PESTICIDES,FERTILIZERS,PLASTICS, ALCOHOL & airlines

World over governments and countries have understood the importance of sustainable development and the dangers of environmentally retrograde actions. And many countries have started to react positively to environmental depletion. But unfortunately that is not the case in India, be it the various governments that occupy positions both in the states and at the center.

If nuclear power plants  are killers that become infamous through the wide barrage of intense publicity it receives through various mediums, pesticides used in agriculture and farming are certainly silent and slow killers , but devoid of the sheen and the gruesome glamour atomic energy possess...

The foremost responsibility of any government in a democratic political system is the betterment of the populace. But in contrast we have in this country governments and political parties who are intent in destroying the life of its citizens and bequeath gloom for posterity. The greatest misfortune people of India would have is the very governments they elect through suffrage, acting against their interest by lobbying and ensuring free hand for fertlisers and pesticide conglomerates.

Vijay Mallya will find a place of prominence amongst the top five industrialist and billionaires of India. He is a member of the upper house of parliament .Indeed the majority of our parliamentarians are millionaires, felons, rapists, thugs, murderers and convicts. While Vijay Mallya adorns the elite billionaire club of industrialists in the parliament it is also a known and not much spoken matter that he is also the don of industries and commercial ventures that  defraud and rob people off their health, wealth , wellbeing and also make exorbitant margins as profit, thereby.

Vijay Mallaya is the largest manufacturer and seller of alcohol in the world. He is the largest manufacturer and distributor in India and to poor third world countries pesticides as dangerous as Endosulfan.He is also the largest manufacturer of plastics. In fact he is the largest manufacturer and distributor of unsustainable fertilizers and pesticides. And he has the clout to influence and channel government policies and decisions to suit his commercial illusions, and ventures.

The history and evolution of agriculture pesticides has an interesting aspect.

Toxic chemicals were invented and manufactured by both the Allied and Axis forces in the Second World War. They were used at will in ammunitions and shells on the general population and troops of the adversary. Subsequent to the end of the Second World War, the manufacturers of such toxic compounds saw they were to be rendered job less as the use of such poison ceased to exist. In a brainstorming meeting of the manufacturers an idea evolved to use the poisonous chemicals and its variants as agriculture herbicides and pesticides. The powerful group of such people joined forces and marketed the poison as panacea for crop rot. They literally bought various governments and entrenched themselves. And since then, every grain of soil, land and water world over is being slowly rendered infertile and toxic. (Compiled and translated from Mathurbhumi Weekly)

Agent Orange is the code name of one such herbicide and defoliant used by the USA as a part of its herbicidal defoliate progarmme in the Vietnam War. According to the Vietnamese authorities 4.8 million Vietnamese were exposed to Agent Orange, resulting in the death or maiming of 4, 00, 000, and 5, 00,000 children born with birth defects. During a phase of ten year span of the Vietnam War the US military sprayed 8, 00, 00,000 liters of chemical herbicides in Vietnam, Cambodia and the former Laos. The intent was to defoliate the natural forest cover and rural dwellings and eliminating the food cover for the guerillas. This was also aimed at depriving the rural population of life in the country side and forces them to run for cover to the urban areas occupied by the US. Thereby depriving the Vietnamese guerrillas’ chance for base and support. The genesis of the Agent Orange had agricultural research. In the course of a research on the usefulness of a chemical compound in shortening the grain bearing span of Soya, scientist stumbled upon the fact that the chemical can defoliate crops. This was adopted by the US military to concoct a horrendous herbicide.

Imagine the revenue big chemical, fertilizer and pesticide companies will harvest and are continuing to harvest through dumping of toxic pesticides on the farming community and as deadly chemicals inside weaponry. Easier for them because human conflict is unremitting like human blunders and myopia.

                                                              Coffee Maker

And to compliment these endeavors of the business class, the poor mans’, labourers and tillers party the CPI ( Marxist) have made a fascinating inexplicable turn around and  have begun lobbying for genetically modified crops.

Scripted in the USA- " Thou shall be liable"

This is something that may come up in Wikileaks a few years from now.

Scene -1

The Ministry of public health and safety Government of Japan, Tokyo.

Bureaucrats and the cabinet minister are huddled around the conference table. Officials from the Ministry of energy are also standing around with devastated looks. The camera zooms into the middle aged man seated at the head of table. He is wearing a black suit with gold crested buttons. He is the only person at the crowded table who seems to be relaxed and gay.

The camera cuts and moves to focus the huge video screen at the far corner.

Scene -2 to interlay with scene 1

And it is the General Electric HQ in Connecticut USA

GE officials are cloistered in the brain storming room of the headquarters and are in video conference via satellite with the ministry officials in Tokyo. The GE officials are all grim faced.

Cut to the cabinet minister in Tokyo

Minister displays an exasperated look

“Gentlemen, to you guys in the USA, we have explained the terrible problem of radiation we have on hand here in Japan. All your lousy reactors have gone broke and are sending out toxic fumes. If this goes like this we will not have any edible blue finned tuna to consign you and no more sushis. No great sharks to slice the fins for soup, and no mink whales to hunt for hamburgers. We are already running out of birds that nest here in Japan and so no more 'bird- nest -soup' for us."..

Cut- to the GE HQ on the video screen

GE chairman beseeching and pleading - “Sir you must understand the stringent quality we maintain in all reactors manufactured here. Though we have dual standards that are adopted one for the reactors to be used here in USA and the other for export to the third world. Shhhh now Sir this is off the record please. But believe me the ones we sent you are better than and not as bad as the ones we are holding for shipments to India”.

Cut- to the Cabinet minister- “Ok CEO now this is getting a bit too far. Let me ask in simple English you guys stole from the English.When can we expect the accident liability compensation from you?”

-Cut to the GE CEO

 Sir, I implore you, please you must accept a reduced level of compensation. You see like the General Motors we are just about limping back from economic crisis. And a hefty compensation claim will put us out. You see my friend Anderson at the Union Carbide paid only $ 400 million to the blokes who got gassed by his company in Bhopal India. And that as well after twenty odd years!

Cut- Camera zooms into the cabinet minister in Tokyo-

“Look, you stupid, your good old George Bush had ensured that the liability in case of accidents on the reactors you send to India will only be pea nut skins. And that foolish Indian Sardar has signed the dotted line. Why do you fret then? You can add some of the liability you will not pay to India into our account. In any case we have an agreement that the USA will clean up the mess should it ever happen. You know that”.

Cut- camera zooms in to the video screen- 

The CEO displays a face of relief. And says grace to George W Bush.       

Musings

Ten meter high wave, traveling as fast as a jet plane. Each carrying tones of water. Ploughing under all and anything in its path; more than 1300 feared dead and tens of thousands unaccounted- missing! Literal decimation of a city. Ships, tugs and yachts berthed in the port twisted and thrown around like nine pins. The power of nature- its fury unleashed in proportions that is nightmarishly frightening for real and leaves one behind in awe. The collateral damage – unceasingly burning oil refineries, multitude of fires, four missing trains, and a catastrophic shutdown of a nuclear power plant! That was the Tsunami, the outcome of a massive seismological shake up down below in the tectonic plates and measuring 8.9 on the Richter. The most massive since the recording of seismic events began in the very early 1900’s.Those were the events that were unleashed in the past week in the Japanese costal town. Imagine a few such earth quakes can unleash with inconceivable abundance, forces that can literally wipe out the “Lord of all that he surveys- Man”.

A few years ago a similar cataclysm saw hundreds of thousand being swept down under by gushing sea water in the Tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean states.

Time and again, what more does Nature have to exhibit in blunt  terms and tell us, “Man you are an insignificant bit of star dust and do not matter in my scheme of things. You are not the cog in the wheel that triggers the sun to rise and set, the moon to rise and dazzle in splendour, the oceans to churn, the fishes to festally swim in aura of colors that spellbind. The mighty whales to go distance, the birds, the butterflies, the chameleons, the bees, the crickets, the gregarious little ants and the beasts of the jungle to enhance the grandeur of this world! The seasons to change , the rains to cool, the trees to bloom and fruit, the skies to stay blue, the tempests to beat, the stars to glow and wink! For your decimation can be in a whiff which you may not even notice! Therefore why this audacity, this lordliness, this avarice, this pride, this impulsiveness and false hood? Think,think you are only an aid of the things that are better and necessary for this World to turn around. And a dispensable bit of aid”.

The Tsunami was another instance of Nature imploring man to be just and kind with all that she has  and she owns..Because, for she is not powerless or dead. She can change the world and change it for ever and for good.

 Watching clear midnight skies

suddenly intense storms come alive
showing her rage
as each lightning bolt strikes
Mother Nature no longer sits
idly by

A plink and a plank is heard outside
once she tears up
and starts to cry

Windows rattle
foundations shake
as the roar of her thunder
is heard miles away

Mercy her violence does not show
causing many to scatter
while others are shattered

This mother 
has single handedly 
earned her respect
proving once and for all
a match for no man

---Sherry Lynn