It has become a common sight that angry citizens take to the streets in protesting against the abysmal power situation. Some of the areas receive only an hour of electricity every day. Police has to control the law and order situation on account of people’s agitation.
Some have presented maps showing the physical existence of water in nature to show nations with lower or higher volumes of water available for use. Others have related water availability to population. A popular approach has been to rank countries according to the amount of annual water resources available per person. For example, according to the Falkenmark Water Stress Indicator,[1] a country or region is said to experience "water stress" when annual water supplies drop below 1,700 cubic metres per person per year. At levels between 1,700 and 1,000 cubic metres per person per year, periodic or limited water shortages can be expected. When water supplies drop below 1,000 cubic metres per person per year, the country faces "water scarcity".[2] The United Nations' FAO states that by 2025, 1.9 billion people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions.[3] The World Bank adds thatclimate change could profoundly alter future patterns of both water availability and use,thereby increasing levels of water stress and insecurity, both at the global scale and in sectors that depend on water.[4]
Another measurement, calculated as part of a wider assessment of water management in 2007,[5]aimed to relate water availability to how the resource was actually used. It therefore divided water scarcity into ‘physical’ and ‘economic’. Physical water scarcity is where there is not enough water to meet all demands, including that needed for ecosystems to function effectively. Arid regions frequently suffer from physical water scarcity. It also occurs where water seems abundant but where resources are over-committed, such as when there is overdevelopment of hydraulic infrastructure for irrigation. Symptoms of physical water scarcity include environmental degradation and declining groundwater.
Trivandrum: Vilappilsala’s residents’ Satyagraha to shut down the waste treatment plant reached the 100th day today. C R Neelakandan noted environmental activist inaugurated the 100th day milestone meeting. Rene Ayline, National Coordinator, National Confederation of Human Rights Organisations and Gro Vasu, civil rights activist graced the occasion.
CR Neelakantan told the gathering, “the urban city crowd shouldn’t dump waste on others and the solution is treating waste at home. People’s basic needs have to be addressed first.” He also cited that sanitary land filling isn’t practical for Kerala as it causes environmental problems.
The leakage of leachate from the plant has been a cause of concern for the residents of Vilappilsala. The offensive odour could be sensed from kilometres afar. “This factory has been running without the Panchayat’s license and causing health problems for the residents. Vilappilsala is now reduced to a dumping yard. We will continue the strike until the factory is shut down,” said Burhan, President of the Vilappilsala Janakeeya Vikasana Samithi.
“There is no compromise now. The plant must go. They told us that they wanted the land for setting up gardens and we were tricked into this and filed cases against us when we started our protest but we won’t stop. Most of us boycotted this election and didn’t vote as we have lost faith in the Govt. and our strike will continue,” echoed Vijayasree who is having trouble to marry off her daughter because of the plant.
“Political parties and the Corporation have vested interests. It’s the monetary gain that they are turning a blind eye to this issue,” added Gro Vasu and called for the continuation of the strike.
Many rendered their support for the strike disregarding the heavy downpour. “In our attempt to convert the city into a “green city, clean city,“ Vilappilsala is converted into a dump yard. This can’t be justified,” said Rene Ayline.The residents narrated their share of problems. “We have been living with the problems for 10 years and this has led to many diseases. It has polluted the air and the Meenampalli Thodu, our source for domestic chores. But now the water is polluted and so is the Karamana River. It’s our right to breathe fresh air and live in dignity” adds an exasperated resident, Jaya Santhosh.
Residents against whom criminal cases were filed for protesting against the factory and those who were imprisoned were honoured at the meeting.
The effort to bring modern agricultural techniques found in the Western world, such as nitrogenfertilizers and pesticides, to Asia, called the Green Revolution, resulted in decreases in malnutrition similar to those seen earlier in Western nations. This was possible because of existing infrastructureand institutions that are in short supply in Africa, such as a system of roads or public seedcompanies that made seeds available.[50] Supporting farmers in areas of food insecurity, through such measures as free or subsidized fertilizers and seeds, increases food harvest and reduces food prices.[6][51]
The World Bank and some rich nations press nations that depend on them for aid to cut back or eliminate subsidized agricultural inputs such as fertilizer, in the name of privatization even as theUnited States and Europe extensively subsidized their own farmers.[6][52] Many, if not most, of the farmers are too poor to afford fertilizer at market prices.[6] For example, in the case of Malawi, almost five million of its 13 million people used to need emergency food aid. However, after the government changed policy and subsidies for fertilizer and seed were introduced, farmers produced record-breaking corn harvests in 2006 and 2007 as production leaped to 3.4 million in 2007 from 1.2 million in 2005.[6] This lowered food prices and increased wages for farm workers.[6] Malawi became a major food exporter, selling more corn to the World Food Program and the United Nations than any other country in Southern Africa.[6] Proponents for helping the farmers includes the economist Jeffrey Sachs, who has championed the idea that wealthy countries should invest in fertilizer and seed for Africa’s farmers.[6]
Poverty is the deprivation of food, shelter, money and clothing that occurs when people cannot satisfy their basic needs. Poverty can be understood simply as a lack of money, or more broadly in terms of barriers to everyday life.[1]
Absolute poverty or destitution refers to the state of severe deprivation of basic human needs, which commonly includes food, water, sanitation, clothing, shelter, health care, education and information. Relative poverty is defined contextually as economic inequality in the location or society in which people live.[2][3] For most of history poverty had been mostly accepted as inevitable as traditional modes of production were insufficient to give an entire population a comfortable standard of living.[4][5] After the industrial revolution, mass production in factories made wealth increasingly more inexpensive and accessible. Of more importance is the modernization of agriculture, such as fertilizers, in order to provide enough yield to feed the population.[6] People who practise asceticism intentionally live in economic poverty so as to attain spiritual wealth.
The World Bank estimated 1.29 billion people were living in absolute poverty in 2008. Of these, about 400 million people in absolute poverty lived in India and 173 million people in China. In terms of percentage of regional populations, sub-Saharan Africa at 47% had the highest incidence rate of absolute poverty in 2008. Between 1990 and 2010, about 663 million people moved above the absolute poverty level. Still, extreme poverty is a global challenge; it is observed in all parts of the world, including the developed economies.[7][8]
The supply of basic needs can be restricted by constraints on government services such as corruption, debt and loan conditionalities and by the brain drain of health care and educational professionals. Strategies of increasing income to make basic needs more affordable typically include welfare, economic freedom, and providing financial services. Today, poverty reduction is a major goal and issue for many international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Bank.
Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and flow of electric charge. Electricity gives a wide variety of well-known effects, such aslightning, static electricity, electromagnetic induction and the flow of electrical current. In addition, electricity permits the creation and reception of electromagnetic radiation such as radio waves.
In electricity, charges produce electromagnetic fieldswhich act on other charges. Electricity occurs due to several types of physics:
Adivasi is an umbrella term for a heterogeneous set of ethnic and tribal groups claimed to be the aboriginalpopulation of India.[1][2][3] They comprise a substantialindigenous minority of the population of India. The same term Adivasi is used in Sri Lanka (Sinhala: ??? ???) to refer to the native Vedda people. The word is also used in the same sense in Nepal as is another word janajati(Nepali: ??????; janaj?ti), although the political context differed historically under the Shah and Rana dynasties.
Adivasi societies are particularly present in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu,West Bengal and some northeastern states, and theAndaman and Nicobar Islands. Many smaller tribal groups are quite sensitive to ecologicaldegradation caused by modernization. Both commercial forestry and intensive agriculture have proved destructive to the forests that had endured swidden agriculture for many c
