Corporation’s investment for the waste treatment plant is around Rs. 150 crore
Discussions are on with public sector fertilizer companies to operate the plant
KOCHI: An expression of interest (EoI) for running the solid waste treatment plant at Brahmapuram has been floated by the Kochi Corporation.
The move of the Kochi Corporation gains significance in the wake of its standoff with the Andhra Pradesh Technology Development Corporation (APTDC) regarding the completion of the final phase of the project.
The contract between the two agencies for setting up the plant and running it for one year will end on Thursday.Council directive
The corporation council meeting held last week had directed the civic administration to go ahead with its move to tender the rights for running the project for two years.
The floating of EoI is part of the procedure, according to officials.
Though no agency is coming forward for running the plant, it will not affect the plant as the health wing of the Kochi Corporation is fully equipped for managing it.
The engineering and health departments of the corporation are all geared for running the plant, said Corporation Secretary Mini Antony.Easy task
Unlike running the plastic re-cycling and refuse derived fuel units, which require technical expertise, the management of biodegradable waste at the plant is an easy task for the health wing, which had been undertaking the work at different levels in the city, she said.
Meanwhile, the civic authorities have initiated discussions with public sector fertilizer companies for running the plant.
It is mandatory for the fertilizer companies to produce organic manure along with chemical fertilizers.
Agencies like FACT can consider the option of running the solid waste treatment plant that produces organic manure and fulfil their obligation, said the civic authorities.Plant ownership
As the plant was set up using the funds of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission, the ownership of the plant will not be transferred to any agency.
But companies can take up the running of the plant and produce organic manure.
The investment of the corporation for the plant, including the value of the land, would come to around Rs.150 crore, Ms. Antony said.
The plant was set up by HYQUIP Technologies for APTDC, which won the contract for establishing and running the plant. Settlement of bills
The corporation authorities had been maintaining that the final bills regarding the establishment of the plant would be settled after obtaining an evaluation report from FACT Engineering and Design Organisation, its consultant.
They also accused HYQUIP Technologies of failing to complete some of the works associated with the plant, including a sanitary landfill site and an onsite laboratory.
On its part, the HYQUIP Technologies had been complaining that bills for huge amounts were pending.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Norms for IT parks in private sector
Special Correspondent
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Cabinet on Wednesday approved the guidelines for establishment of Information Technology (IT) Parks in the private sector in the State.
Accordingly, the IT park building should have a minimum land area of 50 cents and should have a minimum super built up area of 30,000 sq ft.
The built up space in rural areas should be less than that in urban areas. At least 70 per cent of the built up area in the park should be used for IT, IT-enabled services and knowledge work and related support services. The promoters submitting application for approval of the private IT Park and building should establish their legal ownership of the property. In the case of the building being leased out, the lessee shall conform to all requirements.
If the IT Park buildings are to be newly constructed, the promoter should guarantee that the construction of the buildings will start within six months from the date of approval. The work should be completed in three years from the date of approval.
The plans for construction of the park and building should have all the necessary statutory approvals and clearances from the departments/bodies concerned.
The IT Park building should have minimum allocation of electricity at 10W per square feet of super built area. Besides, the park should have minimum parking facility at one car per 500 sq ft of super built area. The space cannot be used for any other purpose. The promoter should substantiate the arrangements made with regard to sewage collection and treatment. The proposed building should have arrangements to dispose of all solid and liquid waste generated as per norms stipulated by government agencies.Controlling department
The Department of Information Technology will be the controlling department for giving approval for the private IT parks. It will constitute an empowered committee of functional experts to evaluate and approve the applications.
The Kerala State IT Mission will be nodal agency for monitoring compliance of norms. The promoters will be required to enter into an agreement with the government and the Mission in this രേങര്ദ്
http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/30/stories/2009043054050400.htm
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Cabinet on Wednesday approved the guidelines for establishment of Information Technology (IT) Parks in the private sector in the State.
Accordingly, the IT park building should have a minimum land area of 50 cents and should have a minimum super built up area of 30,000 sq ft.
The built up space in rural areas should be less than that in urban areas. At least 70 per cent of the built up area in the park should be used for IT, IT-enabled services and knowledge work and related support services. The promoters submitting application for approval of the private IT Park and building should establish their legal ownership of the property. In the case of the building being leased out, the lessee shall conform to all requirements.
If the IT Park buildings are to be newly constructed, the promoter should guarantee that the construction of the buildings will start within six months from the date of approval. The work should be completed in three years from the date of approval.
The plans for construction of the park and building should have all the necessary statutory approvals and clearances from the departments/bodies concerned.
The IT Park building should have minimum allocation of electricity at 10W per square feet of super built area. Besides, the park should have minimum parking facility at one car per 500 sq ft of super built area. The space cannot be used for any other purpose. The promoter should substantiate the arrangements made with regard to sewage collection and treatment. The proposed building should have arrangements to dispose of all solid and liquid waste generated as per norms stipulated by government agencies.Controlling department
The Department of Information Technology will be the controlling department for giving approval for the private IT parks. It will constitute an empowered committee of functional experts to evaluate and approve the applications.
The Kerala State IT Mission will be nodal agency for monitoring compliance of norms. The promoters will be required to enter into an agreement with the government and the Mission in this രേങര്ദ്
http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/30/stories/2009043054050400.htm
Zoom bid to be re-examined
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Cabinet on Wednesday decided to re-examine the bid of Mumbai-based Zoom Developers for the execution of the Vizhinjam International Transhipment Project. The bid was rejected by the government earlier on technical grounds.
The decision comes after Zoom Developers, which contested the award of the contract to Hyderabad-based Lanco Infratech, obtained a verdict in its favour from the High Court and the Supreme Court refused to reverse the order on appeal by the government.
Briefing jthe media on the decisions of the weekly Cabinet meet, the Chief Minister said the government would ask the bid evaluation committee to scrutinise the tender documents submitted by Zoom Developers on the basis of the Supreme Court order on April 13 and a subsequent application from Zoom Developers to the government on April 17.
The tender evaluation committee is headed by the Chief Secretary.
Mr. Achuthanandan said the government would give a reply to the application from Lanco Infratech (stating that the company was ready to execute the project and provide the specified bank guarantee of Rs.50 crore besides a development fee) that the matter was under consideration. This was pending evaluation of the bid documents of Zoom Developers.
(The Rs.5,348-crore project was approved by the Central government last year and the State government had awarded the contract to Lanco Infratech. However, the contract ran into trouble after Zoom Developers approached the High Court. The Opposition alleged that Zoom Developers had been deliberately kept out despite its offering to pay the government Rs.447 crore after 10 years of operations, while Lanco Infratech offered only Rs.115 crore.)
വിസ്റ്റ് http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/30/stories/2009043055530700.htm
The decision comes after Zoom Developers, which contested the award of the contract to Hyderabad-based Lanco Infratech, obtained a verdict in its favour from the High Court and the Supreme Court refused to reverse the order on appeal by the government.
Briefing jthe media on the decisions of the weekly Cabinet meet, the Chief Minister said the government would ask the bid evaluation committee to scrutinise the tender documents submitted by Zoom Developers on the basis of the Supreme Court order on April 13 and a subsequent application from Zoom Developers to the government on April 17.
The tender evaluation committee is headed by the Chief Secretary.
Mr. Achuthanandan said the government would give a reply to the application from Lanco Infratech (stating that the company was ready to execute the project and provide the specified bank guarantee of Rs.50 crore besides a development fee) that the matter was under consideration. This was pending evaluation of the bid documents of Zoom Developers.
(The Rs.5,348-crore project was approved by the Central government last year and the State government had awarded the contract to Lanco Infratech. However, the contract ran into trouble after Zoom Developers approached the High Court. The Opposition alleged that Zoom Developers had been deliberately kept out despite its offering to pay the government Rs.447 crore after 10 years of operations, while Lanco Infratech offered only Rs.115 crore.)
വിസ്റ്റ് http://www.hindu.com/2009/04/30/stories/2009043055530700.htm
PACHALAM ROUNDABOUT
An elevated roundabout of 50 m diameter has been planned for Pachalm to ease congestion in Pachalam and Vaduthala. Application for GAD approval for ROB's at these railway crossing are pending with railways. The Kerala Industrial and Technical Consultancy Organization (KITCO) has drawn up a plan for a roundabout. The roundabout will have the following connections:
An arm towards Marine Drive
An arm towards Kaloor
An arm towards NH 17
An arm towards Gosree Bridges
A connection between Chittoor Road and Mathai Manjooran Road
In view of the coming up International Container Transshipment Terminal at Vallarpadam this roundabout is strategically important. RBDCK is in the process of getting a detailed project report prepared by a reputed consultant.
An arm towards Marine Drive
An arm towards Kaloor
An arm towards NH 17
An arm towards Gosree Bridges
A connection between Chittoor Road and Mathai Manjooran Road
In view of the coming up International Container Transshipment Terminal at Vallarpadam this roundabout is strategically important. RBDCK is in the process of getting a detailed project report prepared by a reputed consultant.
Commercial Complex at Kakkanad, Kochi
Government of Kerala vide GO No. GO(Rt) No. 4892003/PWD dated 29/05/2003 has allowed RBDCK to utilize the above land of about one acre at the junction of Airport – Seaport Road and Kakkanad Ernakulam Road near Ernakulam Collectorate for improving the junction by providing utilities like traffic control room, rest room, shopping kiosks etc.
The Chief Architect of Government of Kerala has approved the plan of a high rise 16 storied tower building with the following floor plans.
Sq mt
Basement Floor
717
Ground Floor & M.Floor
1763
First Floor
927
Second Floor
927
Third Floor
413
Fourth to Sixteenth Floor
5369
Total :
10,116
The building is going to be located at a strategic location and the plan is for a high rise modern tower building using all modern techniques with four lifts we expect that it will be a land mark building of Cochin. Due to its proximity to the Smart City and the centers of major players in the IT field we expect to lease the building to premium clients.
RBDCK is proposing to undertake this project either on Joint Venture or on BOLT method.
What is True Development? The Kerala Model
What is True Development? The Kerala Model
Bill McKibben
Kerala (pronounced ker'uh luh) , a state of 29 million people in southern India, is poor--even for India--with a per capita income estimated by various surveys to be between $298 and $350 a year, about one-seventieth the American average. When the American anthropologist Richard Franke surveyed the typical Keralite village of Nadur in the late 1980s, he found that nearly half the 170 families had only cooking utensils, a wooden bench, and a few stools in their homes. No beds--that was the sum of their possessions. Thirty-six percent also had some chairs and cots, and 19 percent owned a table. In five households he discovered cushioned seats. But here is the odd part.
* The life expectancy for a North American male, with all his chairs and cushions, is 72 years, while the life expectancy for a Keralite male is 70.
* After the latest in a long series of literacy campaigns, the United Nations in 1991 certified Kerala as 100 percent literate. Your chances of having an informed conversation are at least as high in Kerala as in Kansas.
* Kerala's birth rate hovers near 18 per thousand, compared with 16 per thousand in the United States--and is falling faster.
Demographically, in other words, Kerala mirrors the United States on about one-seventieth the cash. It has problems, of course: There is chronic unemployment, a stagnant economy that may have trouble coping with world markets, and a budget deficit that is often described as out of control. But these are the kinds of problems you find in France. Kerala utterly lacks the squalid drama of the Third World--the beggars reaching through the car window, the children with distended bellies, the baby girls left to die.
In countries of comparable income, including other states of India, life expectancy is 58 years, and only half the people (and perhaps a third of the women) can read and write; the birth rate hovers around 40 per thousand. Development experts use an index they call PQLI, for "physical quality of life index," a composite that runs on a scale from zero to a hundred and combines most of the basic indicators of a decent human life.
In 1981, Kerala's score of 82 far exceeded all of Africa's, and in Asia only the incomparably richer South Korea (85), Taiwan (87), and Japan (98) ranked higher. And Kerala kept improving. By 1989, its score had risen to 88, compared with a total of 60 for the rest of India. It has managed all this even though it's among the most densely crowded places on earth--the population of California squeezed into a state the size of Switzerland. Not even the diversity of its population--60 percent Hindu, 20 percent Muslim, 20 percent Christian, a recipe for chronic low-grade warfare in the rest of India--has stood in its way.
It is, in other words, weird--like one of those places where the starship Enterprise might land that superficially resembles Earth but is slightly off. It undercuts maxims about the world we consider almost intuitive: Rich people are healthier, rich people live longer, rich people have more opportunity for education, rich people have fewer children. We know all these things to be true--and yet here is a countercase, a demographic Himalaya suddenly rising on our mental atlas. It's as if someone demonstrated in a lab that flame didn't necessarily need oxygen, or that water could freeze at 60 degrees. It demands a new chemistry to explain it, a whole new science.
In the morning, every road in Kerala is lined with boys and girls walking to school. Depending on their school, their uniforms are bright blue, bright green, bright red. It may be sentimental to say that their eyes are bright as well, but of all the subtle corrosives that broke down the old order and gave rise to the new Kerala, surely none is as important as the spread of education to an extent unprecedented and as yet unmatched in the Third World. Though Christian missionaries and the British started the process, it took the militance of the caste-reform groups and then of the budding left to spread education widely. The first great boom was in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in southern Kerala, where the princes acceded to popular demands for ever more schools. When leftists dominated politics in the 1960s, they spread the educational programs into Malabar, the northern state that had been ruled directly by the British, and began granting
scholarships to untouchables and tribal peoples. By 1981, the general literacy rate in Kerala was 70 percent--twice the all-India rate of 36 percent. Even more impressive, the rural literacy rate was essentially identical, and female literacy, at 66 percent, was not far behind. Kerala was a strange spike on the dismal chart of Third World literacy. The government, particularly the leftists who governed for much of the late 1980s, continued to press the issue, aiming for "total literacy," usually defined as a population where about 95 percent can read and write.
The pilot project began in the Ernakulam region, an area of 3 million people that includes the city of Cochin. In late 1988, 50,000 volunteers fanned out around the district, tracking down 175,000 illiterates between the ages of 5 and 60, two-thirds of them women. The leftist People's Science Movement recruited 20,000 volunteer tutors and sent them out to teach. Within a year, it was hoped, the illiterates would read Malayalam at 30 words a minute, copy a text at 7 words a minute, count and write from 1 to 100, and add and subtract three-digit numbers. The larger goal was to make people feel powerful, feel involved; the early lessons were organized around Brazilian teacher Paolo Freire's notion that the concrete problems of people's lives provide the best teaching material. "Classes were held in cowsheds, in the open air, in courtyards," one leader told the New York Times. "For fishermen we went to the seashore. In the hills, tribal groups sat on rocks. Leprosy patients were taught to hold a pencil in stumps of hands with rubber bands. We have not left anyone out." For those with poor eyesight, volunteers collected 50,000 donated pairs of old eyeglasses and learned from doctors how to match them with recipients. On February 4, 1990, 13 months after the initial canvass, Indian prime minister V.P. Singh marked the start of World Literacy Year with a trip to Ernakulam, declaring it the country's first totally literate district. Of the 175,000 students, 135,000 scored 80 percent or better on the final test, putting the region's official literacy rate above 96 percent; many of the others stayed in follow-up classes and probably had learned enough to read bus signs. The total cost of the 150 hours of education was about $26 per person. Organizers knew the campaign was working when letters from the newly literate began arriving in government offices, demanding paved roads and hospitals.
Many people, sincerely alarmed by the world's ever-expanding population, have decided that we need laws to stop the growth, that, sad as such coercion would be, it's a necessary step. And they have some cases to point to--China, for instance, where massive government force probably did manage to contain a population that would otherwise have grown beyond its ability to feed itself. But as that country frees itself from the grip of the communists, the pent-up demand for children may well touch off a massive baby boom. Compulsion "does not work except in the very short term," writes Paul Harrison in his book The Third Revolution (Viking Penguin, 1993), and his case in point is India, which tried to raise its rate of sterilization dramatically in the 1970s. To obtain recruits for the "vasectomy camps" erected throughout the country, the government withheld licenses for shops and vehicles, refused to grant food ration cards or supply canal water for irrigation, and in some cases simply sent the police to round up "volunteers." It worked, in a sense: In 1976, 8.3 million Indians were sterilized. But Indira Gandhi lost the next election largely as a result, the campaign was called off, and it was "ten years before the number of couples using modern contraception rose again to their 1972-73 peaks," Harrison writes. India's population, which grew by 109 million in the 1960s and 137 million in the 1970s, grew 160 million in the 1980s. That is the population of two Mexicos, or one Eisenhower-era United States.
Kerala--and a scattered collection of other spots around the world, now drawing new attention in the wake of the United Nations' Cairo summit on population--makes clear that coercion is unnecessary. In Kerala the birth rate is 40 percent below that of India as a whole and almost 60 percent below the rate for poor countries in general. In fact, a 1992 survey found that the birth rate had fallen to replacement level. That is to say, Kerala has solved one-third of the equation that drives environmental destruction the world over. And, defying conventional wisdom, it has done so without rapid economic growth--has done so without becoming a huge consumer of resources and thus destroying the environment in other ways.
"The two-child family is the social norm here now," said M.N. Sivaram, the Trivandrum--capital of Kerala--representative of the International Family Planning Association, as we sat in his office, surrounded by family-planning posters. "Even among illiterate women we find it's true. When we send our surveyors out, people are embarrassed to say if they have more than two kids. Seven or eight years ago, the norm was three children and we thought we were doing pretty good. Now it's two, and among the most educated people, it's one."
Many factors contribute to the new notion of what's proper. The pressure on land is intense, of course, and most people can't support huge families on their small parcels. But that hasn't stopped others around the world. More powerful, perhaps, has been the spread of education across Kerala. Literate women are better able to take charge of their lives; the typical woman marries at 22 in Kerala, compared to 18 in the rest of India. On average around the world, women with at least an elementary education bear two children fewer than uneducated women. What's more, they also want a good education for their children. In many cases that means private schools to supplement public education, and people can't afford several tuitions. Kerala's remarkable access to affordable health care has provided a similar double blessing. There's a dispensary every few kilometers where IUDs and other forms of birth control are freely available, and that helps. But the same clinic provides cheap health care for children, and that helps even more. With virtually all mothers taught to breast-feed, and a state-supported nutrition program for pregnant and new mothers, infant mortality in 1991 was 17 per thousand, compared with 91 for low-income countries generally. Someplace between those two figures--17 and 91--lies the point where people become confident that their children will survive. The typical fertility for traditional societies, says Harrison, is about seven children per woman, which "represents not just indiscriminate breeding, but the result of careful strategy." Women needed one or two sons to take care of them if they were widowed, and where child mortality was high this meant having three sons and, on average, six children. In a society where girls seem as useful as boys, and where children die infrequently, reason suddenly dictates one or two children. "I have one child, and I am depending on her to survive," said Mr. Sivaram. "If I ever became insecure about that, perhaps my views would change."
Kerala's attitude toward female children is an anomaly as well. Of 8,000 abortions performed at one Bombay clinic in the early 1990s, 7,999 were female fetuses. Girl children who are allowed to live are often given less food, less education, and less health care, a bias not confined to India. In China, with its fierce birth control, there were 113 boys for every 100 girls under the age of 1 in 1990. There are, in short, millions and millions of women missing around the world--women who would be there were it not for the dictates of custom and economy. So it is a remarkable achievement in Kerala to say simply this: There are more women than men. In India as a whole, the 1991 census found that there were about 929 women per 1,000 men; in Kerala, the number was 1,040 women, about where it should be. And the female life expectancy in Kerala exceeds that of the male, just as it does in the developed world.
Whatever the historical reasons, this quartet of emancipations--from caste distinction, religious hatred, the powerlessness of illiteracy, and the worst forms of gender discrimination--has left the state with a distinctive feel, a flavor of place that influences every aspect of its life. It is, for one thing, an intensely political region: Early in the morning in tea shops across Kerala, people eat a dosha and read one of the two or three Malayalam-language papers that arrive on the first bus. (Kerala has the highest newspaper-consumption per capita of any spot in India.) In each town square political parties maintain their icons--a statue of Indira Gandhi (the white streak in her hair carefully painted in) or a portrait of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in careful profile. Strikes, agitations, and "stirs," a sort of wildcat job action, are so common as to be almost unnoticeable. One morning while I was there, the Indian Express ran stories on a bus strike, a planned strike of medical students over "unreasonable exam schedules," and a call from a leftist leader for the government to take over a coat factory where striking workers had been locked out. By the next day's paper the bus strike had ended, but a bank strike had begun. Worse, the men who perform the traditional and much beloved kathakali dance--a stylized ballet that can last all night--were threatening to strike; they were planning a march in full costume and makeup through the streets of the capital.
Sometimes all the disputation can be overwhelming. In a long account of his home village, Thulavady, K.E. Verghese says that "politics are much in the air and it is difficult to escape from them. Even elderly women who are not interested are dragged into politics." After several fights, he reports, a barbershop posted a sign on the wall: "No political discussions, please." But for the most part the various campaigns and protests seem a sign of self-confidence and political vitality, a vast improvement over the apathy, powerlessness, ignorance, or tribalism that governs many Third World communities.
How can the Kerala model spread to other places with different cultures, less benign histories? Unfortunately, there's another question about the future that needs to be answered first: Can the Kerala model survive even in Kerala, or will it be remembered chiefly as an isolated and short-term outbreak from a prison of poverty? In the paddy fields near Mitraniketan, bare-chested men swung hoes hard into the newly harvested fields, preparing the ground for the next crop. They worked steadily but without hurry--in part because there was no next job to get to. Unemployment and underemployment have been signal problems in Kerala for decades. As much as a quarter of the state's population may be without jobs; in rural villages, by many estimates, laborers are happy for 70 or 80 days a year of hoe and sickle work. And though the liberal pension and unemployment compensation laws, and the land reform that has left most people with at least a few coconut trees in their house compound, buffer the worst effects of joblessness, it is nonetheless a real problem: In mid-morning, in the small village at the edge of the rice fields, young men lounge in doorways with nothing to do.
To some extent, successes are surely to blame. A recent report published by the Centre for Development Studies looked at the coir (coconut fiber), cashew processing, and cigarette industries and concluded that as unions succeeded in raising wages and improving working conditions, they were also driving factories off to more degraded parts of India. Kerala's vaunted educational system may also play a role. Because of what they are taught, writes M.A. Oommen, "university graduates become seekers of jobs rather than creators of jobs." In Kerala, says K.K. George of the Centre for Development Studies, "the concept of a job is a job in a ministry. When you get out of school you think: `The state should give me a job as a clerk'"--an understandable attitude, since government service is relatively lucrative, completely secure, and over, by law, at age 55. Large numbers of Keralites also go into medicine, law, and teaching. That they perform well is proved by their success in finding jobs abroad--as many as a quarter million Keralites work at times in the Persian Gulf--but at home there is less demand.
The combination of a stagnant economy and a strong commitment to providing health and education have left the state with large budget deficits. Development expert Joseph Collins, for all his praise of progress, calls it a "bloated social welfare state without the economy to support it," a place that has developed a "populist welfare culture, where all the parties are into promising more goodies, which means more deficits. The mentality that things don't have to be funded, that's strong in Kerala--in the midst of the fiscal crisis that was going on while I was there, some of the parties were demanding that the agricultural pension be doubled."
But the left seems to be waking up to the problems. Professor Thomas Isaac--described to me as a "24-karat Marxist" and as a wheel in the Communist Party--said, "Our main effort has been to redistribute, not to manage, the economy. But because we on the left have real power, we need to have an active interest in that management--to formulate a new policy toward production." Instead of building huge factories, or lowering wages to grab jobs from elsewhere, or collectivizing farmers, the left has embarked on a series of "new democratic initiatives" that come as close as anything on the planet to actually incarnating "sustainable development," that buzzword beloved of environmentalists. The left has proposed, and on a small scale has begun, the People's Resource Mapping Program, an attempt to move beyond word literacy to "land literacy."
Residents of local villages have begun assembling detailed maps of their area, showing topography, soil type, depth to the water table, and depth to bedrock. Information in hand, local people could sit down and see, for instance, where planting a grove of trees would prevent erosion. And the mapmakers think about local human problems, too. In one village, for instance, residents were spending scarce cash during the dry season to buy vegetables imported from elsewhere in India. Paddy owners were asked to lease their land free of charge between rice crops for market gardens, which were sited by referring to the maps of soil types and the water table. Twenty-five hundred otherwise unemployed youth tended the gardens, and the vegetables were sold at the local market for less than the cost of the imports. This is the direct opposite of a global market. It is exquisitely local--it demands democracy, literacy, participation, cooperation. The new vegetables represent "economic growth" of a sort that does much good and no harm. The number of rupees consumed, and hence the liters of oil spent packaging and shipping and advertising, go down, not up.
With high levels of education and ingrained commitment to fairness, such novel strategies might well solve Kerala's economic woes, especially since a stabilized population means it doesn't need to sprint simply to stay in place. One can imagine, easily, a state that manages to put more of its people to work for livable if low wages. They would manufacture items that they need, grow their own food, and participate in the world economy in a modest way, exporting workers and some high-value foods like spices, and attracting some tourists. "Instead of urbanization, ruralization," says K. Vishwanathan, a longtime Gandhian activist who runs an orphanage and job-training center where I spent several days. At his cooperative, near the silkworm pods used to produce high-quality fabric, women learn to repair small motors and transistor radios--to make things last, to build a small-scale economy of permanence. "We don't need to become commercial agents, to always be buying and selling this and that," says Vishwanathan. He talks on into the evening, spinning a future at once humble and exceedingly pleasant, much like the airy, tree-shaded community he has built on once-abandoned land--a future as close to the one envisioned by E. F. Schumacher or Thomas Jefferson or Gandhi as is currently imaginable."What is the good life?" asks Vishwanathan. "The good life is to be a good neighbor, to consider your neighbor as yourself."
A small parade of development experts has passed through Kerala in recent years, mainly to see how its successes might be repeated in places like Vietnam and Mozambique. But Kerala may be as significant a schoolhouse for the rich world as for the poor. "Kerala is the one large human population on earth that currently meets the sustainability criteria of simultaneous small families and low consumption," says Will Alexander of the Food First Institute in San Francisco.
Kerala suggests a way out of two problems simultaneously--not only the classic development goal of more food in bellies and more shoes on feet, but also the emerging, equally essential task of living lightly on the earth, using fewer resources, creating less waste. Kerala demonstrates that a low-level economy can create a decent life, abundant in the things--health, education, community--that are most necessary for us all.
Gross national product is often used as a synonym for achievement, but it is also an eloquent shorthand for gallons of gasoline burned, stacks of garbage tossed out, quantities of timber sawn into boards. One recent calculation showed that for every American dollar or its equivalent spent anywhere on earth, half a liter of oil was consumed in producing, packaging, and shipping the goods. One-seventieth the income means one-seventieth the damage to the planet. So, on balance, if Kerala and the United States manage to achieve the same physical quality of life, Kerala is the vastly more successful society. Which is not to say that we could ever live on as little as they do--or, indeed, that they should. The right point is clearly somewhere in between.
Logical as a middle way might be, though, we've not yet even begun to think about it in any real terms. We've clung to the belief that perhaps someday everyone on earth will be as rich as we are--a belief that seems utterly deluded in light of our growing environmental awareness. Kerala does not tell us precisely how to remake the world. But it does shake up our sense of what's obvious, and it offers a pair of messages to the First World. One is that sharing works. Redistribution has made Kerala a decent place to live, even without much economic growth. The second and even more important lesson is that some of our fears about simpler living are unjustified. It is not a choice between suburban America and dying at 35, between agribusiness and starvation, between 150 channels of television and ignorance. It is a subversive reality, that stagnant/stable economy that serves its people well, and in some ways it is a scary one. Kerala implies that there is a point where rich and poor might meet and share a decent life, and surely it offers new data for a critical question of our age: How much is enough?
Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature (Random House, 1989), The Age of Mssing Information (Random House, 1992), and Hope, Human and Wild (Little Brown, 1995).
Source: THE UTNE LENS - a web publication with some really good articles.
http://www.ashanet.org/library/articles/kerala.199803.html
Bill McKibben
Kerala (pronounced ker'uh luh) , a state of 29 million people in southern India, is poor--even for India--with a per capita income estimated by various surveys to be between $298 and $350 a year, about one-seventieth the American average. When the American anthropologist Richard Franke surveyed the typical Keralite village of Nadur in the late 1980s, he found that nearly half the 170 families had only cooking utensils, a wooden bench, and a few stools in their homes. No beds--that was the sum of their possessions. Thirty-six percent also had some chairs and cots, and 19 percent owned a table. In five households he discovered cushioned seats. But here is the odd part.
* The life expectancy for a North American male, with all his chairs and cushions, is 72 years, while the life expectancy for a Keralite male is 70.
* After the latest in a long series of literacy campaigns, the United Nations in 1991 certified Kerala as 100 percent literate. Your chances of having an informed conversation are at least as high in Kerala as in Kansas.
* Kerala's birth rate hovers near 18 per thousand, compared with 16 per thousand in the United States--and is falling faster.
Demographically, in other words, Kerala mirrors the United States on about one-seventieth the cash. It has problems, of course: There is chronic unemployment, a stagnant economy that may have trouble coping with world markets, and a budget deficit that is often described as out of control. But these are the kinds of problems you find in France. Kerala utterly lacks the squalid drama of the Third World--the beggars reaching through the car window, the children with distended bellies, the baby girls left to die.
In countries of comparable income, including other states of India, life expectancy is 58 years, and only half the people (and perhaps a third of the women) can read and write; the birth rate hovers around 40 per thousand. Development experts use an index they call PQLI, for "physical quality of life index," a composite that runs on a scale from zero to a hundred and combines most of the basic indicators of a decent human life.
In 1981, Kerala's score of 82 far exceeded all of Africa's, and in Asia only the incomparably richer South Korea (85), Taiwan (87), and Japan (98) ranked higher. And Kerala kept improving. By 1989, its score had risen to 88, compared with a total of 60 for the rest of India. It has managed all this even though it's among the most densely crowded places on earth--the population of California squeezed into a state the size of Switzerland. Not even the diversity of its population--60 percent Hindu, 20 percent Muslim, 20 percent Christian, a recipe for chronic low-grade warfare in the rest of India--has stood in its way.
It is, in other words, weird--like one of those places where the starship Enterprise might land that superficially resembles Earth but is slightly off. It undercuts maxims about the world we consider almost intuitive: Rich people are healthier, rich people live longer, rich people have more opportunity for education, rich people have fewer children. We know all these things to be true--and yet here is a countercase, a demographic Himalaya suddenly rising on our mental atlas. It's as if someone demonstrated in a lab that flame didn't necessarily need oxygen, or that water could freeze at 60 degrees. It demands a new chemistry to explain it, a whole new science.
In the morning, every road in Kerala is lined with boys and girls walking to school. Depending on their school, their uniforms are bright blue, bright green, bright red. It may be sentimental to say that their eyes are bright as well, but of all the subtle corrosives that broke down the old order and gave rise to the new Kerala, surely none is as important as the spread of education to an extent unprecedented and as yet unmatched in the Third World. Though Christian missionaries and the British started the process, it took the militance of the caste-reform groups and then of the budding left to spread education widely. The first great boom was in the 1920s and 1930s, particularly in southern Kerala, where the princes acceded to popular demands for ever more schools. When leftists dominated politics in the 1960s, they spread the educational programs into Malabar, the northern state that had been ruled directly by the British, and began granting
scholarships to untouchables and tribal peoples. By 1981, the general literacy rate in Kerala was 70 percent--twice the all-India rate of 36 percent. Even more impressive, the rural literacy rate was essentially identical, and female literacy, at 66 percent, was not far behind. Kerala was a strange spike on the dismal chart of Third World literacy. The government, particularly the leftists who governed for much of the late 1980s, continued to press the issue, aiming for "total literacy," usually defined as a population where about 95 percent can read and write.
The pilot project began in the Ernakulam region, an area of 3 million people that includes the city of Cochin. In late 1988, 50,000 volunteers fanned out around the district, tracking down 175,000 illiterates between the ages of 5 and 60, two-thirds of them women. The leftist People's Science Movement recruited 20,000 volunteer tutors and sent them out to teach. Within a year, it was hoped, the illiterates would read Malayalam at 30 words a minute, copy a text at 7 words a minute, count and write from 1 to 100, and add and subtract three-digit numbers. The larger goal was to make people feel powerful, feel involved; the early lessons were organized around Brazilian teacher Paolo Freire's notion that the concrete problems of people's lives provide the best teaching material. "Classes were held in cowsheds, in the open air, in courtyards," one leader told the New York Times. "For fishermen we went to the seashore. In the hills, tribal groups sat on rocks. Leprosy patients were taught to hold a pencil in stumps of hands with rubber bands. We have not left anyone out." For those with poor eyesight, volunteers collected 50,000 donated pairs of old eyeglasses and learned from doctors how to match them with recipients. On February 4, 1990, 13 months after the initial canvass, Indian prime minister V.P. Singh marked the start of World Literacy Year with a trip to Ernakulam, declaring it the country's first totally literate district. Of the 175,000 students, 135,000 scored 80 percent or better on the final test, putting the region's official literacy rate above 96 percent; many of the others stayed in follow-up classes and probably had learned enough to read bus signs. The total cost of the 150 hours of education was about $26 per person. Organizers knew the campaign was working when letters from the newly literate began arriving in government offices, demanding paved roads and hospitals.
Many people, sincerely alarmed by the world's ever-expanding population, have decided that we need laws to stop the growth, that, sad as such coercion would be, it's a necessary step. And they have some cases to point to--China, for instance, where massive government force probably did manage to contain a population that would otherwise have grown beyond its ability to feed itself. But as that country frees itself from the grip of the communists, the pent-up demand for children may well touch off a massive baby boom. Compulsion "does not work except in the very short term," writes Paul Harrison in his book The Third Revolution (Viking Penguin, 1993), and his case in point is India, which tried to raise its rate of sterilization dramatically in the 1970s. To obtain recruits for the "vasectomy camps" erected throughout the country, the government withheld licenses for shops and vehicles, refused to grant food ration cards or supply canal water for irrigation, and in some cases simply sent the police to round up "volunteers." It worked, in a sense: In 1976, 8.3 million Indians were sterilized. But Indira Gandhi lost the next election largely as a result, the campaign was called off, and it was "ten years before the number of couples using modern contraception rose again to their 1972-73 peaks," Harrison writes. India's population, which grew by 109 million in the 1960s and 137 million in the 1970s, grew 160 million in the 1980s. That is the population of two Mexicos, or one Eisenhower-era United States.
Kerala--and a scattered collection of other spots around the world, now drawing new attention in the wake of the United Nations' Cairo summit on population--makes clear that coercion is unnecessary. In Kerala the birth rate is 40 percent below that of India as a whole and almost 60 percent below the rate for poor countries in general. In fact, a 1992 survey found that the birth rate had fallen to replacement level. That is to say, Kerala has solved one-third of the equation that drives environmental destruction the world over. And, defying conventional wisdom, it has done so without rapid economic growth--has done so without becoming a huge consumer of resources and thus destroying the environment in other ways.
"The two-child family is the social norm here now," said M.N. Sivaram, the Trivandrum--capital of Kerala--representative of the International Family Planning Association, as we sat in his office, surrounded by family-planning posters. "Even among illiterate women we find it's true. When we send our surveyors out, people are embarrassed to say if they have more than two kids. Seven or eight years ago, the norm was three children and we thought we were doing pretty good. Now it's two, and among the most educated people, it's one."
Many factors contribute to the new notion of what's proper. The pressure on land is intense, of course, and most people can't support huge families on their small parcels. But that hasn't stopped others around the world. More powerful, perhaps, has been the spread of education across Kerala. Literate women are better able to take charge of their lives; the typical woman marries at 22 in Kerala, compared to 18 in the rest of India. On average around the world, women with at least an elementary education bear two children fewer than uneducated women. What's more, they also want a good education for their children. In many cases that means private schools to supplement public education, and people can't afford several tuitions. Kerala's remarkable access to affordable health care has provided a similar double blessing. There's a dispensary every few kilometers where IUDs and other forms of birth control are freely available, and that helps. But the same clinic provides cheap health care for children, and that helps even more. With virtually all mothers taught to breast-feed, and a state-supported nutrition program for pregnant and new mothers, infant mortality in 1991 was 17 per thousand, compared with 91 for low-income countries generally. Someplace between those two figures--17 and 91--lies the point where people become confident that their children will survive. The typical fertility for traditional societies, says Harrison, is about seven children per woman, which "represents not just indiscriminate breeding, but the result of careful strategy." Women needed one or two sons to take care of them if they were widowed, and where child mortality was high this meant having three sons and, on average, six children. In a society where girls seem as useful as boys, and where children die infrequently, reason suddenly dictates one or two children. "I have one child, and I am depending on her to survive," said Mr. Sivaram. "If I ever became insecure about that, perhaps my views would change."
Kerala's attitude toward female children is an anomaly as well. Of 8,000 abortions performed at one Bombay clinic in the early 1990s, 7,999 were female fetuses. Girl children who are allowed to live are often given less food, less education, and less health care, a bias not confined to India. In China, with its fierce birth control, there were 113 boys for every 100 girls under the age of 1 in 1990. There are, in short, millions and millions of women missing around the world--women who would be there were it not for the dictates of custom and economy. So it is a remarkable achievement in Kerala to say simply this: There are more women than men. In India as a whole, the 1991 census found that there were about 929 women per 1,000 men; in Kerala, the number was 1,040 women, about where it should be. And the female life expectancy in Kerala exceeds that of the male, just as it does in the developed world.
Whatever the historical reasons, this quartet of emancipations--from caste distinction, religious hatred, the powerlessness of illiteracy, and the worst forms of gender discrimination--has left the state with a distinctive feel, a flavor of place that influences every aspect of its life. It is, for one thing, an intensely political region: Early in the morning in tea shops across Kerala, people eat a dosha and read one of the two or three Malayalam-language papers that arrive on the first bus. (Kerala has the highest newspaper-consumption per capita of any spot in India.) In each town square political parties maintain their icons--a statue of Indira Gandhi (the white streak in her hair carefully painted in) or a portrait of Marx, Engels, and Lenin in careful profile. Strikes, agitations, and "stirs," a sort of wildcat job action, are so common as to be almost unnoticeable. One morning while I was there, the Indian Express ran stories on a bus strike, a planned strike of medical students over "unreasonable exam schedules," and a call from a leftist leader for the government to take over a coat factory where striking workers had been locked out. By the next day's paper the bus strike had ended, but a bank strike had begun. Worse, the men who perform the traditional and much beloved kathakali dance--a stylized ballet that can last all night--were threatening to strike; they were planning a march in full costume and makeup through the streets of the capital.
Sometimes all the disputation can be overwhelming. In a long account of his home village, Thulavady, K.E. Verghese says that "politics are much in the air and it is difficult to escape from them. Even elderly women who are not interested are dragged into politics." After several fights, he reports, a barbershop posted a sign on the wall: "No political discussions, please." But for the most part the various campaigns and protests seem a sign of self-confidence and political vitality, a vast improvement over the apathy, powerlessness, ignorance, or tribalism that governs many Third World communities.
How can the Kerala model spread to other places with different cultures, less benign histories? Unfortunately, there's another question about the future that needs to be answered first: Can the Kerala model survive even in Kerala, or will it be remembered chiefly as an isolated and short-term outbreak from a prison of poverty? In the paddy fields near Mitraniketan, bare-chested men swung hoes hard into the newly harvested fields, preparing the ground for the next crop. They worked steadily but without hurry--in part because there was no next job to get to. Unemployment and underemployment have been signal problems in Kerala for decades. As much as a quarter of the state's population may be without jobs; in rural villages, by many estimates, laborers are happy for 70 or 80 days a year of hoe and sickle work. And though the liberal pension and unemployment compensation laws, and the land reform that has left most people with at least a few coconut trees in their house compound, buffer the worst effects of joblessness, it is nonetheless a real problem: In mid-morning, in the small village at the edge of the rice fields, young men lounge in doorways with nothing to do.
To some extent, successes are surely to blame. A recent report published by the Centre for Development Studies looked at the coir (coconut fiber), cashew processing, and cigarette industries and concluded that as unions succeeded in raising wages and improving working conditions, they were also driving factories off to more degraded parts of India. Kerala's vaunted educational system may also play a role. Because of what they are taught, writes M.A. Oommen, "university graduates become seekers of jobs rather than creators of jobs." In Kerala, says K.K. George of the Centre for Development Studies, "the concept of a job is a job in a ministry. When you get out of school you think: `The state should give me a job as a clerk'"--an understandable attitude, since government service is relatively lucrative, completely secure, and over, by law, at age 55. Large numbers of Keralites also go into medicine, law, and teaching. That they perform well is proved by their success in finding jobs abroad--as many as a quarter million Keralites work at times in the Persian Gulf--but at home there is less demand.
The combination of a stagnant economy and a strong commitment to providing health and education have left the state with large budget deficits. Development expert Joseph Collins, for all his praise of progress, calls it a "bloated social welfare state without the economy to support it," a place that has developed a "populist welfare culture, where all the parties are into promising more goodies, which means more deficits. The mentality that things don't have to be funded, that's strong in Kerala--in the midst of the fiscal crisis that was going on while I was there, some of the parties were demanding that the agricultural pension be doubled."
But the left seems to be waking up to the problems. Professor Thomas Isaac--described to me as a "24-karat Marxist" and as a wheel in the Communist Party--said, "Our main effort has been to redistribute, not to manage, the economy. But because we on the left have real power, we need to have an active interest in that management--to formulate a new policy toward production." Instead of building huge factories, or lowering wages to grab jobs from elsewhere, or collectivizing farmers, the left has embarked on a series of "new democratic initiatives" that come as close as anything on the planet to actually incarnating "sustainable development," that buzzword beloved of environmentalists. The left has proposed, and on a small scale has begun, the People's Resource Mapping Program, an attempt to move beyond word literacy to "land literacy."
Residents of local villages have begun assembling detailed maps of their area, showing topography, soil type, depth to the water table, and depth to bedrock. Information in hand, local people could sit down and see, for instance, where planting a grove of trees would prevent erosion. And the mapmakers think about local human problems, too. In one village, for instance, residents were spending scarce cash during the dry season to buy vegetables imported from elsewhere in India. Paddy owners were asked to lease their land free of charge between rice crops for market gardens, which were sited by referring to the maps of soil types and the water table. Twenty-five hundred otherwise unemployed youth tended the gardens, and the vegetables were sold at the local market for less than the cost of the imports. This is the direct opposite of a global market. It is exquisitely local--it demands democracy, literacy, participation, cooperation. The new vegetables represent "economic growth" of a sort that does much good and no harm. The number of rupees consumed, and hence the liters of oil spent packaging and shipping and advertising, go down, not up.
With high levels of education and ingrained commitment to fairness, such novel strategies might well solve Kerala's economic woes, especially since a stabilized population means it doesn't need to sprint simply to stay in place. One can imagine, easily, a state that manages to put more of its people to work for livable if low wages. They would manufacture items that they need, grow their own food, and participate in the world economy in a modest way, exporting workers and some high-value foods like spices, and attracting some tourists. "Instead of urbanization, ruralization," says K. Vishwanathan, a longtime Gandhian activist who runs an orphanage and job-training center where I spent several days. At his cooperative, near the silkworm pods used to produce high-quality fabric, women learn to repair small motors and transistor radios--to make things last, to build a small-scale economy of permanence. "We don't need to become commercial agents, to always be buying and selling this and that," says Vishwanathan. He talks on into the evening, spinning a future at once humble and exceedingly pleasant, much like the airy, tree-shaded community he has built on once-abandoned land--a future as close to the one envisioned by E. F. Schumacher or Thomas Jefferson or Gandhi as is currently imaginable."What is the good life?" asks Vishwanathan. "The good life is to be a good neighbor, to consider your neighbor as yourself."
A small parade of development experts has passed through Kerala in recent years, mainly to see how its successes might be repeated in places like Vietnam and Mozambique. But Kerala may be as significant a schoolhouse for the rich world as for the poor. "Kerala is the one large human population on earth that currently meets the sustainability criteria of simultaneous small families and low consumption," says Will Alexander of the Food First Institute in San Francisco.
Kerala suggests a way out of two problems simultaneously--not only the classic development goal of more food in bellies and more shoes on feet, but also the emerging, equally essential task of living lightly on the earth, using fewer resources, creating less waste. Kerala demonstrates that a low-level economy can create a decent life, abundant in the things--health, education, community--that are most necessary for us all.
Gross national product is often used as a synonym for achievement, but it is also an eloquent shorthand for gallons of gasoline burned, stacks of garbage tossed out, quantities of timber sawn into boards. One recent calculation showed that for every American dollar or its equivalent spent anywhere on earth, half a liter of oil was consumed in producing, packaging, and shipping the goods. One-seventieth the income means one-seventieth the damage to the planet. So, on balance, if Kerala and the United States manage to achieve the same physical quality of life, Kerala is the vastly more successful society. Which is not to say that we could ever live on as little as they do--or, indeed, that they should. The right point is clearly somewhere in between.
Logical as a middle way might be, though, we've not yet even begun to think about it in any real terms. We've clung to the belief that perhaps someday everyone on earth will be as rich as we are--a belief that seems utterly deluded in light of our growing environmental awareness. Kerala does not tell us precisely how to remake the world. But it does shake up our sense of what's obvious, and it offers a pair of messages to the First World. One is that sharing works. Redistribution has made Kerala a decent place to live, even without much economic growth. The second and even more important lesson is that some of our fears about simpler living are unjustified. It is not a choice between suburban America and dying at 35, between agribusiness and starvation, between 150 channels of television and ignorance. It is a subversive reality, that stagnant/stable economy that serves its people well, and in some ways it is a scary one. Kerala implies that there is a point where rich and poor might meet and share a decent life, and surely it offers new data for a critical question of our age: How much is enough?
Bill McKibben is the author of The End of Nature (Random House, 1989), The Age of Mssing Information (Random House, 1992), and Hope, Human and Wild (Little Brown, 1995).
Source: THE UTNE LENS - a web publication with some really good articles.
http://www.ashanet.org/library/articles/kerala.199803.html
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IPL Season 2 Cricket Match Timetable & Schedule - South Africa 2009
April 18: MUMBAI INDIANS v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm) RAJASTHAN ROYALS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (4 pm)
April 19: KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v DECCAN CHARGERS (8 pm) DELHI DAREDEVILS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (4 pm)
April 20: ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE V CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm)
April 21: RAJASTHAN ROYALS v MUMBAI INDIANS (8 pm) KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (4 pm)
April 22: ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v DECCAN CHARGERS (8 pm)
April 23: DELHI DAREDEVILS v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (4 pm) KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (4 pm)
April 24: KINGS XI PUNJAB v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (8 pm) at Johannesburg
April 25: KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm) DECCAN CHARGERS v MUMBAI INDIANS (4 pm)
April 26: RAJASTHAN ROYALS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (8 pm) ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v DELHI DAREDEVILS (4 pm)
April 27: KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v MUMBAI INDIANS (8 pm) CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v DECCAN CHARGERS (4 pm)
April 28: DELHI DAREDEVILS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (8 pm)
April 29: MUMBAI INDIANS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (8 pm) KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (4 pm)
April 30: DELHI DAREDEVILS v DECCAN CHARGERS (4 pm) RAJASTHAN ROYALS v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm)
May 1: ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v KINGS XI PUNJAB (8 pm) MUMBAI INDIANS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (4 pm)
May 2: RAJASTHAN ROYALS v DECCAN CHARGERS (4 pm) CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm)
May 3: MUMBAI INDIANS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (8 pm) KINGS XI PUNJAB v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (4 pm)
May 4: DECCAN CHARGERS v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm)
May 5: DELHI DAREDEVILS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (8 pm) KINGS XI PUNJAB v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (4 pm)
May 6: MUMBAI INDIANS v DECCAN CHARGERS (8 pm)
May 7: KINGS XI PUNJAB v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm) ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (4 pm)
May 8: DELHI DAREDEVILS v MUMBAI INDIANS (8 pm)
May 9: DECCAN CHARGERS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (4 pm) CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (8 pm)
May 10: KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm) ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v MUMBAI INDIANS (4 pm)
May 11: DECCAN CHARGERS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (8 pm)
May 12: ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (4 pm) KINGS XI PUNJAB v MUMBAI INDIANS (8 pm)
May 13: DECCAN CHARGERS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm)
May 14: MUMBAI INDIANS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (8 pm) CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (4 pm)
May 15: KINGS XI PUNJAB v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm)
May 16: CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v MUMBAI INDIANS (4 pm) DECCAN CHARGERS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (8 pm)
May 17: RAJASTHAN ROYALS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm) KINGS XI PUNJAB v DECCAN CHARGERS (4 pm)
May 18: CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (8 pm)
May 19: DELHI DAREDEVILS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (8 pm)
May 20: CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (8 pm) RAJASTHAN ROYALS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (4 pm)
May 21: DECCAN CHARGERS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (8 pm) MUMBAI INDIANS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (4 pm)
Schedule for Semi-Final & Final Match
May 22: Semi Final 1 at Pretoria. 8 PM
May 23: Semi Final 2 at Johannesburg 8 PM
May 24: Final at Johannesburg. 8 PM
April 19: KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v DECCAN CHARGERS (8 pm) DELHI DAREDEVILS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (4 pm)
April 20: ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE V CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm)
April 21: RAJASTHAN ROYALS v MUMBAI INDIANS (8 pm) KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (4 pm)
April 22: ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v DECCAN CHARGERS (8 pm)
April 23: DELHI DAREDEVILS v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (4 pm) KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (4 pm)
April 24: KINGS XI PUNJAB v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (8 pm) at Johannesburg
April 25: KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm) DECCAN CHARGERS v MUMBAI INDIANS (4 pm)
April 26: RAJASTHAN ROYALS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (8 pm) ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v DELHI DAREDEVILS (4 pm)
April 27: KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v MUMBAI INDIANS (8 pm) CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v DECCAN CHARGERS (4 pm)
April 28: DELHI DAREDEVILS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (8 pm)
April 29: MUMBAI INDIANS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (8 pm) KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (4 pm)
April 30: DELHI DAREDEVILS v DECCAN CHARGERS (4 pm) RAJASTHAN ROYALS v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm)
May 1: ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v KINGS XI PUNJAB (8 pm) MUMBAI INDIANS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (4 pm)
May 2: RAJASTHAN ROYALS v DECCAN CHARGERS (4 pm) CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm)
May 3: MUMBAI INDIANS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (8 pm) KINGS XI PUNJAB v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (4 pm)
May 4: DECCAN CHARGERS v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm)
May 5: DELHI DAREDEVILS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (8 pm) KINGS XI PUNJAB v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (4 pm)
May 6: MUMBAI INDIANS v DECCAN CHARGERS (8 pm)
May 7: KINGS XI PUNJAB v CHENNAI SUPER KINGS (8 pm) ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (4 pm)
May 8: DELHI DAREDEVILS v MUMBAI INDIANS (8 pm)
May 9: DECCAN CHARGERS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (4 pm) CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (8 pm)
May 10: KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm) ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v MUMBAI INDIANS (4 pm)
May 11: DECCAN CHARGERS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (8 pm)
May 12: ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (4 pm) KINGS XI PUNJAB v MUMBAI INDIANS (8 pm)
May 13: DECCAN CHARGERS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm)
May 14: MUMBAI INDIANS v RAJASTHAN ROYALS (8 pm) CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (4 pm)
May 15: KINGS XI PUNJAB v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm)
May 16: CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v MUMBAI INDIANS (4 pm) DECCAN CHARGERS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (8 pm)
May 17: RAJASTHAN ROYALS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (8 pm) KINGS XI PUNJAB v DECCAN CHARGERS (4 pm)
May 18: CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (8 pm)
May 19: DELHI DAREDEVILS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (8 pm)
May 20: CHENNAI SUPER KINGS v KINGS XI PUNJAB (8 pm) RAJASTHAN ROYALS v KOLKATA KNIGHT RIDERS (4 pm)
May 21: DECCAN CHARGERS v ROYAL CHALLENGERS BANGALORE (8 pm) MUMBAI INDIANS v DELHI DAREDEVILS (4 pm)
Schedule for Semi-Final & Final Match
May 22: Semi Final 1 at Pretoria. 8 PM
May 23: Semi Final 2 at Johannesburg 8 PM
May 24: Final at Johannesburg. 8 PM
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Ashtamudi Lake
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Ashtamudi Lake (Ashtamudi Kayal) in the Kollam District of Kerala, India, is the second largest and deepest wetland ecosystem, a palm-shaped (also called octopus-shaped) large water body, next only to the Vembanad estuary ecosystem of the state. Ashtamudi means 'eight branches' (Ashta = 'eight'; mudi = 'branch') in the local language of Malayalam. This name is indicative of the lake's topography: a lake with multiple branches. The lake is also called the gateway to the backwaters of Kerala. Ashtamudi Wetland was included in the list of wetlands of international importance, as defined by the Ramsar Convention for the conservation and sustainable utilization of വെത്ലണ്ട്സ്
Along both banks of the lake and its backwater canals, coconut groves and palm trees interspersed with towns and villages are seen. Quilon is an important historic port town located on the right bank of the lake and boat cruises are operated by the Kollam Boat Club from Quilon to Alappuzha providing transport access to many other towns and villages along this route, apart from the luxury “house boats” which also operate in the lake. The boat journey is an 8 hour trip, winds through lakes, canals and water bound villages, and gives a complete exposure to the beauty of the backwaters of Ashtamudi Lake. Chinese fishing nets, called cheena vala in the Malayalam language, are used by local fisherman and are a common sight along the waterway.
The lake and the city of Quilon on its banks and the Neendakara port at the confluence offer the transport means for state’s trade and commerce in cashew trading and processing industry and marine products industry.
The lake is the source of livelihood for the people living close to it in fishing, coconut husk retting for coir production and inland navigation services.
The lake and the life on its shores have inspired many artists and writers.It has been the subject of many poems of renowned poet Thirunalloor Karunakaran who was born and brought up on its banks.
Advantages of Vizhinjam Port.
LANCO Infratech Limited (LITL) www.lancogroup.com
Advantages of Vizhinjam Port.
Proposed project aims to fulfill the need of providing Transshipment on Indian Coast (at present there is no existing Container Transshipment Terminal in India to cater to this need. Annual Container Traffic close to 4 Million TEUs is currently originating or destined to India through Sea route with CAGR of 14% during the last decade).
Vizhinjam is an all-weather port and the international shipping line is just one nautical mile off Vizhinjam coast.
The proposed site is on the INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING LINE, very close to the EAST-WEST SHIPPING AXIS.
The proposed site is endowed with natural depth of 24 m (which is by far the best compared to other ports in the world) as close as one Nautical Mile from the sea coast. There is no littoral sedimentation and due to natural depth availability, the site needs no dredging or minimal capital dredging requirements and thus low costs (as compared to the any other port in India within a reasonable distance from the East-West Shipping axis).
The depths at ports in New York, Southampton, Singapore, Dubai, Colombo, Hong Kong is 15 meters and requires dredging
It has more advantages compared to Colombo port and if developed can harbour even Panamax class and futuristic vessels. It also satisfies the physical and hydrographical parameters of modern seaports, the memorandum said.
The proposed site has minimal Littoral drift and as such would hardly require any maintenance dredging during the years of operation. This will result in low O&M Costs.
The proposed port is a Green-field project, away from urban/city limits, and thus can be master planned and shaped by the professional and experienced developer as per his own efficient designs and needs. The Port can turn out to be an efficient, modern and highly productive port with design, expertise and experience of the successful developer having international experience in such ports.
The port can attract large share of the container transshipment traffic which is now being diverted to Colombo, Singapore and Dubai. It can also ensure the badly needed economic development of India other than opening up immense job opportunities.
THE proposed deepwater international container trans-shipment terminal at Vizhinjam is expected to bring down the total costs of movement of containers to and from foreign destinations, according to the Container Shipment Economics Study.
At present, India's port capacity(12 major Indian ports) is a meagre 4.61 million TEUs/annum compared with China's capacity of 50 million TEUs, almost 11 times that of India's. Vizhinjam Port alone will have the capaciy of 4.10 million TEU/annum.
The study, carried out IL&FS Infrastructure Development Corporation and Hauer Associates, has also found that the Sethusamudram project will promote inter-coastal movements of Indian cargo, enhancing the potential of Vizhinjam as a trans-shipment hub.
On the other hand, the present Indian gateway ports do not attract a sufficient number of mainline vessels due to inadequate facilities and the distance from international shipping routes. As of now, about 61 per cent of Indian export/import containers are trans-shipped through the nearby foreign ports of Colombo, Singapore and Salalah (Oman.) This results in an additional burden of up to $200 per TEU of cargo interests with freight paid by Indian exporters being 11.4 per cent of the c.i.f (cost, insurance, freight) value of goods as against the world average of 6.1 per cent.
Notwithstanding the location of Vizhinjam in the deep South, cargo interests in the southern, northern and western regions may find it more viable to use the port as a gateway/trans-shipment terminal instead of Colombo, Singapore or Salalah. This means the hinterland of the port may extend to the western and northern parts of the country.
Once the port is up, Indian exporters will not have to travel to Dubai or Singapore for trans-shipment of cargo. Its is expected to save a Rs 1000 crores in expenditure.
The National Highways (NH-47-in use for years) NH-47 Bypass (partly completed and balance 6-8 Km under implementation) are in close proximity (Bypass at 3 Km & NH at 10 Km) and national rail network is less than 12 Km from the proposed port site. On one side NH-47 connects Thiruvananthapuram to Salem via Coimbatore and to Kanyakumari on the other side. At Kanyakumari, NH-47 would connect to the proposed N-S corridor (between Kashmir and Kanyakumari) being implemented under National Highway Development Project (NHDP) of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). New alignment connecting Thiruvananthapuram to Kanyakumari is also proposed by NHAI under NHDP, the detailing of the same is underway (to be followed by implementation).
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Advantages of Vizhinjam Port.
Proposed project aims to fulfill the need of providing Transshipment on Indian Coast (at present there is no existing Container Transshipment Terminal in India to cater to this need. Annual Container Traffic close to 4 Million TEUs is currently originating or destined to India through Sea route with CAGR of 14% during the last decade).
Vizhinjam is an all-weather port and the international shipping line is just one nautical mile off Vizhinjam coast.
The proposed site is on the INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING LINE, very close to the EAST-WEST SHIPPING AXIS.
The proposed site is endowed with natural depth of 24 m (which is by far the best compared to other ports in the world) as close as one Nautical Mile from the sea coast. There is no littoral sedimentation and due to natural depth availability, the site needs no dredging or minimal capital dredging requirements and thus low costs (as compared to the any other port in India within a reasonable distance from the East-West Shipping axis).
The depths at ports in New York, Southampton, Singapore, Dubai, Colombo, Hong Kong is 15 meters and requires dredging
It has more advantages compared to Colombo port and if developed can harbour even Panamax class and futuristic vessels. It also satisfies the physical and hydrographical parameters of modern seaports, the memorandum said.
The proposed site has minimal Littoral drift and as such would hardly require any maintenance dredging during the years of operation. This will result in low O&M Costs.
The proposed port is a Green-field project, away from urban/city limits, and thus can be master planned and shaped by the professional and experienced developer as per his own efficient designs and needs. The Port can turn out to be an efficient, modern and highly productive port with design, expertise and experience of the successful developer having international experience in such ports.
The port can attract large share of the container transshipment traffic which is now being diverted to Colombo, Singapore and Dubai. It can also ensure the badly needed economic development of India other than opening up immense job opportunities.
THE proposed deepwater international container trans-shipment terminal at Vizhinjam is expected to bring down the total costs of movement of containers to and from foreign destinations, according to the Container Shipment Economics Study.
At present, India's port capacity(12 major Indian ports) is a meagre 4.61 million TEUs/annum compared with China's capacity of 50 million TEUs, almost 11 times that of India's. Vizhinjam Port alone will have the capaciy of 4.10 million TEU/annum.
The study, carried out IL&FS Infrastructure Development Corporation and Hauer Associates, has also found that the Sethusamudram project will promote inter-coastal movements of Indian cargo, enhancing the potential of Vizhinjam as a trans-shipment hub.
On the other hand, the present Indian gateway ports do not attract a sufficient number of mainline vessels due to inadequate facilities and the distance from international shipping routes. As of now, about 61 per cent of Indian export/import containers are trans-shipped through the nearby foreign ports of Colombo, Singapore and Salalah (Oman.) This results in an additional burden of up to $200 per TEU of cargo interests with freight paid by Indian exporters being 11.4 per cent of the c.i.f (cost, insurance, freight) value of goods as against the world average of 6.1 per cent.
Notwithstanding the location of Vizhinjam in the deep South, cargo interests in the southern, northern and western regions may find it more viable to use the port as a gateway/trans-shipment terminal instead of Colombo, Singapore or Salalah. This means the hinterland of the port may extend to the western and northern parts of the country.
Once the port is up, Indian exporters will not have to travel to Dubai or Singapore for trans-shipment of cargo. Its is expected to save a Rs 1000 crores in expenditure.
The National Highways (NH-47-in use for years) NH-47 Bypass (partly completed and balance 6-8 Km under implementation) are in close proximity (Bypass at 3 Km & NH at 10 Km) and national rail network is less than 12 Km from the proposed port site. On one side NH-47 connects Thiruvananthapuram to Salem via Coimbatore and to Kanyakumari on the other side. At Kanyakumari, NH-47 would connect to the proposed N-S corridor (between Kashmir and Kanyakumari) being implemented under National Highway Development Project (NHDP) of National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). New alignment connecting Thiruvananthapuram to Kanyakumari is also proposed by NHAI under NHDP, the detailing of the same is underway (to be followed by implementation).
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ലുലു-ബിഗ്ഗെസ്റ്റ് മാല് ഇന് kerala
Lulu mall
A unique design, a new shopping philosophy, and an intelligent investment
A leisurely saunter through the Lulu Cochin Mall will take you away from the hustle and bustle of your daily schedules. The Mall allows shoppers to meander through the specialty stores, linger in a cafe, or meet friends to escape and rejuvenate. With its unique architecture, international class services and facilities, and a delightful customer friendly approach the Lulu Shopping Mall is sure to usher in a unique philosophy and a new shopping culture in Kochi. Located in one of the prime locations at the meeting point of three key Highways,NH47, NH17, and the Kochi by-pass the Mall is going to be landmark for the state of Kerala and its people. Designed to be a premier lifestyle center in Cochin, Lulu Mall will become the destination for the latest in retail and dining experiences.
Lulu Shopping Mall is going to be more than just a shopping centre. It is planned as a destination where visitor will experience the well known LULU values of guaranteeing world class quality at never before prices. More then 240 renowned outlets including food courts, restaurants, family entertainment zones and a 7 screen Multiplex will all come together to make Lulu Shopping. Mall a nerve centre of the city of Kochi. Any business that wants to be seen as part of the future of retailing will want to do business from the Lulu Shopping Mall.
No competition in size….no comparison in its facilities no limits to business opportunities
Lulu shopping mall with a basement and G-3 configurations is spread over 15 lakh square feet.
Located at Edappally, Kochi in an area of 16.5 acres, the LULU complex will also house of a five star hotel of 250 rooms.
With an outlay of 8 billion INR, LULU International Shopping Mall is the first of its kind shopping and leisure venue which will have no comparisons and will offer unlimited business opportunities.
A unique design, a new shopping philosophy, and an intelligent investment
A leisurely saunter through the Lulu Cochin Mall will take you away from the hustle and bustle of your daily schedules. The Mall allows shoppers to meander through the specialty stores, linger in a cafe, or meet friends to escape and rejuvenate. With its unique architecture, international class services and facilities, and a delightful customer friendly approach the Lulu Shopping Mall is sure to usher in a unique philosophy and a new shopping culture in Kochi. Located in one of the prime locations at the meeting point of three key Highways,NH47, NH17, and the Kochi by-pass the Mall is going to be landmark for the state of Kerala and its people. Designed to be a premier lifestyle center in Cochin, Lulu Mall will become the destination for the latest in retail and dining experiences.
Lulu Shopping Mall is going to be more than just a shopping centre. It is planned as a destination where visitor will experience the well known LULU values of guaranteeing world class quality at never before prices. More then 240 renowned outlets including food courts, restaurants, family entertainment zones and a 7 screen Multiplex will all come together to make Lulu Shopping. Mall a nerve centre of the city of Kochi. Any business that wants to be seen as part of the future of retailing will want to do business from the Lulu Shopping Mall.
No competition in size….no comparison in its facilities no limits to business opportunities
Lulu shopping mall with a basement and G-3 configurations is spread over 15 lakh square feet.
Located at Edappally, Kochi in an area of 16.5 acres, the LULU complex will also house of a five star hotel of 250 rooms.
With an outlay of 8 billion INR, LULU International Shopping Mall is the first of its kind shopping and leisure venue which will have no comparisons and will offer unlimited business opportunities.
Thrissur പൂരം ഓണ് മെയ് 3rd
Thrissur Pooram is the annual temple festival of the town of Thrissur in Kerala, India. It is one of the most colourful temple festival of Kerala which attracts large masses of devotees and spectators from all parts of the State and even outside. Thrissur Pooram is celebrated at the premises of the Vadakkunnathan Temple, situated on a hillock (Thekkinkadu maidan) right in the centre of the city, on the Pooram day in the month of Medom (April-May). Processions of richly caparisoned elephants accompanied by percussion ensembles from various neighbouring temples culminate at the Vadakumnathan temple. The most impressive processions are those Thriuvambadi Bhagavathy from the Thiruvambadi Sri Krishna Temple and the Paramekkavu Bhagavathi from Paramekkavu temple. The celebrations which last for over 36 hours includes parasol displays and firework shows. This festival was introduced by Sakthan Thampuran, the Maharaja of the erstwhile Cochin State in the late eighteenth century. Perhaps, there is no other festival in Kerala that draws such an unbelievable number of people to a single event. However Vadakkunnathan is a mere spectator at this festival, lending its premises and grounds for the great event. The pooram festival is also well known for the magnificent display of fireworks. Fire works start in the early hours and the dazzling display last three to four hours. The Pooram Festival is celebrated by two rival groups representing the two divisions of Thrissur Paramekkavu and Thiruvambadi vying with each other in making the display of fireworks grander and more colourful. Each group is allowed to display a maximum of fifteen elephants and all efforts are made by each party to secure the best elephants in South India and the most artistic parasols, several kinds of which are raised on the elephants during the display. Commencing in the early hours of the morning, the celebrations last till the break of dawn, the next day.
An elephant carrying Thidambu during Thrissur Pooram festival The procession but also quite enlivening. The marvellous as well as magical effect of the Panchavadyam, a combination of five percussion and wind instruments is to be felt and enjoyed. Among the varieties of festivals celebrated in Kerala, Thrissur Pooram is the most thunderous, spectacular and dazzling. There are three temples participating in the event. It is an expression of popular fascination for sound and colour, and because of the pageantry, it appeals to all people. The images of the deities from all temples of the village are taken on elephants to the main temple. The climax of the festival is the exhibition of thirty elephants and the famous fireworks at 2.30 am local time.
An elephant carrying Thidambu during Thrissur Pooram festival The procession but also quite enlivening. The marvellous as well as magical effect of the Panchavadyam, a combination of five percussion and wind instruments is to be felt and enjoyed. Among the varieties of festivals celebrated in Kerala, Thrissur Pooram is the most thunderous, spectacular and dazzling. There are three temples participating in the event. It is an expression of popular fascination for sound and colour, and because of the pageantry, it appeals to all people. The images of the deities from all temples of the village are taken on elephants to the main temple. The climax of the festival is the exhibition of thirty elephants and the famous fireworks at 2.30 am local time.
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