Life - Discoveries and Evolutions in Daily Living

Emmigration Officials Tearing Up Pages of Passport!

2009-11-17T23:22:00.003+05:30

Stories have been circulating through emails. Here's a report of the same that came in Mid Day.

NRIs say passport pages are torn at Indian airports

Mumbai:

pic for representation

The next time you are flying abroad make sure you check your passport thoroughly for any ripped off pages. At least 20 NRI groups in the US and Canada have complained that the visa pages in their passports are tampered with at some Indian airports. On their next entry to India, they say they are detained and harassed and they have to pay a lot of money to get out of the mess.

Said Amsterdam-based doctor Chandrashekhar Rao, "It happened to my brother, an Indian citizen, with a 10-year, multiple-entry visa to the US. When he arrived in Amsterdam from Bangalore, an immigration official in Amsterdam found his visa page torn and as a precaution warned him not to visit the US." Rao has since started a blog to inform all Indians in Holland of the possible dangers awaiting them at Indian airports.

Rao's brother later entered the US through Niagara airport in Canada, where the official granted entry since most digits of the visa number were still clearly visible (despite the page being partly torn). "Now, he is going through the pain of applying for a new American visa. The immigration people are crazy. It is a huge fraud," added Rao.

Over the past six months, over 90 NRIs have complained to Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) and External Affairs. "There are certain complaints that are being probed. But it is not a scam as it is being alleged," said an MOIA spokesperson. Immigration officials at Mumbai and Delhi airports refused to comment, terming the allegations as bogus.

Sneak

In their complaint, the NRIs have alleged that at the time of the passenger's departure, the duty officer sneakily tears away one of the pages from the passport while stamping it.

"When the passenger leaves the immigration counter, the incident is keyed into the system to alert all international airports across India. So, the next time the passenger returns to India he or she can be immediately detained," said Hyderabad-born Arifuddin. Arifuddin, who works in Jeddah, got a taste of this when his wife's passport was found torn. The family, which returned to India, is now fighting the case in court.

What happens

>15 to 20 cases are reported each month
> Harassment depends on the passenger's period of stay abroad, his income and standing
>If a passenger tries to argue, then he is sure to be detained
> Once the page is torn, the passport immediately becomes a 'marked one'

How to insure your health and get your premium back if you don't claim

2009-10-31T04:05:00.002+05:30

I've been trying to find out a good health insurance for the past one week, and been visiting blogs and sites about it. I realized that the money we pay as premium is gone into thin air if we don't make any claims. The paltry sum offered as addition to sum assured isn't a good enough incentive not to make any claims.

However, I found one company that offers health insurance with a moneyback option. That was Tata AIG. Their critical insurance plan called Life Health Investor keeps you insured against 12 critical illnesses and against death. The miracle is that they will give your premiums back if you don't make any claim. Quite a good policy to keep. Now, that's what an innovative product look like!

A Marketing Lesson from Church Auctions

2008-12-24T11:46:00.008+05:30

It's funny that we can observe the most interesting marketing insights in our daily life itself yet we don't recognize most of them. It's also funny that we notice something happening right in front of us when somebody else tells us about it.

I read about the role of social or peer pressure in buying decisions and the fear of losing vs the joy of winning. I had this going on at the back of my mind the whole day. Towards evening, I met a few neighbors of mine at the frontyard and began talking about Christmas and the festivities going on, especially as they were avid churchgoers.

They said most churches conduct auctions to raise money for charity and even small items raise money many times more than its true price as people bid higher and higher in religious fervour. Though interesting from a marketing perspective, it's something they said right after the discussion about church auctions that amused me. Talking about one of their relatives, one of them said "It's a shame that he hasn't paid the money due to the church from last year's auction." All of their family members supported this statement with affirmative nods.

I thought, "Great! What a nice way to market things!" People's fear of failure or loss is much greater than their sense of bargain. I say this from a truly marketing frame of mind. Therefore, I believe it's better to tell a customer as to what he stands to lose along with what he stands to gain in a deal to sway them your way.

I think people's fear of losing is much higher than their joy in winning something; more so when there is social or peer pressure involved. If the church can use it, I think God wouldn't mind us poor marketing souls using that too.... It should be true... bcoz I know I do so many things out of pure social pressure... like going to work in the morning :-) Disclaimer: If anybody from my workplace is reading this, this is not true, and thinking so is equal to blasphemy!

What happens when we organize?

2008-11-17T12:46:00.000+05:30

Most power occurs because one side is better organized than the other. Labor is usually less well organized than management, criminals are usually less well organized than the police and customers are always less well organized than producers.

The internet promises to change that. It does it occasionally, sort of randomly. Sometimes, users will rise up and complain (as they did at Facebook). Or voters will organize online and hurt (or help) a politician or candidate.

Wikipedia works because so many contributors figured out how to self-organize into a group that produced something far more useful than a traditionally organized document.

I think we're at the earliest possible beginning of the changes we're going to see because of this sort of grass roots coordination.

Simple example: the Starbucks in Larchmont, NY keeps their thermostat at 64 degrees. And the stores in Breckenridge, Colorado keep their doors wide open all winter. If you're raging mad about energy waste, you could say something. And nothing would happen. But if customers organized and ten people said something or a hundred people said something... boom, new rules.

The system doesn't know what to do with a movement.

Link to the original post by Seth is given below.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/04/what-happens-wh.html

Ten Social News Sites for Easy Marketing

2008-09-18T14:06:00.000+05:30

Steven Snell says: Major social media sites like Digg and StumbleUpon get most of the attention, but smaller, more targeted niche sites can provide excellent opportunities for networking with others in your niche and getting some exposure for your own work. While others are chasing after the Digg front page and 99% are getting nowhere, you could be getting hundreds and thousands of higher quality visitors over the same period of time by targeting niche social media sites.

Of course, the sites you choose to target will depend on what niche you’re in, but there are probably more niche-specific sites than you realize (See our list of over 400 social media sites). Some of them have very low traffic and influence, but others are very active. Here is a look at 10 that are doing things right.

Design Float

Design Float was started about a year ago to serve the web and graphic design community. It only takes about 3 votes to reach the front page and from there you can easily receive a few hundred visitors.

Health Ranker

Health Ranker was just started earlier this year (see my interview with Israel Lagares), but it has quickly built a decent-sized audience. Any bloggers in the health and fitness niche should definitely be active here.

Kirtsy

Formerly known as Sk*rt, Kirtsy is a site that targets women. Kirtsy certainly has a nicer look than many Pligg sites, and the content featured is fairly diverse.

BallHype

Most major social news sites include a sports section, but at many of them it’s less active than other sections like technology. BallHype has a large audience of sports fanatics.

Lipstick

Powered by Reddit, Lipstick targets celebrity news and gossip. There’s certainly plenty of blogs covering these topics to keep an active community at Lipstick.

Dealigg

If you’re looking to find bargains, Dealigg is a great place to start. Users can submit deals that they have found online and they get voted up by other users. It’s not quite the same as the other sites on this list where you would submit a blog post.

Sphinn

Sphinn is a popular site for internet marketing and search marketing. It has a large, intelligent audience that’s great for marketing the right kind of content.

I lIke Totally Love It

I Like Totally Love It is another site for finding products that can be purchased. It focuses on products that are “cool, innovative, exceptionally beautiful, or just weird.”

DZone

DZone is a highly specialized site for software developers and web developers. The popular items need to get about 5 votes and they go out to over 13,000 subscribers.

Hugg

Hugg promotes itself as being “Digg for Green.” Any content related to environmental issues can get some great exposure here.

Note: When submitting your content to niche social media sites, be sure that it is a good fit. Nothing will make you look more like a spammer than submitting something that is completely not relevant. The audiences of these sites expect to find a certain type of content, and they won’t appreciate random submissions. In fact, many of them will be deleted by the site owner and even if they aren’t deleted it won’t get any votes without gaming the system.

That being said, if your content is relevant they are all excellent places to promote your blog. Sign up to some niche social media sites!

Want more? Subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/traffikd/~3/348322853/

Google Scares Me!

2008-09-18T13:54:00.001+05:30

Andy Beal says: If you’re an avid Google user, you may wish to read this post sitting down. Chris Brogan documents the sorry tale of Nick Saber’s complete and utter denial by Google. After returning from lunch, Saber was unable to access his Gmail, Google Talk, Google Docs, or Picasa–and he was a paying Google customer!

When he tried to log in, he saw this message:

Sorry, your account has been disabled. [?]

When he contacted Google he received this reply:

Thank you for your report. We’ve completed our investigation. Because our
investigation was inconclusive, we are unable to return your account at
this time. At Google we take the privacy and security of our users very
seriously. For this reason, we’re unable to reveal any further information
about this account.

The good news is that, 30 hours later, Saber’s account is now back up and running. And, reading the comments, this could have been resolved much faster by calling Google’s support for paying customers. Still, the scares the heck out of me. My email, docs, calendar, instant messenger, analytics–just about everything–is hosted with Google.

I’ve already experienced first hand the pain of being shutout by Google, but this is a wake-up call to all of us that let some other company host our data. That company can shut you off without warning!

Scary, huh?

Original post: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/08/google-can-will-shut-off-your-account-without-warning.html

Warning: Hackers Using Sexy Girls to Infect Twitter Users

2008-09-18T13:54:00.000+05:30

Andy Beal reports...

Some people get on my case because I don’t follow everyone on Twitter, who follows me. Well, for one thing, I’d never keep up with 3000+ Tweeple, but I also live by my mantra of building meaningful relationships with social media–I don’t care about any popularity contest.

Well, there’s another reason why you–and I–should think twice before we add a friend to Twitter. Viruslist is reporting how easy it easy for hackers to trick Twitter users into downloading Trojan software.

In this case, a sexy girl, an enticing link, and voila!

If you click on the link, you get a window that shows the progress of an automatic download of a so-called new version of Adobe Flash which is supposedly required to watch the video. You end up with a file labeled Adobe Flash (it’s a fake) on your machine; a technique that is currently very popular.

In reality, this is a Trojan downloader that proceeds to download 10 banker Trojans onto the infected machine, all of which are disguised as MP3 files.
Please, be careful who you add as a friend–on any social network–a hacker may not be as obvious as the one above.
Original content: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2008/08/warning-hackers-using-sexy-girls-to-infect-twitter-users.html

Future of Search Engines - By Scott Buresh

2008-09-01T17:12:00.000+05:30

Current and Future Search Trends: What the Top Internet Search Engines Are Doing

By Scott Buresh

The future of search is unclear - what is clear is that change is rapidly happening for all of the top Internet search engines. Google as always is the frontrunner for many of these search trends, but even little guys like Ask.com are making waves. In this article, I will attempt to cover some of the more interesting search trends that are occurring today with the top Internet search engines - but I am by no means being comprehensive about the subject. Things are changing on a weekly, or sometimes even daily, basis, and future articles will cover additional developments in depth.

Universal Search

In May 2007, Google - the leader among top Internet search engines -- got people talking (again) when it rolled out its latest search concept, Universal Search. Universal Search was Google's attempt to create a single page of search results, rather than separate pages for types of results, such as videos, images, maps, and websites. When it was first introduced, many search engine optimization firms raced around exclaiming that this was one of those search trends that would change everything and that new optimization rules should be created and followed immediately.

I published an article in early 2007 in which I noted, "The problem with Universal Search is that it can muddy the results, and it can also introduce irrelevant results that a searcher cannot use."¹ I also wrote, "Clearly, Universal Search will change how an SEO campaign is run if it catches on. But this is a real if - users' search habits are hard to change overnight, even if you are Google and you essentially define what searching is and how it works."²

And in fact, Universal Search didn't quite take off the way Google had hoped. A post on MediaPost's Search Insider by Mark Simon boldly states, "Universal Search will probably not be viewed as the greatest Google fiasco since Google Video, but it's clear that it's failed to deliver on the vaunted promises made by Marissa Mayer back in May."³ So will we see more of Universal Search, or will it be quietly put to the side? Will other top Internet search engines want to use it for themselves? Only time will tell, but it seems like Google needs to do a lot more work before users really warm up to it.

Personalization and Personalized Search

Personalization on the other hand seems to be one of the search trends working very well for Google and many of the other top Internet search engines. In an article I wrote a few months ago, I said "The basic principle behind personalized search is simple. When you go to Google and type in a search query, Google stores the data. As you return to the engine, a profile of your search habits is built up over time. With this information, Google can understand more about your interests and serve up more relevant search results."⁴

As it works right now, if you use a Google product (Gmail, Google toolbar, AdWords, etc.), Google is keeping track of what you search for and what websites you visit, and it's then tailoring your results appropriately. Search for "bass," and Google will know whether you mean the fish or the instrument. As I pointed out, though, there are major issues with search trends like personalization:

Privacy issues that arise from personalized search are also a big question. The EU recently announced that it is probing into how long Google stores user information (this probe was subsequently extended to include all search engines). AOL recently committed a serious blunder when it released search data from 500,000 of its users, and it was discovered that it was fairly easy to identify many people by the search terms that they use...⁵

Yet if nobody makes a fuss about this, then it's very likely Google - and the other top Internet search engines - will start tracking everyone behind the scenes, whether they use a Google product or not.

It's actually already starting - right now, the cookie Google places on your machine (did you even know they did that?) will expire in two years - but they won't really expire at all. According to the official Google blog:

In the coming months, Google will start issuing our users cookies that will be set to auto-expire after 2 years, while auto-renewing the cookies of active users during this time period. In other words, users who do not return to Google will have their cookies auto-expire after 2 years. Regular Google users will have their cookies auto-renew, so that their preferences are not lost. And, as always, all users will still be able to control their cookies at any time via their browsers.⁶

Seems it won't be long before Google knows what you're searching for before you do.

Expanding "Sneak Peeks"

Ask, one of the smaller of the top Internet search engines, has been using sneak peeks to entice searchers for a while now. Searchers who use Ask.com can mouse over an icon next to many results and see a screen shot of the website. No clicking needed. Google, always watching for search trends, seems to have noticed, because they've filed a patent for expanding their own snippets.⁷ Soon searchers on Google may be able to read expanded summaries of pages, or longer clips of page text. This tactic appeals to searchers who are now demanding more and more information faster and faster from the top Internet search engines, and who don't want to waste precious seconds clicking on a link and then on the back button to find just the right site for their needs.

Syntax Queries

When Ask was Ask Jeeves, the butler was supposed to listen to your search queries in the form of questions and then get answers for you. The problem was, this never worked exactly the way it was supposed to. Instead of answering the question based on syntax, the engine still responded to searches in the same way others did, by analyzing the words and returning a list. Jeeves was retired with a bit of fanfare, and the engine handles queries in the more traditional manner for now. But all of the top Internet search engines have continued to work on this concept, with Google again leading the way since it has the manpower and brainpower to do so. I expect that within the next year, this will be one of the search trends that the engines will want to focus on with a greater push toward answering questions rather than just returning related results.

Speech Recognition and the Mobile Market

Speech recognition is really going to be one of the huge search trends in the coming months and years for the top Internet search engines. In an interview from this past summer, Peter Norvig, director of Google Research, noted, "[Google] wanted speech technology that could serve as an interface for phones and also index audio text. After looking at the existing technology, we decided to build our own. We thought that, having the data and computational resources that we do, we could help advance the field."⁸ With speech recognition in place, one could go to Google (or another of the top Internet search engines) and use a microphone to ask a question aloud, or just say some keyphrases, and get a list back immediately.

And speech recognition has the biggest benefit for top Internet search engines when it comes to users of mobile devices. Let's face it, as advanced as those keyboards may have gotten, they're still a pain to use and it's time-consuming to type in more than a few sentences. (That's y txt msgs r lk ths, u c?). Norvig is on top of that too, noting, "In general, it looks like things are moving more toward the mobile market, and we thought it was important to deal with the market where you might not have access to a keyboard or might not want to type in search queries."⁹

More to Come

As I noted in the beginning, this is just a small sampling of the search trends for the top Internet search engines today. Google, Yahoo, and even Ask are all working tirelessly to get your business and to make search easier, faster, and more accurate. Keep checking back for future articles covering some of the other trends and following up on the ones I've already discussed.

The original article can be found at http://www.mediumblue.com/newsletters/search-trends.html

5 IM Techniques - By Scott Buresh

2008-09-01T11:15:00.000+05:30

Five Simple Internet Marketing Techniques

By Scott Buresh

Each of the following five internet marketing techniques can be implemented without a considerable investment (except perhaps time). While some of them might be more accurately described as internet marketing advice rather than internet marketing techniques (most notably #5), each of them can have a positive impact on your internet marketing initiatives.

Track and analyze your web site traffic.
Most web hosts offer traffic analysis data to their clients, and it is arguably the most important tool at your disposal in measuring the effectiveness of your internet marketing techniques and overall website performance. By taking the time to understand this data, you can begin to understand the motivations and interests of your audience. Are many of them leaving on one particular page? Perhaps you should make some changes to keep their interest. Are most of them looking at one particular part of your site? Perhaps you should make it a more featured area. Since this data updates on a regular basis, you are also able to gauge the effectiveness of any changes that you make. These are the most basic examples, as there are many more useful bits of information available- what search terms your visitors are using to find you, what sites are bringing you the most traffic, how long your visitors are staying, etc. Maintaining a successful website is an ongoing process, and visitor data is crucial to getting optimum results.

Request links from non-competing, quality companies related to your industry.
This is a simple but effective piece of internet marketing advice. Links allow you to get quality traffic while increasing the prestige of your business. Visitors that enter your site from a link that they find on another site are predisposed to believe that they will find something of value there (if not, why would the site take the time and effort to link to it?). The added benefit to link building internet marketing techniques is that they can give a tremendous boost to your link popularity, which is a major factor in determining how your site gets ranked in search engines.

Write informative articles about your business or products and make them available to online publications and webmasters.
There are numerous sites that will allow you to offer original informational articles for others to publish. In fact, our own company routinely publishes articles containing internet marketing advice. Such an exchange benefits you in several ways. First, all of these sites require anyone who is reprinting your article to provide a link back to your site, which can provide highly targeted visitors (visitors that most likely already have a good impression of you from your article). This is also another way to boost your link popularity, which is vitally important to your search engine rankings (as discussed above and in our last issue). Moreover, if you offer a service, a reputation is your most valuable asset. Widely distributed articles can help to establish you as an expert in your field and help you to gain credibility with your future clients. Although internet marketing techniques such as these may require a considerable time investment, the payoff can be well worth the trouble.

Give your website visitors a clear call to action.
If your site isn't intended to sell a product or gain a customer, then what is it for? Your internet marketing techniques should have a clear purpose, meaning that every page on your site should focus on getting the visitor to take an action. This could be purchasing something online, filling out a form or sending an email, making a phone call, or even simply moving on to the next step in the process. Your website should be more than a static billboard proclaiming that you are open for business- it should compel your visitors to follow a specific path that leads to a sale. The answer can be as simple as placing a prominent offer on your pages.

When it comes to your site, don't overlook the obvious.
As previously mentioned, this might fall better into the category of internet marketing advice, rather than internet marketing techniques. However, it is important that you compare your website to an actual store. Is everything clean and organized, or is everything messy and cluttered? Many websites give bad first impressions with issues that could easily be avoided. Broken links are a sign of sloppiness that are fairly common. To combat this, there are several websites that will automatically scan your site and identify any broken links. Seeing little red "x's" where a graphic or photo should appear is another common problem that is easily addressed. Does your site maintain its look and functionality with most browsers? People are sometimes dismayed to learn that their site (which looks great in Internet Explorer) doesn't maintain its look or functionality with other popular browsers such as Firefox. The time and resources required to fix these problems are small when compared with the cost of tarnishing your professional image.

Original post can be found at http://www.mediumblue.com/newsletters/internet-marketing-techniques.html

Revisiting the western product boycott exhortation by Muslim outfits in Kerala

2008-07-25T02:22:00.002+05:30

Mahir Haneef
Kochi
Two years after the invasion of Iraq, boycott campaigns against American and British products in Kerala have gone off the track and the targeted companies have started to pickup sales again, leaving only the cadres of the organisations that conducted the campaign to stick to the dogma.

While the sales volume, which plummeted and showed more than a 50 per cent drop following the campaigns, is gaining momentum, leaders of the various organisations point out lack of basic awareness among Kerala Muslims as the main reason for the failure of boycott.

Muslims of Kerala lack the inner drive to show continued resistance to western products, said KP Zakkariah, state secretary of Ithihadu Shubbanul Mujahideen (ISM). “People forget their ideologies when it comes to buying products for day-to-day use,” he said.

The lack of quality products to replace those offered by American and British companies was the main reason for Muslims to go back to Western products, said EM Abdul Rahman, chairman of National Development Front (NDF). “The campaign cannot be termed a complete failure. Our cadres and a small section of Muslims who became aware through the campaign still continue to boycott Western products,” he said.

According to Jamaat-e-Islami Hind state leader T Arif Ali, the boycott campaigns reflected the general emotional state of the Muslim society rather than a measured step against Western products. NDF chairman Abdul Rahman also feels that it was a step to create awareness among people than to pose an economical threat to the US.

Explaining the lack of basic awareness among Kerala Muslims, Arif Ali said “If the Japanese community is offered an American apple and a Japanese apple, they would buy their product even if it costs more. But such an attitude can’t be found here as people lack awareness regarding the need for such a move.”

All the leaders agree to this and stated that the problem was dealt as an emotional issue and not as an economical resistance. The reason why the problem was dealt so was because it happened far away, they said. NDF chairman Abdul Rahman said “Had such an issue happened here and the victims were the people here, they would have shown stiff resistance. That is the same reason why guerrilla warfare is still continuing in Iraq.”

Though some Muslim organisations had good business base in Kerala and could have promoted swadeshi products and helped in ousting Western products, such a move didn’t occur anywhere in Kerala. Meanwhile, NDF had conducted open markets of swadeshi products at various places during the peak of the boycott campaign.

According to Arif Ali, the boycott campaigns were a right move as colonialism can be dealt only in the markets and needs to be dealt so. “Those companies (Western companies) buy the successful swadeshi companies after three or four months of picking up sales. So it was not wise to support any swadeshi product,” he said.

The leaders of the various organisations view Iraq issue as something more than a Muslim issue. “This is not a problem of Muslims alone. Colonialism is a threat to humanity,” said Arif Ali. NDF chairman Abdul Rahman agreed to this and said “Iraq invasion is a challenge to human rights and equality.”

Even cops concerned about misuse of Goonda Act

2008-07-25T02:21:00.003+05:30

Kerala needs a law to curb goonda activities but enough provisions should be there to prevent its misuse, say senior police officials. Referring to Kerala Felonious Activities (Prevention) Ordinance 2005, Assistant Commissioner Sam Christy Danniell said “The law is good but steps should be taken to ensure that it is used for genuine purposes only.”

Senior police officials themselves fear widespread misuse of the provisions for detention provided in the new law. The new law enables police to detain any person, whom they suspect might disturb the law and order situation, up to a period of six months.

Describing the difference from provisions of detention in Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC), Thiruvananthapuram City Police Commissioner Manoj Abraham said “The new law allows us to detain a person without giving bail. Though CrPC grants the police the right to detain a person, the time is limited to 24 hours. But the new law will permit us to detain a person up to six months.”

Raising his fear of misuse of law at lower levels, a senior police official said “There are powerful provisions in CrPC, but they have to be referred to the Police Commissioner or District Magistrate to be enacted. A similar system should be there in the new law also so that a sub inspector or anybody at the lower level will not be able to misuse the provisions.”

According to him, the best way to ensure this is to make a rule that the provisions like detaining persons being granted by the law should be allowed to use only with the permission of senior police officials in the rank of a commissioner or superintendent.

“A system of additional reference should be ingrained in the new law. This should be such that a police officer not below the rank of a commissioner or superintendent has to be informed of detention or such provisions in the law within 24 hours,” he said.

According to senior police officials, the present system does not curb habitual offenders and gangsters as they can come out easily on bail after a criminal act and resume his activities again.

Mr Abraham said “In the present system, criminals have to be granted bail or else he will come out naturally after 90 days according to the provisions in the law.” The present system fails to leave an impact in the case of habitual offenders, say senior police officials.

Mr Danniell said “All it costs for one to obtain a bail is Rs 5,000 and this amount is nothing for criminals. Studies have proven that one has to be confined at least 21 days to make an impact on him. Thus the new law will be helpful, but my only wish is that there should be provisions to prevent its misuse.”

The provision to seize the property of the accused will be a useful weapon against criminals, senior police officials say. Mr Abraham said “In cases like visa rackets, the new law will help us to seize the property of the accused. Otherwise, we can register a case and very little can be done to recover the financial losses.”

Disaster Management: How prepared is the State?

2008-07-25T02:21:00.002+05:30

Mahir Haneef

In Kerala, the term ‘monsoon’ was synonymous for disaster. While Malayalees had to fear only natural disasters before, now they have to worry about industrial hazards also. From a State with plenty of monsoon disasters, we are graduating to a State where disasters can happen anytime.

Inept management of such crises by various departments make matters worse for the victims. Even if the decision makers and superior officers of various departments wanted to pay some attention to disaster management, they won’t be able to do so as almost all of them are ignorant in this respect.

The latest tragedy of school children’s death following collapse of school building roof is a classic example of tragedy caused by red tapism. Local residents had alerted the administration of a possible collapse many days before it happened, but no official turned an eye towards their helpful advice.

In the Munnar landslides just a day before the school tragedy, Chief Minister Oommen chandy requested army help at around two pm on July 26 and they began operations at the tragedy site 13 hours later. An altercation arose between local residents engaged in rescue operations and the army as the latter were armed with shovels and pick axes only. Thus, the army, who arrived many hours after the incident, was no better than the hundreds who voluntarily began the work immediately after that.

When a benzene spill occurred from storage tanks near Vathuruthy last November, fire force had to remain a spectator as they didn’t have the right chemical compound to douse the fire.

In a State like Kerala, where the density of population is very high, it is murderous not to have proper and efficient methods of disaster management. Disaster management committees are formed each time a tragedy occurs, and they remain as organisations only in paper and often as paupers. Experts talk to Action Line on the present scenario of disaster management.

Sam Christy Daniel, Assitant Commissioner of Police
With the help of Kochi Refineries Limited, around hundred police constables were recently given training on how to respond to disasters caused by chemicals. It was the first such class for constables and we realised that they don’t know how to identify the hazardous chemical in a tanker lorry caught in an accident.
The exact identification of the chemical in a lorry would be marked at three places and it is mandatory. The driver of the vehicle will have a TREM (transport emergency) card in which the same details will be recorded. But none of the constables knew this as no such training was received by them.
Officers are also equally ignorant about such things. Some of us, who received awareness classes from National Safety Council, have heard about such things, but don’t possess exact knowledge as to what to do in such hazardous situations. There are no study materials for officers (during training). The only thing we could do upon such an incident was to wait for the fire to burn out itself.
Police and drivers are the first to arrive at hazardous situations and more awareness classes should be conducted regarding this. But we lack resources and funds to conduct a State-level training course.

Mohan Lal, Chief Manager of Learning Centre, Kochi Refineries Limited
The awareness class was conducted for police as they are the first to arrive at a disaster or hazard scene. They are the ones to inform the fire force as to what kind of chemical is involved.
Tanker lorries loaded with hazardous chemicals have symbols showing whether they are flammable, inflammable, corrosive and likewise. But the police constables who came for the training didn’t knew about such symbols. Nor did they knew that the exact technical details such as the name of the chemical would be marked in a TREM card with the driver as well as in three places on the vehicle.
There are fire extinguishers inside tanker lorries carrying hazardous substances, but policemen don’t know how to remove the pin and operate them in the event of a fire. They also don’t have the personal protection equipment necessary to operate in hazardous circumstances. So this course will remain as an awareness course.
As a result, the police cannot inform the fire service on what material to bring to prevent the hazard from becoming a disaster. Passing correct information is the most important factor in the entire process. Otherwise the hazard would develop into a disaster.

EB Prasad, Divisional Officer, Fire Force
The markings on vehicles carrying hazardous substances and the TREM card are statutory as per Motor Vehicles Act of 1989, but the police isn’t aware about that. Even superior officers don’t know about these things. The chances of police informing us about the nature of hazardous substance are very rare.
It is the revenue department which coordinates all rescue services, but even superior officers there don’t know the basics. I realised this when I gave a led an awareness class for revenue department officials. As the police and the public aren’t aware of the basics, we normally won’t know what kind of chemical it is until we reach the spot. Thus, if we run out of any compounds to counter a hazard, another vehicle has to bring it.

Shibu, journalist residing nearby landslide site at Munnar
There were some problems when the rescue work began. All seemed to be in a state of confusion. It took some time for them to overcome this. The fire force couldn’t reach the landslide site at Devikulam as the road was blocked by debris. It was the local residents who took out the victims out of the debris. The army unit arrived from Thiruvananthapuram around 3.00 am on Wednesday. They had only shovels and such equipment with them.

APM Mohammed Haneesh, Ernakulam District Collector
Problems of logistics and communication are common. (Referring to Munnar landslides) The army proceeded to Munnar by land. They should have been air-lifted. Expenditures on such things should be considered a State expenditure.
We have a Crisis Management Group consisting of heads of various departments like electricity, water, panchayats, transport, police and civil supplies. When we find a crisis brewing, tasks to overcome that are identified and assigned to each of the officials. We have chemical, industrial and natural calamities and plans vary according to each of that.
In natural hazards, we adopt warning measures first. Then we move on to evacuation, rehabilitation and supply of food and clothing; followed by an action plan.

What justification do stun grenades have?

2008-07-25T02:20:00.002+05:30

Action Line

Mahir Haneef
Kochi

Following grenade attacks by the police on student protestors and National Congress-Indira activists at various parts of the State, objections regarding police action from various corners of the society are strengthening. The State Government is still hiding in the dark regarding the grenade attacks on unarmed protestors and hasn’t revealed the classification and damage potential of the grenades used.

Though it is widely stated that Kerala police used “just stun grenades”, a report that came on CNN regarding the encounter that killed the notorious bandit Veerappan states “After firing warning shots and an exchange of gunfire, police said, they hurled a stun grenade and later confirmed Veerappan had been killed.”

This brings our attention to the fact that the weapon called stun grenade, used on unarmed protesters in Kerala, is in fact used in operations to kill or capture bandits like Veerappan in other States. Former DGP Alexander Jacob’s statement to one of the television channels in an interview also verifies the fact that the stun grenade used by police is dangerous. Mr Jacob said in his interview to the channel: “Kerala police do not have separate arms and ammunitions. The devices used by Kerala police are those used by the police all over India.”

It is also pointed out by several experts that the grenade attacks took place in violation of several rules regarding their use. The primary rule in using such equipment is that it should be used only against an armed mob, but the student protestors weren’t armed. The law also states that it should be used only on the Collector’s order. In his absence, the Revenue Divisional Officer or Tahasildar has to order such attacks. But none of these officials were present or were aware of such an action by the police.

Even when debates on rules and regulation dominate the scene, the question whether such high-potential offensive equipment can be used to deal civilian protests remain unanswered. This becomes particularly relevant when such police action happen only against those opposing government moves, clearly denoting abuse of power.

Shobhana George, Ex-MLA
The use of grenades on peaceful protestors, that too students less, cannot be approved in any way. The protesting students were less than 100 in number and were unarmed. Police rules don’t state anywhere that grenades can be used. The Police Act of 1960 also doesn’t allow the use of grenades. Who gave the police the power to use grenades against civilians? The use of grenades in a peaceful State like Kerala is unwarranted.

Justice VR Krishna Iyer
In the khadi country, khaki is dominating police power. These days, to my utter shock, I find the police behaving with unabated brutality. They are using lathis and other weapons including grenades, which to my mind, are atrociously beyond the moderate violence they are allowed to used. Actually, they (the protestors) were unarmed people. They could have been prevented from marching just by blocking them with moderate force. Even girls, to my tears, I found beaten. Therefore, I protest against the indefensible savagery by the police.

T Chandran, Superintendent of Police, Thrissur
The grenades used by Kerala police in these attacks are stun grenades. They are used to stun you and can’t do any other harm. But if hits directly, injury may happen.

Sindhu Joy, SFI activist injured in the grenade attack
It was an organised attack. When we reached the barricade, the water cannons were directed at us. While this was going on, the police launched smoke bombs and then threw the grenade at us while we were groping about.

The statement that it was a stun grenade is a blatant lie. My leg muscles were burned away and half of my fee is lost. Doctors removed a shrapnel from the leg. Shrapnels were found on those who weren’t hit directly also. I saw the grenades and they are not stun grenades made of plastic.

Advocate Sreevalsan Nair, NC-I activist injured in grenade attack
I was in the front row of the rally and when we reached 2-3 metres away from the barricade, the police threw the grenades at us without any warning. One grenade hit my lower leg and the police prevent my friends attempt to take me to a hospital.

I underwent an emergency operation for my leg and the doctor extracted one-inch long grenade shrapnel from the wound. Doctors say my leg may have to be amputated. Vinod (another activist) was not hit directly by the grenade, but was injured by shrapnels. Statements that it was a stun grenade are lies.

TV Rajesh, SFI state secretary
The kind of grenades used on us are used by Border Security Force on infiltrators at the border. There are rules stating that it should be used to confront a violent mob and that too should be directed with sufficient gap from persons. Eight of us are in hospital due to injuries from these grenade attacks. We have found shrapnel on many of the injured. Bones and nerves of the injured were destroyed by the grenades. This is definitely shell grenade and not stun grenade. We have decide to do a campaign on grenades among the people and we are also sending video cassettes of the attacks to National Human Rights Commission.

Money, muscle and murder: Fraudulent chit fund operators go scot free

2008-07-24T02:17:00.000+05:30

Sunday Action Line

Money, muscle and murder

The murder of Everest Chits owner Ramesh on July 20 on National Highway 47, allegedly by rival group Himalaya Chits, brought the hideous operations of chit companies and money-lending firms into light. But the police investigation that ensued is limited to the immediate cause of the murder and turns a blind eye towards the root of the disease – the unholy nexus between money-hungry politicians, police officers and more than 39,000 illegally operated chit companies in the State.
Even though State laws require chit companies be registered in Kerala for operating here, only 5,696 of the 45,000 chit companies functioning in Kerala comply to this law (as on March 2004). This is also causing serious revenue loss as the State gets only around 12 percent of the tax that is due from this Rs 400-crore industry.
By registering in states like Jammu and Kashmir, chit companies overcome the provision in Kerala Chitties Act 2002 that 20 percent of the amount collected should be deposited with the State to prevent companies getting away with investors’ money.
As chit companies in the State utilize their deposits in high-rate money-lending, the assistance of goondas became necessary in daily operations. Over years, the chitty company owners learned that it is more profitable to employ goondas as collection agents than outsourcing the ‘pressurized collection’ cases.
Thus Himalaya group, a prime example of chitty companies in the State, grew into a multi-crore business with 58 branches and more than 10,000 collection agents. Are our laws sufficient to bring these fraudulent chitty companies to book? What protection does the law offer to investors in out-of-State chitty companies? Mahir Haneef in Kochi tries to find out the answers.

VA Hakeem, Convener, Kanichukulangara Action Council
Chitty companies have close relations with finance ministers. The president of Kerala State Chitty Foremen’s Association is also the secretary of a minister’s party. Local police also has an understanding with chitty companies. Monthly tips are regularly given to police officers saying that they have won chitty prizes. This happens even if the policemen do not partake in actual chitty proceedings.
All laws in India have ‘except Jammu and Kashmir’ in them. Thus chitties registered in Jammu and Kashmir (JK) do not have to abide by the rules in other states. They do this to avoid remitting security deposit to the government. No government agency has enquired into this till date.
Investors cannot get back their money as they have to go to JK for the legal proceedings as the head office will be set up there. In reality, these companies have only a name board in JK. All these companies are owned by Malayalees and operated in Kerala.

DB Binu, lawyer
The existing laws are enough to provide protection to investors and curb these chitty companies, but they are not being implemented properly. This continues because of the unholy link the chitty companies have with politics and police.
The investors are also at fault in the case of these chitty companies (out-of-State chitty companies). In their craving for high profits, investors forget the risks. The simple procedures in chitty companies also attract them. The collection agent would come to their homes and they can remit as well as get loans from these persons. Investors should be careful in investing only in chitty companies registered according to Kerala Chitties Act.

P Vijayan, Commissioner of Police, Kochi
People are not complaining about chitty companies nor do they enquire about the credibility of these companies before investing. People just want the police to facilitate reimbursement of their money. They are hesitant to register a case stating they were defrauded. We can make an arrest under Money Lenders Act if we get a complaint.
We have formed an action plan to regularly monitor money-lenders and goondas in the city. People can report of such activities to any police station and inform me if no action is taken by them. We plan to strengthen the monitoring and make the money-lenders report to the station and make statements about their activities. All violations do not come under the jurisdiction of police. There are some boards appointed to monitor such cases.

Sharaf, former gangster
When the chitty companies find it difficult to collect money from somebody, they approach us. The normal rate is Rs 20,000 per lakh, but it varies depending on the profile of the defaulter. If the defaulter has ‘grip’, the rate increases.
The chitty companies recover the maximum amount from the defaulter through us and then lodge a case against him on the basis of the blank cheques given by him. The defaulter has to pay our fees also to settle the case.
If we get into trouble with police, the chitty companies will look after that. They will also bear other expenses incurred in the course of collecting the amount. There are collection gangs that operate on an all-Kerala basis.

Power to local bodies yet to come

2008-07-23T02:14:00.000+05:30

Mahir Haneef

Even though constitutional status was granted to Panchayati Raj institutions through an amendment in 1992, local self-government bodies still suffer from lack of an independent funding system and interference of State governments.
Though governments of Kerala scored over other States in conferring powers on Panchayati Raj institutions, they retained the reins by not setting up a separate finance commission and autonomous status to these local bodies.
Thus, the panchayats, representing the will of the people, have a limited in implementing the will of the people due to the lack of self-sufficiency. This continues even though it goes against the definition of a free people, who are a people who participate in decisions affecting their lives and destinies.
Kerala High Court became the villain in the recent episode of denial when they ordered the panchayat to grant licence for Coca Cola’s bottling plant. Following this, many experts pointed out that the order goes against the spirit of cooperative federalism represented through Panchayati Raj, the most cherished dream of Mahatma Gandhi.
Intervention in the activities of local bodies through State functionaries like Collectors and Revenue Divisional Officers are also common in the State. This often prevents village panchayat from acting as a direct channel for citizens to exercise their will and thereby participate in local self governance.
With all these factors, panchayats are now limited to function as an implementation agency for State and Central projects and rarely get the chance for functional and financial devolution. Thus with State control over funds and personnel, local bodies are distanced from the development process as envisioned through Panchayati Raj.

AK Krishnan, president of Perumatty Gramapanchayat
The panchayat doesn’t have the power to implement their decisions. I believe that the high court order favouring Coca Cola was discriminatory. What came as court order were the propositions put forward by Coca Cola in a discussion with us. We rejected their propositions in the meeting itself, but the court made us grant licence to them, thereby denying the powers of the panchayat.

Justice VR Krishan Iyer conducted a press meeting and stated that the High Court Bench was bought by the company. No reply was given to this and this again proves it right. Otherwise, he would have been prosecuted for contempt of court. The court also stated that they would grant licence if the panchayat fails to do so, thus denying the powers of the panchayat.

Jose P Mani, District Panchayat President
Finance Commission for self-governing bodies have to be set up for better functioning of panchayats. Now panchayats are restricted according to the financial condition of the State government. As a result of this, panchayats have to take loans from agencies like HUDCO.
Interference by Collectors and Revenue Divisional Officers is also a great problem. I warned them of prosecution when they tried to interfere with panchayat activities recently. Panchayats have the right to do that. If anybody has a complaint regarding the decisions of panchayat committee, it should be brought up via ombudsman and not through the Collector or RDO. The activities of the panchayat should not be interfered in any way by the Collector or RDO.

K Krishnankutty, Secretary General of Janatha Dal
I believe in Justice VR Krishna Iyer’s allegation fully. This court order proves that panchayats have no power. A panchayat is in control of the resources there and is bound to protect it, but this order came out quite contrary to previous order and this raises our suspicion.
By threatening that the court would grant licence, it was implying that it would use the powers of the panchayat. Under no circumstances should the court do such a thing. The contempt of court case came before the same bench considering the original case and this is also not proper.

Kutty Ahammed Kutty, Minister for Local Self Government
Panchayats are given enough funds now unlike in the past. We are calling back funds because they are not used. Panchayats are given plan funds and non-plan funds. They can use non-plan funds as they decide, but plan-funds have to be spent as per the decisions of the government.

PV Sahasranaman, lawyer
The power of the panchayat is independent. This power should be used reasonably and fairly. If the panchayat fails to do so, court can interfere. In the Coca Cola case, the panchayat did state before the court that the plant is causing water scarcity, but failed to state how much and how large. They didn’t also do any expert study on this.

Stolen mobile phones sold off as new ones

2008-07-21T02:11:00.000+05:30

Mahir Haneef
Kochi
Is there any chance of a lost or stolen mobile phone being recovered? Not in Kerala, say experts. The reason is that full-fledged rackets for selling stolen mobile phones as new ones are functioning in Kerala.

Abdul Rehman, a mobile phone technician, says “About 90 per cent of the new mobile phones sold in Kerala are old ones, either stolen or sold after short-term use. Very few people have detailed knowledge on how to sell a second-hand or stolen mobile phone as new and they thrive on it. Every part of a mobile phone is available including duplicate catalogues.”

Explaining the function of the rackets, Mr Rehman said “International Mobile Equipment Number (IMEN) is the key to identify a stolen mobile phone. This number is part of the software, which also stores the number of hours used and such details. IMEN is also stored in a sticker inside the mobile phone. This sticker is removed applying heat and a duplicate sticker is installed in its place. Then the IMEN on the duplicate sticker is fed into the mobile phone after replacing the software, thereby deleting details such as number of hours used.

“Second-hand mobile phones are also sold as new ones by replacing the software and the outer cover and recharging pins, which may show signs of use. The rich as well as business class use a new model for a few months and then sells them at whatever price it fetches and buy new ones. These phones and the stolen ones are offered at prices lesser than phones with company guarantee. A shop guarantee is given instead and the fact is that most mobile phones won’t have any complaint within one year of manufacture.”

Referring to catalogues, he said “Duplicate catalogues and covers are available for all models. Mobile phones from the gulf regions are brought here and sold as new ones after packing them in duplicate cover along with a duplicate catalogue. Most buyers believe that the information regarding usage, displayed by pressing certain codes, is true, but replacing the software resets the whole data.”

Original catalogues are also reused by some dealers, Mr Rehman said. “Some customers sell mobile phones along with original. The details of the customer would be recorded only in the page printed in English. This page is torn off and details of the new customer are entered in the page printed in Hindi. Most often even the company officials fail to recognise this and provide warranty cover.”

Customers are losers in terms of spare parts also. “Duplicate batteries are sold as original ones by fitting bronze plates inside them. Customers are asked to differentiate the original one from the duplicate by their weight, saying that an original battery would weigh more,” Mr Rehman said.

This racket is not limited to mobile phone technicians and dealers alone, says Mr Rehman. “A major service provider of CDMA sets cheats the customer in a unique way. When the mobile phone fails, the customer would approach the showroom and would be informed that the network card and other things have become faulty and have to be replaced at the cost of Rs 5,000. He would also be told that it would take some time as the phone has to be sent to Madras for repair. In reality, only the software needs to be replaced. The customer then goes in for a fresh set, which the company provides at Rs 2,500. Thus the customer not only has to spend for a new set, but also has to recharge his connection once again.”

Kochi police's website hijacked

2008-07-20T02:04:00.000+05:30

Mahir Haneef
Kochi
When Kochi police tried their hand in welcoming IT revolution by launching a website, they soon learned that even law enforcement departments are preyed upon in the world of Internet. The official website of Kochi police was set up in 2002 by the then Commissioner Y Anil Kumar by the web address http://www.cochincitypolice.com.

The website changed hands from Mr Kumar to Shaik Darvesh Sahib, who was the Commissioner of Police from April to July in 2002. One fine day, Kochi police realised that their site was ‘hijacked’ by a foreigner and they had no control over it.

The ‘traditional’ lack of funds might have prompted Kochi police set up a domain website unlike their Thiruvananthapuram wing, which set up a server of its own. Thus, the help of an Internet solution provider with the name of Planet Earth Net Solutions (PENS) was sought to build and maintain the site at their server.

Though the district police officials were well-versed in the laws of the country, little did they know about the rules of the Internet world. It turned out that PENS had its head office at Ontario in Canada and their Kochi office was its ‘offshore development center’. Strangely, PenSolutions.com, the website of PENS is currently (Aug 21 4.00 pm) put up for sale at www.buydomains.com.

Within a few months of the ‘kidnapping’, Vinod Thomas became the Commissioner. Realising that the previous web address is lost forever, he began a new site in the address http://www.kochicitypolice.org. This time, the Internet solutions provider is Millenimum Consultants Inc, a company based at New Jersey, USA with an ‘offshore development centre’ at Kochi.

Fortunately for Kochi police, the new site has been running without any trouble for the past one-and-a-half years now. But the site, put up mainly for the benefit of the public, continues to confuse them by announcing in their flash news that P Vijayan “will assume office on Friday” and stating in the Commissioner’s page that Dinendra Kashyap is still in charge of the city. The flash news that states “will assume office on Friday” on Sunday evening itself is evidently more than three days old by the time your read this.

Box story: Swadeshi is suraksha
Pioneer News Service
Kochi
By registering a domain with Canada-based company, Kochi police facilitated the ‘kidnapping’ of their website. Another ‘kidnapping’ is waiting to happen as the current website of Kochi police is also registered in a foreign country (USA), rather than setting up own server and consulting native companies.
While the Kochi police website exists in fear of being ‘kidnapped’, Thiruvananthapuram police displays their web portal as an example of self-reliance. They set up a web portal (www.tvmcitypolice.org) in 1997, seeking the help of Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala (IIITM-K).

Satheesh Chand, Assistant Commissioner of Computerisation, said “We decided to set up a portal instead of a domain considering the security needed. Now we have gone beyond providing basic information and are using our portal for intra-departmental communication also. We have a special login system whereby police officers from the level of Sub Inspectors to DGP can communicate with each other. The total cost of maintaining this doesn’t even come anywhere closer to running a single motorcycle from office to office.”

Government departments groping in the dark over Information Act

2008-07-19T02:01:00.000+05:30

Mahir Haneef
Kochi
“Successfully implemented Right to Information Act, 2005 in the State” says a recent self-promoting advertisement by the Public Relations Department of Government of Kerala. At the same time, the reply to an application for information dated November 9, submitted according to the provisions of the Act, from the Superintendent of ESI Hospital, Ernakulam says “The details of Right to Information Act haven’t reached this office yet.”

The Superintendent gave this reply to an application filed by KN Gopakumar, resident of Pathanapuram, on October 31 last year requesting the service details of his ex-wife for use in a court case. The case was that his ex-wife got a court order in her favour and forcing him to pay alimony to her by suppressing the fact that she was a government employee.

This incident points to the fact that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s concern regarding improper implementation of the Act has come true in Kerala as the government has failed to execute the law properly. Mr Singh voiced his concern by advising the civil servants that they should see the Act in a positive light and shouldn’t see it as a draconian law, being servants of the public.

The Act, which came into effect on June 15, 2005, states that 10 sections of the law comes into effect immediately and the rest of the sections should be implemented within 120 days of passing the law.

Those 10 sections that had to be implemented at once include section 5 (1), which requires Public Information Officers (PIO) to be appointed within 100 days from the date of enactment. Though almost five months have passed since the deadline of 100 days passed on September 23 last year, PIOs are yet to be appointed in more than half of the government departments.

The government website states that only 37 PIOs have been appointed, though there are more than 60 departments (excluding the lower level offices across the State). While the Act was passed to strengthen the right of the public, most of the offices accessed by the public haven’t received any information regarding implementation of the Act, as like the ESI Hospital at Ernakulam.

The officials at the government offices are also at ignorance as to how to respond to requests for information under the Act. Section 6 (3) of the Act directs a government official to forward the application, within five days of receipt, to the concerned official if the information sought is not within his jurisdiction. The official to whom the application was first submitted should also intimate the applicant that his request has been forwarded to another office.

However, officials in charge of government departments continue to return the application often stating that the information sought is not within their jurisdiction and directs the applicant to submit a fresh application to the concerned department, contrary to the provisions of the law.

Corruption in appointments and meagre salaries driving Indian doctors abroad

2008-07-17T01:55:00.000+05:30

Mahir Haneef
Kochi

Widespread corruption in appointments and meager salaries are driving medical graduates away from State health services. Fresh medical graduates are enrolling in private hospitals and are subsequently migrating to developed countries, while the government loses the money spent for the subsidized education these people avail in their homeland.

The main deterrent to enrolling in government health service is the corruption in appointments, say fresh medical graduates. “A doctor belonging to Thiruvananthapuram is appointed at Kasargod, while a native of Kasargod will be appointed at Thiruvananthapuram. This system is maintained by politicians to enable corruption. If one wants to get appointed in his hometown, he has to pay lakhs of rupees,” said Dr Raju Narayanan, a resident of Thiruvananthapuram currently working at Thrissur.

“This is not a one time affair. You have to pay lakhs every time the government changes. Provided the salary structure in government service, we cannot afford to pay such huge amounts every now and then. So freshers stay away from government service,” said Dr Narayanan.

Poor salary structure and lack of equipment come next in the list of deterrents to enrolling in government service, say young medical professionals. Sanju Thomas, a gastroenterologist, said “When the government pays you Rs 10,000, salary in the private sector starts at Rs 45,000. Private sector also gives the advantage of providing consultations in one’s specialization only. But in the government service, you have to act beyond your speciality, which is not a good thing to do with regards to the patient’s health.”

Doctor-patient ratio in government service also acts as a deterrent, say medical professionals. “The present doctor-patient ratio stands at 1:300 in rural areas, which makes it impossible to do a proper diagnosis. You begin to prescribe even before you examine the patient properly due to lack of time,” said Dr Thomas.

The low doctor-patient ratio is also the cause of errors in surgeries performed at government hospitals, say medical professionals. Mini Varghese, an anesthesiologist, said “The low doctor-patient ratio bars the doctor from performing many statutory checks before a surgery. It is mandatory for the operating surgeon to narrate the procedure he is going to perform to another doctor and the listening doctor should verify the details. But how can you do that when you have dozens of surgeries pending with only one or two doctors to do that.”

While enrolling in the State service ensures a grim future, developed countries have opened gates to professionals from countries like India. Medical professionals are lured to developed countries by the exotic pay packages combined with excellent and frequently updated equipment that enables them to achieve maximum performance.

Naturally, medical professionals bid goodbye to their homeland and start working like a donkey in a developed country as performance is directly proportional to salary, whereas in government service in India, one gets paid regardless of his performance. Today, Indian doctors are a formidable presence in USA with numbers as high as 40,000. Nearly 10 per cent of the total anesthesiologists in USA are Indians.

Dr Narayanan depicts the poor state of State health services through these words: “The most needed quality in medical profession is team work as no surgery can be performed without it. But the situation in State service is such that nobody listens or obeys a superior. The nursing superintendent won’t obey the doctor and the nurse won’t obey the superintendent. Performing a surgery in such an atmosphere is very difficult.”

why should all motorists pay for overspeeding ones?

2008-07-16T13:35:00.000+05:30

Kochi: Why should motorists as a whole pay for the increase in premium caused by drunken driving, over-speeding and overloading? Traffic experts point out these three factors as major reasons for accidents, but only a minority of motorists indulge in these and make the majority pay through frequent hikes in insurance premium.

Public insurance companies, who are the only third-party policy providers due to heavy loss in the sector, agree to the fact that policy premium should be raised for these high-risk motorists. Krishna Das, assistant administrative officer of a public insurance company, says “It is necessary that the premium of motorists who indulge in drunken driving, over-speeding and overloading should be raised as they are doing it at the expense of other motorists who have to pay for the damage these people cause in the form of hike in premiums.”

The high level of loss incurred to the public insurance companies through third party policies can be offset in this way, say public insurance company officials. M M Sulphey, development officer of New India Assurance Company, says “For a premium of Rs 100, we incur a claim of Rs 200. This loss is due to the high level of accidents in the state, which is caused by factors like drunken driving, over-speeding and overloading.”

While insurance officials ask for an increase in premium for traffic offenders, police officials are of the view that no insurance cover should be given to these people. KE Joy, assistant commissioner of police, said “Insurance cover should not be given to over-speeding motorists. We fine over-speeding motorists for Rs 1,000 through petty cases, but criminal cases are charged in serious cases.”

Even when all agree that insurance premium should be raised for traffic offenders, lack of provision in the law, absence of a good monitoring system and scarce equipment for tracking down offenders come in the way of implementing the raise. Mr Sulphey says “There is no proper system to monitor whether a claim was caused by over-speeding or overloading. We have provisions in the law that allow us to cancel a policy or reject a claim citing overloading, but we do not have the authority to conduct any checking to verify it.”

Law doesn’t seem to favour insurance companies in cases of overloading and over-speeding. Insurance officials say that in motor accident cases, courts mostly don’t consider whether there was overloading or over-speeding. This attitude of the courts together with lack of necessary equipment to determine speed makes for an easy getaway for traffic offenders.

Even though State police procured some speed radars a few years ago, they are very limited in number. Mr Joy says “We now have only one speed radar in Ernakulam. To make up for that, we employ policemen in civilian clothes along highways to inform about speeding vehicles. We stop these vehicles at the next junction and fine them.”

At present, the burden of loss due to third-party policy is borne by public companies alone. Public companies cannot reject the customer as the policy is one stipulated by law and has to be provided by them. But how long will these public companies last to bear this loss and how long will motorists be penalised for a minority of traffic offenders among them?

98 per cent software in Kerala pirated

2008-07-15T13:31:00.000+05:30

Kochi: Even as computers are fast becoming an essential and integral part of the life of Indians, reports state that most of them do not pay for the software they use. Seventy three per cent of the total software used in India is pirated, says National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM) officials. The total annual loss due to software piracy ranges between Rs 500-2,000 crore, they said.

A close look at software piracy in Kerala reveals that the situation is even worse. The estimated annual sale of computers in Kerala is now 96,000. “At least 98 per cent of the software used in Kerala is pirated. Even the software used in government computers are pirated as they are not willing to pay for the software,” says Santosh Kumar C, president of All Kerala IT Dealers Association.

Piracy in Kerala is not dealt seriously by software providers, said several computer engineers and technicians. Shameer Rehman, a systems engineer, said “The most pirated software is Windows, the operating system by Microsoft. But company officials are not taking any hard measures to control piracy. Only very few instances of piracy has been caught by Microsoft officials and they resorted to advising the defaulters rather than imposing any hefty fines. They seem to want to keep Windows as the most used operating system, which won’t be possible if strict actions are taken against piracy.”

But AKITDA officials and most software engineers pointed out that the high rates of piracy is due to the unaffordable price of software rather than people trying to cheat. A Pentium IV computer is sold at the range of Rs 22,000-25,000. But if the customer tries to buy the necessary software, he has to shell out around Rs 60,000. The price of Microsoft Windows XP home edition, which a customer cannot avoid as it is the operating system, is US $ 199 (around Rs 10,000). The customer cannot also avoid MS Office as a computer without it is useless for any work, and this would cost another US $ 399 (around Rs 20,000). Another essential software a customer needs in this age of digital photography is Adobe Photoshop, which will cost US $ 599 (around Rs 30,000).

Software Engineer Mr Rehman gives an example to prove that this phenomenon is true. “Tally, the most popular accounting software, prices its single user version at Rs 5,200. The networking edition of the same software to be used in ten computers is sold at Rs 15,000. More companies buy the networking version of this software as individual use in ten computers would cost Rs 52,000, whereas they get it for Rs 15,000 from the company itself.”

Explaining the problem further, Mr Rehman said “The problem is that the prices are fixed in US dollars, which is cheap for customers in Europe but not affordable to Indians as it amounts to tens of thousands of rupees when converted into Indian currency. Microsoft Windows and other similar software are pirated widely because of the high price of their networking versions.”

Companies like Microsoft have hidden agendas in not enforcing strict anti-piracy laws, says Mr Rehman. “Microsoft can easily develop locks in software that cannot be broken, but they won’t do it as they want to retain their market leadership. If they keep the laws stringent, people will switch to Linux, which is a freeware and therefore won’t cost anything or if at all any money has to be paid, it would be very less compared to the price of Windows.”

Awareness about software piracy is increasing, say experts. AKITDA officials now warn customers that they are using pirated software. Mr Kumar said “Customers used to think that the software that comes along with the computer comes for free and is their right. But now we tell customers that they have to spend more money for software and installs pirated software only with their consent. We also warn them that the software installed is in their own risk and we are not accountable for it.”

KSRTC and disabled

2008-07-14T13:31:00.000+05:30

In spite of being 10 per cent of Indian population, disabled persons continue to face discrimination even though there are several laws to ensure their well being.Travelling, one of the most challenging tasks for disabled, is made more challenging by the apathy of various transportation departments in the country.
Starting from the absence of wheelchair ramps and easy access to bathrooms in restaurants and hotels, the list goes on quite long. The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act was passed in 1995 to safeguard the rights of physically disabled persons. But so many guidelines mentioned in the act are neglected by KSRTC and the transport department, says K Thajuddeen, vice-president of Kerala Vikalanga Association (KVA).
The task of procuring and renewing various identity cards have become an ordeal for disabled persons as each institution asks for separate identity cards, say KVA representatives. Referring to breach of guidelines of the act, Mr Thajuddeen said "The 1995 Act requires the government to issue an identity card for disabled and this card is valid enough to avail concessions in all institutions in the country. But KSRTC demands separate identity cards issued by them. The demand for a separate identity card nullifies an identity card issued as per the 1995 Act, procedures of which include examination by a medical board consisting of five doctors and a superintendent,” said Mr Thajuddeen.
According to KVA, KSRTC tops the list of institutions that make their travelling difficult. Mr Thajuddeen said “Verification of address for identity card is done by KSRTC officials, for which we have to rent a taxi and pay other expenses to get a sanction. Most of the disabled persons are very poor and struggle to make a living. The procedure of renewing the identity card has become an unbearable ordeal for us in terms of money and time.”The Act also specifies 40 per cent disability as the eligibility to get travel concessions, whereas KSRTC gives concessions only to persons with more than 50 per cent disability, Mr Thajuddeen said.KSRTC officials defended the use of a separate identity card stating that law demands a separate identity card for KSRTC. “We ask for a separate identity card because we want to know the percentage of disability and also because our law states that we should do so,” said TR Satheesan, law officer of KSRTC.
The neglect of KSRTC officials towards disabled is not limited to identity cards alone. "They have avoided marking the seats reserved for disabled persons in the new high-tech buses even though we are eligible to travel in buses run as a fast passenger," said Mr Thajuddeen.
When it comes to travelling via railway, the situation is much better, says Mr Thajuddeen. Railway approves the identity card issued as per the 1995 Act and is much better in providing ramps and access ways for disabled, he said. Railway also gives proper concession in fares as opposed to KSRTC, which gives concession only if one is 50 per cent disabled, he said. “But there aren’t enough facilities in many railway stations and the existing facilities have to be improved,” he added.

Good roads increase accidents!

2008-07-13T13:30:00.000+05:30

At a time when many are advocating express highways and multi-lane roads in Kerala, traffic records show that accidents are caused more due to motorists’ carelessness than lack of road facilities. Officials of Kochi traffic police also endorse recklessness on the part of motorists as the main cause of accidents.

Traffic records of Kochi East traffic section for the past year state the highest number of accidents in Vytilla – Aroor stretch, closely followed by Edapally– Vytila stretch. These stretches are part of the most developed highways in Kerala and have four-lane system and medians to prevent accidents involving oncoming traffic and pedestrians. While these stretches accounted for 43 per cent and 19 per cent of the total number of accidents respectively, the Edapally-Varappuzha stretch, which has the least developed roads among the highways, recorded only four per cent of the total number of accidents Thus Edapally-Varappuzha stretch remains the least accident prone road among the four stretches under the jurisdiction of East traffic police.

Assitant Commissioner of Police KE Joy, who heads the East traffic section, said “Our experience reveals that accidents are caused by carelessness on the part of motorists than bad road conditions. Motorists are less careful and at the same time cruise at higher speeds in good roads. Narrow roads limit the average speed and keep the driver more alert for accidents.”

Referring to Muttom-Edapally highway, which accounts for 28 per cent of accidents in his juridisction, Mr Joy said “Proximity of residence areas is the main cause of accidents in this stretch. People and vehicles crisscross the road frequently without caring that it is an area of high-speed motoring.”

Season-wise study of the accidents in East section reveals that the most number of accidents happen in summer, closely followed by monsoon and winter. Spring or post-monsoon season remains the period with the least number of accidents. While summer season accounted for 27 per cent of accidents, monsoon and winter follow closely with 26 and 25 per cent respectively. Spring season recorded 22 per cent of the total number of accidents.

Look before you book an MLA

2008-07-12T13:29:00.000+05:30

What will happen to a traffic constable and sub inspector who ‘dare’ to bring to book an MLA who parks his car at the wrong side of the road and create traffic obstruction? In Kerala it directly translates into suspension for at least an year and enlisting in the bad book of the government.

Two officers of East traffic section have been suspended from service for 11 months because they cleared a traffic congestion in one of the most crowded points in the city. Unfortunately for them, the troublemaker this time was an elected representative of the ruling party, who came to worship at St Antony’s Church, Kaloor along with his other half.

The MLA parked his car in front of the church on the wrong side of the road and thereby created a traffic congestion. The constable who came to clear the traffic block was told that he was an MLA and refused to move the vehicle, by which time the sub inspector arrived at the scene. The sub inspector repeated the need to remove the vehicle and the MLA did not even flinch. The locals who were witnessing the entire drama demanded the MLA remove the vehicle and finally he conceded to the request.

Following a complaint by the MLA, an enquiry was ordered into the incident and the Assistant Commissioner who was nominated for the task submitted a report to the government congratulating the action taken by the policemen. But within a few days, an order came stating that the policemen are being suspended from service based on the report filed by the Assistant Commissioner. Thus these policemen, who set an example for integrity in the police force, are about to observe the anniversary of their suspension, thanks to an elected representative of the State.

Willingdon Island - disaster waiting to happen (and it happened!)

2008-07-11T13:27:00.000+05:30

(Author's note: One of the tanks mentioned in this report collapsed a week after publishing this story in The Pioneer. Two workers died while the tank was being calibrated before commissioning.)

The presence of fuel storage tanks in land leased by Cochin Port Trust has made Willingdon Island a ticking bomb – a bomb enlarging in size and effect day by day as more and more tanks are being set up, flouting all norms and challenging the oppositions put forward by Corporation of Cochin, Revenue Divisional Officer, District Collector, Department of Factories and Boilers and Fire Safety Controller.

There are 28 above-ground storage tanks and the rumour is that 90 more will be put up soon. These tanks violate the norms regarding proximity, fire safety, environmental safety, and above all endangers the life of around 1,500 residents of Vathuruthy, who live just 100 feet away from these tanks.

Leakage from one of the tanks last November caused a fire that needed 15 fire engines to douse it after one-and-a-half hours of strenuous efforts. Luckily for the Vathuruthy residents and students of Naval school, which is situated just 100 metres away, the fire did not spread to other tanks. Else the whole island would have been no more as there are eight petrol pumps within 200 metres of the storage tanks. These facts combined with the lack of equipment and facilities on the part of fire force to handle industrial mishaps translates to thousands losing their lives in the event of a fire or explosion.

In view of the high number of industries in Kochi, fire force officials of Kochi have been demanding high-tech equipment and chemicals to handle industrial mishaps for a long time. They also endorse the fact that Kochi would have a disaster to tell in future in the event of a fire or explosion in the industrial areas including Willingdon Island. R Prasad, divisional officer of fire force and secretary of Kerala Fire Force Officers Association, said “We do not have facilities to douse fires caused by chemicals. The fire due to benzene spillage in Willingdon Island lasted many hours because we didn’t have the right chemical compound to use. The fire was kept alive not by the spilled benzene, but by the vapours coming from it and we were helpless as we did not have the chemical compound to deal with vapours.”

Xavier Raju, a journalist residing in Vathuruty, said “Not only Vathuruthy residents and students of Naval school but the entire motorists in the adjacent highway along with the people there are at risk as the fuel pipelines are laid right below the roads and is seen jutting out in many places. A leak in any point of these pipelines will cause a calamity.”

Above-ground fuel-storage standards specify that a secondary containment and a secure six-foot fence or a well-ventilated building should be built using non-combustible material surrounding a storage tank to prevent pollution due to spillage or leakage from the tank. But the storage tanks in Willingdon Island are built within a few feet of each other without any secondary containment to prevent water and environmental pollution.

Even a small leak of one drop per second can result in the release of about 1,500 litres of fuel per year. A few litres of fuel in the ground water is enough to severely pollute drinking water. At low levels, fuel contaminants in water cannot be detected by smell or taste. Thus the seemingly pure water may be contaminated to the point of affecting human health.
Preventing tank spills and leaks is especially important because fuels like petrol and diesel can move rapidly through surface layers and into ground water. The time it takes for petroleum products to reach ground water also depend upon the type of soil. The more porous the soil (for example sands and gravels), the faster and higher the rate of pollution.

Petroleum spilling and leakage is a major hazard in a city like Kochi as the soil here is very porous, being a city residing at sea-level. Kochi is basically not a city suited for fuel storage tanks due to the high porosity and saline nature of the soil. But this does not stop port authorities from allowing more and more tanks to be set up in the city, right beside civilian centres.
The saline and corrosive nature of the soil in Kochi is enough reason for removing fuel storage tanks from here. Highly corrosive clays, wet soils and acidic soils can significantly increase the rate of corrosion of underground pipes. AG Kora, geologist at Department of Mining and Geology, said “The chances of petroleum spills reaching and polluting ground water is high in porous soil and the soil in Willingdon Island is semi-porous, (a type of soil in which petroleum easily spreads through surface layers).” Currently, the fuel arriving in ships at Cochin Port is transferred to the storage tanks via underground metal pipes passing right below the highway. These pipes will corrode soon and will cause disasters in Kochi.
Porous soil also lacks stability, which causes the tanks to lose the balance and cause them to bend or lean and thereby cause spillage. TR Sanu, a resident of Vathuruthy and convener of Willingdon Island Action Council, said “We strongly suspect that low-quality material was used to build the tanks as is evident from tanks leaning like the tower of Pisa.”Another hazard from petroleum leakage is risk of cancer. Petroleum fuels contain a number of potentially toxic compounds, including common solvents such as benzene, toluene and xylene, as well as additives such as ethylene dibromide (EDB) and organic lead compounds. It is a proved fact that EDB and benzene can cause cancer in humans. The situation is made worse by the fact that the odor of EDB cannot be recognized until concentrations are much above the maximum level recommended in India.

State's elite run for cover

2008-07-10T13:26:00.000+05:30

Burglar alarm sellers in Kerala are thriving as more and more Malayalis are opting for home security systems in view of the rising incidence of attack on elders by criminals. Sale of home security system has skyrocketed in the past five years, with over a hundred per cent increase in sale.

Suresh Namboothiry, head of security systems at Godrej & Boyce, said “Awareness about security systems has increased tremendously over the last five years. This is evident from the boost in sales, which is more than 100 per cent in the past five years. The sale goes up by 35-40 per cent each year with most of the customers being NRIs and people who were residing in cities like Mumbai and Delhi.”

With the police groping in the dark on several murders and robberies in which elders were targeted, many people believe it is wise to invest in burglar alarms. The drop in burglar alarm prices over 40 per cent due to the development of quality indigenous burglar alarm systems is a major factor in the boost in sales, say security experts.

Builders and construction experts state that many people now incorporate the wiring for security systems while they build their houses so that they can retrofit burglar alarms if needed. Safety factor has acquired a prime position in the mind of most city residents and investment on this side is considered necessary by many.

People who are abroad or have been out of the state are the main consumers, say home security system providers. “Ninety per cent of the customers are people who have returned from cities like Mumbai or Delhi and Non Resident Indians (NRIs),” said Suresh. These people are more aware about security systems, he added.

Security systems are customised according to the type of risks and needs of the customers, said Suresh. “In houses where elderly people reside alone, we incorporate Automatic Telephone Dialer (ATD), which can dial nine preset telephone numbers when the alarm goes off,” he said. This system eliminates the need to remember telephone numbers, which is very mostly impossible for elderly people at the time of an emergency. The receiver of the call will hear a recorded message asking for help or assistance.

Video door, a facility which shows a video footage of the person ringing the door bell, is a much sought-after system by NRIs, said Suresh. The system also allows the residents to talk to the person at the door before opening the door, thereby allowing them to decide whether to let the person in or not.

Another feature advantageous to elders is the panic switch, which enables them to activate the alarm if a seemingly harmless person turns violent or hostile. These switches are fixed at different points in the house for easy reach.

A basic security system costs around Rs 7,000-8,000, which is nothing when compared to the security and confidence it gives back to the residents. Most house owners go for the basic system, which includes a control panel, few panic switches costing Rs 500 each and one or two door sensors at Rs 300 each. Security system providers say that this is enough to protect the people from intruders. But NRI families often go a step forward and install fire sensors and motion detectors for added safety, they said.

A select few who consider spending on security systems go for a complete system, which enables the customer to monitor his house from anywhere in the world, stated security system providers. This system alerts the house owner through his cell phone in the event of an intrusion and also sends a message through the Internet. This system not only protects the house, but also monitors the surrounding areas and alerts the owner if any intrusion occurs.

How accurate are our suspect identificatin parades?

2008-07-09T19:21:00.000+05:30

Mahir Haneef
Kochi: Hundreds of people would have saved their necks and many thousands could have saved many years of imprisonment had our identification parades been updated using modern technologies. The present system of identification parade is archaic and needs to be updated urgently, say experts.

James Vadackumchery, noted criminologist, said “The present system of identification was instituted in 1861 by the British according to the CrPc (Criminal procedure Code). Identification parades conducted today are done according to the law written by Macaulay more than a century ago.”

Law says that an identification parade has to be conducted ‘blind’, but how safe are the parades conducted by the police today? The existing system of identification is such that a group of men are lined up and the witness is asked to identify from that group. The policeman who accompanies the victim will know beforehand who the suspect is. Mr Vadackumchery says “There were instances when the policeman who accompanies the witness gave away the whole procedure by giving signs to the witness by coughing and other visual signs.” A system of making the police escort “blind” hasn’t been developed even after a century of practising the identification parade.

Dr B Umadathan, former head of forensic science department of Kerala, points out another irony of the identification process. “The suspect is produced before a court well before the identification parade. Therefore, the photograph of the suspect will already be published in newspapers and the media and therefore the whole process is a waste. Therefore, what is termed as a scientific process in our country is really unscientific and needs to be updated.”

Not only the process but the existing law has to be changed with regards to identification parades, says Mr Umadathan. “The existing system of identification results in the witness comparing the mental picture he formed from the crime scene to the most resembling individual in the group. This is ineffective in crimes happening within a few minutes, the witness mostly won’t get a chance to see the perpetrator clearly. The only case where the witness or victim can undoubtedly point out the criminal would be a rape case, due to the prolonged nature of contact.”

Many nations have switched to more scientific methods of identification due to the problems of the system that we still continue to use, says Mr Umadathan. “When the witness or victim compares the mental image of the culprit to those present in the group, he will point out the most similar person as the mind doesn’t block him from doing so even if the real person is not in the group. Innocent person may get chosen because of this.

There was a case in Changanassery where a person was rendered unconscious and then robbed. When we took him for identification, he identified many persons as the perpetrator under several circumstances.”

Foreign countries have done research in this regard and are now using a technique called double-blind lineup, said Mr Umadattan. Explaining the concept, he said “In this system, the witness or the victim is shown only one person at a time by pointing a light at him and thereby casting a silhouette. Each person of the group is shown in this manner and the result is that the witness compares the mental image to each person and decides whether it is the culprit or not. This method makes the witness bank more on his memory of the scene and come up with a conclusion.”

In the double-blind lineup, the official who conducts the parade doesn’t know who the suspect is and therefore cannot suggest it to the witness, says Mr Umadathan.

Hoardings and traffic

2008-07-08T19:20:00.000+05:30

Ban fails to check ads on traffic signs

No clear rule on hoardings

Mahir Haneef
Kochi
Despite the High Court ban on advertisements on traffic signs, Kochi city still have many such boards with colourful advertisements. Most of the traffic signs in the city are sponsored by private firms, who were once permitted to put up advertisements in them.
Referring to the existence of traffic signs with advertisements on them, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Traffic) said, “We prevent new boards with advertisements from being put up and allow old ones to be there as they will be removed when the contract is over. We are now concentrating on advertisements and hoardings that disrupt the flow of traffic. Motor Vehicles Act only allows removal of those boards that disrupt traffic.”
At the same time, the huge hoardings that have changed the face of Kochi had become a controversy recently. Big hoardings in the city fall outside the High Court ruling, but the court had ruled that the corporation can impose tax on hoardings following a dispute between M/s Mayoora Advertisers and Corporation of Kochi.
But advertisers cry foul over the new tax saying that the hoardings put up on top of buildings are already being taxed in the form of land tax and building tax. Corporation of Kochi also made a rule that hoarding should not be put up above a height of four floors.
Describing the new rule as a thoughtless one, Vimal Arakkal of Mayoora
Advertisers said “Corporation banned hoardings above fourth floor saying that it would injure people if it falls. Still a hoarding falling from the third or second floor is enough to injure a person.” Amongst all these disputes, the fact that there is no proper regulation or law to control hoardings and advertisements in India remains so.

NRI families and apartments

2008-07-07T19:19:00.000+05:30

NRI families prefer flats to isolated houses

Mahir Haneef
Kochi

Families of Non-Resident Indians (NRI) are shifting to apartments in the city in large numbers for reasons of safety and convenience, even though they can own a house on their own. Living in an apartment in a city makes life easier for these families because of easy access to amenities.

These families find security as the main reason for living in an apartment than in a rented or own house. Jessy Cherian, a resident of Malabar Gate, said “We can just lock the front door and go out as we have a security guard. We don’t have to lock all the windows and doors as we do in a house.”

By employing a security guard, the entry to the apartment is restricted and this makes NRI families more secure. Sixty two year-old Valsamma Mathew’s two sons are abroad, but she isn’t bothered about security as she is in an apartment. “If we are living in a house, we have to worry about thieves as parents of NRIs living alone are often targeted by thieves. But being in an apartment, we haven’t had any trouble yet,” Mrs Mathew said.

Aged parents of NRIs also find apartments more convenient as the managers of the apartment would help them with shopping and would even go to the bank for them. Another important advantage these families find is easy medical access. “It is difficult to buy a house in the city and the prices are very high; but there are plenty of apartments available in the heart of the city,” said Mrs Mathew.

Travelling is also much easier in the city with easy access to bus services and taxi cabs. “We find travelling easier as taxi cabs would come to our apartment within a few minutes of telephoning them. Even if it is a medical emergency, we reach the hospital within a short time,” Mrs Mathew said.

Common lobby at the entrance of the flat is a blessing for most NRI families. Aysha Mohammed, an NRI’s wife who lives with her two small children in an apartment, says “The lobby is useful to entertain people whom you do not know directly but are unavoidable. Friends and acquaintances of my husband come here and as I do not know these people well enough, I meet them downstairs at the lobby. It is safe there as there are security guards and managers nearby.”

Many posh flats have small telephone switching boards that enable communication via intercom between flat residents. This facility is most used by aged residents. Sixty five year-old Amina Umma says “I am living with daughter-in-law and my son is abroad. After the children and daughter leave in the morning, I am alone here. But I don’t have to worry as I can call my relatives living on the floor right above us using the intercom and somebody would come down instantly.”

Another advantage of an apartment is that it is easier to manage, say NRI families. “We don’t have to employ a servant at all. Myself and my daughter-in-law can manage all the cleaning and other household chores, which we would not have been able to do in a house as I am aged,” said Mrs Mathew.

Children of NRI families also like life in apartments as they have access to well-equipped play areas. Another reason for their happiness is that they can easily find friends to play with. Going to school is also easier for children as the bus would come right to their doorstep as opposed to the ordeal of reaching the bus stop while living in a separate house outside the city.

Shape-conscious youngsters are also happy as they have fitness centres and swimming pools in apartment complexes to keep themselves fit. “When I was living in a rented house in Thiruvananthapuram, I had to travel five kilometres to reach Water Works swimming pool. Now I can swim as much as I want without going anywhere,” says 25 year-old Jayakumar.

Apartments and fire safety

2008-07-06T19:18:00.000+05:30

Mahir Haneef
Kochi: Kochi city perhaps has the highest number of multi-storeyed buildings in Kerala. But when it comes to fire safety, this city has a poor record with most buildings having no fire safety exits and no fire hydrants on the street.

Residents of Kochi have no choice but to die if a fire breaks out in the multi-storeyed building they reside. Even while the city is developing very fast, the fire safety standards comes nowhere to a standards of a metro city.

Fire safety came to be of some concern to the government of Kerala only in 1999 and that too only after the court removed its right to grant extensions to buildings. Following this, a standardisation of fire safety in Kerala was initiated and fire safety was made mandatory for multi-storeyed buildings to be built after that.

Referring to buildings prior to 1999, Senior Town Planner S Rajaram said “It is high time that the government make a law regarding fire safety in buildings built prior to 1999. This depends on the policy of the government and unless the government forms a law to this effect, the respective government agencies cannot do anything.”

Even though buildings built after 1999 have fire-fighting hydrants and hoses installed, most of them do not have a water connection to be used in the event of a fire. This should be read in connection with the fact that the fire-fighting system in Kerala now cannot cease fire on top floors of a building without them. Divisional Officer of Kerala Fire and Rescue Services E B Prasad said “It is mandatory that multi-storeyed buildings have fire hydrants and hoses installed so that fire services can use them to cease fire on top floors.”

Fire hydrants are important fire safety equipment, which unfortunately is nonexistent in Kerala. “A few fire hydrants that we have are those installed during the reign of maharajas and are not in working condition. According to the fire service rules, there should be fire hydrants in every street. In the event of a fire, our resources are now limited to the water contained in a fire engine.”

Fire Services officials admit that there are many things lacking in terms of fire-fighting equipment in Kerala. Even though Fire Force gets special training, lack of proper equipment to cease fire on multi-storeyed buildings make them depend heavily on fire hydrants and hoses installed on these buildings. Most of these hydrants and hoses are in a damaged condition and cannot be used in the event of a fire.

Lack of fire hydrants and equipment combined with no easy access way for fire engines to reach a place, residents of multi-storeyed buildings in Kerala are now at the mercy of fate.

Fresh retirees and technology

2008-07-05T19:17:00.000+05:30

Mahir Haneef
Kochi: Fresh retirees from government jobs are facing an acid test of adaptability in their effort to find employment and those who have managed to find new jobs are having a tough time to prove themselves useful.

As computers still remain a luxury in our government offices, these officers have been going about their jobs in the age-old pen-and-paper environment. Suddenly they find themselves in a difficult situation when they try for a job in private establishments as these offices are computerised, based on the theory of maximum utilisation and efficiency.

VK Samuel, a recent retiree from the Accountant General’s office, wants to be keep himself busy and earn a few bucks rather than sit at home idly. He is not alone, but most of the fresh retirees think along these lines. But he was shocked to find that he cannot engage his accounting skills, in which he has become a master by now, in some private firm because they are asking for a computer-literate person.

“I know every single detail of accounting but I am not able to do get any work because companies are asking whether you can do the same on a computer. Another aspect is that my job in AG’s Office didn’t require me to prepare a balance sheet, but only part of an account. Private companies that I have applied for asks for somebody who can prepare the balance sheet on a computer, both of which I do not know even after so many years of service in the industry. Companies prefer young people who are computer savvy rather than retired hands like me. They pay both of us equally and hiring young people is more profitable for them,” says Mr Samuel.

P Shamsuddeen, another fresh retiree, says “I can’t even find employment as a billing clerk as even that has been computerised. Suddenly I find myself useless in a world surrounded by technology, which I am not used to and quite messy to study and operate. When I tried to find employment after retiring, the only option available was to go for marketing, for which there are lots of young people who are more competent and are able to travel around and do the job. I decided not to go for that as I cannot do that much travel in this age and do not possess the suave nature needed for a marketing guy.”

When asked whether he went for any computer course, Mr Shamsuddeen said “We had computer courses arranged by our office, but those provided only the basics and I the only thing I learned from the course was to switch the computer on and off. Either the course failed or I failed to provide the knowledge necessary to handle a job with the help of a computer.”

Sixty-three year-old V Haneefa, who retired as an Arabic Professor, is able to handle the basic computer jobs needed for his visa-translation office. He does his work on a computer and uses a laser printer to get print outs of his work. But he limits his activities on the computer to these. He also holds regular consultations with a computer expert to overcome the difficulties that surface once in a while, and is also an ‘early adopter’ of computers.
The most cited reasons for not going for computer classes while in service were fear of learning something new, financial constraints, poor interface of computer operating systems and programmes and lack of exposure.

Lift matters

2008-07-04T19:11:00.000+05:30

Mahir Haneef

Kochi: The safety of the lifts that have expired its guarantee period is in question now.
Kochi city, with hundreds of apartments and high-rise buildings have several of such lifts.

Thousands of people ride in lifts on their way to office or home. But very few think of the safety they are in their upward and downward flight in lifts even though the number of lift accidents is rising.

When asked about the government rules regarding safety factor in lifts, Senior Town Planner S Rajaram said “Any construction activity in the state comes under Kerala Municipal Building Rules. It specifies that buildings higher than three floors should have lifts, but does not have any rules to govern the safety of lifts.”

There are nearly twenty five companies that manufacture and service lifts in Kerala. A newly installed lift is given a guarantee of only one year. After that, these companies would service the lifts on an annual maintenance contract (AMC). But very few lifts are being serviced regularly as an AMC costs about Rs 70,000. “Some companies even offer AMC at rates as low as Rs 30,000, but even then there are very few takers for AMCs. Apartment owners do not seem to like spending such a huge amount on a lift,” said Jayanth John, a lift service engineer.

Another interesting aspect is that the metal ropes used in lifts do not have any guarantee at all even though manufacturers state that a rope will last for 15 years if serviced regularly. Regular service, according to Otis, the famous lift manufacturing group, is every month. But very few lifts in Kochi city are lucky enough to get this kind of service. “We call the service people only when the lift shows any fault or stops working,” says manager of a renowned apartment in the city.

Referring to lift accidents, S Chandran, another lift service engineer, said, “There are companies that manufacture lifts using substandard materials, leading to accidents. Local lift manufacturers use poor quality metal rope leading to accidents. Even if the metal rope is of good quality, the lift may fall if the hinge on which these ropes are attached breaks off from the top.

“Failure of speed-governing system also causes accidents. The function of the speed governor is to turn off the lift if it the speed of the lift is high due to a defective motor running at high speed. Low-quality speed governors will fail to switch off the lift and thereby causing the ropes to break or hinges to break due to strain. Even if the governor switches off the lift, a defective governor cannot prevent the lift from starting the flight again when the motor cools,” Mr Chandran said.

Another major cause of lift accident is overuse, says Mr John. “If lifts made for apartments are used in high-frequency installations like hospitals, an accident is likely,” he said. Apartment owners think in terms of money only and normally install a lift for five persons even though the usage may demand a lift for eight persons,” he said.

………

Childline - the name you should remember the next time you find a lost child, and the telephone number is 1098

2005-03-14T11:16:00.000+05:30

Childline
THRISSUR: Childline is a nationwide 24-hour emergency telephone helpline and outreach service for children who are in need of shelter, medical aid, emotional support, or sponsorship.
Statistics by the Childline unit at Saint Christina Home at Pullazhi say that children here need more emotional support and guidance than elsewhere in the state. "Since the inception of Childline unit in Thrissur in Dec 2002, we received 3295 calls for emotional support from children.", said A D James, a Childline official at Saint Christina Home.
Meanwhile, the number of calls for emotional support received at the Thiruvananthapuram unit of Childline is 2321 and at the Kozhikode unit, it is 1229. The highest number of emotional support calls received is in Thrissur even though it is not as populated as Thiruvananthapuram or Kozhikode.
Parents exerting too much pressure on the child to study seems to be the main cause of distress, said Mr James. "As families are becoming smaller, children do not have a place to ventilate their feelings. When they know of this facility, they call to tell their happiness and sorrow.", added Mr James.
Explaining the method of work of Childline, he said "We don’t give solutions. Instead we guide the child to find a solution by himself. If we give a solution and it fails, we will be blamed by the child. Giving the child a solution each time a problem comes up will create perpetual dependency.", said Mr James.
When the child is made aware that it is for his own good that he is asked to learn, he tries to adjust himself. In the next call, he usually say that the problems are less severe, explained Mr James.

When the police finds a child in need of shelter or help, they call Childline to escort them to juvenile homes. If the police wants to take the child to a juvenile home, they have to produce the child before a magistrate, whereas Childline can do it directly.
Childline, which now has 55 units in India, was started in 1996 as a field-work project for postgraduate Social Work students at Tata Institute of Social Science in Mumbai. As Childline proved to be a success in Bombay, it was expanded to other places later.
Childline was taken up by Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in 1998, and works with the partnership of state governments, NGOs, the corporate sector, UNICEF, and concerned individuals.
--- 30 ---

Bell metal industry in Kerala (bronze metal industry in Kerala)

2005-03-14T10:45:00.000+05:30

THRISSUR: Young men of "Moosari" caste are abandoning careers in bronze artefacts industry, which had been the livelihood of their caste before, due to the meagre remuneration for the arduous work.
As technology advanced, aluminum and steel emerged as cheaper replacements for bronze vessels. "Nowadays, people use bronze vessels as showpieces at home and for religious rituals", says Madhavan Vasu, a bronze worker from Cherpu in Thrissur.
The consumer trend is also towards cheaper goods than quality goods, said Sudhakara Pillai, a vessel shop owner in Thrissur. While a vessel weighing 1 kg of bronze costs Rs 190, an aluminum vessel of the same weight costs only Rs 125.
The other factors that keep away young people from bronze work are the difficulty in learning the job, the terrible heat one is exposed to while making a vessel, and susceptibility to burns and injuries.
"It’s very difficult to learn this job. So there are no youngsters in this job now.", says Madhavan. About a dozen bronze vessels are made at one time and the process takes at least 20 days.
"If anybody sees the vessel freshly taken out of the clay mould, he will say that it is made of clay. It requires hours of hard work to make it look like gold.", said Madhavan.

First, a clay mould is filled with wax and dried in sunlight. Later another layer of clay is
laid on top of the mould, leaving a hole for wax to be drained out, and made to dry
again.
The dried mould is then put in a kiln along with a metal container filled with broken pieces of bronze. When the mould becomes red hot, it is taken out along with the metal container.
The wax gets drained out and the mould is then filled with molten bronze. The molten bronze gets hardened into the shape of the mould. Then the vessel is taken out of the clay mould, and grinded, buffed with gold, and polished.
--- 30 ---

The story of the only driftwood museum in Kerala and the only woman curator of a museum in India

2005-03-14T09:24:00.000+05:30

MAHIR
Driftwood
KOTTAYAM: "Turbulent sea is a creative sculptor," says Raji Punnoose, proprietor of Bay Island Driftwood Museum at Kumarakom.
Mrs Punnoose transformed driftwood, comprising of twisted tree trunks, stumps and roots, into great sculptures, with a marginal effort. She collected them from the beaches of Andaman Nicobar Islands, where she worked as a school teacher for 25 years.
"I was walking through one of the beaches in Andaman with my son, searching for corals, and found a driftwood in the shape of a monkey in sitting-posture. It gained the attention of everybody when it was cleaned and kept at home. That was the beginning," said Mrs Punnoose.
"This inspired me to go to beach and collect more. I accompanied my husband, who was the Chief Engineer of the islands, during inspections after cyclones and I got more driftwood. I wanted to beautify my home with unique items from Andaman Nicobar islands." she added.
Explaining the reason for setting up a museum, she said "While I was in Andaman, an artist saw my collection and asked me to start a museum for the benefit of the art-loving people."
"When I come across a driftwood, I see the figure in my mind. Then I cuts off the unwanted branches, cleans the moss, and applies polish." she said.
"Some of these pieces are centuries old, and having drifted across the seas, they have become more resilient. What is left of a tree will be its sturdiest part. It’s difficult even to scrape off a piece or to drive a nail", she said.
Tourists from more than 40 countries have visited the museum until now.
--- 30 ---

The problems of disabled in Kerala

2005-03-13T21:36:00.000+05:30

MAHIR
Disabled
KOTTAYAM: In spite of being 10 per cent of the population, disabled persons in India continue to face direct and indirect discrimination even though there are several laws to ensure their well being.
Travelling is an area where the disabled are challenged most, not by their physical disability but by the lack of facilities that enable them to move around on their own. Starting from the absence of wheelchair ramps and easy access to bathrooms in restaurants and hotels, the list goes on quite long.
The Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act was passed in 1995 to safeguard the rights of physically disabled persons. But so many guidelines mentioned in the act are neglected by KSRTC and the transport department, says K Thajuddeen, vice-president of Kerala Vikalanga Association.
Referring to breach of guidelines of the act, Mr Thajuddeen said "The 1995 Act requires the government to issue an identity card for disabled and this card is valid enough to avail concessions in all institutions in the country. But KSRTC demands separate identity cards issued by them."
The Act also specifies 40 per cent disability as the eligibility to get travel concessions, whereas KSRTC gives concessions only to persons with more than 50 per cent disability, Mr Thajuddeen said.

KSRTC does not approve the identity card issued as per the 1995 Act, but demands the identity card issued by themselves, thereby nullifying an identity card issued after examination by a medical board consisting of five doctors and a superintendent, said Mr Thajuddeen.
KSRTC officials defended the use of a separate identity card stating that persons with even minor disabilities got hold of the card issued as per the act.
Referring to the neglect of KSRTC officials towards disabled, Mr Thajuddeen said "They have avoided marking the seats reserved for disabled persons in the new high-tech buses even though we are eligible to travel in buses run as a fast passenger."
--- 30 ---

Book piracy in Kerala

2005-03-13T21:35:00.000+05:30

MAHIR
Piracy
KOTTAYAM: In spite of strict copyright laws, book piracy continues to be a major problem for Indian and foreign publishers as at least 50 per cent of the market is lost to illegally-produced books.
As books continue to be a luxury due to the high pricing, piracy rackets are thriving. Police investigations against pirates have resulted in arrests but cannot keep up with the illegal market as the books are sold mostly through second-hand book dealers, who keep pirated books among the second-hand books on display at the road side.
"Self-help and technical books are in great demand" says Hassan Koya (name changed), who sells pirated books in Kottayam town. "Most of the customers come to me because of the high price of the original books," he said. The focus of pirate activity is on fiction, school books, local and imported college texts and imported language texts.
N Dharmaraj, a printing technician, said with the introduction of new and cheaper technologies, pirating of books have become easy. "In order to copy a book, all you need is two copies of the original, a scanner, a computer, ink, paper, a small rotary press and a binding machine, he explained."
Mr Koya said, "Pirated books are mostly printed in Thenkashi, where all printing methods are available. Books printed at Thenkashi has good quality and thus are difficult to be identified as duplicate."

Another method of making illegal copies is by photostating the books. Photostat business centres make duplicate copies of costly publications like foreign medical books and bind them to form books. Copies thus obtained are sold at around 25 per cent of the actual price. This racket works mostly adjacent to educational institutions.
Duplicate copies of pirated books made by photostat centres are in great demand among medical students as these are sold at cheap rates. Foreign medical books that cost upto Rs 4000 are sold by these centres at prices as low as Rs 500.
Referring to the flaws in Copyright Law, Deputy Superintendent of Police Muraleedharan Nair said, "Most of the publishers would have global rights, but whether it should be respected in all territories is still a disputed matter. Nevertheless, we are taking action against those who indulge in pirated book trade."
--- 30 ---

Child labour in Thiruvananthapuram

2005-03-13T21:30:00.000+05:30

MAHIR
Children
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A recent study conducted by Childline, a non-governmental organisation, had shown that over 50 per cent of hotels and tea shops in Thiruvananthapuram employ children under the age of 14 (There are 127 registered hotels in Thiruvananthapuram, according to a Department of Tourism report). The study also revealed that over 90 per cent of these children were brought from Tamilnadu.
T Sivakumar, an official at Childline, said that these children are brought from Tamilnadu as bonded labourers. There are three types of bonded labourers among these children. In the first type of bonded labour, the child inherits the debt carried by his parents. In the second type, the child becomes the collateral for a loan. Yet another form of bonded labour is by paying advance on future wages they expect to earn, he said. Of these the second type of bonded labour, where the child becomes the collateral, is the most common, he added.
Poor people have very few sources of loans or credit sources and they resort to moneylenders, pledging their child’s labour, Mr Sivakumar said. As the earnings of bonded child labourers are less than the interest to be paid for the loan, the children are forced to work, while the interest on the loan accumulates. The release of the bonded child labourer is possible only when the parents make a lump sum payment, which is extremely difficult for the poor, he said.
MAHIR
Children Take - 2
Selva Raj, a 12-year-old labourer at a hotel, said "My parents were given
Rs 10,000 by sir (the hotel manager) and I have to work for him to pay off the debt."
Talking about the nature of work at the hotel, Ramesh Babu, a 10-year-old labourer, said "Our work starts at 7 am and goes on till 9 pm." We are beaten up if any fault is found in our work, he said. "I am afraid of the manager", he added.
Referring to the laws concerning child labour, Sanal Kumar, a lawyer, said "Section 363 of the Indian Penal Code warrants imprisonment up to 10 years for being in custody of a minor for the purpose of employment."
But there are pitfalls in the law, he said. "The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000 was introduced to ensure the welfare of children. The Act demanded the state government to set up Juvenile Justice Board, but this board has never been set up," he said.
Circle Inspector of Thiruvananthapuram City M Suresh Kumar said "Usually we do not get complaints from the children. The children and their parents are hesitant to complain as they fear they will have to pay back the money immediately. The parents also fear that the children might be harmed."
Police records show that nine cases were registered against hotel owners for engaging in child labour in the past two years. But this figure is not indicative of the extent of child labour, says the Circle Inspector.

Explaining the hazards of child labour, Nancy Joseph, a psychologist at Childline, said "The hazards due to child labour can be classified into 1) physical, 2) cognitive and 3) social and emotional." Due to the long hours of toil, the health of the children deteriorate rapidly, she said.
Describing the cognitive hazards of child labour, she said "Acquisition of knowledge and literacy necessary to normal life becomes impossible to child labourers as they spend their time working and don’t go to a school."
Explaining social and emotional hazards of child labour, she said that children are abused by employers as they can be easily dominated and thus vulnerable. The children are also often introduced to drugs to control them, she said.
Child labourers are often sexually abused by the employers or their adult colleagues. As most of the child labourers are sexually abused, the risk for sexually-transmitted diseases increases, she added. Creating awareness among people regarding the ill-effects of child labour is the need of the hour, she said.
--- 30 ---

Illegal use of horns in Kerala

2005-03-13T21:29:00.000+05:30

MAHIR
Horns
KOTTAYAM: Almost all the state-owned vehicles use high-pressure horns (horns that produce a loud noise) to announce that it carries an important person. Any given day, one can see state-owned vehicles rushing through the town blasting high-pressure horns. But the Motor Vehicles Act prohibits the use of multi-tone horns and high-pressure horns. Yet no action is taken to control the use of these horns as it is the law enforcers themselves who use these and act as pilot vehicles to the cars of VIPs.
K Padmanabhan, a lawyer specialising in motor vehicles, said "According to the Motor Vehicle Act Section 190 (2), no vehicle is allowed to be fitted with multi-tone horns. Horns producing musical notes, unduly harsh, loud shrill or alarming noises fall in this category."
Explaining the fines prescribed in the Motor Vehicle Act, N C Rajmohan, Circle Inspector of Police, said "Under Section 177 of the Act, the fine for multi-toned horn and high-pressure horn is Rs 100 for heavy vehicles and Rs 20 for cars and two wheelers."
Varghese Thomas, a taxi driver, said it has become difficult to drive through the town as the state-owned vehicles carrying VIPs come blowing the high-pressure horns forcing other road users to make way for them.
Unnikrishnan Pillai, a shop owner at Thirunakkara, said state-owned vehicles keep blowing the horns until the vehicle in front of them gives way.
--- 30 ---

BPOs and health

2005-03-13T21:28:00.000+05:30

MAHIR
Health
KOTTAYAM: Bijoy Varghese’s job at a call centre in Thiruvananthapuram fetches him a cool monthly salary of Rs 12,000, which is much more than what a 21-year-old graduate with no special skills could expect in a bank or government office. He is only one of the thousands working in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in India. But these youngsters are paying a heavy price in terms of their health.
According to Bijoy, the BPO-based companies try to maximise their profit by following a 24 x 7 work pattern, thereby forcing the employees to work in shifts. Referring to health problems due to the frequent change of shift timings and the irregular work time, he said "I have developed digestive complaints and the number of visits to the doctor is increasing every month."
Ashwati Gopal, another Call Centre Executive, said she is now undergoing treatment for stress problems. She also complains of eye problems and hearing loss due to excessive exposure to computers and headphones.
Explaining how human body is affected by working at odd hours, Dr Joy Philip, a physician at Cosmopolitan Hospital, Thiruvananthapuram, said "The human body has a biological clock in the brain that relates and adapts to the change in the day-night cycle of the environment."
" When the sleep-awake cycle is changed, then the body clock needs to readjust and adapt, and make the body corrections. The longer the shift, more is the time needed by the body to adjust; resulting in psychological, behavioural, and physical problems," he said.

Irregular working hours increases the chance of premature greying, hair loss, insomnia, digestive diseases and stress, said Dr Philip.
--- 30 ---

Fish poisoning in Meenachil River, Kottayam, Kerala

2005-03-13T21:26:00.001+05:30

MAHIR

KOTTAYAM: Meenachil River is facing a different kind of pollution - the poisoning of water for fishing. The water is poisoned at midnight and the fishes thus got are sold through the markets early morning.
As the residents along the banks of the river use the water for bathing and washing clothes, it has led to health problems. Abdul Hakkim, a resident of Arupuzha (a place situated on the banks of Meenachil River), said "Bathing on poisoned river water results in itching and formation of rashes all over the body. The rashes thus developed normally lasts for two days."
Poisoning of river water also causes serious environmental problems, says K Sreekumar, president of Kottayam Nature Society. "River water poisoning leads to the extinction of fishes in the river as all the fishes including the small and big ones are killed," he said.
Consumption of fish caught through poisoning leads to vomiting and diarrhoea, said Dr Anil Kumar, a gastroenterologist. "Patients present with complaints of acute diarrhoea and vomiting within two hours of consumption of poisoned fish," he said.
Explaining the prohibitions placed by law on pollution of water, Joseph Willington, an official at the Pollution Control Board, said "Poisoning of river water comes under The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974, which defines Pollution as ‘contamination of water, discharge of any sewage or trade effluent or any other liquid, gaseous or solid substance into water directly or indirectly’."

Referring to actions taken against those poisoning river water, N C Rajmohan, Circle Inspector of Police, said "As the pollution does not happen on a regular basis, we are not able to track down the miscreants."
--- 30 ---

Drunken driving in Kerala

2005-03-13T21:26:00.000+05:30

MAHIR

KOTTAYAM: Kerala ranks top in accidents related to drunken-driving, according to the Road Safety Report by National Transportation Planning and Research Centre, Thiruvananthapuram. But the use of modern equipment and tests by the police has helped to bring down the rate a bit, the report states.
Referring to the role of technology in preventing drunken driving, N C Rajmohan, Circle Inspector of Police, Kottayam, said "The use of modern tests like breath analysis and blood alcohol-content test have helped a lot in brining offenders to book."
Explaining the legal process against drunken drivers, he said "We give a roadside breath test, using breath analyser, as a preliminary screening for drivers suspected to have consumed alcohol."
The legal maximum is 30mg of alcohol per 100 ml, he added. "If level of alcohol is above 30 mg, the driver is entitled to give a specimen of blood." he said.
"The results of the blood tests will form the basis of the case against the driver. As the per capita consumption of alcohol is very high in Kerala, breath analyser is helpful to quickly identify offenders" said Mr Rajmohan.
Explaining the penalties for drunken driving, he said, "Motor Vehicle Act prescribes imprisonment of six months, with or without fine, for the first offence. For the second and subsequent offence, if committed within three years of a previous offence, the imprisonment is up to two years."
Referring to the adverse effects of alcohol on motor-driving, he said, "Alcohol seriously impairs a driver's judgement, co-ordination and reactions. It can make you a hazard to yourself, your passengers, and other road users."
--- 30 ---