List.
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Martha Speaks :
On her legal ordel..."I felt like Alice in Wonderland.I fell into a nightmare."
On agreeing to go to prison...
"When the water is in front of me and the fire is behinf me,I'll jump."
On prison consultants...
"They charge $25,000 to tell you everything .They don't tell you anything."

Show them the money

Indian hockey cannot be run in this ad hoc manner . A professional set-up is a must .

Torrential Reign{bramcohen)

Bram Cohen's BitTorrent software nmade it a cinch to pirate films on the Internet.So why is Hollywood on his side?
Here's how BitTorrent enables Internet users to distribute even humongous files--legally or,in this case,not.
1. A movie fan runs
2. Dowloaders get the BitTorent software ,then find the dot-torrents online.
3.As the swarm grows ,the distrribution burden is spread among users...
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Thanks to real businesses (nd,of course,pirates)BitTorrent has45 million users.
*********
cohen solved the puzzle of why he acts as he does when he realized he had Asperger's
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Cohen and COO Ashwin Navin ,however ,have a plan they think will build on the founder's brainstorm.

Small cars ,big deal

India is well on its way to becoming a global hub for making compact automibles...

Two tears after Ratan Tata unveiled the Nano at the Delhi auto show ,the city is getting a glimpse of how carmakers across continents reacted to the world's cheapest car .This year's exposition has on display small cars fromToyota,Genral Motors,Volkswagenand Honda,the heavyweights of the automobile industry.
Most of the models will ,over the next two years ,principally small ones ,are growing at 16per cent a year.There is 4 of the the 1.4 million cars that sold in India in2008-09 will be compact .China and India are the the only two sizable growth markets in the world ,significant for any global manrufacturer in the long term.India offers the added advantage of being a testing ground for a global shift towardssmaller ,fuel-efficient and low-emission cars.
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Car penetration per 1000 people
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UK 511
US 458
Germany 499
Brazil 102
Russia 212
Japan 490
India 11
China 22
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@movies

Toy Story was the first full-length film to be completely computer-generated.It required 87 2-CPU SparcStation 20's ,30 4-CPU SparcStation 20's and a SparcServer 1000.ABOUT 800000 MANHOURS WENT INTO PRODUCING THE MOVIE FOR pIXAR ,OWNED BY sTEVE jOBS OF Apple.

Micro-credit Messiahs

Anew breed of microfinance entrepreneurs has emerged on the scene ,armed with magt. techniques and technology,and a burning desire to get big quickly.

Harsha Moily uses microfinance to create a rural market place .Son of former K'taka CM Veerappa Moily,an MBA from Thundeerbird.
Mnab Chakraborty's Mimo Finance lends to the poor of Uttarakhand.
Subhankar Sengupta has a customer base of 23000 with a cumulative loan disbursement of rs.16 crore
Rakesh Dubey and ANUP kR. sINGH OF sonata finance disbursed 25 Crore Rupees.
Kishore Kr.Puli disbursed 3.5crore
Praseeda Kunam serves pne of India's poorest districts,Rewa.
PN Vsudevan :4500customers within a month of launch..Vasu...quit a Rs.55-lakh per annum job with Dev.Credit Bank to launch UPDB.

With eyes wide shut

Most people would opt for a nice long snooze over other things . So we'll take a nap while you read this

Now , for those of you turned in dateless and earlier than fellow party-goers this New Year's Eve ,take heart.It seems that those 40winks are much more precious to the masses than finmding a long-forgotten tenner in the old jeans pocket or even cuddling up in bed.In fact ,if a survey by Britain's Batchelors Cup-a-Soup makers is to be belived ,most people would prefer to doze off on their own rather than waste time getting cosy with their parterners.What's more ,a good night's sleep guarantees greater bliss than the odd lie-in,sleeping on freshly laundered bed linen ,uncontrollable laughter;reminiscing with friends and even a grand bargain at your favourite store.
Now only if our judges back home had known this earlier --and duly followed that age-old 'early to bed and early to rise'adage --they'd have promptly tucked in at seven and woken up fresh enough to plough through those mounting case files.And have been spared the wrath of litigators and legislators alike,given their prosperity to teeter at the edge of wakefulness while graver matters hang in the balance.
So ,with the proposed new judicial Standards and Accountability Bill 2009, our men in black won't be hitting the snooze button on their alarm clocks anymore.Under the new rules,the gravel's set to come down hard on the sloppy and the drowsy.
It's hard to blame our lawgivers,given that long-winding arguments can easily put even hardcore energy-drink junkies to sleep.But the fact that the nxt time they can be hauled up before an Oversight Committeee should serve as a wake-up call for those looking for a quick catnap in the courthouse .Our advice: it's best to get that night's sleep,mate.

Down from Earth

There's a buzz about extra-terrestrial life being discovered soon. But do aliens want to be found?

We are not alone .That much we know by looking beyond our elbow and finally the guy in the next seat blissfully munching on his samosas.But are we humans the only sentient beings in the universe?Before youn can quote that line from the Bhagvat Gita ,Nobel-prize-winning Nasa astrophysicist John C.Mather tells us that wee are "very close to finding other Earth-like planets in the universe ."Which makes it more likely for life like ours to exist outside this climate -changing planet of ours.
So what has made Mather revive that old chestnut of alien life?After all ,finding extra-terrestrial life was the talk of the galaxy when the late astrophysicist Carl Sagan put that bee firmly in our bonnet some 30 years ago through his award-winning TV documentary series Cosmos and novel Contact.Well ,apart from the instrument on Chandrayaan1st. finding traces of water on the moon last year and aliens returning in the post-Spielberg era w2ith James Cameron's Avatar raking up piles of earthly currencies , a series of telescopes schuduled for launch this year will be carrying new radiation-sensing technology that can detect planets revolving around alien suns.So ?Well ,bright boys like Mather presume that if planets spin around a star and have days and nights,they will have temperatures that support life-forms.Frankly ,we're not holding our breath.
But before we get excited about the prospects odf coming into contact with little green men or sqidgy brown women,we should ask two questions.Do they want to be found ?And is ther really intelligent life on Earth ? Going by what we see these days,the truth is still out there.

tH E WONDER DECADE:INFOTECH

1999: MILLENNUUM BUG:TCS , Wipro, become trusted parterners for Y2K compliance.
Infosys achieves $100 million in revenues.
2000-2001:Indian IT industry moves from Y2K to complex e-business projects.
2002-2003: NR Narayan Murthy steps down from Infosys and Nandan Nilekani takes over.
2004-2005:TCS lists on BSE.
IBM,Accenture andHPSTART DEVELOPING THEIR Indian offshore presence to make them their largest operations outside the US.
2006-2007: Indian IT becomes $31-bollion industry.
TCS ' annual revenues cross $6billion.
Satyam fdounder B.Ramalinga Raju admits to over $1 billion fraud.

Billy's pugmarks:a tribute

The indomitable Billy Arjan Singh taught that the tiger is an animal worth fightimg for.
In the forests of India there is mourning Billy Arjan Singh ,an old tiger ,is dead .
I give quiet thanks for Billy .AND FOR PEOPLE LIKE uLHAS , fATEH sIGH rATHORE, vALMIK tHAPAR ,bITTU sEHGAL ETC.

From the blog cabinet

In the month of August 1999,the San Fransisco company Pyra Labs ,made an international service avaible to the public.The format was basically an online diary that was named after a contractionof the term "weblog" first coined by the term hirsute anti-capitalist John Barger in 1997(The contracted name "blog"was coined by Peter Merholz after he broke up the word "weblog"to "we blog" and give birth to a full-blown verb.)

Blog in!

The Internet has become a dominant means of communication across the globe.It has enabled highly successful services such as e-mail and chat for direct conversation,and newsgroups mand forums for publishing ideas and thoughts.People share not only opinions over ther Internet,but also photographs,video,music and money .The Internet has evolved into a huge graffiti boardm where anyone can stick up their creations,for feedback and comments from people from all walks of life.
Some popular sites for blogging
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www.livejournal.com
www.blogger.com
www.blogroots.com

Blogging Etiquette
*****************
Don't use abusive languageon public blogs
Be discrete with the pictures.
Respect all bloggers.
Healthy blogging is for the open-minded .Don't ban a user because he or she has differing opinion.
Don't hesitate to ban mischief-makers from the blog.
If you are referencing items from other Web sites ,provide a link to them.

Let the rivers flow

Indian policy makers scoff at traditional water harvesting .For them infrastructure stops at big projects ,possibly because of big money.
Some solutions for water management:Big dams are not equitable
*Empower communities
*Create awareness
*Maintain water bodies
*River basin organisations