Megachurches 1

Picture the nation of India as you imagine it to be with its Hindu temples and masses of people. Now add to that picture some Christian megachurches.

Satish Kumar grew up as a "rowdy lad" in a poor Hindu family. When he heard from a street evangelist that Jesus Christ could change his life, he embraced the message. Beginning as a manual laborer for conferences, he started a youth fellowship group. That was followed by a new church of 25 members in 2005.

In ten years that church had grown to 130,000 members. Today Pastor Kumar's congregation numbers over 300,000, a church size unknown in the U.S. and hard to imagine.

Global coal 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

According to this forecast by the International Energy Agency (IEA), China's production of coal in 2024 will increase by 57 million tons (Mt) over its 2021 production.

India's increase over the same time is expected to be 162 million tons (Mt).

Reductions in coal production by other countries won't come close to making up for these huge increases. 

from "The Future of Coal Production (2021-2024)"

Sex selective 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Unborn daughters are aborted in spite of laws forbidding it. The discrimination continues even after they are born. Little girls in India are 75% more likely to die than little boys.

Because of deadly gender bias and the subsequent societal imbalance of the sexes, girls are trafficked into forced marriage and prostitution with the attending violence.

"Gendercide in India must end. Invisible Girl Project is committed to shedding light on this atrocity, combatting it, and caring for its survivors."

Sex selective 1

About half a million girls are lost each year in India due to the practice of sex-selective abortion. About 111 boys are born for every 100 girls. The naturally occurring ratio of male babies to female babies born is 101 to 100.

Boys are preferred to girls. It's a pattern that also exists in China. The two most populous nations in the world have a significant excess of males to females. That's a problem.

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Long term, this imbalance between the sexes will mean millions of men may not ever marry. Female trafficking will increase.

This post is from a population analyst podcast about sex selective abortion in India here. Tomorrow: the Invisible Girl Project.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Garbage tower 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

"On a recent day, trucks rumbled up a steep dirt road to the top of the garbage pile, where crows blotted out the sun and wind kicked up fumes from moldy vegetables and feces discarded in saggy plastic bags.

"Down below, Faiyaz Khan, the owner of a dairy plot, said this patch of land was once dense forest, perfect for his buffalo. He wondered what his future would hold.

“The height of the dump keeps increasing and my health keeps decreasing,” said Mr. Khan.

"Something as simple as installing trash cans around Delhi has not been done, partly because garbage collection is not guaranteed and many residents are used to simply flinging trash onto the ground.

“You don’t know whether the public will even use them,” said Mr. Annepu, founder of a waste management non-profit. Cultural change doesn't come easy.

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Garbage tower 1

India's garbage problem has not been solved since the last time we took a look at it.
There have been attempts to solve it. Prime Minister Modi's party started "Clean India Mission" in 2014. People who don't separate their trash for recycling are subject to fines. One company is making mulch out of the trash.

But there are multiple hurdles to overcome. Designating new dumps faces opposition from residents. "A few hundred thousand ragpickers" live in nearby slums, picking plastic out of the dumps to sell, and they may not vote for politicians who threaten their livelihood.

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Four official dumps in the Delhi metro contain about 80 billion pounds. They're getting so big that air traffic controllers may have to start steering planes around them.

During a monsoon rain, part of the dump crashed and two people were killed.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Train traffick 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Children, both boys and girls, are sold into slavery or prostitution in some of India's train stations in big numbers. It's not a safe place for kids. Families sleep on the floor of the station, where kids can be stolen from between their parents. Over 630 children were reported missing to police in the West Bengal district in one month.

Even the police are not necessarily a safe haven. "Deva, 13, sleeps in the parking area and describes police violence as a more pernicious threat than traffickers. “They wake us up and hit us or chase me and my friends.”

And finally . . families themselves may put kids in danger.  Some send children to live in the station in the hope that they can somehow make money.

Uptal, 13, now lives in the station as an escape from home, playing cricket by day and sleeping on cars in the parking lot at night. At age 9 he was forced by his father into 12-hour days of work at a factory.

"Rosheen, aged 12, was born on the station steps outside its main entrance, the latest generation of her family to have lived in one of the most public places it is possible to imagine.Her bedroom is a flattened cardboard box . ."

photo: zeenews

Train traffick

One person - just one -can make a difference. Here's the story of one:

Adarsh Shrivastava was traveling by train last week in India. It's common to see children on the trains, but he noticed that the 26 young girls in his car were visibly upset, some crying.

He suspected the children were being trafficked. 

But what could one person do about it? Something clever and effective: he opened a new Twitter account, tweeted what he saw, and tagged the authorities. 

The Railway Protection Force in civilian clothes boarded the train a few stops later. The men with the girls were apprehended and the girls brought to safety.

"When news of Shrivastava’s actions went viral, Twitter users called for him to be awarded for his “heroism.” He simply responded,“Thanks, but as a citizen of India, it’s our responsibility to help people.”

(cont'd tomorrow)

Clean village

An Indian government official claimed in 2010 that his country's cities are the dirtiest in the world. "Come, Clean India" is the campaign aimed at improving things by 2019.

But Mawlynnong is out of the mainstream because it's been declared the "cleanest village in Asia" by Discover India magazine. It's a legendary source of pride for the region, an example held up by Prime Minister Modi as a model to aspire to.

"Cleanliness is deeply ingrained into living a good life here; it's just what you do." Children sweep the streets and empty rubbish bins. Everyone has cleaning duties with extra weekend projects, and town gardeners beautify the public paths.

In the words of mom and homemaker Sara Karrymba, "We are Christians from more than 100 years back, and cleaning is learned from our elders. We pass on these skills, from me to my children and from them to their children." The cleanliness tradition may have started about 130 years ago during an outbreak of cholera.

"She says, "My kids know it's different here." And there's more . . the village is 100% literate.

Chess village

Can a game change a life?

Fifty years ago, alcohol and gambling dominated leisure time in the northern India village of Marottichal. A villager, Unnikrishnan, opened his own teashop and started teaching his customers how to play a game he learned in a nearby town. The game was chess - and it went viral.

"Miraculously, the game’s popularity flourished while drinking and gambling declined."

“Chess improves concentration, builds character and creates community . . . We don’t watch television here; we play chess and talk to each other.” 😇

They figure at least one person per household plays chess. 

Rohingya

If 400,000 destitute people came across our US borders, we'd feel it. Charities, government units, media, all would be in an uproar. 

But we have resources we could mobilize. Many more resources than, say, Bangladesh - which is where 400,000 destitute refugees have in fact come. They fled from their homes in Myanmar (Burma) in SE Asia, south of China and east of India.

The Atlantic has amazing pictures that for sure put a face on the problem.

Savage

Government programs can have unexpected consequences. Think, "I didn't see that coming."

India's government will pay the family if its family member is killed by a tiger outside the nature reserve. So . . prepare yourself for a bizarre story.

"Elderly relatives are being sent into tiger reserves to be killed so that families can claim compensation in a horrifying new trend in India. 

"Younger family members appear to be targeting Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh by sending their elders into the forest to be mauled to death before dumping their bodies in nearby fields."

photo: dailymail.co.uk

Water rights

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Economist Jairaj Devadiga has another option in mind for on-going water war between two Indian states. Their governments withhold water rights from the people. He suggests a different dynamic would solve some problems if people were able to purchase water rights to use on their farms.

 

The water would find its own value level by the price that farmers willingly pay for it. Why do the governments subsidize rice to the point that it's wasted? The article doesn't say, but maybe a market value on the water would direct the water to crops that don't need as much but have a good market value.

Instead of government using the river as a power tool, let the farmers figure out how to use it.

Water war

Two states of India have been waging a war (at times violent) over rights to the Kaveri River. It's been going on for about a century. Only one identifiable group benefits from this on-going war - it's the government in each state.

"Governments give out water to farmers in order to secure votes. Why do farmers require so much water? Because the same governments are giving incentives for overproduction of water intensive crops like rice. Much of that rice goes, not to a table but rather, to a warehouse where it rots.

"Milton Friedman once said “If you put government in charge of the Sahara desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand.” Similarly, putting government in charge of a river gave us a shortage of water."

Some of that violence - vehicles burned, roads barricaded, even two people killed.

(cont'd tomorrow)

A good year

Was 2014 one of your very best years? According to this article, "It may not feel like it, but we are safer, richer, and healthier than at any time on record."

As an example of global improved health, life expectancy in India increased by seven years for men and ten for women since 1990. Even more impressive, life expectancy for Rwanda and Ethiopia is up by fifteen years since 1980.

Extreme poverty, defined by people living on less than $1.25/day, has been reduced by half since 1990.

So in a worldwide sense, the trend is good.  It certainly doesn't mean every person has a better life - especially the people of Iraq.  An update from the Vicar of Baghdad tomorrow.

India MYGOV

On Saturday, new Prime Minister Modi of India "launched an interactive online platform that allows people to share ideas and suggestions and participate in the country's governance."  They can also volunteer to work on projects, hopefully including solutions for a cleaner nation (see post of July 18).

The PM took office two months ago after running on  a perception that he would be a reformer, and he has the usual short time period of new political leaders to win support by keeping those promises.

Previously he led the state of Gujarat into an economic boom, and there's a lot of hope that he can do that on a national scale.  Foreign investment has poured in.   

Walmart "last month announced plans to open 50 new wholesale stores there as well as grow its e-commerce operations."

Cleaner India

India's new prime minister, Narenda Modi, has a vision for a cleaner country.  He'd like to make it trash-free as well as free of corruption, and he talks about it.  It's kind of overwhelming but it gives people hope that things can change.

"Four years ago, a senior government minister, Jairam Ramesh, shocked many when he said that Indian cities were the world’s dirtiest and that “if there is a Nobel Prize for dirt and filth, India will win it, no doubt.”

PM Modi is not alone in his goal. "“There is an unspeakable amount of filth around us. We must shake up our numbness to it,” said Robinder Sachdev, who leads a campaign called Come, Clean India."

"“Some momentum is building up among the educated middle classes in the big cities. They are becoming aware that their global aspiration is not consistent with their tolerance of filth.”

Plastic roads

India has a garbage problem.  Up to 40% of the waste is not collected.  Plastic waste of 15,000 tons is discarded every day.

Would you describe the plastic as a "gift from the gods?"  That's how an Indian chemistry prof describes it - because he came up with a way to use it in asphalt.  Over 3,000 miles of "plastic roads have been laid . . ."

So the method is proven.  But that's not all there is to it.  "In a country where throwing garbage onto the roads and littering in public areas are acceptable behaviors, it's going to require a social transformation . . Culture is now the most important part."