A historic moment - Gold surges above 1000 USD an ounce!

U.S. gold surges to record on Bear Stearns, dollar

At 10:33 a.m. EDT (1433 GMT), the active gold contract for April delivery GCJ8 on the COMEX
division of the New York Mercantile Exchange jumped $10.40 or 1.1 percent to $1,004.30 an
ounce. It traded between a bottom of $991.70 overnight and a record high of $1,007.30.

This is big! Check out the Kitco 24 Hour Spot Gold Charts here.

Here’s a snapshot of the 5-year gold chart.

I confess to taking a rudimentary interest in the financial markets, and most of what I’ve been seeing here isn’t pretty. I was having a chat with my mother earlier on about buying gold but she’s skeptical about gold as an investment because gold has already had a tremendous run in recent years. Will prices hold? Or is the investment scenario ripe for a medium-to-long term technical correction?

First, the bad news.

IMF tells states to plan for the worst

(Excerpts)

"Stressing that this was a global problem - not one confined to the US - he said it would have to be addressed in a "global -context"."

"He said this crisis was different from recent past crises because both the financial markets and the banking system "have faltered simultaneously"."

"He urged policymakers to "think the unthinkable" and prepare now for what they would do if the worst case scenarios materialised and "low probability but high impact events" threatened to jeopardise global financial stability."

This is what Jim Sinclair has to say. And if there’s anyone who gives the lowdown like it is, it’s Jim.

(Excerpts)

“Never in economic history has there been a night like tonight. I am writing later than usual because of the enormity of all the converging forces. The euro reaches for $1.60, the Middle East oil producers are in shock, and the IMF tells the world to “plan for the worst.””

“This paper is $550 trillion plus dollars in notional value. The horrible fact is that in bankruptcy notional value becomes real value with the capacity to destroy the world financial system.”

“There is no practical solution to today’s TERMINAL problems and that means you are up to your eyeballs in alligators.”

“You must protect yourselves.”

“Gold is going to $1650. In all probability my major error will be in forecasting a price that is much too low for gold.”

Now let’s try and piece together some bits and parts to form a bigger picture.

America faces day of reckoning with debt

Risk of a US recession high, India to be hit

As I mentioned in an earlier post, hiring in India’s IT industry has nearly halved compared to last year.

What exactly is a banknote? A banknote is actually an IOU or a promissory note, made by a bank and payable to a bearer on demand. Does a banknote have any value of its own in and of itself? None, except for the value attached to it by government dictum. In the 1940’s, US currency was backed by physical gold and considered to be as good as gold (1 dollar = 1/35 of an ounce of gold), until they started printing more notes and ended up with an inability to pay off debt with gold in the 60’s. After this, the new tactic to keep the dollar artificially strong was the agreement with OPEC to price oil exclusively in USD for all transactions worldwide. Sadly, the charade is up. A banknote now is no more an asset than the paper it’s printed on (though it will take some time before the markets start reflecting the real value of paper currency, thanks to all the fuel injections by various governments). The value of the money printed on it is on credit! So basically, your banknote is a promise to pay backed by – a tiny undeterminable amount of real gold.

While NYMEX oil futures have hit 110 USD a barrel, the dollar which is supposedly backed by oil has shockingly depreciated even below the Swiss Franc. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has been slammed for deliberately destroying the dollar in a bid to wipe out the American middle class. As far back as a year and a half ago, Prof. Lawrence Kotlikoff declared that the US Federal Reserve is, by some measures, already bankrupt! This is the fate all fiat currencies have met historically and history as we all know, repeats. Gold and silver are the only currencies not created and controlled by governments. ALL of today's other currencies (dollars, rupees etc) are fiat currencies, which means they do not represent anything tangible but are only worth something because the government has decreed it. And it's evident that the government has over-extended itself with credit and so most of this fiat currency is thin air.

HSBC is currently losing $51 million dollars a DAY because of this. Citibank lost $11 billion till Nov last year. Within the space of 5 months, the dozen biggest Wall Street firms and the commercial banks with the largest investment arms - a list that includes Bank of America, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse lost more than $240 billion in market value last year. Dozens of smaller companies in the mortgage business have suffered huge losses or folded completely. ICICI has taken a $263 million mtm hit, and our very own SBI and PSU banks combined have suffered a $1.5 billion loss till now. We in India are not as insulated from the subprime shocks as we’d like to believe. In fact, Jim Walker, economist and CEO of Asianomics, says, “Financial institutions in India probably have sub-prime problems that are “waiting to be exposed.”

And this is BEFORE the derivative bubble comes crashing down… nope not my prediction... all credit (how I abhor that word now!) goes to Buffett and Gross.

Derivatives are the new 'ticking bomb'

What they’re really saying is, derivatives are the sub-prime equivalent of the stock market. Multiplied by a factor of about 2000. This is what Warren Buffett had to say about it:

“"We try to be alert to any sort of mega-catastrophe risk, and that posture may make us unduly appreciative about the burgeoning quantities of long-term derivatives contracts and the massive amount of uncollateralized receivables that are growing alongside. In our view, however, derivatives are financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal."”

How’s this for a fairly good idea of the kind of scale we’re talking about…

- Total value of the world's real estate is estimated at about $75 trillion

- Total value of world's stock and bond markets is more than $100 trillion

- BIS valuation of world's derivatives back in 2002 was about $100 trillion

- BIS 2007 valuation of the world's derivatives is now a whopping $516 trillion

“Bottom line: Little things leverage a heck of a big wallop. It only takes a little spark from a "bad 2% deal" to ignite this $516 trillion weapon of mass destruction. Think of this entire unregulated derivatives market like an unsecured, unpredictable nuclear bomb in a Pakistan stockpile. It's only a matter of time.”

Doesn’t it give you a warm, fuzzy feeling to know that our NSE’s emergence as the ninth largest F&O bourse in the world in 2007 by trading volumes – 15 billion F&O contracts last year – is being hailed as cause for celebration?

In fact, the money in derivatives alone puts the US $9.4 trillion national debt ($79,000 per American taxpayer) to shame. When push comes to shove, who’ll be bailing out who here?

Federal Reserve bank New York President Tim Geithner stated we are in the midst of FINANCIAL MELTDOWN: New York Times

Now you know why they're worried! The derivative bubble, when it does burst, will be fast, furious…. and catastrophic.

Gold, on the other hand, is a durable physical commodity. If you really need more convincing, here are 15 solid reasons to buy solid gold. The high price of gold is due to its rare amount. Only three parts / every billion parts in the Earth's crust is gold. That's how it will remain. The price of gold is up and rising because better informed people know what they need to do to save their future generations. The World Gold Council chief executive is optimistic about strong demand and steady gold prices in India. After all, we Indians have traditionally been one of the highest consumers of gold, and at present buy about 1.5 times as much gold as the Americans though our GDP stands at about a twentieth of theirs. Our gold buying patterns are too deeply ingrained in our cultural milieu for high prices to thwart us. Added to that is gold-buying as an investment, a trend which is on the rise.

Gold demand of China, India and the Arabs

“"From ancient times Gold (and gold jewelry) has enjoyed safe-heaven status. Gold jewelry is the only way to protect against depreciation of the Indian rupee against US dollar. In the long term the Indian rupee price of Gold has been in an up-trend. Inflation has continuously, year after year, eroded the value of currency."

"Based on demographical and cultural studies of India, one may accurately conclude that its Gold demand cannot go down unless the psyche of the Indians undergoes a sea change—a very unlikely event in the next few decades."”

This one’s a whopper. As per the World Gold Council, Indian households combined own about 16,500 tons of gold (you can add 9 billion USD in government reserves for posterity). Compare this with just 8,139 tons of gold in the US Federal Reserve.

My mum will be heading to the jeweler’s tomorrow. Have a nice weekend!!

My embarrassingly unsuccessful stint as a Herbalife distributor

Embarrassing all right, but not for the reasons you think.

Years ago, when I was as naïve as they come, I responded to a classified advertisement in the local newspaper. “Be your own boss! Work your own hours! Unlimited earnings! Register yourself for this life-changing seminar now!!!” Being at a loose end at the time and frustrated with my day job, I found myself paying a hundred bucks to get registered for a presentation outside the conference room of a hotel on Lavelle Road. The speaker was motivational all right. He had practically everyone in the room salivating at thought of making as much money as he claimed to make himself – one lakh rupees a month after just a year’s worth of efforts. All-expense-paid working vacations in Los Angeles. Rubbing shoulders with the mighty top brass in the organization and wowzers, with the pictures to prove it too! Having a flourishing business and being completely in charge. Really cool. Being someone. After a couple of hours of being bombarded with testimonials of fabulous incomes by various speakers who tried their level best to build up the pitch to a frenzy we were repeatedly urged to sign up as distributors. Cost of the starter kit: Rs. 1,500. I had a vague feeling of unease but went ahead anyway, hoping to discover what this was really all about in due time. After all, I had a slew of manuals to go through and whatever it was obviously had immense potential.

Over the next few days I found myself understanding bits and pieces of it, but mostly becoming hopelessly confused with their seemingly illogical policies. The supervisor who was assigned to me seemed genuinely helpful. Except that he clammed up when I quizzed him about what seemed to be a hardliner approach by the company, unfair percentages hopelessly skewed in favor of the upper levels and so on that put the newest member in a situation he’d want to wriggle out of ASAP. Give it time, he told me, and make all the efforts you can to sell, sell, sell. The money will follow. The uppity positions will follow the money. And make certain you purchase your Herbalife products from me (because that way he’d get a greater share of the profits). Meanwhile I came to know what an MLM is, what a pyramid scheme is, and why the people on the bottom rungs always end up losing. But this was a company traded publicly on the Nasdaq and had been around for decades in 52 countries around the world (this was drilled into our heads about 1 gazillion times) so it couldn’t possibly be a scam! Could it?

My supervisor rubbished my fears. Bangalore is still a nascent market, he assured me. Everyone’s making money. You will too, and so will the people under you. The potential is just incredible! I believed him. I met a distributor who corroborated his version and convinced myself to get cracking instead of questioning. After all, these were tried and tested ingeniously engineered products that promised to be a nutritious blessing for everyone who needed to lose weight without having to go on a starvation diet. Maybe I could even get a foothold in heaven for making this stuff popular!

Wonder of wonders, in my 4 months of distributorship, I didn’t make a single sale for cash. Not one. This being India, it’s practically indecent to take money from family. So, I peddled the stuff to my overweight sisters and aunts who blithely expected me to foot the bill. Not that I minded … lol… but it would’ve been nice to offset the costs with ONE sale!! Obviously strangers were the way to go. This company requires you to purchase every single bit of advertising with your own money, whether it’s a hugely overpriced brochure from their distributor office, or a badge, or flyers, or anything else… or placing an ad in the papers inviting people to lose weight with these miracle products. Since all distributors are strongly encouraged to become lifelong consumers “to lead by example”, (and it works the other way round as well) I would dutifully make myself some Herbalife shake every morning while strategizing my sales calls. I noticed how people tended to switch off the moment my “mentor” and I appeared with our sales pitch. He’d blather blissfully on while it was painfully obvious that no one wanted Herbalife products. Not a single one. It never occurred to me that they already knew what they needed to know, had already made up their minds. He didn’t make any sales over a whole week, and after I was left to my own devices, neither did I. Damn, it was crazy!

I couldn’t understand why no one wanted to try the stuff, but time after time it was drummed into my head that pushing myself into good-natured people’s houses and trying to ram it down their throats WAS the way. After all, they didn’t know what they were missing out on – ultimately it’s for their good!! As a single girl trying to make a go of it all by myself, I had my qualms about that (which I didn’t say aloud though). I was advised to create flyers and walk down Commercial Street, make eye contact with strangers and hook them in. And to “get chatting” with strangers at petrol pumps by begging for a minute of their time. Aww hell!! At least I never actually did it. It kinda takes the zing out of “being your own boss”, to say the least!! But I did do something else that seemed a bit more respectable. The flyers were printed in hundreds and deposited in every human family’s mailbox in all of Jayanagar by midnight. I even met a friendly guy on his porch who told me to get off this s**t because some of his pals have burnt their fingers with Herbalife and it’s only the company and the topmost-level distributors who end up making all the money. I told him I’d keep it in mind. The next day I stayed stuck to the phone, willing it to ring. Ha! ONE call. One call! And… The caller insisted on knowing the name of the company and hung up on me the moment I said the H-word!!!

Fed up by now, I approached my supervisor and said this wasn’t working. He invited me to attend a lecture on marketing techniques organized by a distributor many levels up. Fifty odd students were given the low-down on all the ol’ tricks in the book and admonished for not being aggressive enough (yeah right, it’s all our fault). Interestingly, all the people I interacted with in the class had similar stories of failed sales calls to tell. Our potential prospects were perfectly pleasant with us until we popped the H-word.

I went back home and thought to myself, maybe it's time to quit. My supervisor gave me a mind-blowing suggestion. He said that maybe what I needed was to purchase a huge number of shakes in bulk from him (nothing to do with the fat percentage he would get of course) so that I could get bulk discounts, and next step – set up an advertising blitzkrieg in multiple channels (newspaper, mags, flyers) to maximize the probability of achieving sales in a short time. When I seriously got down to number crunching though, I realized the advertising costs would cut so deeply into profits that the end result just wouldn’t be worth it. Maybe a couple of hundred bucks at most. Pooh.

As a last resort, and frustrated as hell, I convinced myself that I should be doing what they do, i.e. recruit others to do the dirty work while I feed off the percentages from their efforts. Bingo! This time my 400-buck classified ad promising an appealing business offer for people who “wanted to be their own boss” elicited a tremendous number of calls and I directed them all to attend the presentation on Lavelle Road the next evening. Congratulating myself on my smart move – about time!! - I turned up at the conference hall to find four bakras beaming with anticipation after the presentation, and signing up for distributorship just like I had four months ago. I looked at them for a long time while they chatted with my supervisor. He made them feel so safe and comfortable with his soothing tone exuding warmth and that toothy trademark grin.

That’s when I realized I’d come full circle. And that by luring these unsuspecting lambs into that room I’d become as low, as conniving, as avaricious, as supremely pathetic as any of the men present in the room that evening. Maybe this is what they call the moment of truth. I left the venue without saying goodbye and drove straight home, deeply (and privately) ashamed.

I never did take my supervisor’s calls after that. The kabadiwaala happily lapped up my Herbalife shakes and manuals. Thankyou sir. But I suspect you got ripped off too.

The many wonders of Oil of Oregano

The good news is that there’s a miracle herb out there that can rid you of everything from the common cold to a staphylococcus infection.

It’s anti-viral.

Anti-bacterial.

Anti-parasitic.

Anti-fungal.

Anti-oxidant.

Anti-allergic.

Provides incredibly quick and lasting relief to people suffering from any of the above + respiratory distress.

The bad news? It’s not available in India. Not yet anyway.

The miracle herb is known as Oil of Oregano. Pizza lovers will probably jump at the word “oregano” because they’re already familiar with oregano seasoning. Hang on! Before you reach for the phone in the mistaken belief that ordering pizza with oregano seasoning will cure you of that running nose, know this… the composition of the oil produced from the wild oregano plant (grown mostly in the Mediterranean and some parts of North America) has practically nothing in common with processed herb seasoning.

Last year I had the good fortune to read several testimonies regarding this oil at a time when I had reached a nadir health-wise, and the good sense to order some from an EBay worldwide seller (I have tried only the P73 brand from North American Herbs and Spices thus far – it’s supposed to be the best). My sinusitis was reaching epic proportions and was refusing to respond to both Amox and Azithromycin. After tut-tutting over my X-ray (clearly I was one of his worst cases!) the ENT specialist I was consulting in Delhi - one of the best in his field - informed me that a sinus drain was my only hope. When I came back to Bangalore I began searching the Internet for alternative sinus cures. Oil of oregano popped up often enough for me to wonder why people are so crazy about it… why they swear by its ability to eradicate everything from warts to asthma and the flu. I hadn’t bargained for the pungent odor to hit me from the couriered package 10 ft. away (ok! ok! Maybe that’s an exaggeration… it was only 5 ft. away). I could never have imagined that a single drop of any substance in this world could have such a murderous taste… (and I’d thought garlic was bad, ha!!) Most of all, I could never have imagined that within an hour of taking this stuff my eyes would stop watering, within a day my sinuses and chest congestion would begin to clear up. Within two days I no longer had a running nose and could breathe in full gulps of air. I continued the course over ten days and two things happened. First, my infection (I don’t have a clue if it was viral, bacterial or fungal) cleared up completely and second, it’s been four months since the first drop and I haven’t experienced a single sinus attack since then!!

*CAUTION: The oil should NEVER be taken as is, because a single drop is so powerful it could burn your tongue or your insides. It must always first be mixed with extra-virgin olive oil (a carrier oil, necessary for emulsification) preferably with a dropper, or in a spoon.

**IMPORTANT: Since OoO is so potent, and practically demolishes all bacteria, fungi and viruses in its way even in dilute doses, it likely eradicates much of the healthy flora in our stomachs as well. For that reason, it’s a good idea to replenish the healthy bacteria in our stomachs by ingesting probiotics like curd around an hour or so after the dose.

My Dosage:

Day 1: 6 drops a day every 2 hours, 7 times a day

Day 2: 6 drops a day every 4 hours, 4 times a day

Days 3-5: 4 drops a day every 4 hours, 4 times a day

Days 6-10: 4 drops a day every 12 hours, twice a day

Ratio of Oregano oil to Olive oil = 1:10.

i.e. 6 drops of oregano oil in about 1 tsp. of extra virgin olive oil is a workable ratio.

I discovered that one of the most incredible things about OoO is that it destroys bacteria and viruses so completely and thoroughly that the poor dears have no chance to mutate into other, more threatening forms of themselves. This is most certainly not true with conventional antibiotics, which is why we’ve been stepping up the grades ever since penicillin was invented and now we’re in deep doo-doo because certain bacteria – superbugs – are mutated versions that can’t be eradicated even with vancomycin, which is supposedly the most powerful weapon in a doctor’s armoury.

Anyway, after witnessing my amazing results I googled Oil of Oregano for children and was a bit thrown to read that it isn’t advised for kids below the age of 5. My son has always been prone to all kinds of viral infections following which he develops terrible bronchitis. He has been to every reputable hospital in Bangalore and had every kiddy allopathic drug in the market. In December of 2006 at the age of 4 he developed respiratory distress so acute he had to be taken to Emergency and pumped with steroids. I was so disillusioned with allopathic meds that seem only to substitute one ailment for another without actually ever curing anything... I vowed to dump allopathy and went for homeopathy instead. That worked, with mixed results. This most acclaimed doctor I went to prescribed his unique formulas which seemed to work at some times but not at others. As you may be aware, homeopathy works on the principle of similum, and you either hit upon the one correct medicine or you don’t. Because homeopathy treats the symptoms and not the disease, two people afflicted with the same virus could be experiencing varying symptoms and require different homeopathic meds. Now even the God of Homeopathy, Dr. George Vithoulkas, admits to a diagnostic accuracy rate of about 80%, so regular homeopaths can’t hope to do much better. I was convinced there had to be something else out there. I looked up Indian herbs and Chinese herbs, but either due to lack of comprehensive and verifiable studies/info or availability issues, I lucked out. After I discovered Oil of Oregano and saw what it had done for me, I decided to try it on my son 3 months ago when it looked like he was about to go down with a bad virus yet again. Sigh. I know the signs so well. Running nose, climbing fever, constant sneezing. I tucked him in at night with three drops of oregano oil mixed with olive oil in the proportions mentioned above. Come morning, and I was ready for the worst. I just couldn’t believe it when I saw no signs of any sickness on him!!! The cold/flu had vanished like it never existed! I wondered if it would be equally effective in the flu season of Feb/March which is especially terrible for Northies in Bangalore. I needn’t have worried :-D … I just give him two drops of the oil in 1 tsp. of olive oil every alternate night, just before bed. He’s the only kid in his class who’s right as rain… most of the other kids have been down with the flu and I’m sure that if he hadn’t been taking OoO to boost his immunity he would’ve been first in line this year too - like every year before this.

Oil of Oregano, for me, is the Holy Grail of natural medicines. I’ve ordered a whole bunch of 1 oz. bottles of the oil with expiry dates set for 4 years hence and spared him some nail-biting visits to the doctor and whole lot of days of feeling ill and suffering miserably.

So, if this is such a wonder cure, why haven’t you heard of it before? The answer’s not so simple, and I can’t claim to be a know-it-all because only the parties involved in the politics behind the scenes know the truth. For a product to be FDA approved, it needs to go through hellishly expensive specialized clinical trials. I have posted a few links at the end of this article to some individual researchers’ clinical trials on the efficacy of OoO as a germ killer, so you can judge for yourselves. Or you can read testimonials from thousands of people at various forums and websites that simply swear by OoO and neither they nor I require a stamp of approval from the FDA to make up our minds (didn’t the FDA pass Vioxx too? What a joke… or even aspirin for that matter. Did you know that giving your kids aspirin in a fever can cause Reye ’s syndrome? It can give your kids brain and liver damage, and most of the public doesn’t even know about it! Or how about the “safe” drug Warfarin, that sends 43,000 Americans to the Emergency room with strokes and abnormal bleeding every year?) The FDA also denies that homeopathy works, despite huge quantum of evidence to the contrary.

Links for those interested in the results of lab testing / limited human testing of Oil of Oregano:

STUDIES AND TESTS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Like it or not... Food shortages are here to stay?

I recently came across the headline
U. N. Warns Food Shortage Will Continue Up to 2010

which (excerpted) states that:

United Nations World Food Program (WFP) head Josette Sheeran warns that the agency is already taking precautionary measures by rationing food aid to address worldwide food shortage and the increasing commodity prices which is expected to continue up to 2010.

She said that millions of the world's poorest people will buy less food, less nutritious food or be forced to depend on aid if no concrete action is taken.

WFP latest data showed that prices of some food rose by up to an unprecedented 40 percent last year in many nations citing that the escalating energy and grain costs, the effects of climate change and demand for biofuel are primarily responsible for the soaring prices.

The agency head said global food reserves were at their lowest level in 30 years, which is good for only 53 days, compared with 169 days in 2007.

If you're wondering why, instead of reaching shortage point, the farmers can't just use the seeds collected from the crops after harvest, the answer is simple. Monsanto's corporate ownership of seeds and patenting policies won't let them. The hybrid and so-called preferred seeds use something called terminator technology, which means that the seeds produced after a single harvest will produce sterile seeds that cannot be planted again, and are for all practical purposes d-e-a-d. So instead of re-investing a portion of the produce for the next year's crop as has been customary for millennia, the farmers are being forced to purchase new seeds all over again from the meager profits made from previous crop sales (assuming there are any left after fighting off the loan sharks). Is it any wonder that farmers in India are committing suicide like never before? Watch this 5-minute video to get a feel of how bad the situation is... and where it's heading. While the youth in our government-supported tech-driven economy have consistently increasing purchasing power, the benefits seem to be a one-way street as hardly any are percolating down to the people who quite literally hold the future of our subsistence in their hands, thereby taking away even more from the have-nots. Fact: for every rupee you pay for fruit/vegetable produce in the market, less than 6 paise is actually making its way to the grower.

And because this is all about control, the powers-that-be couldn't possibly get rid of Monsanto (what? and kick away all those fat kickbacks??) and allow farmers the empowerment they so desperately seek, such as affordable credit, better irrigation, and relinquish their efforts to suppress the usage of ham radio which has proven networking benefits for subsistence farmers and can potentially be a most helpful tool for disseminating technical and marketing information and advice on a daily basis.

All of which has everything to do with food shortages. One thing leads to another and before you know it, the domino effect has wiped the house of cards off the map.

I used to be a meat eater not so long ago. I quit. I used to believe that vegetarianism doesn't have a whole lot going for it, and I couldn't stand the holier-than-thou attitude some vegetarians tend to adopt when they hear you're a chicken-eater. As it turns out, my decision to quit eating meat wasn't planned. So-called healthy proteins aside, I just developed an aversion to the thought of an animal's carcass providing my body with any kind of nourishment. I had no idea that in my own miniscule way I was actually helping to alleviate grain shortage.

For a start, this article is an eye-opener. It says, "Scaling back on heightened levels of resource-intensive meat production may be the best way to ensure food security for all people into the next century." In nutshell, a sizable proportion of food-grains is being diverted to fill the stomachs of livestock who are in turn filling the stomachs of the richer sections of society which in turn is causing the poorer people, who are dependent on direct consumption of food-grains, to starve. Imagine, it takes SIX pounds of corn and 660 gallons of water to produce a single pound of chicken, and 2500 gallons and nearly SIXTEEN pounds of grain to produce a single pound of beef!!! On top of which, increasing income levels means that meat consumption in India is rising. We're discovering the Western way to shooting ourselves in the foot.

While starvation is nothing new in this country, and most of us have developed a thick hide to being bombarded with stories of deprivation by the media, it just might concern us to understand that according to the Law of Unintended Consequences ..uhhh... I mean the Law of Cause and Effect (LCE), us city-bred folks (specially in North India) who have been till now insulated from the vagaries of crop output will be just as badly hit in a famine because of our dulled survival instincts and lack of intimate knowledge of the Earth. I’m not talking a couple of years of drought – that seems fluffy and cute in comparison. I’m talking about a doom scenario. Consider this: in 2004, our food-grain production was 182 million tons with 169 million hectares of land under cultivation. By 2010, our food-grain requirement is projected to be 240 million tons but due to rapidly diminishing arable land only 130 million hectares will be available! This precious non-renewable resource is losing its health to the long term effects of agro-chemicals and the projected climate change scenarios that will severely jolt production in the fertile Northern plains. Seeds that will exhaust themselves after a single year and will need to be re-purchased every year, huge overpopulation will decrease per capita land available for use to a fraction of the present value, millions shifting home and hearth due to flooding and the problems of resettlement that will also impact existing dwellers, and the icing on the cake – the recession in the USA that has the potential to stem the cash flow into our hugely US-dependent economy. Doesn’t sound like much fun huh? What goes around comes around. It bothers me to know that city supermarkets and grocery stores (all those in India, and even more so abroad) often willfully go to extreme lengths to dispose off food (hoarding, throwing, spoiling it) in order to siphon off excesses and protect their profits. This in addition to all the food wasted due to lack of proper transport and infrastructure! Did you know that according to a report presented to the Ministry of Food Processing by Rabo India Finance, 58,000 crores worth of agricultural food items get wasted every year? How can we know that, and know about the nightmarish scenario looming high ahead of us, and still believe that we can continue with our callous and apathetic attitude and abuse the privileges we take for granted without the LCE catching up with us?

I often think that the Indian government has it so good!! Lucky for them, we don’t care about a single issue unless it concerns us directly, and we don’t bother to hold them accountable if we don’t care. We blissfully continue with our lives thinking that so-and-so problem is “his” problem or “their” problem, or the familiar “oh, but that can’t happen to me!” or better still, “I’m perfectly ok, and I don’t have to care”. Guess what, the writing’s on the wall. Unless we take the trouble to empathize with the farmers when we see them on the news, and see through the voracious corporate greed structure and recognize it for what it is under all its various garbs, and unless we are aware and educated and make ourselves heard, our fates are sealed.

End of diatribe. Don’t take my word for it though. Do your own research – I could be lying (you wish!!)

Have a nice day :-)

I created this blog because...

... I'm tired of being a good girl in real life (YAAAAAAGHHHHHH!!)
... I 've decided to take a journey into the labyrinthine excesses of my inner mind (and hopefully discover more 'me' in the bargain)
... Getting a flogging for publicly blogging sounds more fun than being privately fiery in my secret diary :-)
... I'm curious about everything, and my explorations generally generate more thoughts than I can fuse into one head alone...
... I'm hoping to connect with some far out people - in addition to the samefully sane ones of course!!

Hasta mañana