Priyanka Kumari
priyanka_k03@rediffmail.com

FROM SAVE OUR PLANET
TO SAVE OUR PACHAURI

We stand in awe of environment scientists because they unnerve us. In 20 years, the glaciers will melt; earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons will devastate the earth, and many of the cities we so loved will be submerged under the sea; and half of the earth will turn into a global furnace that human beings will flee forgetting national borders to other regions and time zones. Scary enough we swallow every word as gospel truth to ward off the nightmare. After winning global attention and the Nobel Prize for the Himalayan endeavour, the same scientists say to err is scientific. There is no evidence after all to prove that natural calamities occur because of global warming. Harry Potter now seems more real than the science fiction our environment scientists presented.

Predicting a stock market crash was the favourite pastime of some economists; they forecast with such devastating precision that some thought it was scientific. Later the simple folks realized that the panic button they pressed created its own panic on the market that the prices came tumbling down. Economist Keynes who lost a million dollars but somehow regained it made a classic comment: `You can become a millionaire on the stock market, if you can forecast what a million fools will think tomorrow’. The Japanese believe monkeys make better stock market analysts than human beings and they give the monkey the dart to throw on the board where the major shares are listed. Man has many things to learn from monkeys!

Karthik H

karthik.h.krishnan@gmail.com

BLOOD IN THE UNIFORM

Perversion of Justice has touched its nadir. In India, the law seems to exist only for criminals to escape and for the lawyers to fatten their coffers defending them. In a television debate on Times Now, Ram Jethmalani had the cheeks to say the system cannot be changed just for the sake of one Ruchika.
From Jessica to Ruchika, it was a long tale of miscarriage of justice because the guardians of the law perfected the art of shielding criminals by adeptly destroying evidence. Officers who destroy evidence were promoted and even awarded gallantry medals.
So the trials went without conviction – from Jessica Lall to Priyadarshini Matto, and the raping of Scarlet the British girl to the German girl whose rapist, the son of a DIG, is now absconding. `The law will take its own course’, assured the political brass, whenever no action was intended.
The common man is bedeviled when he finds what the whole world knows cannot be established in a court of law and almost often the criminals go scot-free on flimsy technical grounds. His agonizing suspicion is recaptured by The Times of India in its memorable headline: No body killed Jessica!
People staying across the house of the cannibal of Nithari have spotted Dr Kidney Kumar and the controversial nurse in his van parked in front of the den, signalling the fact that the children of the poor were killed and kidney robbed. Yet no channel or newspaper could report the matter because of the Draconian legal system operating in this country.
When the previligentsia treat the life of the ordinary citizen as cheap as dirt, the lessons of the French and Russian revolutions need to be retold. Will someone stand up and tell him, ``Shut up, Jethmalani. The life of each Indian is precious. If justice is not delivered by the Justice, people will force him to deliver justice, even by changing the system, which is a hangover of the colonial times.’’

Aaheli Bagchi

aaheli.bagchi@gmail.com

NEHA, WE MISS YOU

She was a blooming talent. Just 11. Yet she took her life. Her parents did not allow her to participate in a reality show. Instead, they wanted her to study. `Study, study, study’ is all that most parents want from their children. But do they know their children – who are not just biological accidents? Most parents think they know but do not know, or care to know. This parental ignorance has snuffed out many a life. Good many tender flowers arrive in this world only to be brutalized by their own parents or relatives. Of course, Neha was not one of them. Her only fault was she had talent which she wanted to take to the logical conclusion. She confused virtual reality with reality. To many teens, Shah Rukh Khan and Amir Khan, Aishwarya Rai and Karisma Kapoor or Sachin Tendulkar and Virendra Sewak make their reality. But the shocking reality is that we are all chasing illusions most of our lives, and values are seldom imparted to our children because we ourselves don’t have them. On one extreme, suicide bombers are taking their lives only to drag as many as possible with them. On the other, gentle extreme, people like Neha (Sawant) of Dombivli, Mumbai, snuff out their own lives, hoping they could be happy that way. The people of neither extreme realize the value of life, let alone the meaning of life, because we live in the Planet of Apes – materialistic apes, if you prefer.

MORTGAGING OUR CHILDREN’S FUTURE

Navjot Kaur Rajiyal
indegenious_88@yahoo.com

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the King’s horses and all the King’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.

The Copenhagen Summit has disappeared the Humpty Dumpty way. Almost so. President Barack Obama has once again missed the golden opportunity to emerge as the global leader. With a George Bush legacy around his neck with America not a signatory of the Kyoto Agreement, Obama thought it politic not to play to the world media gallery by committing to cut US carbon emission to laudable levels that a sense of equity demands. By not doing so, he has arrested the already sliding popularity rating at home. Asking comfort-loving fellow-Americans to tighten the belt is a sure way of inviting a political disaster. The second best option is to let China and India play the global leader and America playing the role of the first among the equals.
China was truly playing the global leader and relished every moment at Copenhagen. The efficacy of Chinese diplomacy lies in knowing when to be friendly and when to be hostile. An unusual warmth developed between India and China notwithstanding Dalai Lama and Arunachal Pradesh, which has nothing to do with camaraderie. In the Belgian city, the two Asian giants felt helpless without each other in fighting the onslaught of the rich nations. In an article in the Guardian, the British climate secretary, Edward Miliband, accused China and other leftwing countries of trying to hijack the UN climate summit and "hold the world to ransom". Meanwhile, scientists and environmentalists were critical of rich countries which need to put up three times as much money and cut emissions drastically if they want to save the world from a climate catastrophe.

The self-styled conscience-keeper of climate change, Yvo de Boer, who is also the head of the committee for negotiations, commented:
The Marxists are using Climate Change to promote a Proletariat agricultural revolution;
The Maoists are using Climate Change to get us back to year zero;
The Corporates are using Climate Change to promote carbon trading;
The Governments are using Climate Change to tax us until the pips squeak;
The Vegans are using Climate Change to promote vegetarianism;
The One Worlders are using Climate Change to promote one government with a single point of tax and control;
The West is using Climate Change to dump pollution on the Third World;
The Eugenicist/Malthusians are using Climate Change to cull the population;
The Greens are being used by all of the above, and they don't realise it.
It’s one world, many universes!
And finally what will be remembered of the Copenhagen summit is the grim picture of the statues installed in front of the venue.

Tailpiece:
To preserve the Amazon, we need to stop eating meat. The president of the Brazilian Vegetarian Society, Ms Marly Winckler, says more than 80% of the Amazon's destruction is caused by cattle rearing.

NEW YEAR!

TSJ wishes you a Happy and Prosperous New Year

FAREWELL PRINCIPAL

TSJ's farewell to its Principal Mr. Umesh Chandrasekhar

Tista Sengupta

tista.ju@gmail.com

WHOSE INDIA IS IT ANYWAY?

Yes Telangana, no Telangana! See the power to create confusion by interchanging yes and no, like the placing of the comma in the classic sentence, ‘Hang him not spare him’. On the slender thread of a comma hangs the life of a convict. Placed after him, the hapless man dies; but after not, the man is set free. Perhaps an anecdote of two squabbling women on a railway compartment explains the situation better. One of them wanted the window to be shut because she said she would die of cold otherwise. The other woman said she would die of suffocation if the window is shut. Up came the peacemaker among the fellow passengers, who suggested to keep the window open for five minutes so that one of the contenders would die and then keep it shut for five minutes so that the other would follow suit. Deny statehood, and Telangana would burn; grant statehood, and the rest of Andhra would burn.
Ours is a democracy where decisions are taken on the street; you hijack a city, and all your political demands are met. Where will you find such a democracy in the whole world; and the marvel is that it works and all the anarchy it generates finally brings some semblance of order and merit. So we have discovered an economic wizard, Sardar Manmohan Singh, mummy Sonia Gandhi, and for a change a home minister who speaks sense, and a trouble-shooter Pranab Mukherjee, who knows what India needs. The marvel that is Mayawati can cut the trunk of the tree she is standing on into three pieces if not four, as she has been demanding the truncation of her own state.
In the final analysis, the root of India’s problems are two: its underemployed politicians, and unemployed youth. It’s heartbreaking but true that agitations employ our unemployed youth – which is happening in Kashmir and the North-East – and give meaning to our politicians’ existence. Imagine a Raj Thackeray without vandalism or agitation. Our politicians are now entering into a state of competitive madness to divide India into as many districts as the country has. Remember, we were once a conglomerate of 500-and odd princely states before the British came and ruled over us. We shall soon be back to square one. Who cares? Whose India is it anyway!