India « What Ho!

11Jul/100

The Indian Plutocracy

Our pretense to have a democracy
Is merely transparent hypocrisy:
Though the polity balks,
It's the money that talks:
Our "leaders" bow down to plutocracy.

Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

Tagged as: Government, India No Comments

29Nov/090

I contribute to CRY every year and I suppose they have me on a list somewhere because every year at around this time CRY volunteers visit my home. Two young ladies, Swati & Soudamini, visited us yesterday and I handed over a cheque to them. Swati & Soudamini informed me that this year’s theme is the “Girl Child”, particularly girls under threat of sexual exploitation.

All donations to CRY can be 100% Tax Exempt as per Indian Income Tax laws. I see from the CRY web site that they have online donation facilities too.

I have scanned the CRY flyer Swati gave me and am putting it up here. If you wish to contribute and live in Hyderabad do call her. She is a volunteer and spends her weekends visiting people around the city. Please interact with her and give your contribution to her. People like her must be encouraged. So while you can donate online it would be much nicer to speak with Swati and her friends.

Please do not misuse the information provided here. By putting up the CRY volunteer’s contact information on a public forum like this blog I am potentially exposing the young lady to danger. I think the benefits out weigh any danger and expect my readers to be mature, responsible adults who will not misuse this trust.

Tagged as: Charity, CRY, Donate, India No Comments

13Oct/090

Marooned in Raichur – Videos

During our Raichur episode I was too busy worrying to take pictures. But I did shoot two small videos using my Sony Ericsson P1i mobile phone. The first one is of the small river about 12 kilometers from Makthal that stopped me on the night of Oct 2, 2009. Moin drove me to the bridge across this river the next morning so that “I could see for myself…”

The flooded bridge near Makthal

The second video is of the flooded bridge between Merikal & Devarkadra that forced us to take a 50 km detour via CC Kunta & Allipur in a race against the flood waters. This little river cost us a good 2 hours on the return journey and an anxious 5 kilometers while the Innova coasted on diesel fumes into the petrol pump at Devarkadra

Flooded bridge before Devarkadra

Tagged as: Adventure, Family, Flood, India, Raichur, Travels No Comments

8Oct/090

Light A Diya For Every State in India!

I am going to Light a LG Virtual Diya for every state in the country! I request all readers to light at least 1 Diya. More if you can. And please invite your family & friends to light a few Diyas too.

I hope & pray that one day soon every child in this country will have a Diwali to look forward to and not just watch others celebrate.

Click here to light a Diya for a Child.

Update:

12.58 pm, Oct 8, 2009 - It took me some time but I have lit a Diya for every State in the Nation! And twice for my home state of Orissa

Update:

2.45 pm, Oct 8, 2009 – Damn! I didn’t read the fine print. 1 click per IP only! LG will not pay any money to CRY for multiple clicks from the same IP. I suppose they don’t want somebody like me to write a small script to go click the pages and garner points for CRY. Pity. For this excludes my family members from using the home computer to light a Diya. They would all use different email addresses but since I have a static IP they would all end up having the same IP address.

The same thing would happen to people at work because most often they would be behind a Firewall and connecting to the Internet via a Proxy Server. The LG servers will only see the Proxy Server’s IP. So only person’s click will register.

This doesn’t look so magnanimous of LG anymore.

Pity.

Tagged as: Charity, Diwali, India No Comments

7Oct/090

LG’s Light A Diya – Proceeds to CRY

LG India has a excellent initiative where they will donate Re. 1/- to CRY for every virtual Diya that is lit on their web site. They have put up a very nice video on You Tube to advertise the initiative.