Wireless@SG

Most of us encounter this situation, you are at a public place waiting for someone and you don't know how to kill time. You are left with few options in hand, either you start shopping with the fellow singaporeans and burn your pocket and shell out some extra cents to catch up with your old buddy over your phone.

How would it be if you are able to check your e-mails or read up your favourite blogs using your PDA/Phone/Laptop (WiFi device) for FREE. Even better if you could call your buddies for FREE using SKYPE! Sounds great right! Thats what IDA, Singapore is offering us.

Right now they have free hotspots all over Singapore. You just have to register at Singtel website and you are ready to go! The list of hotspots is also available in PDF format at the link given below.

Happy Surfing!

Source: IDA

Women the better half?

Gender empowerment, gender equality are the terms which are most often read these days. By constitutional provisions discrimination by caste,creed, place of birth or SEX is not legal and these are some of the fundamental rights which can be enforced by knocking the doors the Supreme Court, what has socially the gender equality is enforced is a million dollar question. I would second the opinion that India still has a long way to go to achieve this in letter and spirit.

The recently spurted controversy of an woman ranked officer in the Army committing suicide being succumbed to occupation stress , leading to a statement high order officer Mr. Pattabhiram saying women are not wanted in Army talks stories of how women's involvement in the work life is not welcomed.

The sex ratio of the Indian population is at a pathetic state, worse being in states like Haryana, Punjab, Bihar etc where the female infanticide is more prevalent! The inheritance of property and issues like dowry haunt the couples to avoid female child and go for a male one. The female child in rural north India is still considered a curse, eventhough the situtation in southern India has improved far better than what it was few years back.

Women's role in the managerial decisions in India is negligible, we can count the number of female bureaucrats, M.P's, Ministers, Chairmans, Presidents in the private sector or for that matter in any area you take. This talks fortunes of how much influence does female have in the society. Majority of the women are even today restricted to mundane jobs and activities and discriminated. They are not openly given credits and appreciation for the work they do, nor they are promoted on time even if they deserve. It happens more in the public sector.

The recent move by UPA to make the Right to Property for women, is probably an eye opener for the junta, as this makes sure at least they don't succumb financially to the other half in their later years, majority of the women being unemployed today. The specific ratio maintained in the National Rural Employment guarantee Act (NREGA), for rural women is also welcomed.
The sponsorship of CBSE for single girl child also boosts the ego of the female child and allows them to study further without any financial hindrances coming in their way. Even the definition of rape is being broadened by the government with the help of National Commission of Women (NCW) which is becoming another move to empower them with the crime ridden environment.

As more such incentives come in the way, I feel more women would opt for better education and would be more independent and contribute to the society in all aspects rather than the just mundane household chores that they carry out today. The journey has begun as it can be seen from Mr. Pattabhiram retracting his statement after some pressure from the women's who's who. It is just a matter of time for us to see the Gender Equality happen both in true letter and spirit!

Is Literacy a panacea to backwardness?

One of the foundations on which the democracy lies is people rule the country through their representatives. But how far this is true can be debated in developing countries like India. According to the Indian statistical organization(NSSO,CSO) which I don't know how far is reliable, the estimates comes to about 65% of the people are literate. The rural population contributes to about 72%. About 80- 90% of the total population is living on unorganized employment, can democracy style of governance succeed in ruling such a country?

The politicians find it very easy to dupe the rural population who are not even aware of their basic fundamental rights. The rural population is just fighting for its daily bread and wants to find a quick way out of the misery and it has no choice but to vote for those gigantic national parties in the hope that Godly intervention from the politicians would happen. The independent and smaller parties are mostly not trusted by the general population thinking that they may not be able to make a big difference in the policies of the government which are ruled by bigger parties.

Our forefathers with special credit given to Dr B.R. Ambedkar & Pandit Nehru who were the major contributors to our constitution which stands as the ultimate bible over which our government runs, thought that the present way of Democracy would empower the Indian citizen to be more vocal in each and every important decision taken by government, but probably they forgot to think on the lines of what in-efficient governance can do to the country! India in the past 60 years after independence has not improved much in terms of the demographic or social indicators other than that of the population growth. The poverty is all time high according to the U.N. official statistics released recently and they compare it to some of the under developed countries of Africa. The selective urbanization of the cities alone has become a big menace and the Dharavi slum of Mumbai being the biggest in Asia is one of the best examples of what could happen. The U.N. lately pressing for better Human Development has framed indicators such as literacy, IMF(Infant Mortality Rate), Life Expectancy etc.. from which it assess a country for Human Development, India ranks 127 out of the 177 countries it evaluated and of which even countries like Sri Lanka has overtaken us.

Most of the population in rural India is not only deprived of infrastructure, health and education facilities but they are even deprived of basic necessities like water and electricity. I can hardly think of how people living in these conditions would be interested in exercising their franchise to vote enthusiastically thinking about India's future when their own immediate future is at stake. Such kind of vulnerable population is duped by the politicians showing them some immediate relief during elections. Some of these could be the Free colour T.V. sets, Rice for Re.1 per kilo and other such fanatic manifestos which not only does erode our public treasury big time but also do no good to our fellow citizens in the longer run.

I would say that India for a brighter future not only needs a more educated and public service oriented politicians but also a more empowered literate citizen who could question the very basic existence of the politicians, which is for them! Right now, the country is in a big vicious circle where the illiterate people are made to remain that way so that they can be duped and the politicians can keep eating the public time and money. More educated citizens like us need to spend more time and effort, as the great mortals during the independence to empower our grassroots. We need to provide them education, better health facilities and basic infrastructure with the support of philanthropic industrialists and IT giants. This I feel would truly change the entire nation's future!

Take it Easy Policy !

It has been a longtime since I have wrote something on my blog and finally I wanted to share something and here comes the entry !

Right now I am in Delhi with my parents for a short visit, and there happened to be 3 bomb blasts here a couple of days back ! And one thing that fascinated me here was that the people here didn't react the way I imagined they would ! There was utter chaos and panic just for a few hours and the death toll should have been pretty high than what was mentioned in the media, but then the public just sprang out for diwali shopping the next day !

All the shops opened the next day afternoon, people were busy shopping sweets,crackers,dresses and getting prepared for the most celibrated Hindu festival. I was just amazed by the way my fellow brothers here live, with no big fuss ! The song that came to my mind seeing that was "Don't worry, Be happy !". Infact, just the SARS/Bird flu threat itself had sent people of Singapore into jitters, people there had stopped going to theatres and their day to day
activites had reduced manifold !

Anyways I can see Indians have proved to go with the "Take it Easy policy" again !

Heart Risks,Race,Ethinicity

The statistics seems very scary from what it seems, looks like South Asians have the highest risk of heart attacks !

The sedatary lifestyle we have these days have really costed us on our health. Lot of us don't really care much about our health and ignore its initial warnings and later pay a bigger price to it.

Watch out folks ! Let us lead a more healthy and disease free life :)

Image courtesy : TOI

Leading Contended lives !

Long time since my last post ! Lets see if I get a comment for atleast this one :)

I had a discussion recently with a few people here who have been born and brought up in so called developed countries. This write up comes up after a couple of similar discussions with people from developing nations.

There were some comments on women sitting in the rubbles and working on the dusty construction sites, and how they felt sorry for people who lead miserable lives living in the footpath and occasionally emotionally blackmailing the motorists who stop by the traffic lights and pester them to buy newspapers/magazines.

But then, I would say they lead the most simple and contended lives. Infact, they have nothing much to worry for compared to the so called rich people who earn four/five figure salary! They would just get enough money and manage to get their day through which is what they are looking forward for. How many of us can live such a life without any greedy desires ?

Even a small fry in developed nations have so many tensions in life, in terms of their insurance, house loans, phone bills,...etc etc which creates a even tougher and stressful life for the meagre income that they have! So in terms of suffering I would say one is mental and the other physical, thats about it !

So shall I say the crux to the story would be, whether it be a developed or the developing nation, suffering of people comes free of cost ! It is our perception to see it in the way we want. I would be rate/equate mental suffering same as physical suffering. As say, you guys in the developed world suffer too ! Instead of living in the dirt of construction site, your mind lives midst of all kinds of financial stress.

Lets stress for a stress free world sans nations :)

Adieu.

Updatez..

Its been a long time since I posted here ! The past few weeks have been hectic, I had gone for a sight seeing tour to Bangkok during the Vesak day's long weekend. Some of the photos can be found at flickr.

I flew by budget carriers namely Thai AirAsia and Tiger Airlines, took a backpacker's lodging at a hostel called Suk11. Went around the city most of the time through their metered taxis and their intra city train, except for getting fooled by one of the drivers of the tuk-tuk on the first day :)

But the place was very cheap (by Singapore standards) and reminded me of India a couple of times, in terms of the bargaining and cheating the tourist interacting folks practice in. Overall, the local crowd was very friendly and the city has lot a variety of architectural wonders to offer !

A cool bird shot

This a nice sharp pic, I shot in Mandai Orchid Garden (Singapore).



The bird pictured above is called Sun bird