Vansh - First Two Months

My son Vansh was born in Amin's hospital, Ahmedabad on a quiet afternoon of 29th June 2011. During time of his birth there was not much activity in the hospital as he was the only one born on that day. Of course his birth has created lot of excitement among family members in Ahmedabad and Bhopal but otherwise nothing significant happened that day.

But when the days started passing after his birth, lot of new changes started getting visible in various aspect of life. Far away in London Wimbledon tennis tournament, considered as most cherished for Tennis Players was going on when Vansh was born. After one week of Vansh's birth tournament was concluded with emergence of new champions in Novak Djokovic (Men's) and Petra Kvitová (Women's). Both first time winners and thus ending the domination of Nadal, Federer and William Sisters. This is definitely a new era in Tennis world and mark of changing order.

Few weeks after Vansh's birth on 6th Aug, another significant changed occurred - this time in economics order of the World. Standard & Poor downgraded the U.S.'s triple-A credit rating to AA-plus. This happened for the first time when rating started in 1917. This news created ripples in market worldwide and event seen as dramatic reversal of fortune for the world's largest economy and massive change in world's economic order.

Mid-August, one more sporting order changed - this time in cricket and for obvious reasons not liked by any in India. World champion in one day cricket and world number one test team India lost test series to England comprehensively losing all 4 matches. With this win team England became world number one test side and India pushed to third place ending its supremacy. Coming days will be interesting to observe if this changing trend will continue for one day and Twenty20 cricket also.

On 16th Aug, Anna Hazare, social activist from Maharashtra started his fast in Delhi with objective to pass his version of Lokpal bill termed as Jan Lokpal Bill in Parliament to create independent body responsible for controlling corruption in India. Following days after he initiated fast was unprecedented in history of free India. Masses all across the country irrespective of their social, religious and financial status participated in this movement to support Anna. Nothing of that nature was even seen after the mass movement of Jayaprakash Narayan during emergency days in late 70s. Finally Parliament debated Anna's demand and theoretically agreed to push for the reforms Anna is demanding as part of Lokpal bill. Anna ended his fast on 28th August a day before Vansh's second monthly birthday and whole nation celebrated this as victory of this mass movement. This is changing political and democratic order in free India where masses are pushing for certain demand directly and pressurizing the parliament, which so far was the de facto decision owners, to obey that demand.

So first two months of Vansh's life has seen a lot of changing order in field of sports, economics and politics. It would be interesting to see if this is just a beginning.

25 years of Gas Tragedy – Bhopal need identity change

25 years ago on night of 3rd Dec, city of Bhopal witnessed one of the most severe industrial disasters in history of mankind. Leave aside world, leave aside India, I am sure even all the people of Bhopal might not be remembering this incidence today. True that government was having daunting task after incidence for rehabilitation of the victims. In years to follow after incidence city, state and central government was busy mostly in providing medical care to victims, fighting legal war against the culprits responsible for incidence, and create infrastructure for distribution of compensation amount received from Union Carbide. But after these things were sorted, nobody cared to create any memorial to pay tribute to victims. In other places, cities which suffered any traumatic event make sure to create some kind of memorial for the incidence and for the victims. There was a lengthy process in New York, for example where the government along with the family members of the victims of 9/11 terrorist attacks conducted various round of discussions and considered many options as to how to keep the memory of incidence and victims alive. They finally came up with the idea of freedom tower and hefty budget has been allocated by government for the same.

Whatever Bhopal is known to other part of world is mostly because of this tragedy. But if somebody who visits Bhopal and wants to pay tribute to those who lost life in this tragedy, there is no space in city where he can do so. Premium area has been allocated to create memorial for so called great people of India (which includes Sanjay Gandhi who never hold any constitutional position) but nothing of that kind has been done for creating memorial of thousands who lost life in this incidence without any fault of their own.

On the basis of magnitude of tragedy and number of casualties, city of Bhopal and all those who lost life truly deserve some world class memorial. The memorial should not be just a place where people can pay homage but it should also highlight the adversaries of unplanned industrialization and impact of same on our environment.

Beyond this, people of Bhopal along with government can also take this opportunity to make Bhopal a global hub for the activities and research related to topics of environmental care, impact of unplanned industrialization etc. This will not only be a great tribute to those who lost life but also help in image makeover of city of Bhopal which as of now is mostly known for this incidence only. People across world should get a feeling how a city that faced such a traumatic incidence has learnt from the incidence and rise to a level where it is giving direction to the whole world how to avoid such thing to happen again. After 25 years of this tragedy Bhopal as a city and its people truly deserve a change in identity where city is not known in world only for the tragedy but also how city has rise after that.

My First Blog

I have created my account in Blogger way back....around 2 years ago. But after that I just did get time (may be it is just an excuse) to write anything. Looking at popularity of blogs these days and how it is becoming a part of day to day life, I am feeling enough encouraged to start using this medium of communicating your thoughts, ideas and feeling from today. So here is my first blog.

At this moment, I feel I will be writing Blogs to present my ideas and thoughts on social and other issues related to our day to day surroundings. May be in future I will also try to share my personal feelings through this medium but it is probably not my current focus. I also feel that sharing personal feelings and emotions probably require more courage and it is going to take some time when I reach to that level.