DID THE BIBLE REDACTORS PERCEIVE GOD's WORDS CORRECTLY !!????

THE BIBLE, LAND GRAB, CHURCH, KERALA-TN, ECOLOGICAL SENSITIVITY, SOUNDS, LANGUAGE, MEANINGS AND ITS PRESERVATION !!!!

One of the main concerns in the first six books of the Bible is the promise of LAND . This promise is initially made in Genesis 12:1-2, by the GOD of the Bible. “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing”. The last part of the command and promise of God, ie ‘so that you will be a blessing’ implies that those associated with Abraham and his heirs will flourish as well. This is the interpretation according to Bible scholars. (On the other hand,if it is literally interpreted, far from being a blessing, ............... !!!!)

Protestant Britain and its planters, and close on their heels the Catholic Church in Kerala , sincerely adhered to this tradition of land usurpation from the Bible. Now how could God’s promise not be fulfilled ? But the omniscient God had done the unthinkable, by fanning the flames of rapacity in these sections of human population. They raped and plundered virgin and sensitive forest lands, felled valuable timber and planted cash crops. To get more yield they poisoned mother earth and her milk giving veins, by using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They thus usurped more than their share !!! In their case, they flourished very well, and not to be outdone those from other communities also vied with them to get a piece of the cake. This includes the crony capitalists in the Hindutwa camp, like Bellary Reddy brothers.

Restraint exercised by many by-gone generations, gained through spirituality and simple living were thus contemptuously overlooked, in the wake of the new-found prosperity riding piggyback on non-native values. All these did not happen in the remote past, and is at the utmost 200-250 years old.

The prosperity thus experienced turned out to be short-lived, and at great COST to the rest of the state/world. So much so that man-made restrictions are being pursued (Madhav Gadgil/Kasturirangan report) to account and even annul Gods promise to his exclusive and chosen people. This is now being challenged,resisted through violence and cunning and machinations by Gods own people. Which makes one wonder about God, Godliness and the real nature of Gods own people !!??? Millions of people are living on both sides of the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats., in Kerala & TN. Their and their future generations peaceful living greatly depends on regular climatic patterns, that is guaranteed by an un-spoilt and unexploited Western Ghats.

There is only God, and he cannot be wrong !!!! Did Abram hear Gods words properly, attentively and understood it in the correct sense ? Or the chain of persons who transmitted and later wrote down God’s words unwittingly committed a mistake ? Or the narrator/compiler/ author had motives !??. Compared to India and the Vedas, is there any tradition in the middle-east to exactly preserve & transmit ancient sounds to the present, with minimal error ??? Here in India religious studies necessarily included grammar, phonetics, etymology, poesy etc. Thus ancient sounds and meanings could be transmitted with minimal loss and error.

If such a tradition like in India, did never exist in the middle-east with respect to Hebrew or Aramic languages/dialects, - that places the entire content and meaning of the Bible in jeopardy. Even in India, though the systems are there and fairly preserved, modern Indians are failing in their understanding of the Vedas /Upanishads and Gita. (Reason : Declining intellect of the human-race)

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/ecopolitics-churns-the-election-scene-in-kerala/article5794149.ece

TODAY'S PAPER » NATIONAL

KOTTAYAM, March 17, 2014

Eco-politics churns the election scene in Kerala

GEORGE JACOB

  

It is seldom that major political parties in Kerala have had to confront fundamental ecological questions when venturing out to face the electorate. The State, which was the site of historic battles for protecting the Silent Valley and shutting down the Coca-Cola unit at Plachimada, is now discussing electoral prospects and ecology in the same breath as it goes to polls on April 10.

At the heart of the debate is the Kasturirangan Committee report on the protection of theWestern Ghats, which is itself a watered-down version of the more rigorously prepared Madhav Gadgil Committee report. The whole debate has thrown up what can only be described as situation extraordinaire: strange logic, stranger friends and, possibly, weird outcomes.

The CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) in Kerala, which had won plaudits for pushing a law seeking to protect ecologically fragile stretches of the State’s verdant landscape, is today in the company of the High Range Protection Council, an activist body led by Catholic priests and settler farmers, who are more eager to protect their lucrative farmsteads than the Western Ghats. On the opposite side, the incumbent Congress MP P.T. Thomas (Idukki), who has been sharply critical of the stand taken by the Church, his party’s traditional backers, is out in the cold because he is persona non grata for the local top brass of the Church and the farmers’ lobby.

In the neighbouring district of Pathanamthitta, Peelipose Thomas, former AICC member, had no other option but to bolt from his party’s confines and the ruling alliance before the UDF could commence itscandidate selection because neither the Congress nor the alliance, of which he was a candidate in previous elections, could stomach his stand on the controversial Aranmula international airport project, which had found a place in the President’s address to Parliament before it got the necessary clearances from the State or the Central government agencies.

If the question of protecting the Western Ghats finally boiled down to a slugfest within the ruling alliance and between the settler farmers and those whom they have traditionally backed, at Aranmula it has assumed even more ominous dimensions with issues of religious beliefs of the Hindu community becoming the touchstone on whether or not the project was to be given the nod.

The debate over the Kasturirangan Commitee recommendations saw the government giving in to Christian priests, the most vociferous of them all, and, in the process, the 327-page report submitted by the 15-member Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) chaired by Madhav Gadgil got restricted in size and scope to a 175-page report by the High Level Working Group on Western Ghats headed by K. Kasturirangan, which again got vetted by a three-member panel chaired by Oommen V. Oommen, chairman of the Kerala State Biodiversity Board, ultimately ending as a terse two-page office memorandum issued by the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.

There is no such clarity on the fate of the Aranmula airport where a popular agitation led by both the Left and Sangh Parivar organisations is still very much on.

The outcome of the Lok Sabha elections would reflect, in at least a few constituencies in the high ranges, on the relative positions of the mainstream players on ecological questions, but the real issues would remain as the voices from the margins seek to articulate.

Gandhian Economics - The only way forward.

The name of J.C.Kumarappa  and his take on the different kinds of economy, especially predatory economy figures in this recent op-ed article. Modern business practices (karma) are setting on boil, the entire world. It is reported that India has succumbed to US interests, in the WTO round at Bali. Very bad !!!!

Towards an economy of mutualism (Dec 04, 2013, The Hindu)

by MADHAV GADGIL

J.C. Kumarappa, the Gandhian economist who worked with the Planning Commission in the early years of Indian Independence, favoured industrialisation but insisted that its pursuit should not lead to the creation of an economy of violence. Recent disturbances linked to control over, and fate of, the rich water, mineral, forest and biodiversity resources of the Western Ghats of Kerala suggest that Kumarappa’s worst fears of a lopsided development have come true. As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz emphasises in his recent book, The Price of Inequality , any nation must aim at a harmonious development of its four capital stocks: not just man-made capital that GDP highlights, but natural capital, human capital and social capital as well. A GDP-centric viewpoint focusses exclusively on economic activity in the organised industries-services sector.

Chembanmudy quarries

 Thus, in the case of the controversial Chembanmudy hill stone quarries of Pathanamthitta district in Kerala, what will count as positive development gains are not only quarrying, crushing and truck transport, but also the boosting of sales of anti-cancer and anti-asthmatic drugs as a result of the ill-health caused by quarrying activities. In the absence of proper records, other relevant elements of economic activities such as the decline in agricultural productivity and loss of employment for agricultural labour that ought to be counted on the debit side will be overlooked. In addition, the GDP-centric view totally ignores the ongoing grave depletion of natural capital, human capital and social capital. Thus, in the case of Chembanmudy, landslips and blockage of streams are adversely impacting land, water, forest and biodiversity resources. Health, education and employment are three important components of human capital. In the Chembanmudy case, health has suffered, with even young children developing lung cancer. Mothers have petitioned that the unceasing truck traffic does not permit their children to focus on studies.

As for employment, there is little for local community members. Most of the small number of labour employed is from tribal tracts of Orissa or Jharkhand, people whose livelihood has been destroyed by rampant mining in their own native districts. There are horror stories making rounds of how this disorganised labour force is ill-treated, with no compensation for accidental injuries or even death. Indeed, the claim that India’s rapid economic growth is helping create much-needed employment is dubious; the annual rate of growth in employment in the organised sector that was 2 per cent when the GDP was growing at 3 per cent, actually declined to one per cent as the GDP growth rate soared to 7 per cent. So what we are witnessing is jobless growth, with accompanying erosion of human and social capital.

Social capital resides in social harmony, cooperation and trust. These too are suffering under the prevalent economy of violence. This economy is promoting grabbing and spoiling of land, water, mineral and forest resources to benefit a few, at the cost of the larger society. This is being facilitated by lawlessness and social injustice: witness the very large number of illegal quarries currently operational in Kerala, estimated at 1,700 out of a total 2,700 functional quarries. The disinformation campaign focussing first on our Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel (WGEEP) report, and now on the Kasturirangan report, and the violence that has been triggered suggest that social disharmony has become the order of the day.

WGEEP points out that we are currently practising “Development by Exclusion, accompanied by Conservation by Exclusion.” This is because the many powerful interests that control decision-making today are not motivated to pursue development that would create mutually beneficial relationships among the beneficiaries of the organised industries-services sector and the bulk of our people dependent for their livelihoods and well-being on a healthy base of the natural resources. Nor are the powers-that-be properly informed of the realities at the ground level. This prevails all over the country, despite our well-entrenched democracy and the many constitutional and legal provisions to protect the environment and engage people in decision-making processes that are a result of a sensitivity towards what the people want.

Of all the States, it is Kerala that has led the country in democratic devolution and has made considerable progress in ensuring that people can influence the course of development and protect their environment and livelihoods. A notable example of this is the Plachimada panchayat in Palakkad district, where a Coca Cola plant had polluted as well as depleted groundwater, with consequent drying up of wells, loss of agricultural productivity and concomitant negative impacts on livelihoods. The people of Plachimada ensured that there was a proper scientific inquiry into the losses suffered by them. This provided sound scientific evidence that these losses amount to a whopping Rs. 260 crore. On the basis of this evidence, the panchayat rescinded the company’s licence. Notably enough, initially none of the political parties backed the people’s demands, but came round when confronted with a groundswell of sentiment. While cancelling the licence, the panchayat evoked its constitutional rights, arguing that as a local elected government it had the duty to protect the well-being of its subjects. So it had the right to cancel — or refuse permission to — anything that affected its subjects adversely. The company’s counter-argument was that the panchayat was a subordinate of the State government and thus could not operate out of its domain, since the State government had granted the licence for Coca Cola to operate. The High Court rejected this argument, affirming that people at the grassroots indeed have the authority to decide on the course of development in their localities.

The powers-that-be today would like to set aside these significant constitutional provisions empowering the people and helping them protect their environment. Instead, they are promoting a GDP-centric approach with little concern for natural, human, social capital. This is reflected in the rhetorical — and unconstitutional — question posed by the Kasturirangan panel: “How can local communities have any role in economic decision-making?” Evidently, the Kasturirangan panel wishes to facilitate the continuance of the present system of a predatory economy, but was obliged to prescribe some minimal level of protection for natural resources. Quite typically, this protection is proposed to be imposed from above and is not decided upon through a democratic process. But even this minimal protection is unacceptable to the beneficiaries of the current system who triggered the recent violence.

Duty to inform

Such lopsided development is clearly against broader national interests and since it is people at the grassroots that are best aware of what is happening to the natural, human and social capital, their inputs are critical to arriving at a development strategy that will promote a harmonious, balanced development. The sole duty of those wielding power should, therefore, be to inform the populace of all relevant facts and of the various development-conservation alternatives. Hence, WGEEP has explicitly stated that “we should attempt to develop a model of conservation and development compatible with each other … to replace the prevailing ‘Develop recklessly – conserve thoughtlessly’ pattern with one of ‘Develop sustainably – conserve thoughtfully’. The fine-tuning of development-conservation practices to [the] local context that this calls for would require the full involvement of local communities. It is therefore quite inappropriate to depend exclusively on government agencies for the constitution and management of Ecologically Sensitive Zones. Instead the final demarcation of the Zones and fine tuning of the regulatory as well as promotional regimes must be based on extensive inputs from local communities and local bodies.”

An important focus of the development of the Western Ghats tracts of Kerala should therefore be on properly informing and organising people down to the grassroots level to exercise their democratic rights. A well-informed and empowered citizenry will ensure that the environment is properly cared for even as we continue to industrialise, as has happened in Germany and the Scandinavian countries. What we need to concentrate on is implementing that which by all rights must be implemented, namely, the constitutional provisions for protecting the environment and empowering the people.

Of course, India must continue to develop a vibrant technology-based economy as well. Inevitably, this will end up employing only a small proportion of our people. But this modern economy must come to assume a mutualistic, and not predatory, role towards the natural resource-based, labour intensive sector of the economy. That is the only route to balanced and harmonious economic and social development.

(Madhav Gadgil is Chairman of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel. madhav.gadgil@gmail.com)

Modern economy must come to assume

a mutualistic, and not a predatory, role toward the natural resource-based,

labour-intensive sector of the economy

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-opinion/towards-an-economy-of-mutualism/article5419751.ece

Environmental Issues- Madhav Gadgil & Kasturi Rangan Committee’s Report on Kerala, S.India - KARMA

We belong to a generation that have failed to protect our own ( the present) and future generations of our  land, from impending calamities. For without discrimination, without any critical understanding, we have perpetrated the  same destructive knowledge (Aasuri)  imbibed from an alien civilization. The  pitiable state of our existence is reflected in the fact that our generation is not able to fall back on the knowledge resources, bequeathed on us, by our ancestors. A deliberate psychological campaign was unleashed, especially in academic circles, washing away our trust and confidence in traditional knowledge, which naturally belonged to us. We look down upon such knowledge as not practical for this age, and not yielding monetary and materialistic gains. We are diseased !!!!

Madhav Gadgil 

The  main news in today’s (April 18^th)  Malayala Manorama  (Malayalam) paper , is about the fragile nature of Kerala’s  ‘geographical’ environment.  The report says that 1/3 rd of the land mass of Kerala is ‘environmentally/ecologically  FRAGILE’.  It is not  clear whether the  environmental audit had covered the whole land mass of Kerala or only those areas classified as belonging to the Western Ghats and its immediate precincts. Anyway, overall,  the picture is one of anxiety, regarding the basic material  needs  essential for living. ie clean air, water and food and other basic necessities like stable climactic patterns, power and availability of building materials.

Kasturi Rangan

Though Kerala is not highly  industrialized like other Indian States and other industrialized nations,  still we have reached the brink. The reason is that we are following  the consumptive patterns of highly industrialized nations without adequate social controls. Even the ‘well-governed’ industrialized nations are not able to sustain their lifestyles with resources raised from within. All this points to the reality , that we cannot have any succour from  ephemeralistic modern knowledge and systems.  Our only hope of  reversing this suicidal trend , before we veer off the cliff, is to fall back upon traditional  methods of living based on traditional knowledge. Our traditional knowledge is post-modern , and we as a civilization have the exclusive credit of analysing  human nature and conduct (action/karma) derived from a full and proper understanding of the coming into being of the COSMOS.  Ah ! we understand the whole picture !!!!

Drinking water being transported