Kusum Choppra

the sep. 12 issue of India Today has a long article on the new rural employment scheme. some well known economists have argued against the scheme; oneof the primary accusations is that the earlier record on poverty alleviation is woeful and that the best scheme can only reach 25 per cent. it would be extremely interesting to know what is the record on schemes to aid the industrial lobbies, big and small, their record of completion of projects, employment generation and income generation, of excise and other tax evasions which are depriving the national kitty of funds and what our premier economists feel should be done by the government towards ' garibi hatao'. or is it merely 'garib hatao'?

A few weeks ago, I read a piece in a newspaper in which a vague research organization in the USA claimed that the entire homeopathic system of medications was nothing but an elaborate hoax on patients, as the medicines had no healing value whatsoever. Now this is real news. For one, most people are painfully aware of the creditability of research institutions in the United States. For those who came in late, research in the US is done to prove a proposition propounded by pharmaceutical interests. It is the pharmaceutical interests which fund research which is aimed at proving their products’ efficacy and enhancing their marketability. For those who are really interested, it would be very educative to read up the history of homeopathy in the United States, where at the turn of the previous century, allopathic pharmaceutical interests ran a virulent campaign to hound out homeopaths whose formulations for individual patients were not allowing their cheap manufacture and expensively ma...

A friend who has just returned from South China made some interesting revelations about how China manages to outprice everyone else in the market. “It could put Hitler’s labour camps to shame. The girls live on the premises, two-three dozen to a room in rows of four tiered beds. Up before dawn, they are at work by 5.30 and work through to midnight, or until they finish their daily quota, with three short breaks for breakfast, lunch and dinner, provided by the factory owner. It is worse than slave labour as the payment is minimal.” “What,” I asked, “about the U.S. Human and Labour rights concerns? It is very simple. There are a number of showcase units which are shown off whenever the Americans come, while work carries on apace elsewhere in the vast hinterlands of China. The show cases can be those of factories, tourist spots, administrative excellence, cooperative farms or whatever. Now, I find, we in India are following the China example. To attract foreign investment, we show off our...

It was instantly obvious that her thirty years in education had not taught the lady how to guide young minds. She was the unworthy principal of the leading girls' school at mt. Abu in Rajasthan India, run by a Catholic order. Born into an Indian family which lived in Indonesia, I had done my early educaton in a Catholic school and higher education in a Methodist institution, both of which built up a healthy respect for the Christian religion and the nuns who ran schools with so much love, dignity and erudition. All those healthy feelings were shattered in a single instant when Sister X, virtually jumped up and down in her chair to convince my husband and me that she could not admit my adopted daughter, into her school, because children are cruel !! My child is blessed with the sunniest of dispositions. but at that stage, approaching age 12 and Std. 7, she was tall for her age and fat and dark wheatish in complexion... a combination which was only lit up by her bright smiles an...

A WOMAN NAMED SITARAM ? Have you ever heard of a woman called SITARAM ? or RADHAKRISHNA or RADHESHYAM ? WHY ? The names sound feminine enough. Then why does one only hear of men carrying those double-barreled names ? Legend has it that these double barreled names are the outcome of a " vardaan" from the Gods to two women, Sita and Radha: that their names would always precede the man's. this was because their steadfast loyalty and pure love had raised them head and shoulders above their communities, even their men, Ram and Krishna, respectively. For Krishna had dallied with dozens and married two, but Radha, a married woman defied home, family and society, to abide by her steadfast love for her Lord. Sita too proved her mettle, in banwas, in imprisonment , in the agnipariksha and ever after, to place herself a cut above the Maryada Purushottam, against whose later days and apparent lust for power, question marks still stand. So it is Men who are called Radha...

Is there actually a water shortage ? How Ancient India Coped Kusum Choppra The wisdom of our hoary traditions indicates that as a monsoon dependent country, India needs to conserve its sheet flows of rain water in any and every way possible. In fact, by the end of the sixteenth century, we had cultivated such expertise in water conservation, that in some parts of the country, as much as 60 % of the precipitation was being harnessed. Major R H Sankey, a chief engineer in Mysore in 1866, (quoted in Water Management Systems in India) records : " Of the 27,269 sq.miles covered by Mysore, nearly 60% has, by the patient industry of its inhabitants been brought under the tank system. Unless under exceptional circumstances, none of the draining of these 16,287 sq.miles is allowed to escape. To such an extent has the principle of storage been followed that it would now require some ingenuity to discover a site within this great area su...