Time A Resource Curse Got Lifted

Take a map of India. Now mark the districts with forest wealth, where the rich and dense tree cover is found. Then overlay on it the sources of streams and rivers that feed us, our water wealth. Upon this, further locate mineral deposits—iron ore, coal, bauxite, all things nice that make economies rich. Don’t stop here. Mark on all this wealth another indicator: districts where the poorest people of our country live. These are also tribal districts. So you will find a complete match. The richest lands are where the poorest people live. Now complete this cartography of the country with the colour red. These are the very districts Naxalites roam, where the government admits it is battling its own people, who use the gun to terrorize and kill. Here is a lesson of bad development we clearly need to learn from.

Let’s configure this map with events of the last few weeks. Madhu Koda was chief minister of Jharkhand, a mineral-and-forest-rich but poor-people state, for about a year. Today, enforcement agencies are unearthing a mother of all scams—Rs 4,000 crore, and counting, of illegal assets he and his associates looted from the state. This is roughly a fifth of the state’s annual budget. More importantly, this enormous wealth came from the same minerals that never made his people rich.

It does not end here. This past month, when the bjp government in Karnataka was brought to its knees by defiant legislators who wanted the head of the chief minister, we did not connect this episode with the cartography of India. The Reddy brothers—Gali Janardhana Reddy, the tourism minister of Karnataka and his brother, Gali Karunakara Reddy, the revenue minister of the B S Yeddyurappa government, are mining barons. Their wealth and power comes from rapacious mining in the similar rich-poor districts of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

The Reddy brothers’ fiefdom, Bellary district, produces some 20 per cent of the country’s iron ore. The ore is mined with little or no consideration to environmental safeguards. Water in the region runs red because of mine discharge, the land has been mauled, forests have vanished and people’s livelihood devastated. Bellary has the largest number of registered private aircraft, but ranks third from the bottom in the human development index of Karnataka, with 50 per cent literacy level—a shame for an otherwise progressive state. The Reddy brothers (like Madhu Koda) are products of the extraordinary wealth of regions we still call poor. Why, then, are we surprised when Naxalites profit from the anger of local people, witnesses to the loot of their land?

The problem is we have never taken seriously the issue of sharing wealth with the people, whose land it is. This is not part of the development mandate. Take forests. Some 60 per cent of the country’s dense and most bio-diverse and economically rich forests are found in these tribal districts. This is where the magnificent tigers are found. Ask again: If there is extraordinary wealth, why are the people who live here so poor?

The fact is we have never built a development model for natural resources, which is sustainable and also can benefit local economies and people. The first phase of development was when the state extracted and exploited the forests. Large areas were handed over to the paper and pulp industry, much like what’s happening with minerals today; swathes of dense forests were cut, land was denuded to build the economic wealth of the country. But nothing was shared with local people. This was the forest wealth that built fortunes of governments and private companies. But not its people.

Then came the phase of conservation. The nation decided forests had to be protected; tigers and other wild animals had to be safeguarded. But instead of building an economic model which shared the benefits of conservation with people, the State once again marginalized them. Forests, went the belief, had to be protected from the people who lived on these lands. Today the callous implementation of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, which does not allow (rightly in many cases) diversion of forestland for non-forest purposes, has become the single biggest reason for anger and violence in the region.

See, while forests are cleared for mines, or power or industrial projects, what is delayed and discounted is the little forestland local people need to build a school, a water tank or an access road. Worse, the wealth of the forests is never used to build their economies. Conservation of the tiger happens on their lands, on their backs, with little benefit to them. Are we still surprised at their anger?

This needs to change, and there are avenues. Some years ago, the Supreme Court passed an important order regarding the sharing of the mineral wealth with people. Today, there are new imperatives, national and global, such as protecting forests for water, or climate, security. Can these enable renewed futures? Can we change the rich land-poor people cartography of India? Let’s discuss this the next time.

—Sunita Narain (editor Down to Earth)

Down To Earth is a science and environment fortnightly published by the Society for Environmental Communications, India.

Instruction Manual For Life !!

Have a firm handshake.
Look people in the eye.
Sing in the shower.
Own a great stereo system.
If in a fight, hit first and hit hard.
Keep secrets.
Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen everyday.
Always accept an outstretched hand.
Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
Whistle.
Avoid sarcastic remarks.
Choose your life's mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 per cent of all your happiness or misery.
Make it a habit to do nice things for people who will never find out.
Lend only those books you never care to see again.
Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all that they have.
When playing games with children, let them win.
Give people a second chance, but not a third.
Be romantic.
Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know.
Loosen up. Relax. Except for rare life-and-death matters, nothing is as important as it first seems.
Don't allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It's there for your convenience, not the caller's.
Be a good loser.
Be a good winner.
Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.
When someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go.
Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born.
Keep it simple.
Beware of the person who has nothing to lose.
Don't burn bridges. You'll be surprised how many times you have to cross the same river.
Live your life so that your epitaph could read, No Regrets
Be bold and courageous. When you look back on life, you'll regret the things you didn't do more than the one's you did.
Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.
Remember no one makes it alone. Have a grateful heart and be quick to acknowledge those who helped you.
Take charge of your attitude. Don't let someone else choose it for you.
Visit friends and relatives when they are in hospital; you need only stay a few minutes.
Begin each day with some of your favorite music.
Once in a while, take the scenic route.
Send a lot of Valentine cards. Sign them, 'Someone who thinks you're terrific.'
Answer the phone with enthusiasm and energy in your voice.
Keep a note pad and pencil on your bed-side table. Million-dollar ideas sometimes strike at 3 a.m.
Show respect for everyone who works for a living, regardless of how trivial their job.
Send your loved ones flowers. Think of a reason later.
Make someone's day by paying the toll for the person in the car behind you.
Become someone's hero.
Marry only for love.
Count your blessings.
Compliment the meal when you're a guest
in someone's home.
Wave at the children on a school bus.
Remember that 80 per cent of the success in any job is based on your ability to deal with people.
Don't expect life to be fair.
Always smile, at least try, if nothing, it improves your face value!
Say something good to someone (even if you dont mean it) and make his day!
Tell someone-"You made my day" and make his/her day!
Life is too short to hate!
There is a difference between people whom you hate and the ones whom you don't like!

This Man Saves Lives !!

For over ten years now, Khushroo Poacha has stood by the sole belief that to do good work you don't need money.

Poacha runs indianblooddonors. com (IBD), a site that lets blood donors and patients in need of blood connect with each other almost instantaneously. He also does not accept cash donations. The site has been live for almost ten years and with over 50,000 donors in its database, IBD is perhaps a classic example of what the Internet is truly capable of. But more importantly, it is a reflection of a single human being's desire to make a difference to this world.

It all started in the mid-'90s when Khushroo Poacha, an employee with the Indian Railways in Nagpur saw a doctor being beaten up because he couldn't save a patient's life. No one in the mob seemed to understand that it was the lack of blood that caused the death.

"A few years later, I witnessed the death of a welder because he couldn't get blood. The two incidents really shook me up," Poacha says, "And that was when I expressed to my wife my desire of doing something."

Poacha, however, had no clue about how he could make a difference until one day, sitting in a cybercafe with a 56 kbps connection, the idea came to him.

"I did not know head or toe of the Internet, let alone about domain names, but I knew this would be the tool that would make a difference," he says, explaining the dotcom extension to the site.

Over the next few months, Poacha liquidated practically all his savings, purchased a domain name and started up indianblooddonors. com. "During the time, there were no companies booking or hosting web domains in India . I was paying USD 300 every three months to keep the site live and running. Meanwhile, I had spent almost Rs 40,000 in developing the site and had gone practically bankrupt," he says.

Poacha says he even went to a local newspaper to place an ad. "I needed visibility and that was the only way I thought I could reach out to the people. The day the ad appeared, I was expecting a flood of registrations," he recollects. "No one registered."

The silver lining to the dark cloud came when someone from the outskirts of his hometown Nagpur contacted him, expressing interest. "It was a saving grace," Poacha says.

Meanwhile, the dotcom bubble had burst and Poacha was being told what a fool he had been. And then there were household expenses to be taken care of too. "There were many occasions when unpaid phone bills would be lying in the house and there would be no money to pay them off," Poacha recollects, adding that "things always have a way of sorting themselves out. And mysteriously during such times, a cheque would make its way into the mailbox."

Poacha admits that his wife was quite apprehensive about his endeavor. "But she believed in me," he says, "And that has made all the difference."

Visibility, however, was still an issue. No publication was willing to write about him. No major hospital or blood bank was interested in taking his calls. And then the 2001 Gujarat Earthquake happened. As visuals of the devastation flashed before his eyes on television, Poacha realized yet again he had to do something.

Only this time he knew just what. "I called up (television channel) Zee News and requested them to flash the site's name on the ticker and they agreed." Five minutes later, the ticker was live. Ten minutes later, the site crashed. "I spoke to the people who were hosting the site (by now website hosting had started off in India ) and explained to them the situation. They immediately put me on a fresh server and over the next three days or so I received some 3,500 odd registrations," Poacha recollects.

Realizing the difference he had made, the 42-year-old started working on getting visibility again.
Over the next few months, Poacha had contacted every major magazine and sure enough, a few responded. "Outlook (magazine) wrote about me, then (British newspaper) The Guardian followed suit and then came the BBC," he says.

Along the way, IBD had also gone mobile. All you had to do was type out a message and send it to a short code and you'd have a list of blood donors in your inbox. As luck would have it, the service became far too popular for Poacha's pocket. "By then I had stopped taking cash donations and had to discontinue it," he says.

Interestingly, IBD is not yet registered as an NGO. "We function as individuals. We don't take donations and only accept bumper stickers (of IBD) and postage stamps to send out those stickers and create awareness," he says, "I was asked to deliver a lecture at IIM during a social entrepreneurship seminar and was asked what my sustenance model was. I replied I didn't have one. And I have been doing this for the last ten years."

Today, the database of IBD is growing at the rate of 10-15 users every day and the requests have grown from 25 to 40 per day. Poacha says he eats, drinks and breathes IBD. "The zeal I had ten years ago has not diminished and the site continuously sees innovation."

The latest, Poacha tells us, is the option of being an exclusive donor to one patient. "During my journey, I realised there were some patients who required blood every month. So if you want, we can put you onto them so you can continue making a sustained difference to one person's life."

IBD is currently on an auto pilot mode and Poacha continues to keep his day job. He says, "Initially I would take the calls and personally connect the donor with the patient's relative. But I know only three languages and I'd get calls from all over India ," he laughs.

Poacha recounts an incident that never left him: "A man from Chandigarh called me and told me he was desperately seeking A-ive blood for his 2-year-old. About five minutes after the call, he got the (difficult to find) blood group he needed. Soon after the surgery he called me up crying, thanking me for saving his child's life. For me, it was just another day at work. But his whole world was at stake that day. I can never forget that call."

Last year Poacha was invited to the Asian Social Entrepreneurs Summit 2008 in South Korea where venture capitalists argued that it wasn't possible to sustain an endeavor without money. He says, "I pointed out that Mother Teresa who had no revenue model when she started the Missionaries of Charity. If you want to do good work, you simply do it."

For someone who has sustained his enterprise for a decade with just a few bumper stickers and postage stamps, Khushroo Poacha knows best. He saved thousands of lives by clicks. So can YOU !!

What is Recession ??

This story is about a man who once upon a time was selling hotdogs by the roadside. He was illiterate, so he never read newspapers. He was hard of hearing, so he never listened to the radio. His eyes were weak, so he never watched television. But enthusiastically, he sold lots of hotdogs. He was smart enough to offer some attractive schemes to increase his sales. His sales and profit went up. He ordered more and more raw material and buns and sold more. He recruited more supporting staff to serve more customers. He started offering home deliveries. Eventually he got himself a bigger and better stove. As his business was growing, the son, who had recently graduated from college, joined his father.

Then something strange happened.

The son asked, "Dad, aren't you aware of the great recession that is coming our way?" The father replied, "No, but tell me about it." The son said, "The international situation is terrible. The domestic situation is even worse. We should be prepared for the coming bad times."

The man thought that since his son had been to college, read the papers, listened to the radio and watched TV. He ought to know and his advice should not be taken lightly. So the next day onwards, the father cut down the his raw material order and buns, took down the colorful signboard, removed all the special schemes he was offering to the customers and was no longer as enthusiastic. He reduced his staff strength by giving layoffs. Very soon, fewer and fewer people bothered to stop at his hotdog stand. And his sales started coming down rapidly and so did the profit. The father said to his son, "Son, you were right”. “We are in the middle of a recession and crisis. I am glad you warned me ahead of time."


Moral of the Story: It’s all in our MIND! And we actually FUEL this recession much more than we think.