15 Rules Of Life In Delhi

Today I got this interesting mail from one of my friends with 15 Rules about Living Life in Delhi.
Delhi is known for its multi-ethnic culture. Anyone can survive in Delhi by hard or easy way.

1. The Other Side Law:
   If my side of the road has a traffic jam, then I can start driving on
   the wrong side of the road, and all incoming cars will be rerouted via
   Meerut.
2. The Queue Nahin Rule:
   If there is a queue of many people, no one will notice me sneaking
   into the front as long as I am looking the other way.
3. The Mind Over Matter Law:
   If a red light is not working, four cars from different directions can
   easily pass through one another.
4. The Auto Axiom:
   If I indicate which way I am going to turn my auto rickshaw, it is an
   information security leak.
5. The In Spit Of Thing:
   The more I lean out of my car or

Continue reading »

Videos showing Small Scale Production of Biodiesel

Here is a good video showing you how you can make or Produce your own Bio-Diesel on a small scale if you have a small space or a garage at you disposal.These type of videos are a huge hit and in great demand at times of soaring oil and gas prices at 140$/barrel for crude.

People in India and world should learn these tricks and ways as it is very likely that oil prices will touch the skyscrapers in the times to come.

This is only a part of shows that tell you how to make Bio-Diesel .You can watch full series
here.

Ten Difficult Ways to Save the Environment

So here is a list of 10 difficult (easy with practice) steps that you could learn and follow to make the environment green and friendly.

1. Take a bus and leave your car home. Don’t ever drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle). Say no to diesel cars.
2. Junk bottled water. Demand clean water for all.
   Insist water-free and as a right which is entitled to everyone but be ready to pay more if you use more.
3. Use less water, to discharge sewage.Think of the poluted river,every time you flush.
   Insist your colony recycles its waste-water, even reuses it after treatment.
4. Demand justice for both tiger and poor tribal people who coexist in the habitat
5. To make your beautiful home green, harvest rain, use water saving toilets, segregate garbage and compost kitchen waste.
   Use CFL bulbs and solar hot water heaters.
6. Impose economic sanctions against US for rogue climate behaviour .
7. Do not use any product which uses plastic to pack food or other stuff. This will put pressure on manufacturers to make recyclable packaging.
8. Levy a global “greenwash service” tax on Corporates. Make them fully liable for products that damage the environment today or tomorrow.
9. Do not first adopt wasteful and environmentally bad habits and then become GREEN. Think of the last parson. Do not first buy processed food and then ask for organic and home made food. Do not firs eat junk food and then go on a diet. Enjoy biodiversity in food and lifestyle. Boo MCDonalds.
10. Use less of everything that you use in your daily life.Not greed of some, but need of all is the only way ahead.

This post is dedicated to world environment day 2008
Download the copy of this article in pdf here.

Double Standards

While the Agarias wage a constant struggle with the forest department, the government has allegedly turned a blind eye to pollution by two soda ash-making units run by major industrial groups. At Mithapur in Jamnagar district’s Okha taluka there are charges of pollution against a salt-and-soda ash unit run by Tata Chemicals Limited (tcl).

The Dalmiya group-operated Gujarat Heavy Chemicals Limited (ghcl) unit in Junagadh district’s Sutrapada taluka faces more serious allegations: it has refused to comply with a high court order for more than a year, after violating salt lease conditions for about 20 years.

This is the cover story on salt in Down to Earth magazine that I talked about.
Here is the link to it.

http://www.downtoearth.org.in/

Its about how Conservation has become a ruse to evict Agarias, but so far as allegations of widespread pollution and environment destruction against big companies is concerned, authorities have chosen not to be strict. Local communities face a dual threat: they are dispossessed in the name of conservation and then large companies destroy farms forcing them to migrate.

More pictures from the Rann

Salt making in the Little Rann of Kachchh - Gujarat, India

I took these pictures while doing a story on Agariyas of Gujarat. Surviving in an extremally difficult terrain, under the blistering sun, Agariyas manufacture for us a commodity that we call COMMON SALT. What we do not see is the kind of hard work that goes into producing this commodity that is so basic to our food. But the Agariyas who produce it in unrelenting conditions, in a place where there is no natural source of drinking water, no electricity
and not even a tree to sit under if tired, do not get even a hundreth of the price that we buy our salt at. THEY GET SEVEN PAISE PER KILOGRAM OF SALT.

But still, there is happiness in their lives. I asked why don’t they just leave this lifestyle and go to town to work there as a construction labourer or something. Atleast they will get better money. To this, Shantabhai, the protagnist of my salt story, replied:

Life is hassle-free in the Rann. We may earn less after all this struggle, but there are no worldly botherations of crime or authorities troubling. Who will want to come to this barren land, where there is no other resource except for brine, especially to trouble us. This is Agariyas’ land. We have our freedom here. We do not depend on somebody else for our income.

He is right. I stayed a night with Shantabhai’s family in the Rann. Somehow, Continue reading »

Hello World-Welcome to Wildandhappy.org

Hey People,
Welcome to “Wild and Happy”

First the name (there is a lot in the name!)

Why are we “wild and happy”? I was desperately hunting for a good name for my blog and was frustrated that anything I thought about had already been taken. So, there was Rooted.com, wildernessredefined.com, .org, etc, etc, etc. Imagine the dent to my creativity! And then this friend, whom I had asked to suggest me a name, announced that he is starting a blog by the name, “Wild and Happy.” How incorrigible one could be? I asked him to suggest a name for my blog, and there he was, starting his own. This act demanded revenge. And Ladies and Gentlemen, here is our blog: “Wild and Happy.” Don’t worry, this is not stolen, the friend will be a regular contributor here and I have promised to give him another name for his blog (that is when he feels like posting!).

Wild and happy is a lot about environment and wildlife and all the more about personal experiences while dealing with these issues. We are not going to preach about global warming, pollution, save forests…blah…blah…blah. It is more about the people dealing with these problems and learning to modulate to deal with them, about the people who suffer due to them and how easily we have chosen to ignore them, how we have great figures to quote when making a presentation about impact of pollution, etc,etc, but not the faces of everyday life heroes who brave these problems and are happy in their adversity.

And it is about personal experiences that you and I encounter when we go places and look at these problems from the other side. You are all welcome to share really wild experiences, of places and situations where you thought you were really stuck but did come back, alive and HAPPY. Everything that surrounds you is environment, so feel free to share anything and everything you think is important for lives around you to know. Or something they already know but never voice!

Through this, I also want to share my experiences of Indians and the country we live in (I have deliberately put it the other way round) that are mostly based on my travel assignments as an environment journalist besides the stories that I do for my publication.

So, here we go!