TED India Talks: Kartick Satyanarayan- How we rescued the "dancing" bears

Traditionally, the Kalandar community of India has survived by capturing sloth bear cubs and training them to "dance" through extreme cruelty. Kartick Satyanarayan has been able to put an end to this centuries-old practice, and in so doing discovered a lesson of wider significance: make the practitioners part of the solution.

Kartick Satyanran works tirelessly to save India’s wild animals from illegal captivity and poaching -- most notably rescuing hundreds of “dancing” bears.

Known by many in India as the “Bear Man,” Kartick Satyanaran is the co-founder of Wildlife SOS -- a non-profit wildlife conservation organization famous for its campaign to rescue every “dancing” bear in the country. For many years, “dancing” sloth bears were the only livelihood of the Kalandar community, but the practice involves extreme cruelty by modern standards, endangers the bear population and is illegal today. He began the organization with his aunt and fellow animal rights champion Geeta Seshamani in 1995, and since then they have rescued over 550 bears.

Satyanaran began rescuing animals as a child, with a particular tendency to rescue snakes. Although he majored in business management in college, he returned to his early love of animal as a field assistant tracking tigers for the Wildlife Conservation Society. Now, through Wildlife SOS, he runs rescue and rehabilitation centers for India’s sloth bears, elephants, leopards and more, as well as several conservation and forest watch projects.

"Although we are proud of the life we can offer our rescued bears, in the sanctuary, we would prefer that there would not be a need for these sanctuaries and the bears could live unharmed in the wild."
Kartick Satyanarayan

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Class 10 student got married with his teacher in Andhra, India

Well, Well, Well. All of you might have heard of child marriages in India.It's a different sort of child marriage. The teacher gets in love with his student who is just 16 year old, and marries him by running away. Its Weird to hear such things happen.

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In the Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh, a student at a private school ran away with his Science teacher and then married her at a temple.

The sixteen-year-old groom's mother says her new daughter-in-law informed her of the wedding. "She called up and told that they got married. Being a teacher, she fell in love with her student and married him. He is my only son. I won't accept it."

On the phone, however, the boy's parents asked the couple to return to their home where they said they'd organize a wedding reception for them.

When their son and his teacher arrived at their house, they summoned the police.

The parents want the police to file a case against the teacher, who's 21 years old.

However, the police is trying to counsel the couple instead into living apart till the student is old enough to be legally married.

Source: www.ndtv.com, 18th Feb 2010

80-year-old Indian has four wives, 30 kids, another on way

What can i say about this man. He is saying that it is god's grace. No Comments !!

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At 80, Hussain Ali, a small farmer in Assam, is still going strong but is a little worried as his third wife is expecting his 31st child, even as he is busy cradling a bubbly two-month-old baby boy in the courtyard, born to his fourth wife.
"It is all god's gift and wish that I have a large family of four wives and 30 children," Ali said with a hearty smile as his flowing grey beard tickled the infant and made him cry in his arms.

Donning a skullcap, Ali looked frail and emaciated as he sat in a rickety cane chair outside his cluster of mud-and-thatch huts at Mohkhuli village in Lakhimpur district, about 370 km east of Assam's main city Guwahati.
"Don't judge someone by his weight or height. I am young at heart although I am not going to marry any more and am happy with my 30 children and another that one of my wives is expecting," Ali said as he ordered one of his wives to come and take the baby from him.

His eldest son is 40.But the octogenarian Ali was at his wit's end when asked if he remembered the names of all his children."You think being a father I would not remember the names of my children," Ali retorted with palpable anger and started telling the names of his children, but failed to complete the list after about 15 names.

"At times I do forget their names but recognise them from their faces," he said with yet another hearty laugh."I have no regrets for this large family and all my four wives are very good and caring," Ali said.

All four wives say Ali is a responsible husband and father and gives equal treatment to all of them."He is a nice man and very responsible," said first wife Mohirun Nessa who is the proud mother of 11 children - eight sons and three daughters.The four wives stay in separate huts in the same compound with Ali making it a point to stay with all of them by turns in their respective huts.

"There are no complaints whatsoever from my wives or my children," Ali said.
At least 15 of them are now married and stay separately."At times it was hard to maintain the family, but now with some of my sons working, they help us financially," Ali said.

Source: www.prokerala.com, 16th Feb 2010

Indian girl calls off wedding after groom's 'dirty dancing'

Modern Indian girls are setting the example and preferences straight on. They are not accepting the grooms who behaves badly. Signs of the future where girls will select the guys for marriage. Moreover women population is decreasing alarmingly as compared to mens population. So all Men, Beware!!

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In Sarairanjan village of Bihar’s Samastipur district, a homeopathy doctor did an encore of sorts when she refused to exchange marriage vows with her banker bridegroom after exchanging garlands with him on Thursday because he danced along with other ‘baraatis’ to celebrate the occasion. Ravi Kumar Chaudhary, a Gaya native and PO with United Bank of India, had to return empty-handed, and with a broken heart.

He knew the girl and had been in touch with her since the marriage was arranged in 2005.

Her businessman father, Yogendra Mahto, stood by her side and asked the marriage party to return.

‘‘Dancing in a drunken state in such an ‘uncivilized manner’ is not acceptable to me and my family,’’ he said. A desperate Ravi even called in police. Decked in traditional red bridal attire, the girl still didn’t budge.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 14th Feb 2010

AN IAS officer in India has 220 bank accounts

One more example of corruption and black money existing in India.

An Indian Administrative Officer (IAS) in Chhattisgarh has been found to have a staggering 220 bank accounts and assets worth millions of rupees.

This was revealed after the income tax department raided his residence here, official sources said Saturday.

The IT department raided the houses of some IAS officers and businessmen in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in the past two days.
Chhattisgarh's Bharatiya Janata Party government is waiting for a final report from the IT department about Agriculture Secretary B.L. Agrawal's assets to initiate action against him.

IT officials searched the residence of Agrawal as well as business establishments of his close relatives Thursday.

On Friday, the officials similarly raided his chartered account Sunil Agrawal's house and came across documents suggesting that the IAS officer had amassed assets disproportionate to his known income.

The officer had at least 220 bank accounts, several of them opened on fake names and addresses, and a few in the names of his domestic helps.
Efforts by IANS to contact B.L. Agrawal failed. A man who answered his mobile telephone said Agrawal was "busy in a meeting".

Income Tax department sources said they were analysing the documents and papers they seized. Some documents suggest he might be involved in hawala transactions, the sources said.

The Madhya Pradesh government had Friday suspended a Bhopal-based IAS couple -- women and child development department principal secretary Tinu Joshi and her husband Arvind Joshi, principal secretary of the jail and parliamentary affairs department. IT department found Rs.3 crore (Rs.30 million) in unaccounted cash in a raid on their residence Thursday.

Brajesh Gupta, Director General of Investigations (I-T) for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, said bank notes stuffed in a suitcase were recovered from the residence of the couple.

The IT department had also conducted simultaneous raids in Madhya Pradesh at the houses of retired commissioner of the Bhopal Municipal Corporation M.A. Khan, and residences of road and bridge development engineer R.D. Chaudhary, superintending engineer with Power Works Department Deepak Asai, his wife Jyoti Asai, and businessmen Sunil Agrawal and Pawan Agrawal dealing in fertilisers besides ICICI Bank manager Seema Jaiswal and bank agent Bharti Bhasne's.

Source: www.deccanherald.com, Feb 06 2010

Community boycotts woman who was touched by and outsider

One more case of bizarre superstition which is still existing in rural India.

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Want to see just how deeply superstition remains rooted even in today’s society? Visit Mangrul Chavala village, around 50km from Amravati, where a woman from the Pardhi community was ostracized from the community.

The reason: she was allegedly touched by a person from other community. The victim Parsanta Pawar lives in Pardhi Beda in Mangrul Chavala village, which is located in Nandgaon Khandeshwar tehsil. The tehsil faces acute water shortage. Due to the problem, some youngsters in the community dug a borewell in the school on the premises of zilla parishad, which was used by the Pardhi community and the school’s students.

Sources said that on January 28, group education officer Ram Halde had visited the school for an inspection. He objected to the Pardhi women taking water from the borewell and a heated exchange took place between the women, including Parsanta, and the officer. The women lodged a complaint at the Nandgaon police station where a non cognisable offence was registered against Halde.

However, what happened next was even more bizarre. Instead of rallying behind the 38-year-old Parsanta who has four children, the community held that she had become untouchable as Halde, who belonged to a different community, had touched her during the altercation. Even her husband is supporting the boycott decision taken by the community.

Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 05 Feb 2009

Dalit in India forced to eat humar excreta for daring to wear slippers

This is heights. We have heard earlier that dalits being punished for breaking some rules, which itself is wrong. Who has given the right to people to punish just based on the caste of the person. Now, to make matters worse a dalit in Tamilnadu was made to eat human shit since he breaked some rules by wearing slippers. WTF !!

Such issues should be taken seriously. The media's job is not just to report such issues. They have to take the person to the police/court and get them some justice so that such unhealthy things dont happen in future. Just by mere reporting such issues wont help. The media person as a responsible citizen of india should also help the person in getting some justice in this regard.

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Even after 60 years of Independence, there still exists a side of India that is hard to believe. A Dalit man in Tamil Nadu was forced to eat human excreta because he wore slippers in the presence of upper caste people.

"They said hereafter no one should come in wearing slippers. Arokiasamy told Anbu to put human excreta into my mouth. They hit me severely on my abdomen and shoved it into my mouth," said the victim Sadayandi.

"Even men who come by cycle have to get down and push it into the village," said his wife Nagajothi.

The police took more than a week to file the First Information Report (FIR) under the Prevention of Atrocities Act. And even after that, they were not willing to book the accused. Instead, they want the victim - who is in hiding because of fear - to prove that the crime occurred.

"If this has happened he has to come forward to give some clues and explain about the incident. Only then I can go deep into this matter," said the Deputy Superintendent of Police.

The Madras High Court has now asked for an action taken report.

A few years ago, NDTV had exposed atrocities against Dalits in the state. In many areas they are forced to remove footwear before entering the village, walls deny them access, thorny fences greet them in fields they use as toilets. Even elected Panchayat leaders are forced to quit. Thanks to vote bank politics successive governments seem to have only gone soft on dominant communities.

Politically, Dalits are a divided lot in Tamil Nadu. While the state pampers them with welfare schemes, its tacit support to human rights violations by powerful dominant communities is only making things worse.

Source: www.ndtv.com, 2nd Feb 2010

Fighting corruption in India - The Zero Rupee Way

People in India are finding new ways to fight corruption. They are so frustrated about this whole thing in government offices that they dont know what to do since your work will not be done until you pay hefty money as corruption. Hence people find innovative ways to frustrate the government officials.

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A ZERO-SUM game is one in which the gains of one player are exactly balanced by the losses of another. In India a local non-governmental organisation has invented a new sort of zero sum which, it hopes, will leave everyone better off: the zero-rupee note.

What on earth is the point of that? The note is not legal tender. It is simply a piece of paper the colour of a 50-rupee note with a picture of Gandhi on it and a value of nothing. Its aim is to shame corrupt officials into not demanding bribes.

The idea was dreamt up by an expatriate Indian physics professor from the University of Maryland who, travelling back home, found himself harassed by endless extortion demands. He gave the notes to the importuning officials as a polite way of saying no. Vijay Anand, president of an NGO called 5th Pillar, thought it might work on a larger scale. He had 25,000 zero-rupee notes printed and publicised to mobilise opposition to corruption. They caught on: his charity has distributed 1m since 2007.

One official in Tamil Nadu was so stunned to receive the note that he handed back all the bribes he had solicited for providing electricity to a village. Another stood up, offered tea to the old lady from whom he was trying to extort money and approved a loan so her granddaughter could go to college.

Mr Anand thinks the notes work because corrupt officials so rarely encounter resistance that they get scared when they do. And ordinary people are more willing to protest, since the notes have an organisation behind them and they do not feel on their own. Simple ideas like this don’t always work. When India’s government put online the names of officials facing trial for corruption, the list became a convenient guide for whom to bribe. But, says Fumiko Nagano of the World Bank, transforming social norms is the key to fighting petty corruption and the notes help that process. They are valueless, but not worthless.

Source: www.economist.com, 28th Jan 2010