Orangestreet11’s Weblog

As part of reporting for my diploma course i and my classmates were sent to the MSSRF (MS Swaminathan Reserach Fundation), Chennai, India for the World Food Day Programmes. Here is my first-hand account of the half day-long seminar held on October 16 along with my classmate Saumya Ancheri. This report was published in our college website digantik.com

CHENNAI: “More than half of India’s population survives on less than Rs 20 a day,” said Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, Chairman of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation on the occasion of World Food Day on October16. He was speaking at the Foundation’s seminar on ‘Food for All and Forever’ with this year’s theme being ‘Right to Food.’

Quoting from figures released by Dr. Arjun Sengupta, the Chairman of National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), Dr. Swaminathan pointed out that the per capita availability of land had declined from 0.7 hectares to 0.18 hectares from 1980 to 2007.

Earlier Mr. Gian Pietro Bordignon, Country Director and Representative, India, United Nations World Food Programme, New Delhi warned that, “Right to Food is a distant dream for 850 million people, of whom more than 200 million are in the Indian subcontinent.”

Pointing out that India was also one of the largest food grain producers in the world, he added that ensuring food security was, “A matter of better implementation of food-based schemes and providing food through the Midday Meal and Integrated Child Development Schemes.” Bordignon said that the UN planned to distribute 30-35 million tons of food through various food support schemes like the Integrated Child Development Project from 2008.

Mentioning shrinking land base and reduced livestock holding, Dr. Swarna Vepa, Ford Foundation Chair for Women and Sustainable Food Security and Programme Director, M S Swaminathan Research Foundation said, “The cost of cultivation has increased but support and market prices are much lower.” Thus she said the profitability of agriculture was decreasing.

Dr. Rama Narayanan, Advisor, Food Security, M S Swaminathan Research Foundation said that India’s GDP suffered a 2.3 percent loss due to malnutrition. She also discussed the trend in reduction of the number of underweight children across the different states. Dr. Narayanan stressed on the need for formulating a Nutrition Security Policy for women and children.

Dr. Sesikaran Director, National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad spoke on the problems following the lack of micronutrients in the food consumed by an average Indian. According to him, the marginalised population in India suffered from basic iron, vitamin, and zinc and iodine deficiency because of a predominant carbohydrate rich diet.

Dr. Palanithurai, Professor and Head, Department of Political Science and Development Administration, Gandhigram Rural Institute, said that awareness drives aimed at sensitizing the Gram-Panchayats could bring in positive changes in terms of effective implementation of the development oriented schemes in India.

Hi. I know its party time, however…….if you have a function/party at your home and if you have a function/party at your home and if there is excess food available the end, don’t hesitate to call 1098 (only in India) - child helpline. They will come and collect the food. Please inform your near and dear ones about this initiative which can feed many hungry mouths.

Yesterday i saw along with my family and cousin sister the movie TaareZameen Par. the film had earlier got earlier got excellent reviews in the media for its treatment of a delicate subject. I wasn’t in any mood to c the movie, since i just had a fight with one of my loved ones.

Yet hats off to Aamir Khan the director and actor of the movie. He has so beautifully dealt with the subject of dyslexia in kids. It is very true as depicted in the film today’s parents are pushing the kids towards the rat race. is coming first in the class more important than your kid’s happiness and satisfaction?

In the film the lead character a young boy has failed in the 3rd standard and is repeating the class. he has a problem expressing through words and cannot understand multiple instructions. he expresses himself through beautiful paintings which depict is thoughts. unfortunately his parents don’t understand his problems and forcibly send him to a boarding school. in the boarding the young boy improves slowly with the help of his art teacher played by Aamir Khan.

The film is excellent because it shows that children affected by dyslexia are not ‘mentally retarded’. they are intelligent in many other ways. the film was so touching, during many parts of the movie i had tears swelled up in my eyes.

i think there wasn’t a single person in the move theater who did not shed tears. i would recommend everyone to watch this movie without fail and hopefully parents will not succumb to the rat race in the future. instead they should encourage the hidden talents in their kids.

As the movie tag line says ‘every child is special.’

The pic was taken at Tirupathi after Ash and Abhi’s marriage. It is unfair that the Bacchans used their star power and chose not too stand in the line of devotees at the temple. Instead they got VIP treatment which is unfair and infuriated many of the devotees prompting an inquiry into the incident

Earlier this year Bollywood’s top stars Abhishek Bacchan and Aishwarya Rai got married. When they were getting married, top daily newspapers here in India were agog with stories about the wedding preparations, guest list. And mind you, all these stories were featured with photographs on the front pages of a national daily.

but give me a break. India is soon getting accustomed to the ‘paparazzi’ culture. But don’t newspapers and tv channels have better things to do. who cares from where Aishwarya’s mehendi came or what dress she wore. there are so many other serious things happening in the country like naxal killings, people dying of poverty. the obscene amount of money spent on the wedding could be used for more noble causes like charity or uplifting the poor in the country.

Why am I being shoved with images and news which I’m not interested in seeing? as someone rightly put it with the exception of Animal Planet and National Geographic channels, the rest jumped on to the bandwagon.

Recently Abhishek Bacchan’s grandmother Teji expired after a suffering from an illness. Again the media went overboard in its coverage of her funeral. Suddenly Teji was hailed as a modern woman, who sacrificed her luxuries and chose to marry a lesser affluent person.

Newspapers like the major dailies at least in Mumbai had profile of Teji Baachan. The front page photo in many dailies was Abhishek consoling Aishwarya at the funeral with captions like ‘Kuch Naa Kaho.’ As Mr P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor with the Hindu Newspaper and Magsasay Award Winner sys, “no one is bothered about the funeral of a poor farmer in Vidarbha who was deep in debts. His family did not even have the money to gather money to cremate him. And on the other hand you have the Late. Mr. Dhirubhai Ambani whose body was kept in an expensive sandalwood coffin.” Sandalwood is very expensive and found in minor quantities in our country.

So, my point is there are many other pressing issues in the country which deserve space on pg 1, rather than carrying some stupid entertainment news.

Around last year Kavya Vishwanathan’s book ‘ How Opal Mehta got kised…..’ was pulled out from bookshelves across the world by its publisher Little Brown. With it has been reported that her film deal with Dreamworks has also fell apart.

its really sad that Kavya had to resort to copying. Shes a Harvard student and more importantly it was the Harvard journal which reported instances of Kavya’s copying.

plagiarism has become so common. it leads to the debate among people whether anything original exists in the world.

Kavya copied from Megan McAfferty’s book ’sloppy firsts.’ Kavya copied almost 40 passages from Megan’s book. as if copying from one book was not enough she copied from two other books. Kavya defended the plagiarism allegation stating that she dint do it intentionally, she just happened to ‘internalize it.’ {yaa & u expect us to believe it.

All this just goes to prove the huge pressure on authors today to create a best seller with their every attempt at writing. Kavya’s book has been termed as ‘chiklit.’ one thing to note is that both kavya & Megan’s book was part of a publishing group ‘Alloy.’

Alloy is responsible for the marketing of the books or ‘book packaging.’ book packaging gives rise to the creation of ‘ghost writers.’ the marketing agents themselves write passages in the book on behalf of the author.

its really sad Kavya had to resort to such copying. it just goes to show that marketing concerns have a huge say in the way the book is shaping.

so in future kavya will think hundred times before writing a book, it also serves as a lesson for other budding writers.

But Kavya can still find solace in the fact that her book sells like hot cakes still in Mumbai’s streets in the pirated book markets. Ironically it’s just difficult to find a copy of her book largely because of the popularity.

As they say controversy does make business sometimes, in this case for the pirated book-sellers!

8th march every year is celebrated as international womens day. here in India its a big event with lot of media hype.

so you have pages in newspapers devoted to women achievers, you have special awards being constituted to be given to women.

my point is do we need one day in the entire calendar to celebrate womens day? Isn’t being a women a celebration of life everyday? i don’t believe in dedicating one special day for women & suddenly thinking about them a lot.

in India the female sex is still considered an ill omen or bad luck. you have female fetuses being abandoned or aborted. girls are married off at young ages in rural India even today in some areas.

i think instead of celebrating womens day which i feel is very urban centric we should concentrate on making awareness about the girl child & help in reducing the atrocities against girl child

Last year the whole of India with Richard Gere-Shilpa shetty kiss incident. for people who are new to this incident, let me give you a brief background. Richard Gere is the Hollywood heartthrob and Shilpa Shetty’s claim to fame is the ‘Big Brother’ contest she won amidst racial discrimination in the show.
Richard Gere and Shilpa Shetty, whose claim to fame is the recently concluded big brother reality show appeared at an AIDS charity event together. suddenly Gere planted an impromptu kiss on Shilpa’s cheek and swooped hr down in his arms. this picture was splashed across all the major national dailies on their front page. conservative political outfits kicked up a storm in protest of the kiss. they even burnt effigies of Gere and Shetty.

My question is why do some politician’s have to fuss about such a small issue? We are the land of ‘Kamasutra’! out ancient texts have prescribed various sexual aspects. don’t we have better things to do! if today they are protesting against an impromptu kiss, then tomorrow they will ban films or plays only because they have a kiss!

how long can we be held ransom to some stupid politicians. if u don’t want to see this kiss, then close your eyes! nobody is forcing you to see it! why do your need to protest and make a huge fuss! there are other serious things to do for politicians! why don’t they do something for farmer suicides or reducing poverty. Live and let live.

Bicycles and cars jostling on the roads, overcrowded buses and pedestrians clamoring for space on the footpaths marked a Sunday evening. A marriage procession occupied most of the road thus creating a traffic jam. The traffic constable oblivious to the jam was seen chatting away with a paanwallah. Suddenly, a bike banged into an auto rickshaw, creating a dent on the vehicle’s back. Both the parties started trading accusations at each other over the accident. Hearing the arguments the constable came to the spot and settled the dispute. The biker thrust some money in to the driver’s hand and moved ahead. Meanwhile, a young girl was selling pirated copies of the latest Harry Potter book at the signal. Eager customers started bargaining with the girl for a fair deal. Finally, the procession seemed to have moved into a nearby hall thus paving the way for the movement of vehicles.

hey guys,

this is neha from mumbai, india. i’m a 22 year old journalist right now studying for my post graduate diploma in journalism specialising in new media.

il be updating my blog as and when i am free. please feel free to leave your comments

neha