Seven Deadly Sins of Delhi

Recently I used very harsh words to describe my perception of Delhi Crowd.

Surprisingly, This Outlook Article is also voicing similar opinion.

Delhi's Seven Deadly Sins

1 Aggressive, lawless driving; India's road accident capital

2 Touting, hustling culture, grab-what-you-can-get mentality: law-breaking acceptable across classes, everything 'negotiable'

3 Callousness towards the vulnerable: disabled, visitors, elderly, poor

4 Most unsafe city in India for women; India's rape capital

5 Obsession with hierarchy & status

6 Officious, self-important political and bureaucratic class

7 Appalling cultural and professional manners

Some things about Delhi have got better, whether it’s thanks to initiatives by the courts, greater prosperity or the drive to create a showpiece city for the Commonwealth Games 2010

• Improved air quality, lower pollution levels
• Abundant greenery and increasingly well-maintained parks
• Some hope for its crippled public transport system with new Metro, new buses
• Growing corporate, cultural, educational hub
• Vibrant, throbbing city with explosion of choices for food, shopping, clubbing
• Improved housing options, with satellite towns Gurgaon, Noida slated to get well connected

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"Delhi’s grown from sleepy town to metropolis, incorporating a rural population of independent and aggressive small landholders over whom the urban influence is still very shallow.... Delhi is also the seat of power; everything here is a power play...negotiable and up for grabs. Even among the educated, who’ve been to the right schools, the first instinct is to break the law."

Dipankar Gupta
Sociologist

Kalazar Strikes Back with a Vengeance

Recently Sweta jee reminded us of Kalazar Epidemic in Bihar and this NDTV
report throws some more light on this.


http://www.ndtv.com/template/template.asp?fromtimeline=true&id=86912&callid=1&template=Health

Reports clearly indicate that cases of Kalazar have been rising rapidly
and Govt (Both, GOI and Bihar) has to move fast to save the day.

Year No of cases
2002   9,000
2003  13,960
2004  17,324
2005  21,177   

Let us think of ways in which we can play a role to stop this
epidemic before too many lives are lost.

Tragedy is that most of the victims are very poor and they can not
afford costly treatment.

"But as NDTV had reported in December 2005, nearly 500 metric tonnes
of DDT supplied to Bihar was never used for spraying, and Rs 6 crore
went down the drain as the chemical expired."

What a mess we are in 21st Century? There is enough money and
resources but no proper implementation!

No one bothers to move fast. Politicians are out with Reservation
Bill and Yatras but poor millions are stuck in their place.

Any thoughts on ways to put pressure on Govt?