CC1981 Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 Varun, what scares me the most about India is that India has little or no concern for ecological/social viability. The average indian has so little thought or even idea about their impact on nature. ( they don't get it how pollution is bad..how cutting away vast forests and elephants going extinct is gonna totally EFF US in the future and there aint anything we can do to reverse that! And Indian wildlife is far more important than west's wildlife- we are the tropics- tropics are the 'engine' of the planet in biodiversity & wildlife...tropics going like England or Germany = we are doomed within a generation of it happening) We just breed like mice and keep expanding like a virus. Eating our country from the inside, killing mother India for good. So at the end of the day, we are totally effed...whats even sad is India should know the effect of such ecological destruction and mindless breeding....we already had IVC collapse due to Saraswati river drying up...Sad as it may sound, best thing someone could do for india today is to come up with a way to reduce our population in half. Be it through killing half of us or figuring out a way to get us there by stopping us breed or something within 50 years. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
theguyinallblue Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 i agree with Varun here... suddenly Yoga has become such a huge thing in india... and all the yogis and sadhus have come up with their pravachans.. now i see ..that speaking in english is not that fashionable..as it was 5 years back... yeah..but following EPL is the IN thing among college and school goers.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurker Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 ^^ but that is not the point, is it? It is like Yoga almost dead(mind you I say almost) but is thriving in the West. Then it comes back to India but more as a fashion-fad than anything else. What is with about us Indians that we lose the values we create and then fall head over heels to get it back if it gets repackaged? Same case with classical music etc. Growing up almost every home I knew taught their daughters in classical music. My sister would learn harmonium and most Bihari house you would go to had a wall painting of tabla with harmonium or sitaar. This was specially enhanced in Bengali families where almost every girl learnt music of some kind(back then Bihar had a lot of Bengali population before almost a mass migration to Kolkatta). Today whenever I go I see it dieing by the second. Sure you can have an odd exception here and there but if you think Indian traditional music has not taken a big whammy in last 10-20 years you are mistaken. xxx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CC1981 Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 What is with about us Indians that we lose the values we create and then fall head over heels to get it back if it gets repackaged?If you are bengali, you'd know this to be PERFECTLY demonstrated by Satyajit Ray. Nobody thought his films were any good- everyone thought he made 'artsy fartsy' films that are boring or pointless....then they showed on national TV a sick & dying Satyajit accepting a lifetime's achievement OSCAR....and next thing you know, india's made dvds and tapes of Satyajit everywhere....used to be you could find satyajit ray's films only in college street Kolkata..or wait till DDN-K shows it as it always came around once a year or so...after that OSCAR, i can find Apu trilogy for rent in 4 different video shops within 20 minutes walk of my parent's home in Kolkata. The pucca 'gora-chamchaagiri' complex. but if you think Indian traditional music has not taken a big whammy in last 10-20 years you are mistaken. No, they have not..they have infact been doing very good in the past 10 years. Its not just my mom- i've hung around and spoken to a LOT of accomplished musicians/dancers in the indian classical scene over the years...they arnt concerned about it surviving really...they do want to expand its appeal and sometimes go into polemics...but its a field thats chugging along pretty nicely and infact is in the + growth column. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurker Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 We just breed like mice and keep expanding like a virus. Eating our country from the inside, killing mother India for good. So at the end of the day, we are totally effed...whats even sad is India should know the effect of such ecological destruction and mindless breeding....we already had IVC collapse due to Saraswati river drying up...Sad as it may sound, best thing someone could do for india today is to come up with a way to reduce our population in half. Be it through killing half of us or figuring out a way to get us there by stopping us breed or something within 50 years. I would say it is not so much about breeding(though that obviously hurts) but a bunch of other reasons why Indian ecology has taken a big hit. One key reason is the kind of "modern caste system" in India. This is like a case of have and have nots. Let me give a simple example. You go to Delhi and you would be surprised how every house has a car today. In many cases there are more than 1 cars per house. Having a mobike is considered lowly apparently. Now can you imagine the impact on Indian economy considering India produces negligible oil? Can you imagine the impact on Indian ecology considering how little land of India remains under forest etc etc. The strange thing is many of my friends who have lived in USA/UK for years never bought a car but as soon as they reached India they bought one within months! The story is the same in my hometown, a very small town by most accounts, where almost every other house has a car today. Okay maybe that was a bit OTT but perhaps one in 10 houses which is still a big impact. Growing up in my muhalla there were atleast 6-7 big a$$ed banyan trees. Now they are all gone and buildings erected up. xxx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CC1981 Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 (back then Bihar had a lot of Bengali population before almost a mass migration to Kolkatta) Haha..i know. My grandfather ( mother's father) was born & brought up in Giridih. Did his matriculation there. He is a pucca bong from a bong family but they'd been in Giridih for 3 generations before him...his father was the civil projects guy ( i dunno the term for it but the guy who's in charge of building roads/bridges, etc..basically new construction on big scale in the district). But my grandfather's generation - all the bros and sis ended up moving to kolkata for higher studies and just stayed there..ultimately his father retired and lived the last years of his life in kolkata. Never thought to ask him how/why none of them went back to Giridih. Tsk...oh well, i will never know..they are all dead. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CC1981 Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 I would say it is not so much about breeding(though that obviously hurts) but a bunch of other reasons why Indian ecology has taken a big hit.Nono..Breeding is *THE* main cause...you dont understand..India had a 'pretty developed & extensive land usage' even in pre-historic times...our population was around 250 million in 1900...barring occasional genocides, it was more or less the same figure for the past several thousand years ( Ashoka collected tax from over 200 million ppl for eg). India 100 years ago was MUCH MUCH more forested & ecologically alive today...this country cannot support 1 billion people...the land doesnt just die one fine day in fire & brimstone bible-style...its a slow death...peopple think we'll be fine..we just need to slow down....no-no... we've been in the 'unsustainable in long-term' territorry the moment we crossed 500 million or so...if our motherland is an engine, lets put it this way- we've been revving her in the red for several decades now...and we've only kept revving it up and up...not stopping. We think that its gonna be okay.we just gotto slow down the continuous increase revs.....NO! the engine is starting to overheat....we need to go DOWN or engine will melt. Nature too, is an engine..a grand amazing one but it works on the same principles. Just like how your car doesnt just explode when you rev it past the red-line, nature wont go 'boom' the moment you go past her sustainable limit. And just how a car engine will eventually overheat & then melt if we keep it revving in the red for hours and hours, nature to will overheat & melt if we dont ease up and back down...she's starting to over-heat now. But unlike the car-engine, we cant 'go get another nature' after effing it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurker Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 ^^ Bihar once had a big Bengali population. Southern cities like Jamshedpur, Ranchi, Giridih, Dhanbad which are not too far from the border had big influence but if you went far away more towards the other side there was lot of Bengali influence too. Ashok Kumar was born at Bhagalpur for example and if I not mistaken some of his distant relatives still survive there. Till about 20 years back a lot of Biharis could speak Bengalis. Specially the current Jharkhand areas. I think somewhere around 80's Bengalis started to move to Kolkatta. Have never understood the reason(s) for that. xx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurker Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 Nono..Breeding is *THE* main cause...you dont understand..India had a 'pretty developed & extensive land usage' even in pre-historic times...our population was around 250 million in 1900...barring occasional genocides' date=' it was more or less the same figure for the past several thousand years ( Ashoka collected tax from over 200 million ppl for eg). India 100 years ago was MUCH MUCH more forested & ecologically alive today...this country cannot support 1 billion people...the land doesnt just die one fine day in fire & brimstone bible-style...its a slow death...peopple think we'll be fine..we just need to slow down....no-no... we've been in the 'unsustainable in long-term' territorry the moment we crossed 500 million or so...if our motherland is an engine, lets put it this way- we've been revving her in the red for several decades now...and we've only kept revving it up and up...not stopping. We think that its gonna be okay.we just gotto increase pressure slower...NO! the engine starting to overheat....we need to go DOWN or engine will melt.[/quote'] Population is obviously a big issue but the irony is that what is essentially our drawback is also our biggest strength. I mean how many times have you heard that India will become one of the leading countries simply because we have a 400 million population middle class and that we have the biggest group of young population? Well guess what when that young population starts to settle down the population is only gonna go up. Maybe time to push through 1 kid per family funda. xxx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CC1981 Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 I mean how many times have you heard that India will become one of the leading countries simply because we have a 400 million population middle class and that we have the biggest group of young population?Leading countries in what ? economy ? per capita ? life-style ? Ok that may be all fine...but whats the use of all that if it means within a couple of generations, India will be beyond 'point of no-return' and environment is messed beyond repair ? What exactly is the use of being the richest nation on the planet if it means within a generation of achieving that, we will no longer be a nation due to our irreversible destruction of wildlife ? Again, its NOT the same as forest-clearing in germany or northern climates. You dont have desertification or salination effect as much as you do in the tropics...i dont think you realize that those vast tracts of lands that are being cut down and built up...is reducing the soil quality to total infertile levels...The west lucked out in this regard- the tropics cannot do this because the tropics are the engine of nature... And really, whats the use of all this material wealth if it means rhinos, tigers,elephants, peacocks, etc. are all gone and the himalayas start looking as dead as the hindu kush ? After that happens, no fertilizer combo on this earth will keep our farmland alive for more than a generation..soil leeching & salination effect will just turn india into a salt-marsh type desert similar to southern sindh ( MP or Rajeev might tell you more about the kind of dead salt-marsh kind of topography of sindh province around the indus delta. Thats the end result in Ganga valley or Cauvery or Kerala if we keep this up). When that happens, we start dying or moving away. Thats nature's way of 'population control'...but then, the indian people and our culture/everything will be lost irreversibly. Thats too high a price! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CC1981 Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 Maybe time to push through 1 kid per family funda. It'd be easier if the govt. made it a nation-wide contest...say if our goal is to be 500 million population by 2100 ( we need to return atleast 10-15% of indian land to forest-cover than what is existing today to have a long-term future i think), govt. can calculate the required 'birth rate' and give everyone in a district financial incentive to maintain that birth-rate quota (Within reason..we don't need to be TOO @nal about it) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurker Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 No, they have not..they have infact been doing very good in the past 10 years. Its not just my mom- i've hung around and spoken to a LOT of accomplished musicians/dancers in the indian classical scene over the years...they arnt concerned about it surviving really...they do want to expand its appeal and sometimes go into polemics...but its a field thats chugging along pretty nicely and infact is in the + growth column. We will have to disagree about it then. I can certainly see a big decline in Indian traditional music/dance culture. Gone are the days of Birju Maharaj and Ustaad Allahrakha. The big doyens of Indian musics are falling one by one and there are few replacements. I mean who will replace a Bhimsen Joshi? Has Ustaad Bismillah Khan been replaced? Here's a case in point. When the now popular TV serial SAREGAMAPA was luanched on ZEE it used to bring the real maestros of music, the Birju Maharajs etc. Watch this clip of 1999 that involves amongst others Girija Devi and Zakir Hussain Bw8MM2eNwuM Today in the same show the people invited are Vishaal Shekhar, Bhappi Lahiri etc etc and rarely, if any, do the Indian maestros make an appearance. Take it for whatever its worth, Indian traditional music is certainly taking a backseat as years pass by. xxx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CC1981 Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 Gone are the days of Birju Maharaj and Ustaad Allahrakha. The big doyens of Indian musics are falling one by one and there are few replacements. I mean who will replace a Bhimsen Joshi? Has Ustaad Bismillah Khan been replaced? There are young talents on the way..don't worry...Bhim Sen didnt become Bhimsen in his youth...took him time too...same with tabla...mark my words, Rimpa Shiv would be better than Allarakha...don't use bollywood or tv as a guage...i am talking about attending cultural functions or music/dance shows etc...performance arts as it is...in performance theatres/places...that activity is actually increasing. Its lost a lot of media focus due to 'middle class aping the west' though...but that genre has pretty fierce loyalties. For eg, i can tell you as as an insider that Rabindrasangeet is not only alive, it is entering its golden era in terms of quality of singers/accompanyment. Sure, it would be great if it became even more popular but so too would be if people startd to listen Jazz here than the shyte on radio...but survivability-wise, no, its okay i think...guess we'll disagree on this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurker Posted June 19, 2007 Share Posted June 19, 2007 ^^ I am personally not as optimistic as you are but would be only glad if I am wrong on this. Lets see what time unfolds. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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