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Right To Food Security Tuesday. 6.3.08 7:47 am The contention of right to food security to protect the farmers has been doing the round in the centre stage of world trade talks for sometime now. The contention is whether developing countries are entitled to enjoy the right and in that regard whether those countries would be allowed cheaper imports that is likely to overwhelm local agriculture when the farmers' livelihood and food security are most important than the so-called free trade or 'market access' This controversy has been raging the WTO. This issue is being challenged by the US which does not want a want a brake to be on its farm products which are heavily subsidized and thus 'artificially' cheap. No doubt, it is a big issue because the fate of hundreds of millions of farmers is going to hang in balance. Countries like Indonesia, Phiilipines, Ghana, Senegal and the Caribbean region where cheap and often subsidized food are dumped by the US, Thiland etc. have already raised their voices. Developing countries want to be able to designate 20% of their agricultural imports as 'special products'(SP) which will be subject to no or very low tariff reduction as a measure. These are products designated as food security, farmers' livelihoods and rural develpoment. They also propose a 'special safeguard mechanism'(SSM) to allow the developing countries to impose higher duty on some imports in case of an increase in volume and fall in price which are likely to put pressure on the local production. The SP and SSM have already been reached a deala few years ago. The question is how to get them implemented. Comment! (0) | Recommend! | Categories: Opinion [t] Your Blessed Tongue Tuesday. 6.3.08 12:59 am Your blessed tongue will never be blemished Your feet will never stop dancing The high sky painting the brighter sun The misty veil has crossed the road. You sing like a twilight delight You dance over the vast peninsula You will never leave your love for destiny. Comment! (1) | Recommend! | Categories: Poetry [t] Marx's Idea About Ecology Tuesday. 6.3.08 12:59 am During the rising years of Industrial Revolution, Marx thought of the adverse consequences it was supposed to wreak upon the nature and the human world. He was of the opinion that that not only labour but nature too was at a stake by the impact of capital. Capital subjugates both labour and nature. At the same time, it separates town and country and employs more and more industrial techniques in production. As a result, it paves all the way for outright degredation of the ecological basis of the living world and human existence in particular. He says in Capital Vol.I : "All progress in capital agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the worker, but of robbing the soil; all progress in increasing the fertility of the soil for a given time is progress towards ruining the long-lasting sources of that fertility." It seems how far a great man's idea goes to predict the future. He also says ; "The more a country proceeds from the large-scale industry as the backgroun of its development, as in the case of the United States, the more rapid is this progress of destruction. Capitalist production, therefore, only develops the techniques and the degree of the combination of the social process of production by simul taneously undermining the original sources of all wealth...the soil and the worker." How true it can be! Is marx the first environmentalist and ecologist of the? If we say yes, it is no economy of truth and far from the truth we know today. Comment! (0) | Recommend! | Categories: Opinion [t] India's Quest For Safe Energy Tuesday. 6.3.08 12:42 am At a meeting with the Energy Coordination Committee in Aug. 2005 India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh daid, "Atomic Energy will have to play a much larger role in the future in our quest for energy security...The increased production and comsumption of energy is likely to result in adverse consequences for th environment and human health.We need therefore to give careful consideration to the adoption of renewable sources of energy and energy efficient clean technology to the extent finacially feasible." What a self-contradictory of speech! Nuclear energy will play a bigger role and renewable sources of energy will given a careful consideration! India's reserves of oil and coal are limited and depend on supplies from other countries. Its reserve of uranium is also limited and has made a less than equal agreement with the US for the uranium supply and depence on other countiries remains equal.Now take the case of radioactive pollution. No satisfactory solution of recycling is ever sighted. The nuclear waste has to be kept sealed in containers in perpetuity and/or to be kept in deep shafts underground. This pollution of earth is similar to the pollution of air by emission of carbon from the use of oil. The last but not least problem is security thefutility of which can be recapitulated in the Chernobil disater. In india bio-diesel is manufactured from the seeds of Jatropa. Corn is the raw material in the US. Seeds contain starch and and oil that are converted into ethanol to be used as fuel.Cellulose is supposed to contribute as a source of renewable energy. The tentataive manufacture of bio-diesel so far has not been accepted as commercially viable. The use of solar energy as an alternative energy has been round the corner but also not commercially viable. Another source is wind power which has also not got cool customer. So what is the way out? Should safe energy remain a day-dreaming? The only way is to do away with the disuse of cars, particularly the private cars. Are the car owners listening? Comment! (0) | Recommend! | Categories: Opinion [t] You Are The Known, You Are The Unknown Monday. 6.2.08 4:27 pm Who are you pulling the clouds out of the rain? Who are you in hiding always playing tricks into the unknown? Whenever I try to find you, you are elusive in vain Still I see your face in the distant horizon Light blazes your way, I see you in my dream Are you are dark unto light? Whenever I try to know you in my existence I do not get the right answer to follow you, darkly But I know you always as you sing hymns to me You are the known and the unknown You sail by the day into night You are the sole enbelm of time into space Your are the past guiding the life into tomorrow. We are the believers of mankind We look forward to your unblemished blessings Without you we are lost unto void of the world You are the sacred footsteps of life in eternity As life passes and melts in your soul. Still I beg your wisdom of eternal years Still I want to touch your omniscience to fathom But all I beg to reach the depthless void of the known And the blessings of the unknowable, the unknown. Comment! (0) | Recommend! | Categories: Poetry [t] Crossing The Hinterland Together Monday. 6.2.08 1:58 pm Do not fear for the doom's day Some other day it will come When you will no more seeking my love And I will be by the side of your grave. I will rinse your heart with your own fragrance I will drown you with my rains We will be crossing the hinterland together. Comment! (0) | Recommend! |
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