Hotel Taj : icon of whose India ?

Gnani Sankaran- Tamil writer, Chennai.

Watching at least four English news channels surfing from one another during the last 60 hours of terror strike made me feel a terror of another kind. The terror of assaulting one's mind and sensitivity with cameras, sound bites and non-stop blabbers. All these channels have been trying to manufacture my consent for a big lie called - Hotel Taj the icon of India.
Whose India, Whose Icon ?

It is a matter of great shame that these channels simply did not bother about the other icon that faced the first attack from terrorists - the Chatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (CST) railway station. CST is the true icon of Mumbai. It is through this railway station hundreds of Indians from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, West Bengal and Tamilnadu have poured into Mumbai over the years, transforming themselves into Mumbaikars and built the Mumbai of today along with the Marathis and Kolis

But the channels would not recognise this. Nor would they recognise the thirty odd dead bodies strewn all over the platform of CST. No Barkha dutt went there to tell us who they were. But she was at Taj to show us the damaged furniture and reception lobby braving the guards. And the TV cameras did not go to the government run JJ hospital to find out who those 26 unidentified bodies were. Instead they were again invading the battered Taj to try in vain for a scoop shot of the dead bodies of the page 3 celebrities.

In all probability, the unidentified bodies could be those of workers from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh migrating to Mumbai, arriving by train at CST without cell phones and pan cards to identify them. Even after 60 hours after the CST massacre, no channel has bothered to cover in detail what transpired there.

The channels conveniently failed to acknowledge that the Aam Aadmis of India surviving in Mumbai were not affected by Taj, Oberoi and Trident closing down for a couple of weeks or months. What mattered to them was the stoppage of BEST buses and suburban trains even for one hour. But the channels were not covering that aspect of the terror attack. Such information at best merited a scroll line, while the cameras have to be dedicated for real time thriller unfolding at Taj or Nariman bhavan.

The so called justification for the hype the channels built around heritage site Taj falling down (CST is also a heritage site), is that Hotel Taj is where the rich and the powerful of India and the globe congregate. It is a symbol or icon of power of money and politics, not India. It is the icon of the financiers and swindlers of India. The Mumbai and India were built by the Aam Aadmis who passed through CST and Taj was the oasis of peace and privacy for those who wielded power over these mass of labouring classes. Leopold club and Taj were the haunts of rich spoilt kids who would drive their vehicles over sleeping Aam Aadmis on the pavement, the Mafiosi of Mumbai forever financing the glitterati of Bollywood (and also the terrorists) , Political brokers and industrialists.

It is precisely because Taj is the icon of power and not people, that the terrorists chose to strike.

The terrorists have understood after several efforts that the Aam Aadmi will never break down even if you bomb her markets and trains. He/she was resilient because that is the only way he/she can even survive.

Resilience was another word that annoyed the pundits of news channels and their patrons this time. What resilience, enough is enough, said Pranoy Roy's channel on the left side of the channel spectrum. Same sentiments were echoed by Arnab Goswami representing the right wing of the broadcast media whose time is now. Can Rajdeep be far behind in this game of one upmanship over TRPs ? They all attacked resilience this time. They wanted firm action from the government in tackling terror.

The same channels celebrated resilience when bombs went off in trains and markets killing and maiming the Aam Aadmis. The resilience of the ordinary worker suited the rich business class of Mumbai since work or manufacture or film shooting did not stop. When it came to them, the rich shamelessly exhibited their lack of nerves and refused to be resilient themselves. They cry for government intervention now to protect their private spas and swimming pools and bars and restaurants, similar to the way in which Citibank, General Motors and the ilk cry for government money when their coffers are emptied by their own ideologies.

The terrorists have learnt that the ordinary Indian is unperturbed by terror. For one whose daily existence itself is a terror of government sponsored inflation and market sponsored exclusion, pain is something he has learnt to live with. The rich of Mumbai and India Inc are facing the pain for the first time and learning about it just as the middle classes of India learnt about violation of human rights only during emergency, a cool 28 years after independence.

And human rights were another favourite issue for the channels to whip at times of terrorism.

Arnab Goswami in an animated voice wondered where were those champions of human rights now, not to be seen applauding the brave and selfless police officers who gave up their life in fighting terorism. Well, the counter question would be where were you when such officers were violating the human rights of Aam Aadmis. Has there ever been any 24 hour non stop coverage of violence against dalits and adivasis of this country?

This definitely was not the time to manufacture consent for the extra legal and third degree methods of interrogation of police and army but Arnabs don't miss a single opportunity to serve their class masters, this time the jingoistic patriotism came in handy to whitewash the entire uniformed services.

The sacrifice of the commandos or the police officers who went down dying at the hands of ruthless terrorists is no doubt heart rending but in vain in a situation which needed not just bran but also brain. Israel has a point when it says the operations were misplanned resulting in the death of its nationals here.

Khakares and Salaskars would not be dead if they did not commit the mistake of traveling by the same vehicle. It is a basic lesson in management that the top brass should never t ravel together in crisis. The terrorists, if only they had watched the channels, would have laughed their hearts out when the Chief of the Marine commandos, an elite force, masking his face so unprofessionally in a see-through cloth, told the media that the commandos had no idea about the structure of the Hotel Taj which they were trying to liberate. But the terrorists knew the place thoroughly, he acknowledged.

Is it so difficult to obtain a ground plan of Hotel Taj and discuss operation strategy thoroughly for at least one hour before entering? This is something even an event manager would first ask for, if he had to fix 25 audio systems and 50 CCtvs for a cultural event in a hotel. Would not Ratan Tata have provided a plan of his ancestral hotel to the commandos within one hour considering the mighty apparatus at his and government's disposal? Are satelite pictures only available for terrorists and not the government agencies ? In an operation known to consume time, one more hour for preparation would have only improved the efficiency of execution.

Sacrifices become doubly tragic in unprofessional circumstances. But the Aam Aadmis always believe that terror-shooters do better planning than terrorists. And the gullible media in a jingoistic mood would not raise any question about any of these issues.

They after all have their favourite whipping boy - the politician the eternal entertainer for the non-voting rich classes of India.

Arnabs and Rajdeeps would wax eloquent on Nanmohan Singh and Advani visiting Mumbai separately and not together showing solidarity even at this hour of national crisis. What a farce? Why can't these channels pool together all their camera crew and reporters at this time of national calamity and share the sound and visual bites which could mean a wider and deeper coverage of events with such a huge human resource to command? Why should Arnab and Rajdeep and Barkha keep harping every five minutes that this piece of information was exclusive to their channel, at the time of such a national crisis? Is this the time to promote the channel? If that is valid, the politician promoting his own political constituency is equally valid. And the duty of the politican is to do politics, his politics. It is for the people to evaluate that politics.
And terrorism is not above politics. It is politics by other means.

To come to grips with it and to eventually eliminate it, the practice of politics by proper means needs constant fine tuning and improvement. Decrying all politics and politicians, only helps terrorists and dictators who are the two sides of the same coin. And the rich and powerful always prefer terrorists and dictators to do business with.

Those caught in this crossfire are always the Aam Aadmis whose deaths are not even mourned - the taxi driver who lost the entire family at CST firing, the numerous waiters and stewards who lost their lives working in Taj for a monthly salary that would be one time bill for their masters.

Postscript: In a fit of anger and depression, I sent a message to all the channels, 30 hours through the coverage. After all they have been constantly asking the viewers to message them for anything and everything. My message read: I send this with lots of pain. All channels, including yours, must apologise for not covering the victims of CST massacre, the real mumbaikars and aam aadmis of India. Your obsession with five star elite is disgusting. Learn from the print media please. No channel bothered. Only srinivasan Jain replied: you are right. We are trying to redress balance today. Well, nothing happened till the time of writing this 66 hours after the terror attack.

Why should we ban ‘live’ reporting of anti-terrorist & Hostage rescue missions ?

“Several foreign nationals are trapped in the Taj Hotel Mahal”
“The top management of a multinational corporation was meeting…”
“Terrorists are suspected to be on the 9th floor…”
“NSG troops are about to have arrived in Mumbai…”
“NSG commandos have entered the Hotel…”

Some of the information telecast live by all news channels on terror attack on Bombay last few days.

News channels have an objective—to fetch the latest news and share them with viewers, much before a competitor channel does that. But I feel this habit of indiscriminate live reporting, while a combat operation is in progress, can be catastrophic for the success of the military operations against terror.

Let us just think for a while. Do we really need to know everything on a ‘as soon as it happens’ basis? I feel not. Whether NSG commandos have just arrived at airport, or have entered the hotel or are on the first floor or second at this moment, is not necessary to be revealed to the general public on a realtime basis.

Showing such news live, will be immensely useful only to terrorists and their supporters outside.
Consider this. The commandos only know that the militants are somewhere inside the hotel, but the militants know everything about the movements and positions of their pursuers through TV.
Like:

# Who is on their trail (Army/ NSG/ local police, etc)
# What is their ETA (estimated time of arrival), which tells them, how much time they have before a gun battle would begin)
# Where they are right now, at the main entrance/ just entered their floor
# How is the world responding? Is there pressure mounting on the government to succumb to the demands of terrorists to get the hostages freed (so that they can act tough during negotiation)?
# How many of their friends are alive or dead (so that they can assess their strength)?
# What has been the impact of their strike-how many police and civilian dead, the current morale of police, who all as been detained/suspected?
# Live visuals of the street-to assess a possible escape strategy
# What information about them the outside world has (which floor they are in, their head count etc. And much more…

In my view, all this information, while useful to viewers and relatives of victims, also helps the terrorists/ militants to consolidate their position and pose a greater challenge to commandos trying to hunt them down and/ or rescue the hostages.

Why is our media helping them by airing live all the sensitive information about the anti terror operations?

The common man does not need to know them on a live basis.

Can’t the information & broadcasting ministry think of banning live reporting during a hostage crisis? Let the channels air the news with a delay of few hours, so that the police and security agencies will have a lead time of few hours, wherein terrorists would be as equally uninformed as they are.

Please note that I am not advocating censorship. I am all for free speech and expression. What I am proposing, is that security agencies should have the power to impose a delay of say three to six hours w.r.t live reporting of anti terror operations.

Let the TV channels record whatever they want, but they should be aired only after a gap of few hours. I do not think anyone loses anything with this.

The movie A Wednesday also shares same opinion. I feel the good old days of oncein a day news bulletin was far better.

What do you think?

(This post is dedicated to all the brave police officials and innocent civilians who lost their lives in yesterday’s terror attack in Bombay)

Union Home minister Shivraj patil resigns - Breaking news

Breaking News! Under fire from several quarters for his "inability" to prevent the rising terror attacks in India, Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil resigned, owning moral responsibility for the loss of lives and properties in Mumbai due to the recent terror attacks. The terror attack in Mumbai was the immediate cause for his resignation.

Shivraj Patil's own partymen from Congress and other UPA partners were gunning for his head. The BJP, Left and other political parties have been demanding for Shivraj Patil's resignation for a long time. The UPA government did not want to take any chance over Shivraj Patil in the wake of rising anger and emotion in the public after the terror attacks in Mumbai. Pranab Mukherjee is tipped to be the next Home Minister of India.

Where is thackery now ?? after mumbai mayhem, Raj and his pseudo feelings

Raj and his pseudo feelings. Where is Raj Thackeray & his ‘brave’ sena? Forget about he supporting the country, he didn’t even come to save his own state/city. Over 200 NSG from all parts of the country including Bihar and no Marathi Manoos, have been fighting to take terrorists out of Mumbai. Isn’t it ironic that when we required him and his ’sena’ the most, he was no where to be seen? Hitting on gullible poor Indians, this is the true face of his politics. Use ’solvable’ NON-issues to politicize his career.

Poor Raj

Where is his face now in the midst of all the chaos the mumbai has been under the last 4 days ?? What will he say now?? when the National Security Guard (NSG) with all its commandos came in to rescue the Hotels. They hardly cared about their lives as they fought not just for their countrymen but also for the foreigners saving the country some pride from this adverse situation...

Now it seems hez blaming the NCP Govt. for sending the Mumbaikar - Kakre, vijay and all for sending them to rescue foreigners from the Islamist terrorists The article in zeenews

How easily would his ’sena’ would come and bash people for buying greeting cards on Valentine’s day, his men would bash outsiders for ‘working’ in Maharashtra and now when his own people were brutally murdered, he has no qualms and watches TV in the comfort of his luxury home.

Now as i wrote this article im hearing the news about the resignation of the home minister Shivraj Patil facing the intelligence lapse in mumbai. I seriously think that its time the UPA led govt. had to tighten its belt to curb the violence and peaking violence reaching newer highs everytime it strikes.

Should Shivaraj Patil resign?

An astonishing aspect of the current political atmosphere is the complete lack of accountability—or demands for it. Heads are demanded and heads roll when a politician is caught in some minor sexual peccadillo, in a sting operation, or a corruption scandal. But the slaughter of scores of hard-working Indians in City after City across the nation, and the burgeoning fear “psychosis” that threatens to rip the country asunder, barely evokes a squeak either from the media or from the opposition.

Shivaraj Patil is a standout case. Rejected by the voters of Latur in the 2004 elections but resurrected by the Congress in one of those actions that beggars belief, Patil’s performance as Union home minister has been dull, lack-lustre and insipid. Not only has Patil presided over blast after serial blast, he has seemed as clueless as everybody else. Even the Sai Baba of Puttaparthi, whom he personally credits for helping him preside over an unruly Lok Sabha as Speaker, seems to be in no position to provide help at this critical juncture.

Question: Should the man who has helplessly watched the Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bombay, Hyderabad, Jaipur blasts and countless other incidents resign? And if the Congress high command is unwilling, should the “new, improved” Manmohan throw him out to show Singh is King after the trust-vote?

Shiver down IT spine - Chain blasts in Bangalore public places

I think this could only be a warning of what is yet to happen. There can be no control if anyone decides to do this however this can only be prevented with the help of the public. This is nothing new to India or any in any states for that matter. Mumbai rose past these hurdles time and again. But the resilience they had is tremendous. Will bangalore too rise up to the occassion and stand tall against the social culprits who did these sabotages only time will tell. Telegraph reports..

Bangalore, July 25: Eight low-intensity blasts occurring in quick succession shook Bangalore today, killing a woman and wounding seven persons in the first serial bombings in India’s IT capital.

Left near pavement edges, bus stops and roadside walls, seven small bombs went off between 1.30pm and 2.15pm and an eighth around 5.30.

The first of them killed Sudha Ravi at a bus stop and injured her husband and four others. Union home minister Shivraj Patil said in Delhi that a second person had died of his injuries but Bangalore police denied this.

Although no group has claimed responsibility, the police suspect the Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), many of whose activists were arrested on terror charges in recent months.

Police commissioner Shankar Bidari said each bomb contained explosives equal to “one or two grenades”, was packed with nuts, bolts and nails, and appeared to have been set off by a timer.

The timing has left the police puzzled. “It was a non-peak hour when the blasts occurred,” Bidari said. Six of the blasts had no casualties.

The terror strike, the first in Bangalore after gunmen killed a professor at an Indian Institute of Science seminar in December 2005, left the city panicky. Several IT firms, schools, colleges and cinemas closed quickly as the news hopped from mobile to mobile, leaving phone lines jammed.

“I was on my way to office when we heard a noise,” Arun Daniel told a TV channel. “It sounded like a cracker. The traffic was blocked, everyone was running around. It was not a severe blast.”

Police found gelatin sticks, mainly used in quarry operations, at one of the blast sites. Bomb experts said gelatin sticks and a concoction of ammonium nitrate in fuel oil had been used to cause at least two of the explosions.

One of them was the blast that killed Sudha. The bomb had been placed among shrubs behind a bus stop at Madiwala on Hosur Road.

The only other blast that caused casualties was the seventh. At 2.15, Ravindran and Ganesh were waiting to cross Raja Ram Mohan Roy Road when a bomb went off at a garden where they stood surrounded by lush green plants.

Three other blasts occurred on Hosur Road while the remaining three took place on Mysore Road, including the evening explosion near the Gopalan Mall bus stop, where the damage was limited to a private wall and the gutter below it.

One bomb went off in a gutter near the R.V. Engineering College bus stop that teems with students after 2.30pm, when the college closes. There were no students when the blast took place just after 2pm.

The police had a tough time clearing crowds at the blast sites. “Go back, please, there could be more bombs,” policemen were heard politely telling the crowds till they lost their patience and used lathis.

“Push the crowd back, they are trampling on forensic evidence,” Bidari yelled at his men as sniffer dogs and forensic experts searched for clues.

Karnataka police have in recent months made several arrests and claimed to have foiled terror attacks on the state secretariat, Infosys campuses in Bangalore and Mysore, and Hubli airport. Two Pakistanis were picked up in Mysore, a Kashmiri handicraft seller in Hampi and several Simi activists in Hubli.

The police later busted a Simi hideout in Bangalore and arrested two members, including one who worked for an IT company.

Simi is accused of carrying out a minor blast at a city church in 2001. The same day, a van carrying explosives blew up, killing two Simi activists, police say.

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The School Bag

A touching story i read somewhere in blogosphere....

She sat beneath the banyan tree and beside her sat her tuition bag. Her eyes were hurt and she was angry. She kept looking at the open well few yards away. She imagined herself floating over the water the next day. Her appa*** will be angry with her for jumping into the well. Her thambi*** will miss her. Her amma*** will realize that she was after all a good girl. She pulled out her homework notebook which was neatly covered with newspaper that her amma had borrowed from the grocery stores. She looked at the handmade label. She and her brother had made it as soon as her appa had bought them their new books for that year. The label read – Kanmani. Vth Standard. She had wanted to write Kannu, just how her parents called her, instead she wrote Kanmani, the name her friends and teachers called her.

She tore a paper from the almost new notebook. She didn’t mind the torn edges that looked like rat-nibbled paper. She wanted to write her last letter to her parents before she made her way into the well early next morning. Her father had gone out of town and would be returning the next day. She would be gone by then. She addressed the letter to her appa and wrote how amma always scolded her for everything, how amma had always loved thambi and did not find time for her. She wrote about how much she had missed her appa when he was gone all the time, how she used to pretend to be studying late into the night, just because her dad would come home late. She wrote about how much she loved her thambi, how much she cared for him and how amma never used to understand that. Tears trickled down her cheeks as she poured out her frustrations.

Kannu folded the paper and safely pressed it inside the notebook along with a flower that she had picked near the tree. She tucked it inside the cloth bag and looked up at the sky. Darkness was engulfing the town and it was time for her to reach home, to savor her amma’s food for one last time. When her amma wakes up the next morning the door will be open. The kolam*** outside the house will be missing. Kannu will also be missing.

“Why did it take so long to get home?” her amma asked as she stepped into the house.

“I had to finish some additional homework today”

“Come and help me in the kitchen”

Their house was small with just 2 rooms, one living and the other kitchen. As she placed her bag beside her thambi’s bag, she saw him playing with his broken toys.

She had always dreamt of buying him new toys in a year or two. She knew she would be pulled out of school in a year and sent to work. As she walked into the kitchen she thought how her dream will never be realized. He might still have to play with broken toys.

“Tomorrow I am going to the temple early in the morning as it is Friday. So get up early with me and help me in the kitchen so that I can pack lunch for both of you and leave home. You take care of thambi and get him ready for school”, her amma said as she placed the rice pot over the earthen stove.

Kannu did not answer. She did not know how to execute her plan. She was still angry with her amma and she didn’t want to give up on her plan to give up on life.

“Are you listening?” her amma asked.

She nodded her head as she sat down with the onions. Kannu did not want to talk to her amma.

That night, the three of them sat outside the house on the thinnai*** and her amma fed her thambi telling him stories. Kannu ate her share of the rice and curry trying to follow her amma’s stories. She hardly remembered the time when she was her thambi’s age; six. She thought her amma would have told her tales as well and that she had grown up to be a big girl and have forgotten the past. She smiled at her thambi time and again and made faces so that he will laugh at her. Every mouthful of rice, her mind raced back to the letter tucked inside the notebook. “Will they search for my notebooks or should I leave it in a prominent place in the house?” her mind was still planning.

She readied the living room for the three of them to sleep beside a table fan that made creaking noises. The family was used to the noise all night. Her amma and thambi slept right beside the fan while she slept diagonally. She was used to it and she let it be because she loved seeing her thambi sleep so peacefully. She switched off the light and rested her head on the hard pillow. She did not close her eyes. She stared at the dark emptiness on the ceiling and her mind reeled back in time – what had happened few hours ago when she had come back from school.

“Where is thambi’s notebook and box?” her amma was frantically searching for them in thambi’s bag. Everyday Kannu carried both her bag and her thambi’s to and from school. That day her thambi had forgotten one of his notebooks and his pencil box and left them on the class desk.

“I don’t know amma. I just picked him from his classroom and we walked back home” there was fear in Kannu’s eyes when she answered her amma.

Her amma looked at thambi and he began to cry.

“I will run back to school and check” Kannu said as she headed towards the door.

“Wait! Who will go to the tuition? We are not wasting money on your carelessness. What if someone flicks the notebook and box?” her amma was clearly mad at Kannu.

“Now what do you want me to do? I didn’t know thambi had left it behind”

“Don’t talk back!” her amma was enraged. She held Kannu by her ear and stared into her petrified eyes.

Kannu was silent and looked back into her amma’s eyes. She wanted to push her away and run away from that house. Her eyes welled up and her amma’s grip on her ear loosened. She had a stinging pain run down her earlobe.

“You will not forget anything from school ever. You must check your belongings and that of thambi’s also before heading back home. Next time you leave something behind, I will not let you inside the house”

Kannu was angry. She thought it was a very harsh punishment that her amma will be imposing. She looked at her thambi as she picked her tuition bag. He was playing with his broken toys oblivious to the hurt in his sister’s eyes and heart. She was hurt and she wanted to teach her amma a lesson for always finding fault with her. Instead of walking into the tuition class, she sat beneath the banyan tree and wrote her last letter to her family.

As she closed her eyes there was a knock on the door and she opened her eyes with a startle. Her amma woke up from her sleep and switched on the light. Kannu squinted her eyes and looked at the man at the door. It was her appa and her happiness knew no bounds. She jumped at him in joy and broke down. He hugged her and pacified her. Her amma walked into the kitchen to heat the leftover food.

“I thought I will not see you” Kannu said as her eyes were still moist.

“Kannu, appa is here and you will see me quite often hereafter. Promise” he said and hugged her.

“I was harsh with her today” her amma said as she placed the plate on the floor.

“I’m sure Kannu would not have done anything” her appa said.

Kannu felt jubilant and looked at her amma as if to convey that she had appa to support her.

“She left behind thambi’s notebook and pencil box back in school. She might not understand that it is hard to buy another notebook and box this year”

It made sense to Kannu. She knew her parents worked hard to send them both to school.

“Kannu, amma is not angry with you. I just want you to be careful of our belongings. Just like your belongings you will always take care of thambi
also” her amma said as she sat beside appa and placed a plate of diced ripe mangoes.

“Can I take one?” Kannu asked.

“Sure” her appa passed the plate to her.

Kannu was happy. Her anger was replaced with the sweetness of the mangoes. She wanted to tear off the letter right away, but she had to wait until morning to do it. She went to sleep with a smile and the fact that it was Friday the next day. She already thought about how to spend her weekend.

July 16. The day dawned with a million orange flares on the sky. It looked different, the dawn. Kannu and her thambi walked to school. Her dad had left home early that day and her amma had gone to the temple. As they walked down the dusty road, she told her thambi of how appa had come home the previous night and how she got a chance to taste the sweet mangoes that her amma had hid in the rice drum.

At her class, while the teacher had excused herself to go out for a while, Kannu opened her bag to pull out the letter and then realized that it was in her tuition notebook which was at home. Her heart began to beat faster. She imagined her amma open her tuition notebook and read the letter. She wanted to run back home to destroy the letter. She hurried to the classroom door to run out before the teacher was back. The door was locked from outside. Kannu knew something was unusual that day, that moment. She placed her ear on the door. The cries were getting louder. She stood there motionless and the cries were getting scarier. She looked down beneath the door. Black smoke engulfed her legs as if a spirit had just been set free out of a lamp. She turned back and saw the other students in her classroom. They were oblivious to what was happening outside and kept playing. In less than a minute the room was getting smokier and the kids were coughing and some were choking. Kannu began to hit the door faster. The place
was beginning to feel warmer. Kannu realized that something outside the classroom was on fire. She quickly turned around and saw for other entrances to that classroom. She found a grilled gate that had a narrow passage to the ground floor.

She ran towards the gate and pushed it hard. She was sweating profusely and the kids were running frantically. The screams were deafening and Kannu did not want to give up. She wanted to live. As if to remember something, she quickly turned around and ran to her desk. She quickly put her pencil into her box and put everything else into her bag, swung it on her shoulder and ran to the gate. Some more kids joined in jostling the door open. Luckily the door opened and the kids ran down the narrow passage which was already engulfed in fire and black smoke. Kannu did not stop to look back at the kids who were already caught in the hungry fire’s mouth. She ran to the 1st standard classroom to pick her brother. The class was empty and her mind went blank. She did not know if they had a class elsewhere. She couldn’t think. She quickly ran down into open air outside the school. The thatched roofs were on fire all over the school and she looked up. The 11’oclock sun blinded her eyes. Amidst all the mayhem she spotted her thambi who was standing along with his other classmates and wailing. As soon as he saw Kannu, he ran to her and hid his face in her hug.

“Where is your bag?” she asked him.

He did not reply out of shock.

“Let me go get it” she said and pushed him away from her. She gave her bag to him. He began to cry even louder and pleaded her not to go.

“I will come back” she said and ran inside the school. Nobody noticed her as there were lot more kids who needed attention. Fire brigade men came out carrying kids who were half burnt. Some were burnt beyond recognition.

A kilometer away from the school, Kannu’s amma walked out of the house. Her eyes were moist. She had read the letter that Kannu had left in her notebook. She wanted to let Kannu know how much she meant to her and that she had always been rude to her so that she understands the responsibility as a girl child. As she looked up she saw smoke engulfing the bright and windy day. She knew something was wrong. It wasn’t too late for her to smell death.

She ran towards the school and stood there not reacting to the fire that gallantly swallowed the school. She looked around. Every kid looked like her
son and daughter. She moved inch-by-inch fearing that someone would be carrying her kids like charred material. Her head went dizzy and she stood at a place not moving any further.

“Ammmmaaaa!” she heard her son scream somewhere. Amidst all the chaos and mayhem, her son’s voice felt like cold drizzle on a sweltering mid day. He dropped the bag and ran to his amma and hugged her. She wailed and the sound of her own cries deafened her.

“Where is Kannu?” she asked as he buried himself in her.

He did not look at the school. His little index finger showed the direction of the school.

She stood up and saw the school building. The fire was put out and the whole building looked like an ugly man smoking like a chimney pipe. The school was painted in black, as if to have engulfed death on itself. She dreaded walking in. She made her way into the school in spite of people stopping her at the gate. In search of Kannu. Her daughter who misunderstood her love. She covered her nose with her saree as she walked in. Bodies were strewn all over. Kids aged eight to ten years lay there like burnt roses. She stepped one body over the other in search of her daughter. She kept telling herself that her daughter was waiting outside for her to come back after this ordeal. She walked into Kannu’s classroom and did not find her there. She did not recognize few faces but her heart knew she was not there.

She walked down the same narrow passage where Kannu had earlier run along with the other kids. As she decided to step out of the school again, she was reminded of the bag that thambi had while he saw him outside. It was Kannu’s. She quickly ran towards thambi’s classroom, beating her hands over her chest. She knew Kannu was there. She wanted her to be alive. She stepped into his classroom and looked around. There was only one body among the charred tables. Kannu. Beside her were traces of the burnt and tattered bag of thambi’s.

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*** Amma (mother), appa (father), thambi (younger brother), kolam (dotted ranagoli generally drawn outside the house using rice powder), thinnai (raised platform outside the house, generally beside the steps or either side of the steps)

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Disclaimer: The germ of this story was instilled on my mind 4 years ago when I saw the live footage and pictures of the Kumbakonam Fire tragedy on July 16, 2004. I froze watching the footage. Although the story is based on the tragedy, the characters are purely fictional. This story is for those kids who perished for no fault of theirs. God bless their families who might still be reeling under the loss of their loved ones.

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More on the tragedy: Eighty-three children aged between eight and ten years were on Friday charred to death, 20 of them beyond recognition, while over 27 others received serious burns when a major fire raged through their school in this town of Tamil Nadu's Thanjavur district.

The dead included 28 boys, 38 girls and the bodies of others were charred beyond recognition....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/3900631.stm
http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/jul/16tn.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3899971.stm
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/18/international/asia/18INDI.html?ex=1247803200&en=fd0d8ce20b93a7e8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-07/17/content_349354.htm

Inflation a comparison as Zimbabwe breaks all records!

Inflation breaks all the records in Zimbabwe. But it's a wonder how at this inflation-level, its economy is still surviving, the country has observed election and Robert Mugabe has lost, but still not very large scale of violence has been reported!

OUR government, along with Reserve Bank of India (RBI), worries about the effect of nearing eight per cent inflation in our country. But if we see inflation data of few other countries and observe that still those economies are surviving, then we will realise that chances are that we may say, “Hey we are very comfortable as far as inflation is concerned.” There are a number of countries that are having inflation rate much more than ours, but still those economies are alive.

Inflation in Zimbabwe has broken all the records and is first such country of the list where inflation has reached to an uncountable percentage. Name of Zimbabwe will probably appear in the Guinness Book of World Records. In March 2008, inflation was 3,55,000 per cent, which was the double of the inflation in February 2008, when it was 1, 65,000 per cent. We have to say thanks to the Country’s Central Bank (CCB) and the people who are involved in inflation calculation. How they are able to calculate the 3, 55,000 per cent inflation is out of the intelligence of normal people.

What does this level of inflation in Zimbabwe mean to the poor residents of the country? It means that Zimbabweans are purchasing a sandwich for Zimbabwean $50 million, sounds crazy? One kg of potatoes cost Zimbabwean $17 million. Effectively, this means that the value of Zimbabwean dollar has reached almost to zero. Hence 50-million Zimbabwean dollar equals to only1 US$… really only one US$. And also, 50 million Zimbabwean dollar equals to almost 42 Indian rupees.

On May 2, 2008, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) issued currency note of 500 million dollars, which had an expiry date. Once again a crazy talk? But true, the Zimbabwean $50, 0000000.00 will be a bearer cheque with validity up to December 31, 2008. After December 31, 2008, no body can accept it.

Zimbabwe is a country, which has reached a state of laissez-faire with more than 80 per cent of people unemployed. But it is really a wonder that how at this level of inflation, the economy of Zimbabwe is still surviving, banks are still working, accountings are still being done, the country has observed election and Robert Mugabe has lost, but still not very large scale of violence has been reported!

Iraq is the second country of the world, which has registered the highest inflation of 53.2 per cent. Thanks to the USA and its ruthless policy, which has forced the one-time growing and developing Iraq to a war-trodden country. 53.2 per cent inflation in Iraq has crippled its economy.

Another country in the list is Guinea with a whooping 30.9 per cent inflation. Irony is that Guinea is the country blessed with rich mineral resources, gold, diamond and huge iron ore deposits, but is still one of the poorest countries of the world!
Yemen is the other country, which is suffering from high inflation – as high as 20.8 per cent. The country is having more than 87 per cent of poor population. Recently in news due to ‘Nargis’ cyclone, which has taken lives of more than one lakh of people, Myanmar is also not far behind and more than 20 per cent of inflation. Military Junta is so vicious that it is putting lot of obstacles in sending any help to the cyclone hit people by world community. Erstwhile Soviet nation country, Uzbekistan, is also having a high inflation of 19.8 per cent. Another African country, Congo, is struggling with 18.2 per cent inflation. Afghanistan, the country, which is trying to recuperate of the war, is having inflation more than17 per cent. Serbia is having inflation of 15.5 per cent.

Most of the countries, which are struggling with very high inflation, are also named among the poor countries of the world. Inflation hit hard to the poor people and the poor countries too. Most of the inflation hit countries are African countries, which are either war-trodden or suffering from other economic or social crisis.

Inflation in Zimbabwe.... What the Hell...

Well i still can't imagine how a life would be under these circumstances... When we at India fight to curb even at 10% and most western countries fighting it out at less than 5%, one million is total anarchy..... Seems Mugabe is unwilling to quit whatsoever happens there.. How do the citizens survive ?? When america voicing for global peace and prosperity why can't they help with their hand out.... Probably they dont have any oil resouces do they ???

This is the latest article i managed to get somewhere....

http://www.fin24.com/articles/default/di....1518-25_2326591

Harare - Weary Zimbabweans are facing a new wave of massive price increases that put many basic goods out of their reach. Independent finance houses said in an assessment Tuesday that annual inflation rose this month to 1 063 572% based on prices of a basket of basic foodstuffs.

As stores opened for business Wednesday, a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1bn Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars. A loaf of bread cost 200m Zimbabwe dollars - enough for 12 new cars a decade ago.

Fresh price rises were expected after the state Grain Marketing Board announced up to 25-fold increases in its prices to commercial millers for wheat and the corn meal staple.

The economy was on shop clerk Jessica Rukuni's mind as she left the public swimming pool in downtown Harare's central park with three disappointed children. She found the new admission price of 100m Zimbabwe dollars - 30 US cents - out of reach.

The divorcee's income is the equivalent of about one US dollar a day. Her family has one basic meal a day. One kilogram of chicken more than doubled to 1nb local dollars Tuesday and rental for a two-bedroom apartment rose from this month's end to 22bn Zimbabwe dollars - eight times the May price.

Inflation will reach 5m%

The state Rent Board, where unfair or inflated rental hikes are reported, has had no working telephones for several months, a telephone operator at the Ministry of Housing said.

In the economic meltdown, manufacturing industries, running at below 30% of their capacity, reported growing absenteeism by workers facing soaring commuter bus fares.

Economic analysts say unless the rate of inflation is slowed, annual inflation will likely reach about 5m percent by October. Zimbabwe's official annual inflation was given by the government as 165 000% in February, already by far the highest in the world.

"The crunch is going to come when local money is eroded to the point it is no longer acceptable" in commercial activities or as earnings, especially by longtime ruler pres. Robert Mugabe's loyalists, said independent Harare economist John Robertson.

Already, more transactions are being done in US dollars, both openly and in secret. Robertson said sectors of the economy - phone services, the supply chain, maintenance of equipment or manufacturing - may collapse one at a time, but a country continues to exist even in chaos or anarchy.

"In the end, a country must fall into line with international financial standards to balance its books" as experience in once-inflationary Latin American countries has shown, he said. He said that meant re-engaging with international financial institutions, lenders, donors and investors traditionally dominated globally by Western countries, the main source of hard currency.

Mugabe has severed ties with the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other financial organisations. But Mugabe's "Look East" policy to attract trade and investment from China and Asia has yielded a fraction of what is needed to halt inflation.

In the fastest shrinking economy outside a conventional war zone, much of the nation's crucial savings have been used up in government borrowing and spending without corresponding productive income. "It is as though a starving man has eaten his left foot and starts eating his right foot to survive in the short term," Robertson said. - Sapa-AP

What was that ?? Zim inflation hits 1 000 000 percent

ZIMBABWE’s inflation rate has hit one million percent, a number that beggars belief and signals the end of that country’s formal economy.

It is simply no longer possible to place a price on anything because it is rising by the minute and all purchases now become acts of negotiation or bartering.

The unimaginable number — 1 063 572 percent, to be exact (21 May 2008) — is not a thumbsuck. It is the considered opinion of independent finance houses, reports wire service Sapa.

“As stores opened for business Wednesday, a small pack of locally produced coffee beans cost just short of 1bn Zimbabwe dollars. A decade ago, that sum would have bought 60 new cars.”

Other statistics throw the economic crisis into sharp relief:

A loaf of bread cost 200 million Zimbabwe dollars at the time the story was written. It will be much more by the time you read this.

A number in the region of 5 million percent is being predicted for October.

Government’s official figure for February was already 165 000 percent, the highest in the world, the report said.

The fact that refugees from xenophobic violence in South Africa are preparing to return to a country where the economy is in such a parlous state is testimony to the hell they have experienced in this country.

But Zimbabwe’s economic ruin, its gerrymandering of electoral processes, its purchase of vast amounts of Chinese armaments and its human rights abuses remain acceptable to South Africa’s political elite.

Why else would President Thabo Mbeki regularly visit Mugabe in Harare? Why else would South Africa say that the arms transaction which had the world aghast took place “between two sovereign nations”?

The reality is that this country is paying a heavy price for Zimbabwe’s failure. A price that is growing with every day of dithering.

We've Been Changing the Climate for Eons, and That's Reason for Hope

Our epoch needs a new name. You're familiar with, say, the Jurassic? It started 200 million years ago and ended 55 million years later, give or take. For the past 12,000 years, we've been living in the Holocene. But in 2000, the Nobel Prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen pitched a new name for our times: the Anthropocene, the epoch affected by people. He dated it to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution in the late 1700s — in other words, when we started messing things up. William Ruddiman, a retired climatologist at the University of Virginia, likes the name Anthropocene, too. But he thinks it started much, much earlier — as far back as 6,000 BC, when human beings first discovered agriculture. That's when we started razing forests and burning lots of wood, pumping enough carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere to alter the world's climate.

What's the difference? Scientists still argue — though not as much as deniers would have you believe — about the extent to which climate change is the result of human activity. And they still argue — quite a lot, actually — about how quickly the climate shifts in response to new conditions. As I understand Ruddiman, we humans may have been screwing up the climate for far longer than anyone thought. But that's good — because if we could change things then, we should certainly be able to change them now.

The gist of Ruddiman's argument is that 8,000 years ago, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere began their sharpest increase in 350,000 years — a CO2 spike that correlates with the origins of agriculture. Then, 5,000 years ago, methane levels jumped — at roughly the same moment humans started growing rice in paddies (organic matter decomposing in water emits methane). By 2,000 years ago, agriculture and forest-clearing had added as much as 140 billion tons of CO2 to the air, enough to stave off what would likely have been another ice age.

Since then, the climate has wiggled back and forth between warm and cold. Around AD 800, things got weirdly hot; Antarctic ice cores show atmospheric CO2 peaking then at 285 parts per million. Around 1300, CO2 levels started dropping, and by 1600 that number had decreased to as low as 275 ppm. According to Ruddiman, humans caused that nosedive, too — by dying in large numbers: In the 14th century, about one-third of Europe's population died in the Black Plague, and around the same time, some 50 million Native Americans were being wiped out by European germs. The much-reduced surviving population burned less wood and coal, grew less food, and even allowed wooded areas to grow back.

Today things are heating up again. Atmospheric CO2 concentrations have been on the steep incline of an exponential growth curve since 1800. Today they're at roughly 380 ppm. How high will temperatures rise as a result of so much carbon? We don't know. But the more you mess up the climate, the more feedback effects there are and the more chaotic it gets, until eventually we reach tipping points, when various important climatic systems — Arctic summer sea ice, for example, or the Indian summer monsoon — suddenly disappear or change dramatically.

But I see hope in Ruddiman's conclusions. If humans have been changing the climate for eight millennia, that means we can keep right on doing it. We can steer the climate back on course. (I should add that Ruddiman's hypothesis is controversial, and he himself interprets his findings much more conservatively.)

So what do we do? You already know the drill: Make machines more energy efficient. Use less fossil fuel. Sequester CO2. Protect rain forests. Develop alternative energy sources like wind and solar power. Build more nuclear plants. Maybe even change the planet through geoengineering, the once far-out idea that the greenhouse effect can be reversed by, say, releasing fleets of mirrors or sulfur particles into the atmosphere. Ruddiman suggests we focus on reducing the concentrations of methane, a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, by trapping emissions from landfills and changing the fertilizer used by rice farmers.

The point is, exhorting corporations and governments to act now isn't just ringing a rhetorical bell: We can rescue the globe's climatic system as abruptly as we can push it over the edge. And no matter what we call our current epoch, it would be nice if we kept the planet healthy enough to let us live to see the next one.

Peter Schwartz (peter_schwartz@gbn.com) is a cofounder and chair of the Global Business Network.

Stop complaining, people! We live in a bounteous land ruled by brilliant intellectuals

New Delhi-based economist Ajay Shah has a fascinating column in India's Business Standard (via Bayesian Heresy) in which he makes the case that the current financial troubles in the U.S. may bring a recession, but can't really be called a crisis. I recommend reading the whole thing, but here are a couple of key passages:

In such difficult times, why is the US economy still rolling with the punches? Why has the US economy not collapsed in a mire of failed firms, finger-pointing by government agencies, morchas in the streets, and JPC inquiries? Understanding how this shock is being absorbed, and the equilibriating forces in play, is important in making a call on whether this is a crisis or a mere recession.

In the idealised world of securitisation, a parcel of home loans is converted into securities, which are then sold into the broad market. The ownership of these securities is dispersed amidst international hedge funds, pension funds, etc. The originator of the home loan is largely immune to the outcome : if a default takes place, the losses are borne by the owners of the securities.
Many critics of securitisation have pointed out that this theory has not quite panned out as expected. However, at the same time, there is no doubting the fact that securitisation has given a substantial dispersion of the $400 billion loss. For this reason, the impact of the massive loss on the US financial system is not as large as it might otherwise have been.

A JPC appears to be a Joint Parliamentary Committee, a morcha is a "public demonstration for conveying a protest or making a demand." I'd say we've already had the equivalent of a few JPC inquiries in the U.S., with many more yet to come. As for morchas, those are probably coming, too--although they'll remain pretty calm affairs unless the economy gets really bad.

The point about securitization is really interesting. As lots of smart folks have been saying lately, we've got an insolvency problem. But it may be dispersed so widely that relatively few financial institutions are in fact insolvent.

Then there's this gem from Shah:

Unlike many countries which have experienced crises, monetary policy in the US is manned by brilliant intellectuals like Ben Bernanke and Fred Mishkin. Few people in the world understand the interplay between monetary policy and financial sector difficulties as well as them.

Fed governor Mishkin goes by Rick, not Fred (his full name is Frederic). But whatever--he is really smart, and Bernanke (whom I don't know nearly as well) seems to be too. I'm generally hesitant to place all too much trust in smarts. But I guess it's better than putting trust in dumbs.

Is India heading towards a food crisis?

Rising prices are not pure indicator of crisis

Shortage of food is not only faced by India but it is a globally experienced problem. Drought in Australia has lead to international shortage of wheat and an export ban on rice from Thailand and Vietnam has pressured the international rice supply.

This situation of crisis can be debated in the context of inflated prices of food products and mainly that of staple food. Prices are likely to rise if the supply is not able to meet the demand.

In India, the rate at which the consumer preferences are changing is much less than the rate of slowdown in the production of cereals along with diversification of land towards high value agriculture. This effect is likely to create pressure on supply, but as of now, the rising fuel prices have primarily led to the spurt in food prices.

The concern is that with global shortage of foodgrains, even imports are unviable, but the FCI has assured that there are enough stocks of rice and wheat, if there is actually a situation of food crisis.

Since last two decades, Indian agriculture output is constrained by low yields, falling water table, poor infrastructure, lack of irrigation and no new technological breakthrough. Grain output has been stagnant and agriculture had been growing at a low rate of 2-2.5 per cent. The need for investment in agriculture has been repeatedly highlighted so as to avoid any shortages in future.

On the other side, increase in demand of cereals from the livestock sector for feed, the use of cereals for bio-fuel has further diversified the use of grains. Thus in the present time, high fuel costs, increasing demand for feed, use of cereals for bio-fuel along with unattended supply constraints have created pressure on supply.

In addition, worsening global supplies and rising prices have created a situation that looks like a food crisis. But in a short- term scenario, rising food prices are not the pure indicator of a food crisis. But still, the major concern is that of rising global temperature which would further impact the yields, and this trend of rising prices may not be a short-lived phenomena.

Calling All Mad Scientists - to stop Global Warming...

To stop global warming we may need to start thinking outside the box

In the summer of 1858, a putrid odor of raw sewage arose from the River Thames in London and choked the city in its sickly grip. The Great Stink, as it came to be known, spurred Britain's lawmakers to rush a bill through Parliament to provide the money to build a modern sewer system -- one that would discharge sewage downstream from the river's drinking water intake. Construction of similar structures in the same era in a number of European and American cities, including Paris and Chicago, ended epidemics of typhoid and cholera, which victims contracted by drinking water contaminated with feces. If the Victorians could eliminate these diseases through careful disposal of human waste, why can't we counter climate change by extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and burying it where it can do us no harm?

That radical proposal lies at the core of Fixing Climate, the latest in a spate of books on the seemingly intractable problem of global warming. While most writers stress the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, the authors of Fixing Climate -- Columbia University earth scientist Wallace Broecker and the science writer Robert Kunzig -- suggest instead that we view carbon dioxide as a form of sewage: a pollutant with which we have carelessly contaminated the atmosphere, but one that we can remove with the right technology. Doing so is necessary, they argue, because the chance that we will succeed in paring back our carbon emissions with the speed required to avert disaster is quite small.

Broecker and Kunzig embrace a techno-fix that would require us to scrub our carbon dioxide waste from the atmosphere and sock it away in rocks. Their proposal is typically American: upbeat in its can-do spirit, yet pragmatic. The pair are not breast-beating penitents. In fact, they open their book with an eloquent ode to the beauty of the piston engine, acknowledging that fossil fuels have enabled the average American to live as well as a preindustrial king. Yet it's time to shovel away the scum. "We need to create the means for taking our carbon back out of the air and putting it underground, where it came from," they write.

If anyone should be taken seriously on the topic of climate change, it is Wallace Broecker, who has spent more than 50 years studying the climate of the past 200,000 years, and who was one of the first to warn, more than three decades ago, of the dangers of global warming. Born in 1931 ("the same year as Twinkies," the book points out), he arrived in 1952 at what is now Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. He has spent his entire career there, publishing more than 400 papers and winning numerous prizes, including the National Medal of Science. Over the years, Broecker has developed ways to calculate the rate of gas exchange between the atmosphere and the ocean -- in particular, oceanic uptake of carbon dioxide -- and devised what is known as Broecker's Conveyor Belt, a global scheme of ocean circulation that is thought to drive climate patterns the world over.

As background to their proposal, Broecker and Kunzig devote about a third of their book to explaining the complex history of climate change science; a laudable effort, though at times my eyelids did begin to droop. To their credit, they enliven the text with asides on the notable figures who first figured out the science at hand (among them the Swedish physicist Svante Arrhenius, whose "ravishing young wife, Sophia" deserted him in 1894 after a year of marriage in the midst of his calculations on planet-warming carbon dioxide).

The book's real focus, though, is a climate fix hatched by Klaus Lackner, now a physicist at the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Lackner's company, Global Research Technologies, announced in the spring of 2007 that it had built a prototype "air-capture technology product" to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. When Broecker first heard Lackner talking about his ideas in 1999, he recalled thinking, "This guy is nuts." Lackner, then an associate director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, argued that we should attempt to accelerate the natural chemical breakdown of rocks. The plan: grind up billions of tons of magnesium- or calcium-rich rocks, chemically combine them with carbon dioxide to form another type of rock -- a harmless carbonate -- and then find a place to put the resulting mountains of the stuff. Later on, Broecker found Lackner's tendency to think big-and his willingness to attack a problem from first principles -- "more exciting than crazy," and lured him to Columbia.

In fact, there is nothing all that revolutionary about pulling carbon dioxide out of the air; it is done on every space shuttle and submarine to prevent crews from asphyxiating on their own exhaled breath. Lackner built his prototype on a budget of $5 million from the late Gary Comer, the founder of Lands' End. In this device, crushed rocks have been replaced by a plastic compound that reacts with CO2 to form sodium bicarbonate: essentially, baking soda. If Lackner's vision comes to fruition, 20-foot-tall carbon-sucking towers-each resembling an erect Tower of Pisa-could be arrayed all over the planet. The final step in this massive cleanup project would be to extract CO2 from the bicarbonate and inject it into the ground in liquid form.

Each tower would extract about one ton of carbon dioxide a day, so it would take an awful lot of towers to scrub the 80 million tons we emit daily. The sheer scale of the problem dwarfs any single solution, but in Broecker and Kunzig's view, Lackner's invention is "the only hope." Their reasoning is simple: the towers can be placed anywhere -- far easier and more practical than attaching a CO2 scrubber to every car and airplane on the planet. And because CO2 disperses quickly through the entire atmosphere, removing it in one spot helps the whole world.

By contrast, say Broecker and Kunzig, collecting CO2 from the flues of power plants would entail transporting the gas perhaps hundreds of miles to a dumping ground. Nevertheless, this too promises to be an important means for steering us from the path of doom, should we manage to make it happen. In January, the Department of Energy scrapped plans for FutureGen, a coal-fired plant that was to collect and dispose of its own CO2 emissions.

The Norwegian oil company Statoil currently captures CO2 from its drilling operations at the Sleipner natural gas field in the North Sea, and it then injects a million tons of the gas each year under the seabed. There are plenty of other places to put the heat-trapping gas. Iceland, for example, is made entirely of basalt, a volcanic rock rich in calcium silicates, which bind with CO2. This fall, Reykjavik Energy plans to begin pumping carbon dioxide half a mile deep into basalt deposits. Vast banks of basalt also exist elsewhere: in the United States, volcanic rock covers more than 60,000 square miles of Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.

Detractors will inevitably dub such schemes misguided or deluded. Tim Flannery, for one, argues in his 2005 book, The Weather Makers, that the volume of carbon dioxide we create is "so prodigious that it seems impossible for Earth to tuck it away without suffering fatal indigestion." The authors of Fixing Climate are not oblivious to the scale of the problem or the expense of the solution. If we choose Lackner's original proposal, then large mounds of carbonate must be piled or buried somewhere. That would transform the landscape, but so would covering hundreds of square miles with solar panels. "There is no free lunch in solving the CO2 problem," Broecker and Kunzig say.

As for Lackner's current proposal to array carbon-capturing towers across the globe, they admit that it sounds utopian. "If the amount [of CO2] the world produced in a single year were spread over Manhattan, it would rise three-quarters of the way up the Empire State Building. On the other hand, if all the wastewater produced in the United States alone were spread over Manhattan, even the radio antenna on top of the Empire State would be far beneath the waves. Yet somehow in the twentieth century we managed to get our sewage problem under control." With our own Great Stink now threatening to overpower the entire planet, we owe it to ourselves and our descendants to consider the merits of such ambitious technological fixes before we suffocate in our own stifling waste.

Whatz Subprime crisis and Subprime pain: Who lost how much

The United States' subprime crisis has turned out to be bigger than previously thought and has the potential to drag the world's largest economy into a recession.

And although there are varying opinions on whether the US could slip into a recession or not, most economists do feel that despite the US Federal Reserve's rate cuts and the Bush administration's $161-billion economic aid plan, chances of a recession are high.

Be that as it may, one thing is for certain: the losses from the subprime that financial majors have incurred will take a long time to get over.

Given below, in the table, are the estimated losses that some of the world's largest banks have suffered on account of home loan defaults in the US. The total figure adds up to over $76 billion and does not take into account losses suffered by many other financial majors that had an exposure to the crisis.

Four Indian banks -- State Bank of India, ICICI Bank, Bank of Baroda, and Bank of India too have big exposure to credit derivatives, with the spreads on these widening since international lenders turned risk-averse following the crisis in the US subprime (or high-risk home loan) market.

Credit derivatives are instruments for which the underlying asset is a loan or a bond. Marking to market means valuing a portfolio based on the prevailing market price.
Subprime losses till date

Bank - Losses -

Citigroup - $18.0 billion
UBS - $13.5 billion
Morgan Stanley - $9.4 billion
Merrill Lynch - $8.0 billion
HSBC - $3.4 billion
Bear Stearns - $3.2 billion
Deutsche Bank - $3.2 billion
Bank of America - $3.0 billion
Barclays - $2.6 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland - $2.6 billion

IKB - $2.6 billion
Societe Generale - $2.0 billion
Freddie Mac - $2.0 billion
Wachovia - $1.1 billion
Credit Suisse - $1.0 billion

ICICI Bank has the highest exposure of $1.5 billion. SBI has an estimated exposure of $1 billion, BoI of $300 million, and BoB of $150 million. About 5-10 per cent of this figure could be the losses that these banks could incur.

Understanding the subprime crisis

Just what is the subprime crisis? And why is it having such a decisive impact on the Indian stock market?

Let's understand it. Take, for example, an American who seeks a home loan, but does not have a very good credit rating. That essentially means that banks may not extend him a home loan. Enter, another American with stellar credit rating and the willingness to take on some risk. Given his good credit rating, banks are willing to give him a loan at a certain rate of interest.

This individual the divides the loan into small lots and gives them out as home loans to lots of Americans, who do not have very good credit rating and cannot get a home loan from any bank. He gives out the home loan at a rate of interest higher than it is paying to the bank it borrowed money from.

This higher rate is referred to as the subprime rate and this home loan market is referred to as the subprime home loan market.

By giving out a home loan to lots of individuals, the individual ensures that even if a few of them default, his overall position is not affected much. But the individual giving out loans in the subprime market does not stop here. He does not wait for the principal and the interest on the subprime home loans to be repaid, so that he can repay his loan to the bank, which has given him the loan.

He goes ahead and securitizes these loans. Securitization involves converting these home loans into financial securities, which promise to pay a certain rate of interest.

These financial securities are then sold to big institutional investors. The interest and the principal that is repaid by the subprime borrowers through equated monthly installments is passed onto these institutional investors.

The individual giving out the subprime loans, takes the money that he gets from selling the financial securities and passes it on to the bank, he had taken the loan from, thereby repaying the loan.

A neat plan. But then things went horribly wrong. The subprime home loans were given out as floating rate home loans. So as interest rates increased, the rates on floating home loans too went up, and so did the monthly installments needed to service these loans.

These high installments hit the subprime borrowers with the terrible force. Many, given their poor credit rating to begin with, defaulted. Once, more and more subprime borrowers started defaulting, payments to the institutional investors who had bought the financial securities stopped, leading to huge losses.

So how did that effect stock markets in India? Institutional investors who had invested in securitized paper from the subprime home loan market, saw their investments turning into losses. Most big investors have a certain fixed proportion of their total investments invested in various parts of the world.

Once investments in the US turned bad, more money had to be invested in the US, to maintain that fixed proportion. In order to invest more money in the US, money had to come in from somewhere. And this money came in from emerging markets like India, where their investments have been doing well.

These big institutional investors, to make good of their losses on the subprime market, have been selling their investments in India and other emerging markets. Since the amount of selling in the market far overweighs the amount of buying, Indian stock prices have been falling.
Additional inputs: Business Standard

Subprime crisis: Worst may be yet to come

Much has been written on the subprime crisis and the impact it will have on the world, in general, and on India in particular. However, the worst might be yet to come.

So what is the subprime home loan market? It is aggregation of those individuals in the United States to whom, normal banks do not lend, for the simple reason that their credit histories are not good. Hence, there is a greater chance of the individual taking the loan defaulting. And no bank likes to take on customers who are likely to default.

Here is where institutions which have a good credit rating and are willing to take some amount of risk, come in. They borrow money from banks and lend it to the Americans who have a bad credit rating. They divide this loan, into a lot of small tranches and give it out as home loans to Americans who do not have a good credit rating and to whom the bank will not give a home loan directly.

They give out the loan at a rate of interest, which is obviously higher than the rate at which they had borrowed from the bank. This higher rate is referred to as the subprime rate and this home loan market is referred to as the subprime home loan market.

The loans given out in the subprime market are largely adjustable rate mortgages(ARMs). These mortgages are somewhat similar to the floating rate home loans given in India, where as the interest rates vary, the equated monthly installment (EMI) of the floating rate home loan also varies. But there is more to the ARMs than that.

The two most popular adjustable rate mortgages are the interest-only ARMs and payment-option ARMs.

Interest-only ARMs, as the name suggests, involves paying only the interest on the loan for the first few years. This can typically vary anywhere from 3 years to 10 years. After that the principal repayment kicks in. What this does is that during the initial few years of repaying the loan, it keeps the EMI low. Once the principal repayment kicks in, the EMI starts increasing substantially.

Under the payment-option ARM, the interest rate for the first year is very low. After that, the interest rate is the same as other mortgage loans. But the low interest rate comes with a cost attached. The unpaid interest, essentially the difference between the offered interest rate and the real interest rate that is being charged on other mortgages, gets added to the overall loan and the overall loan keeps increasing.

There are certain dates on which these loans are reset. When these loans are reset, the EMI on these loans changes. The largest resets are expected to happen in the first six months of next year.

In 2007, around $197 billion of subprime loans have been reset. Estimates suggest that in the first six months of 2008, around $521 billion of resets are expected. Of this resets nearly 30% will be on interest-only ARMs and payment-option ARMs.

What this means is that the EMI of the subprime borrowers, who have either an interest-option ARM or a payment-option ARM, is expected to go up, as and when these resets happen. Once this happens, whether the subprime borrowers will continue to pay their EMIs is not very certain.

As we have seen in the earlier articles, the institution giving out the home loans in the subprime market does not keep the loans on its books. It does not wait for the principal and the interest on the subprime home loans to be repaid. It goes ahead and securitises these loans. Securitisation essentially involves, converting these home loans into financial securities, which promise to pay a certain rate of interest. These financial securities are then sold to big institutional investors.
The interest and the principal that is repaid by the subprime borrowers through EMI is passed onto these institutional investors who buy these financial securities.

Now once the EMIs go up, there is a great chance that subprime borrowers may not be able to pay them. If these EMIs are not paid, then investors who had bought the securitised paper will not get paid and hence suffer losses.

To cover their losses they may have to sell their investments in emerging markets like India, where there investments have been generating return.

And when they sell their investments in emerging markets, the markets are likely to fall, if there is less buying at that point of time.