Young Consumer

Orkut: Youth Icon or Banned Substance?

2007-06-13T03:16:00.000-07:00

Orkut has been nominated against 'Abhishek Bacchan, Multimedia Cell Phone, Rang De Basanti and You' in the MTV and Pepsi Youth Icon 2007. Orkut has 6.6 Million (66 lakh) Indian subscribers. This consists huge amount of youngsters.

There are more than a million communities on Orkut on absolutely everything from pizza to pasta, from Film star to Sports star, from your pet to your favourite teacher. People freely express their opinions and views here. Internet has always been a medium carrying free information and that’s exactly where the trouble starts for Orkut.

This time the king of Social networking has ran into trouble with the student wing of the Shiv Sena party. The group opposes to what they see as increasing imitation of the West. It often stops Valentine's Day celebrations, attacks nightclubs and pubs, and prevents screening of sexually bold films.

The student wing of the Shiv Sena party said many Indians use Orkut to bad-mouth religious groups and disturb communal harmony, and also to spread misinformation about India. Back in March it was announced that Orkut has agreed to provide Mumbai Police details of the IP address from which an objectionable message or blog has been posted on the site and the Internet service provider involved.

Internet no doubt is a great tool and an innovation like we have never seen before. But with great power comes great responsibility, its up to us to use the internet wisely and make productive use of it. Yes we are free to express our opinions but at the same time we need to see and understand the bigger picture.

Young minds are known to be rebels. And the more you suppress them the more they will come up. With caution and care we need to explain to them what’s right and what’s wrong. We just can’t tell them not to surf Orkut because a few handful communities have an anti-India stand. We should stand strong and show faith in our youngsters such that we are unaffected and undivided against all attempts to disrupt our harmony.

Ankur Agarwal
http://www.onlygizmos.com

Plight of Gidhdha village

2007-03-22T22:18:00.000-07:00

A cold winter morning of 2007, about 30 kms from Patna, I was in
Gidhdha, a village of Moosahari's, a 35-lakh strong community spread
across Bihar, known for eating even rats in dire circumstances of
poverty & survival.

We were with people who often dig a hole in the nights to make their
kids sleep and cover them with dry grass to save them from the cold.
This is a place where women tell you that they don't use ANYTHING
during menses, and they can't take a bath because there is NOTHING to
change

We felt criminal, wearing sweaters and jackets. For every person who
dies because of cold and for every woman who goes through a bad phase
without a piece of cloth, we found ourselves answerable…not because
it's our doing but because we are not doing enough.

I remembered a radio channel holding hundreds of sweaters because they
wanted a celebrity to hand it over to us and they were not getting
dates. I remembered corporates who didn't send material to us because
after collection they were waiting for the right moment to organize an
event to do it. I also thought of millions of individuals who keep the
material with them in search of a real needy or waiting for a
disaster…

Don't you agree that for people who roam around naked in peak winters
or die because of cold, winters are a much bigger annual disaster than
earthquake or floods? For millions of women, even menses is a monthly
disaster if they are forced to roam around even without a piece of
cloth to use as a napkin.

We have decided to do something; every year in addition to our present
role, we will take up 100 villages and ensure that no one in these
villages remains without clothes. That means generating over 1,00,000
kgs of extra material every year. In 2007, we will do this for 100
such villages of Bihar and it has already started from Gidhha, the
village I mentioned earlier.

If you understand the seriousness of this issue then I'm sure we will
able to go way beyond this commitment. By simply giving us any
unwanted cloth you have in your wardrobe, you can change the realities
for these people.

Your immediate support is needed:
(All donations to GOONJ are exempted u/s 80 G of IT act.)
Do visit http://www.goonj.info/clothincentive.php
Anshu K. Gupta ( Ashoka Fellow )
Founder -Director
GOONJ..
Tel.- (m)-98681-46978, (o)-011-26972351
Add-J-93, Sarita Vihar, New Delhi-76
E-mail- anshu_goonj1@yahoo.co.in,anshugoonj24@gmail.com

Indian children suffer more malnutrition than in Ethiopia

2007-03-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

India has higher rates of malnourished children than sub-Saharan Africa, despite having the money to tackle the problem, according to a survey that raises grave questions about the country's economic rise.

Almost 46 per cent of Indian children under the age of 3 suffer from malnutrition, according to the survey by the Indian Health Ministry in conjunction with Unicef, the United Nations children's agency. That compares with about 35 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and only 8 per cent in China, whose economic growth India strives to emulate. It also represents only a slight decrease since the last National Family Health Survey in India seven years ago showed that 47 per cent of its children were mal-nourished.

The results provide a shocking illustration of how India's recent economic gains, while enriching the social elite and middle classes, have failed to benefit almost half of its 1.1 billion people.

India's economy has grown by more than 8 per cent annually since 2003 and hit $4 trillion (based on purchasing power parity) by the end of last year — more than double that of the whole of Africa. The country now has the sort of budget, foreign exchange reserves, transport infrastructure, human resources and stable political environment that are the envy of most sub-Saharan countries.

Yet its child malnourishment levels are worse than Ethiopia's and on a par with those of Eritrea and Burkina Faso.

Werner Schultink, chief of child development and nutrition for Unicef in India, said that the country's failure to address malnourishment and other health problems compromised the world's ability to reach the millennium development goals of halving global poverty and hunger by 2015. It also threatened to wipe out the "demographic dividend" of having a relatively young population by creating a generation of underdeveloped and, in some cases, mentally retarded workers, he said.

The survey found that anaemia levels had risen compared with those of seven years ago, with about 56 per cent of women and 79 per cent of children below the age of 3 suffering from the disorder. It showed only negligible progress in child immunisation levels, at 44 per cent compared with 42 per cent. In Gujarat, one of India's richest and most developed states, the proportion of underweight children had risen to 47 per cent from 45 per cent.

The problem, according to Dr Schultink and other experts, is not that India lacks the money to tackle these problems. They pointed out that child malnourishment levels in India were above 70 per cent in the 1970s and that Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, had called recently for urgent action to address the problem. His Government needed to spend far more than the current 1 per cent of GDP allocated to healthcare, they said.

It also needed to raise awareness about health issues among poor women and needed to focus more on children under three rather than the school-age children currently covered in a state scheme to provide 120 million hot, nutritious and free meals on every school day.

"The survey confirms that India has done little for its children," said Shiv Kumar, a development economist and government adviser, who described the survey as "a matter of national priority and shame".

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article1421393.ece

An Encounter with Extreme Poverty

2007-01-22T02:28:00.000-08:00

On December 5th afternoon a severe fire broke out in the slum colony of Bawana (a village on the outskirts of Delhi ) razing over 350 jhuggies and completely devastating the lives of more than 2500 odd inhabitants including several hundred small children and women. The tragedy had severely hit these families who lost everything, leaving them merely with 10X10 sq. feet of land to rebuild their plastic made jhuggies, or rather, rebuild their lives yet again. Fortunately no causality was caused due to the fire but what could be more tragic than an unending series of extreme mental and emotional turbulences for these poor resettled slum dwellers from Yamuna Pushta, who have lived unsettled lives for several decades.

That same week I got the opportunity to make a visit to the fire-affected colony to assess the situation there and assist in the relief work. Though I had seen and heard a lot about the slums and like most of urban youth I was also pretty confident of my media based knowledge of slums but this was my first ever ACTUAL visit to any such place. The real picture was entirely different and far more disturbing than what I had heard or seen on television. The visit gave me one of the biggest jolts of my life and exposed to me the other face of Delhi , which is seldom discussed in the midst of much trumpeted 8% GDP growth rate of this country. This face is rather well concealed while adeptly showcasing the cosmetically or rather inhumanly developed ultra modern face of Delhi .

We started the relief work early in the morning. We walked down the intricate four feet wide lane, which gradually widened into a few hundred square meters of land housing 500 odd jhuggies inhabiting more than four thousand people. I was totally appalled by the gigantic cluster of human beings in such an extremely small space, perhaps one of the densest human inhabitation existing on earth. This whole place was indeed smaller than the courtyards of many rich and famous of this metropolis. The size of each jhuggi was even smaller than the size of a standard double bed with eight people struggling to somehow accommodate themselves and spend their whole life in it. This scene reminded me of my recent visit to a concentration camp in Poland called Maidanek where during World War II several hundred prisoners were stuffed together in small wooden huts without even basic sanitation facility. In those camps many used to die of severe suffocation, extreme stench and various microorganism diseases. At Maidanek I had to make some effort to visualize that sixty year old tragedy but certainly not here at Bawana.

After reaching that place I spoke to some of the local residents there and could easily sense the feeling of somberness and helplessness prevailing there. Though most of the male members were out to work for daily bread, the women came up and spoke of their sordid tale and the extreme poverty they are living with. It was quite sad to know that with an average family income of Rs. 2000, more than a quarter goes in commuting for work as these people are thrown to the outskirts of Delhi approximately 50 km from the City Centrum. It was poignant to look into the eyes of several old women, widows, handicapped and small children standing in a queue waiting eagerly for their turn to collect their Rs. 300 ( U.S. $ 7) worth of relief packet that meant so much for their whole family.

After spending a whole day there and making a small contribution in the relief work, I got into the car to begin my return trip. I was so much dismayed to see the living condition in those jhuggies that it was very difficult to come out of that feeling so soon. The car seemed much bigger than those dingy jhuggies each housing 8 people for their whole life. Driving down the 15 km long stretch of the smooth road connecting to the main city and surrounded by beautiful lush greenery on both sides evoked the philosophical person hidden in me.

On the way back home several questions came across my mind viz. What was the mistake of those small children who were born in that ill-fated E- Block of Bawana? Whose fault is it if any? Parents, Government or was it in their Destiny? Will they be able to extricate themselves from this vicious circle of extreme poverty and hence out of that E- Block of Bawana, ever in their lives? What is the certainty that these hapless slum dwellers won't be displaced yet again if in case Delhi hosts another mega sporting event? What I had seen was may be just the tip of the iceberg? Is there more to see? Is the uncontrolled and ever-growing population of this country the root cause for all problems? Is it due to the systematic failure of the Government policies? Is it the newly imposed capitalism responsible for it? But what will happen to the progress of the nation under extreme socialism? Can there be a trade off between the two? If yes then how? And many more….Finding myself too small to think of any answer to these difficult questions, I rather chose to sleep quietly and comfortably in my warm and spacious car.

By the time I woke up we had reached Connaught Place . I was wondering why this place, which is so famous for its bustling life, glittering neon lights and sky rocketing buildings, was suddenly lacking in its sheen. Perhaps now my illusion WAS, shattered as I had incidentally just seen a contrasting face of Delhi with my naked eyes, which had never been this real to me till now.

Written by Harsh Agarwal

Your tomorrow...

2007-01-18T00:45:00.000-08:00

[ 10 Jan, 2007 0000hrs IST TIMES NEWS NETWORK ]

The Day After Tomorrow, the Hollywood film portraying a future where global warming causes freaky weather, is playing not in a cinema near you but right in your backyard. Even as Delhi woke up yesterday to near-freezing temperature, and Chandigarh recorded zero degree Celsius, a balmy Washington experienced the flowering of cherry blossoms and chirping of birds bang in the middle of winter, the season of ice and snow.

Whether or not climate doomsayers are right — that the planet is headed for sure disaster — there is no doubt that weather patterns worldwide are indeed changing. Only, this time, it is not due to natural reasons but because of human activity releasing high volumes of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere. International initiatives to deal with climate change are well-intentioned:

A Kyoto Protocol that exhorts member countries to cut back their emissions, an AP6 (Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate), or a Montreal Protocol that restricts release of ozone-depleting substances. But global treaties and annual conferences don't matter that much if, on the ground, little is accomplished. Great planning doesn't translate into great results unless the macro gets translated into the micro.

Micro-management is the key to both adaptation and mitigation. Often the sum of individual action has far-reaching results. Conservation is best implemented when it begins at home: Turning off lights and other electrical appliances when not needed, recycling things, enrolling in car pools, opting for smaller, eco-friendly vehicles, using public transport oftener and capturing solar energy to heat water — all these help minimise consumption of energy.

At the community level, each residential zone could set up a wind farm where conditions are suitable. Tree planting in common areas, maintenance of public parks and woodlands will create carbon sinks that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Residential and office buildings built with green technology will make maximum use of natural light and air to minimise use of electricity.

In the final analysis, you are the environment; what you do affects your immediate environment. Constructing a macro picture of the world's climate pattern is a tedious and often elusive task, and it involves studying innumerable parameters and probabilities. However, at the micro level, freaky weather can be countered with individual action. In totality, this might help us buck the trend of global warming.

Should airguns be banned to protect animals?

2007-01-07T23:45:00.000-08:00

In 2000 People for Animals went to the Delhi High Court asking for airguns not to be sold at all or, if they were to be sold , they should be sold in gun shops and licenced. This was part of a larger case in which we asked for the gun licences that are issued so freely in the name of crop protection be banned. In 2002 we won the case and got a remarkable judgment from the Chief Justice of the High Court Hon'ble Justice S.B.Sinha and Hon’ble Justice A.K.Sikri.

These airguns that people buy in toyshops are not toys. They are weapons. Children who are given these guns by very foolish parents do not use them on inanimate objects or even in the house. Imagine the hell they would have to pay if they shot an expensive vase to bits.

The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960, in Section 11, makes criminal any person from causing pain or suffering to any animals. But invariably airguns, air rifles, airpistols are used on helpless small animals, in particular birds, by children. The victim does not die immediately. The pellet creates a gaping hole in the small body and the victim takes hours, even a few days, to die. The hole becomes infected, flies lay their eggs in it and these turn into maggots that eat the victim's body. Cows or donkeys make easy targets. When they boast to their parents about their kills, and the parent who has given them the gun merely smiles, then that child is lost to civilized society - we have created a monster.

At the very least it teaches children that violence is easy and condoned by adults. It teaches them that all species other than humans are dispensable.

It is not just animals. I have seen children using it on servants and poorer children. I have seen them laugh when they hide and shoot at random passersby. They often do not tell their parents. This is extremely dangerous.

The torture and killing of little animals can be an early sign of a psychological disorder. The shooters are often just showing off to their friends. This leads to a situation where violence becomes power and then other children ask their parents for guns as well so they can be part of the group.

Some children intentionally hurt animals because they enjoy hurting things, or because it makes them feel powerful. Many of these people would hurt other people if they could get away with it; they just choose to hurt animals because animals are more helpless than people. Killing animals is simply training for when they move on to larger things...like people. Children are not stupid: They know they are being cruel, and when they excuse it by simply saying it is a game, these children who subconsciously believe that violence is o.k. grow up to be insensitive and more violent than normal people.

I am sure Pataudi and Salman Khan were given these guns as children and you can see the result now. The jails are filled with violent criminals who started out life, according to every survey done, by killing small animals and birds as children. It also puts other children in jeopardy.

On 13th July 1962 the Government of India brought out a notification exempting airguns/ airrifles/ airpistols from the provisions of the Arms Act. Obviously no bureaucrat or politician applied his mind while passing this arbitrary order. For while a child of any age is allowed to possess and use airguns, and indeed buy them from toyshops or roadside vendors, if the same gun is used by a Rifle Club, it is mandatory that the person should be an adult above 21 years and all the rules of the Arms Act apply to him/her!

So children are exempt but not adults??

The government, we argued, has a duty to create conditions in which children develop a humane and civilized character, the kind of people who assist rather than harm. But this exemption is completely against that constitutional duty. Article 51 A imposes a fundamental duty " to have compassion for living creatures”. The allowance of weapons to children violates this.

The Government in its defense argued that these airguns were allowed as long as they did not perforate a target made of wood of the thickness of one inch. However, children don't use these on one thick wooden piece. They use them on birds. A sparrow has a skin of less than one millimeter. In the judgement the judges have said " it is difficult to comprehend as to why such a category or firearms would be made freely available in the market." " It does not stand to any reason as to why air rifles,air guns and air pistols which can be used for the same purposes as other guns would be taken out of the purview of the Arms act" The judges also noted "there cannot be any doubt whatsoever that the provisions of the prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1960 would be violated" by allowing these guns to be freely sold.

Who do you think opposed us in this case (and the judges found this very curious too) - The Ministry for Environment and Forests, then headed by the DMK minister, Baalu! The lawyer gave examples from Nagaland where boys go on bird shooting sprees at the age of 10 - to the extent that the Chief Secretary of Nagaland had contemplated the regulation and sale of airguns to the general public, the Environment Ministry argued that these were non lethal weapons and suggested awareness and education as a remedy instead of banning guns! They were supported by the Ministry of Agriculture. The Bureau of Police Research and development added their two bits by saying that the muzzle of the guns should be reduced so that the energy of the guns would come down.

The Court ordered a consultation between the Home and other Ministries to take place. Months passed. Not a single meeting took place. We went back to court. The Court realised that the government was going to take no action. They passed an order quashing the notification GSR No 988 dated 13-07-62 "issued under subclause (vii) of clause (b) of subsection (i) of section 2 of the Arms Act by the Central Government whereby and whereunder air guns, air rifles and air pistols have been exempted from all the regulations and controls as provided under the Arms Act. This judgment applies to the whole of India.If you see any airguns being sold, you can have the shopkeeper arrested.

Maneka Gandhi

To join the animal welfare movement contact Smt Gandhi at gandhim@nic.in or 14,Ashoka Road, New Delhi -110001

Blogosphere 2006 is a revolution you brought

2006-12-28T20:23:00.000-08:00

They react, they express their views, and sometimes, they do rap songs. Bloggers are changing the face of the world by turning the web into a forum – for the people, by the people and of the people

CHANDNA ARORA

You made it to Time’s Person of the Year, helped get justice for Jessica, spoke out against reservation… and did a lot of that through blogs. And ‘You’ encompass the millions around the world who have made their voice heard through blogs. And it is no longer about chronicling your day online, this new online activism is issue specific, educated and very, very powerful. The reason: It is person to person.

And it is just going to get sharper and better from here. A recent study by the US analysts Gartner has predicted that this trend will plateau at about a 100 million dedicated blogs next year. DT focuses on people who are driving this revolution of ideas…

Dawn of the individual

As blogging in India comes into greater focus, how powerful a voice is it now? Very, if filmmaker Anurag Kashyap is to be believed. “But it’s still under the surface,” he says. “It’s a bit like a revolution.”

Even filmmaker Shekhar Kapur shares that belief. “Blogging is going to be a rising phenomena that will bring information to a far more democratic level than anyone ever believed possible. The governments and the power structure will have to contend with the power of the individual blogger,” he says.

‘Me’ is the word

Many like Kapur find a release and satisfaction in keeping a sort of a diary that they can share with others online through their blogs. Saket Vaidya, an avid blogger, feels many bloggers have evolved in their writing.

“Take any Indian blog which has been running for more than a year, and compare the writing that you see today with the writing in the archives over a year ago. Veteran bloggers often get a ‘Seriously, I wrote that!’ feeling while browsing through their own archives.” It’s a chance for people to look at a computer screen and wonder who’s out there looking back at them. This translates into the success of sites like YouTube, Orkut etc.

As Kapur says, “Blogging is no longer for the casual blogger. It needs commitment. You’d better be seen as someone who is passionate about what you are doing.”

The other side of things

Influential bloggers also say that encountering conflicting views has enriched their perspective. Bombay Addict, a blogger, is among them. “We have our own causes and beliefs that we support or defend when we write posts or comment on other blogs. Personally, I know that I’ve gained a lot in terms of insights and appreciating the merits of opposing views when I read blogs.”

“Because of the scale of users on blogs today, and the democratic nature of the discourse, blogs are making mainstream media take notice of online conversations. This is perhaps what is enabling blogging conversations to emerge in the public sphere,” says a representative of My Times, My Voice – the Times of India’s reader-interactive platform that incorporates multiple blogs. “Someone who otherwise does not have a visible platform to speak from, can also become a powerful voice through a blog on a popular site like indiatimes.com. Blogs are today opinion builders in their own right,” says a senior official of the site.

'Children's Summit for Disposable Wooden Chopstick'

2006-12-11T23:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.japanfs.org/db/database.cgi?cmd=dp&num=1559&dp=data_e.html

'Children's Summit for Disposable Wooden Chopstick' Held in Home of
Japanese Noodles

The First Kodomo Waribashi Summit in Kagawa, a children's meeting for recycling wooden chopsticks, was held on August 27, 2006 in Takamatsu,Kagawa Prefecture, western Japan. The event attracted about 2,000 people.

Under the theme "Let's start recycling wood from forests in our daily lives," the Green Consumers Takamatsu, a Japanese non-profit organization,proposed and hosted the event as an NPO collaboration project with the Kagawa Prefectural government. The event was also supported by other organizations involved in chopstick recycling and green consumer activities.

Kagawa Prefecture is the home of Sanuki Udon, a famous Japanese noodle brand, and large numbers of disposable wooden chopsticks are being consumed.

The event aims to encourage local citizens to pay more attention to recycling disposable wooden chopsticks as well as working on local environmental problems, with the aim of creating a recycling-based society in local communities.

At the event, Mr. Tetsuro Mukai, an activist in the disposable chopstick recycling movement since 1994, gave a lecture and local children had a discussion about the recycling of disposable chopsticks. Children also gained hands-on experience of the methods used to recycle disposable wooden chopsticks, including traditional papermaking using chopsticks as a fiber ingredient, pictorial letter cards drawn with chopstick brushes, and chopstick crafts such as toy guns and decorative articles. The entry fee of the event was six pairs of used disposable chopsticks.

Now, rickshaw only in the reel life

2006-12-11T22:57:00.000-08:00

Somdatta Basu | TNN

Kolkata: What is common between Balraj Sahani and Om Puri? Both have pulled the rickshaw on Kolkata streets.

Be it period drama (Parineeta ) or old classic (Do Bigha Zameen ), pure love story (Amar Prem ) or the West glorifying the Indian slums (City of Joy ), filmmakers, time and again, have turned to the shaft-yoke imagery whenever they wanted to portray Kolkata in its elements.

The screen travails of the hand-pulled rickshaw from Satyajit Ray to Rituparno Ghosh will fortunately assure the carriage at least lives in reel life even as Bengal’s Marxist lawmakers handed the death sentence to it.

For Pradeep Sarkar, who directed Parineeta, the rickshaw brings out the ‘‘slow, yet steady’’ Bengali attitude: ‘‘The rickshaw is part of Kolkata’s psyche. The time-frame (1960s) of Parineeta warranted portraying hand-pulled rickshaws. They were an integral part of the city then.’’

Kolkata alone has claim on the hackney-pullers, say the directors. ‘‘It may be seen as a form of slavery, but the handpulled rickshaws should be preserved as part of our heritage. There can be certain routes on which they can still be allowed to ply. If they are abandoned, the city will lose part of its tradition. And we shall not be able to use rickshaws in films any more,’’ rues Sarkar.

But the rickshaw is very much there in Buddhadeb Dasgupta’s forthcoming flick, Two Boys and A Girl . ‘‘There is a parity between the hackney carriage and the city. It has been repeatedly used in films simply because of its familiarity with Kolkata,’’ says Dasgupta. Personally, though, he would never take a ride. ‘‘But it is one of the non-polluting vehicles the city will ever have. Before banning it, we should get rid of our autos and buses.’’

Decades ago, middle-class women on hand-pulled rickshaws was a common sight on city streets. ‘‘Naturally, it found reflection in cinema,’’ says veteran filmmaker Tapan Sinha. The rickshaw has been a ‘‘common’’ prop in many of his movies.

Om Puri, who lived with rickshawpullers for some time to get into the skin of his character in City of Joy , says, ‘‘When there is flooding in Kolkata, handpulled rickshaws are the only solace. They are symbolic to the City of Joy.’’

While City of Joy was happening, a rickshaw was parked in the garage of the Oberoi Grand. ‘‘Fifteen days before the shoot, I would get up at 5.30 am, dress scantily, cover my face with a dirty towel and practise,’’ recalls Puri. His two passengers were real rickshaw-pullers; one would guide him, while the other warded off inquisitive passengers.

The experience lingered on his mind. ‘‘When we went to Hong Kong for a promo, I took my wife for a rickshaw ride, She sat on the passenger seat, while I pulled the rickshaw,’’ signs off Puri.

The Trivia

Most of the rickshaw-pullers are migrants from Bihar who leave their families at home & spend 10 months of the year in Kolkata

In July 2005, the Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government heralded a total ban on this antiquated form of transport. But this was not the first conflict between the pullers and the government

24,000 rickshaw-wallahs are enrolled with the All Bengal (hand-pulled) Rickshaw Union

Rs 30 was all a rickshaw-wallah would need to renew his licence.

From Bihar to Kolkata: The Mahato saga

2006-12-11T22:56:00.000-08:00

Ajanta Chakraborty | TNN

Kolkata: Till now, it’s been a cosy, if not happy, family on the pavements of Calcutta Technical School on Dharamtolla.

Basudeb Mahato and his two sons with their three ‘‘rented’’ rickshaws ‘‘parked’’ on the sidewalk may not have painted a pretty picture of Darwinian struggle. ‘‘But we are still here, alive and working and sending money home,’’ sighs Mahato.

‘‘The government’s ban will not only throw us out of work — and probably out of this place (pavements),’’ he says, sure that the rickshaw ban will send them packing to Samastipur in Bihar ‘‘to starve’’. It’s mid-afternoon. The 65-year-old human horse (as the West call them) is negotiating his 11th and final fare of the day with an obese woman and her equally chubby son. After they agree on Rs 20, the two passengers climb aboard.

‘‘Sit here and I will be back in 10 minutes,’’ Mahato says as he positions himself between the rickshaw’s shafts, assuming the yoke as he has every day for the past 25 years.

Ten minutes later, he lights a bidi and looks at it fondly, ‘‘Before I became a rickshaw-wallah, I used to run my own bidimanufacturing business. Now that my business is gone, I don’t know what I’ll do in Samastipur. I have some land, though. But can hardly earn a living with it.’’ But won’t that be better than being a pavement dweller? No way. Mahato is happy to live aasman ke neeche . ‘‘Except for the rain and occasions when police drive us out of here. It’s difficult finding another place. But the ordeal is over in a day or two,’’ says Mahato. He still remembers the day he was rendered ‘‘homeless’’ two years ago when the owner sold off the crumbly building on Colin Street.

Mahato’s balancesheet goes like this: Between the two generations, the Mahatos have been sending a modest packet of Rs 10,000 to Rajo Devi, mother of Basudeb’s nine children.

The three rickshaws have each been rented from one Md Tahir at Mehndi Bagan Road for Rs 20 a day. ‘‘Each of our daily incomes range between Rs 150 and Rs 200. From this, Rs 20 must go to the rickshaw-owner. We have no establishment cost and our lunch and dinner are from roadside eateries.”

The menu comprises daal and roti or bhaat. Machhli-bhat), the typical Bihari palate is a luxury they indulge in off and on. “Kalkatta sasta hain. Yahaan garib aadmi ka achhi khasi guzara ho jata hair (Kolkata is a cheap city. The poor can eke a fairly good living here).”

FAREWELL RICKSHAW

2006-12-11T22:54:00.000-08:00

Source: Times of India, dated:05-12-2006
The Clatter Of The Iconic Rickshaws On Kolkata Streets Was Outlawed By The Assembly

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Kolkata: Bengal lawmakers on Monday voted out and bade farewell to a friend of Kolkatans’ through thick and thin — the hand-pulled rickshaw. The Calcutta Hackney-Carriage (Amendment) Bill, 2006, to phase out handpulled rickshaws sailed through the state Assembly easily, courtesy a boycott by Trinamul MLAs.

The bill, when enacted, will undo what Chinese traders did for Kolkata’s transportation in the late 19th century by introducing this eco-friendly transport. That was years after Shimla boasted of it in 1888.

Incidentally, the first handpulled rickshaws that plied on Kolkata’s streets were freight carriers. Only later did they become the much-chastised man-carrying-man vehicles of today.

Though the government insists the bill will be signed into law immediately, it will have to seek legal advice on pending applications for licences which Calcutta High Court has ruled must be accepted. Monday’s legislative action is the culmination of over 15 months of debate set off by an unprecedented chief ministerial press conference last year to announce that hand-pulled rickshaws would be off Kolkata streets. The bill amending the Calcutta Hackney Carriage Act, 1919 was introduced in the Assembly on July 20 this year and referred to a select committee.

While piloting the bill, CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee reiterated what he had said earlier. ‘‘We must agree on one point that in the 21st century it is not right for a human being to pull another human being. Wherever I go, be it Delhi, Mumbai or abroad, people ask me how long Kolkata will have hand-pulled rickshaws? This is a shame for our city. We should have done this much earlier.’’

All that was needed to put an end to hand-pulled rickshaws, was to remove the words ‘‘and palanquins and to make certain provisions with regard to rickshaws’’ from the original act. The MLAs agreed to it.

The CM promised rehabilitation for rickshaw-pullers. ‘‘Rehabilitation will go along with removal. It isn’t that we will remove the rickshaws and give the rehabilitation package later on,’’ he said and claimed that rickshaw-pullers’ unions had accepted the alternative vocations the government had proposed.

‘‘I have talked with the Kolkata mayor about setting up cooperatives to run car parking lots. This way they will earn more than what they used to earn. The number of cars is going up and we need more parking lots. At least 2,000 people will be involved here,’’ Bhattacharjee said.

For rehabilitation, the first task is to find out the exact number of hand-pulled rickshaw wallahs. The number of licensed hand-pulled rickshaws is 5,937.

‘‘We assume there are as many rickshaw-pullers as there are licenced rickshaws. We are also talking with NGOs about helping some of them set up small trading units. Those who cannot do anything will be given financial compensation,’’ he said.

And an ode to ....

By Shankar
Kolkata’s rickshaw-pullers have given us a lot but we haven’t reciprocated. Every great city has an USP. Kolkata’s USP — whether we like it or not — is the rickshaw. No other great city can boast of it.

Banning hand-pulled rickshaws to alleviate the rickshaw-wallah’s misery is like throwing out the baby with the bath water. In a city sparsed with narrow lanes and bylanes, rickshaw-wallahs meet a very important transport need. They are Kolkatans’ friends through thick and thin.

Come floods or riots, the rickshawpuller is only a hail away. Ever heard of a rickshaw-puller betraying his passengers’ trust. Now, to Kolkata’s peril this very dependable mode of transport is sought to be abolished and their operators uprooted from a vocation handed down from generation to generation.

Crocodile tears are shed on their behalf to justify this. ‘Exploitation’, cry proponents of the law who claim they aim to end this ‘man-pulling-man’ beastliness. This argument doesn’t hold water. After all, our venerable rickshaw-wallah renders voluntary service.

The exploitation cry belies facts. Whoever said a rickshaw ride is cheap. The passenger km cost is among the highest, certainly exceeding a taxi ride. But unlike a taxi or a bus, a rickshaw can manoeuvre along Kolkata’s serpentine lanes. I can’t recall an instance when rickshaws have caused Kolkata’s notorious traffic jams. The city’s traffic managers would vouch as much. I think it might be a good idea to have a thanksgiving day for the rickshaw. To honour the rickshaw-wallah. We could at least give him tea or lunch because no one takes care of our needs better than him — be it taking our child to school, reaching the sick to hospital or helping a tourist find his destination in the city.

When I was young I read this famous novel, Rickshaw-wallah, by a Chinese author. Some years ago, I wrote a story myself — Ekjon Jatri O Rickshaw-wallah — of a man returning to Kolkata after many years and hiring a rickshaw-wallah to revisit his past. He had a luxury car at his disposal but he asked the chauffeur to return home.
(Shankar is one of Bengal’s best known contemporary writers)

‘Most Indian youths want to emigrate’

2006-12-11T22:48:00.000-08:00

http://timesofindia.com Viewed on 05-12-06

Rashmee Roshan Lall TNN
London: India’s Generation Next leads the world’s young, along with the Kenyans in wanting to emigrate and secure a better future, a BBC global survey of 15- to 17-yearolds in 10 cities has found.

Today’s youth also appeared to thirst for a world without borders, with four out of five respondents telling the survey that people should be able to live in any country they choose.

Overall, two-thirds of 3,000 representatives of Generation Next in New York, Nairobi, Cairo, Lagos, Rio de Janeiro, Baghdad, Delhi, Jakarta, Moscow and London said they would happily leave their mother country and emigrate. 81% Indians say no need to follow customs of adopted homeland London: One in seven representatives of the Generation Next said they would even risk their life to reach another country, according to a BBC survey. Indians and Kenyans led the list of potential New Age émigrés with 80% displaying a marked desire to be world citizens rather than stay-at-home wage-earners.

Somewhat surprisingly, however, Baghdad’s youth movingly attested to a firm desire to stay home despite the high levels of violence that leave Iraq bloodied every day. Half of all Baghdad’s youth emphatically said they would not emigrate, which the BBC said was the biggest negative response to the question of all the 10 cities. Analysts said the survey underlined the narrowing distance between the developed and developing world Generation Next attitudes to big-ticket issues such as immigration, quality of life and mobility. Young people everywhere, overall, are seen to display a strong desire to be highly mobile, the survey found.

But the survey found huge disagreement amongst young people in the developed and developing halves of the global economy on immigrant integration. A significant 38% overall, which includes 81% of Indian Gen Next, said it was not essential to adopt the customs and beliefs of an adopted homeland and immigrants were entitled to live separate lives. But 61% of New York’s young called for immigrant assimilation, a high figure that pushed up the overall — 49% — tilt towards the need for immigrants to adopt the culture of their new country.

Young Indians also appeared to be more concerned about terrorism than the wristband-generation anywhere else on the planet. Sixty-six of all Indians said terrorism was the most important issue globally right now, with New Yorkers following close behind at 63% and Baghdad at 59%.

Overall, just 36% of the respondents listed terrorism as the most important issue facing the world. BBC explained its interest in sampling Gen Next attitudes with facts and figures that show “the number of young people in the world has never been higher. In all, there are about one billion 12- to 18-year-olds. Almost nine out of 10 live in the developing world.”

The broadcaster said: “The proportion of young people per country is highest in Africa and lowest in Europe.” BBC, which said on Monday that its key areas of interest in the survey were immigration, climate change, terrorism and war, crime, religion, education, global population and honesty.

Find Ways to curb ragging

2006-11-07T06:14:00.000-08:00

link to the report

Courtesy The Times of India

NEW DELHI: After stripping college elections of money
and muscle power, Supreme Court on Monday turned its
attention to the menace of ragging of freshers
prevalent in almost all educational institutions and
entrusted the task of finding remedial measures to a
committee headed by former CBI director R K Raghavan.

That the Bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and
L S Panta chose a tough former police officer to deal
with a menace bordering on criminality, was not
surprising as it had recently ordered implementation
of radical suggestions of former chief election
commissioner J M Lyngdoh, who was saddled with the
task of streamlining the much maligned college
elections, where money, muscle and political influence
ruled the roost.

During the hearing on the implementation of the
Lyngdoh Committee recommendations, the Bench propped
up the issue of ragging prevalent in educational
institutions and termed it as a menace, which is
claiming the lives of students every now and then.

It recalled that in 2001, the apex court had laid down
stringent guidelines to curb the menace, but these had
remained unimplemented in most states. The court had
said that if an institution failed to curb ragging,
University Grants Commission and other authorities
could consider de-affiliating it, as well as stop its
financial grants.

Expressing concern over the increase in the incidence
of ragging, as mentioned in the PIL filed by an NGO,
Vishwa Jagriti Mission, it had said that ragging
cannot be curbed by merely making is a cognisable
criminal offence.

Irked by the non-implementation of the 2001 judgment,
Justice Pasayat said a committee on lines of the one
headed by Lyngdoh be appointed. This was welcomed by
Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam.

The ASG was given three weeks time by the court to
take necessary instructions from the government for
deciding the composition of the Raghavan committee.

On the issue of implementation of the Lyngdoh
committee, the Bench accepted the suggestion of senior
advocate Arun Jaitley whose experience as a student
leader is well known certain strong recommendations on
student polls needed a fresh look, especially on
relaxation of age limit and the expenditure limit.

Meanwhile, human resource development minister Arjun
Singh welcomed the Supreme Court's direction to curb
ragging and said his ministry was ready to render all
necessary help in this regard.

"The observation of the court is welcome and we would
render all help for it," Singh told reporters here.
"These incidents (of ragging) influence all and have
drawn attention of everyone including the court," he
added. Meanwhile, Singh signed an agreement with Saudi
Arabia to enhance cooperation in the field of science
and education.

Celebrity Overkill

2006-10-22T10:11:00.000-07:00

Do we have an unreasonable fixation with film stars and sports icons? Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have already created a mini-storm in India, or at least in newspaper reams. Now there is another newsitem, that of Shahrukh Khan and Priyanka Chopra taking the Indian Railways for a ride, literally, doing a shoot campaign for Pepsi. On a Shatabdi from Delhi to Jaipur, the soft drink company apparently plastered the coaches with brand posters (such kind of publicity requires prior permission, a bank guarantee and a bond). A hundred-strong police force was pressed into action for the stars’ safety and the railway staff also stood up for action.

The question is why was so much of government money spent on the personal protection of two film entities who were out on a personal business trip? In retrospect, should the stars and the company not be made to account for the losses?

2006-10-08T01:54:00.000-07:00

7 Things You Should Know About Facebook

Information literacy—the ability to negotiate the opportunities and risks of the Internet age—is increasingly important. Facebook, a leading social networking site, highlights the information literacy challenges college students face. The site allows individuals to create profiles that include almost anything they want to post and dynamically links their information to others with similar information. While Facebook allows for easy, spontaneous networking, students may not recognize the potential consequences of submitting personal information to a public forum.
The "7 Things You Should Know About..." series from the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) provides concise information on emerging learning practices and technologies. Each brief focuses on a single practice or technology and describes what it is, where it is going, and why it matters to teaching and learning. Use "7 Things You Should Know About..." briefs for a no-jargon, quick overview of a topic and share them with time-pressed colleagues.

To access this material, go to:

2006-07-31T00:21:00.000-07:00

Can Blogging Derail Your Career?

7 Bloggers Discuss the Case of Juan Cole

With the debut of his Web log, Informed Comment, four years ago, Juan R.I. Cole became arguably the most visible commentator writing on the Middle East today. A professor of modern Middle East and South Asian history at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and president of the Middle East Studies Association, Cole has voiced strong opposition to the war in Iraq and to the treatment of the Palestinians, garnering him plaudits from the left and condemnation from supporters of Israel and President Bush's foreign policy. In the words of a colleague, Cole has done something no other scholar of the region has done since Bernard Lewis: "become a household word."

In the spring, Informed Comment took center stage in another arena — Cole's own career. After two departments recommended him for a tenured position at Yale University, a senior committee decided last month not to offer him the job after all. Although Yale has declined to explain its decision, numerous accounts in the news media have speculated that Cole's appointment was shot down because of views he expressed on his blog. We asked seven academic bloggers to weigh in on Cole's case and on the hazards of academic blogging.
The Lessons of Juan Cole, by Siva Vaidhyanathan
The Politics of Academic Appointments, by Glenn Reynolds
The Trouble With Blogs, by Daniel W. Drezner
Exposed in the Blogosphere, by Ann Althouse
The Invisible College, by J. Bradford DeLong
The Attention Blogs Bring, by Michael Bérubé

2006-07-02T06:51:00.000-07:00

Ragging Makes Us Bold by Varun Aggarwal

Ragging makes one Bold, Part I

I have several times been confronted with the argument that Ragging makes one bold. So many times, I have I been challenged on this, that I thought I would try to analyse it and thus I present this article.

To pick up with examples, people tell me that in life we would face situations where our seniors in our professional life (other high end people) would stress us and ask for unwarranted things from us. Ragging prepares us for the same, so that we dont break down in such circumstances. Thus it makes us strong! It increases our resistance power.

Let us consider, what is BOLDness. I think boldness is actually taking a stand for ones principles and truth, even when the person knows that he could lose something for taking this stand or it can become dangerous for him. Acceptance of wrong done to you and not breaking-down is not in my conception BOLDness. It is revolting against the wrong done to you and not breaking down!

Boldness cannot be equated with `sahansheelta', forbearance makes sense only with a feeling of forgiveness... I shall 'not act against evil' due to forgiveness (inspired from Leo Tolstoy) and not because I think that I dont have another option!!!

Boldness as instilled by ragging is a weak acceptance of fate by people who dont believe in themselves. Teaching such boldness is definitely wrong, you are converting people into non-believers. It is not true boldness which means to fight for ones cause, rights and principles.

Thus I dont believe that ragging makes one bold, it teaches us how to be exploited and mutely, non-resistively accept it. It is maybe the reason, why any one can come and spit on the face of us Indians AND we say its OK! It happens this way!!!!

Ragging makes one Bold, Part II

In Part I of this article, I argued that tolerating wrong-doing to oneself and not breaking-down in such circumstances is not boldness, but 'learning' to accept exploitation. In this second part, I take-up the line where ragging victims are asked to do funny/stupid/sexual/unsocial things and their performing the same is claimed to make them bold.

During ragging session, one is often asked to dance in public, do funny things as to climb the tree, or say something stupid loudly in public/college/bus travel. I accept that this does help the person in defeating his shyness and introvert character (if it is the case with him/her). Infact I wont say I completely oppose this kind of ragging. However, this behaviour does attribute to challenge a person's fundamental freedom of choice, adds to destroying the individuality of the person and playing with his sensitivity. Thus there is a trade-off. It is debatable whether it is fair to strip one of his freedom of choice arguing that it is beneficial for him in the long run!

The usefulness of the above kind of ragging can be achieved in other ways of interaction like group discussions, debates, theatre, sports, social visits, etc. during the first year which can be made compulsary. My idea is that if this kind of ragging has some educational value, it should be made a part of the curriculum and done in a systematic way. We rather leave it to the senior who I feel is not driven by the educational experience he is providing to the junior, but for his want of deriving sadistic pleasure and revenge through a new ' murga '; we cannot be sure when he crosses the line and moves to the other side of the trade off!

Let us now consider ragging where a person is asked to do something stupid in public, but this time the ragging act has a sexual/physical/unethical attributes. This could be hurling nasty/sexual abusation to someone, holding your private parts in publics, making an indecent proposal to a girl, stripping oneself, etc. Yes, indeed this makes once courageous! But, is it the courage to do the wrong? Ragging tend to instill the courage in an individual that he shouldnt be afraid to be something which is socially unacceptable and wrong, since their consequence wont be much! One can appreciate that this boldness is actually 'gunda-gardi'. This is the courage which all unsocial elements like eve-teasers, bullies and even muderers possess. The courage is not derived from the truth of one's stand, but the non-existence of dire consequence. It is once again a perverted boldness/courage.

Thus, I strongly object to this kind of ragging not only due to its inprincipled and unethical nature, but because it instills the worst kind of courage into a person. [May I compare it here with the courage of the suicide bombers?] The other day, I heard a psychatrist say that wrong-doers are persons who lose sensitivity towards the self-respect of the other person and who are not afraid to do the wrong. This ragging indeed moulds freshers in this way, as is proved when the freshers become perpetrators in the second year!

Conclusively, I will jump too far to say that ragging has a inherent invisible role in increaing the crime in India ! And, through this series of articles, I have been able to convince myself that severe sexual and physical ragging doesn't instill BOLDNESS and COURAGE into a person.

2006-06-13T11:42:00.000-07:00

FOCUS

GLUED TO THE TUBE

From blunting children's cognitive skills, to hastening the onset of puberty in girls —TV-viewing impacts kids in more insidious ways than we know.
At a time when India is grappling with providing sex education for teenagers, television poses the threat of setting children on an unchartered path, with images being replete with sexual innuendoes instead of forthright dissemination of information.
The choices of quality entertainment available to children are also very few. There are the customary cartoon channels —but the presence of holistic education and entertainment content is sorely missed.

How many hours of television do your children watch each day? Do you monitor their viewing? Or do you use television as a babysitter and leave your child unattended in front of the TV set for hours?
It has been said that next to the family, television has the greatest social impact on the child. In the United States, the average child between the ages of two and eleven watches 25 hours of television a week, or about 3.5 hours a day - about 20 % of the child's waking time! In India also, children spend long hours in front of the family television set, especially in the last few years with the launch of a half dozen or more children's channels.
Some television programming for children is educationally sound. But parents must be aware that too much television viewing can have a negative impact on young children and requires parental oversight and monitoring.

Advertising: warping minds
In 2000, an American Psycho-logical Association Task Force on Advertising and Children found that children younger than eight years lacked the cognitive development to understand that the true purpose of ads is to sell a product. Furthermore, those under age six could not even distinguish programme content from advertisements. Yet that same year, advertisers spent more than $12 billion on messages aimed at and exploiting this young market, with the average child being exposed to more than 40,000 television commercials, many pushing unhealthy foods laden with too much sugar, salt, and carbohydrates or creating the need for "must
have" toys and clothing.

A second negative impact is the exposure to violence, aggression, and sexual content on TV. A 1999 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that children who watched three hours of television a day were exposed to more than 14,000 sexual references in a year, with risky behaviors such as sex or substance abuse often being depicted as "cool" and "exciting" without any mention of the negative consequences. In addition, by age eighteen, these children had witnessed more than 2,00,000 acts of violence on TV.

Media exposure and aggression
Exposure to media violence and overt sexuality on television does not necessarily increase the risk of aggressive or risky behavior in children, although it does in some. But such exposure can desensitise children to violence; leave those ages 2-7 feeling scared and vulnerable; and also cause unnecessary fears in children ages 8-12. Children are most likely to attempt aggressive or risky behaviours when their television viewing is unmediated by family discussions about the cognitive, moral, and emotional content of the programmes.

Teach your child good TV habits
· Limit the number of hours per week your child can watch TV and have plenty of other worthwhile activities available such as books, kids' magazines, puzzles, toys, and board games to fill non-television hours.
· Consider recording favourite shows to view on weekends after chores and homework are completed. Then the family can spend more time together during the week.
· Include your children in the task of reviewing and selecting appropriate programmes to watch. Look for shows that will build on your child's hobbies and educational interests.
· When you can, preview programmes before your child watches them so you are sure the programme’s content accords with your family's values.
· Watch at least some TV programmes with your children, and discuss what they have seen with them to make them more perceptive viewers.

TV and childhood obesity
A third negative impact of watching too much television derives from the sedentary nature of the activity. When children sit for hours in near hypnotic states before the television screen while consuming unhealthy snacks, weight gain is inevitable. In fact, there has been an alarming rise of childhood obesity in the United States in the last three decades, with about 25% of all U.S. children either overweight or obese. Since there is a direct correlation between childhood obesity and type II adult onset diabetes, allowing children to be "glued to the tube" has both personal and public health consequences.

Speeding up puberty
Another public health issue was highlighted in a flurry of articles in 2004 about how watching TV may speed up puberty. Researchers at the University of Florence in Italy found that when a controlled group of children were deprived of their TV sets and other sources of artificial light such as computers and video games, their melatonin production rose by an average of 30 percent a week. Melatonin is a hormone that regulates the body's waking and sleeping cycles. Too much television, apparently, suppresses the body's production of this hormone, in the process hastening puberty in girls.

No TV for pre-schoolers
Other studies by the American Academy of Pediatrics show that too much television, particularly for children under the age of two, can have a negative effect on early brain development (they recommend that children this young watch no television at all). For those over age two, they recommend no more than one or two hours of educational television a day to avoid the over-stimulation of the brain that leads to heightened and unnatural states of arousal caused by the body's "fight or flight" mechanism.
Finally, young children who watch a lot of TV, especially cartoons, are less likely to become good readers than those who watch an hour or two of educational television a day. Children distanced from reality by heavy doses of TV are also less likely to be successful in school.

Desi TV for children
In India, where there are an estimated hundred million children under the age of ten, there has long been a lack of good television programming for children. Indian children in the past spent only about 10% of their time watching kid's channels, and too many of the children's programmes were reruns from the United States and other countries.
In the past four years, however, competition in children's programming has become intense and offerings more diverse. First was the Cartoon Network. Then Hungama, a new children's channel, was launched in 2004. Other competitors for young Indian audiences are Splash, Nickelodeon, Pogo, and Animex.

Cultural slants
A number of these new children's channels are consciously focusing on programming with an Indian cultural slant. Walt Disney's Television International, through linkage with the Star TV Network, is launching two children's channels available in English and Hindi in the north and Tamil and Telugu in the South. Managing Director Rajat Jain says that the programming will cater to local tastes and incorporate Indian concepts. Splash, to appeal to local audiences, also plans to raise its Indian content to the 70% level, while Pogo has set up an Indian production unit.

Sesame India is following suit with a television series that will incorporate curriculum developed by Indian educators with a focus on India's multiculturalism. The channel will also teach basic cognitive skills such as literacy.

With all these new choices in children's programming in India, what is the best way to utilize television in the home not only as an entertainment vehicle, but also as an educational one?

Guide for parents
A good resource is the "Guide for Parents: Television and Your Child" available at http://www.vh.org/pediatric/patient/pediatrics/tvchildren/ and produced by the Children's Hospital of Iowa Department of Pediatrics. Although written for parents in the United States, the discussions of positive and negative aspects of TV and of what parents can do to take control of their children's television viewing time are universally useful and thoughtful.

Television, like all other forms of media, hinges upon a viable partnership between producer and user. As a parent and a consumer, you have a right to insist on high-quality television programming for your children. You also have the responsibility to help your children to become discerning viewers of what is currently available.
Judith H. Livingston, Ph.D.
University of Maryland University College

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*******The link should be connected to the boxed information i.e. “ Teach your child good TV habits”.