who am I ?

Who am I? Where is my home? What does INDIA mean to me ? What does the world mean to me? As my tenure at Manchester draws to a close, these questions have been plaguing me. They don’t go away when I close my eyes or close my mind ~ they sit around with that look of eternal calm and a desire for completion~ when I think of the future , I look past the idealistic possibilities of existence and often focus on the “seeds” of destiny that I have in my genes. I am talking about the legacy I carry in my blood: by the strength of which, everyday I question the very roots of my existence, the deepest core of my attitude towards, learning, towards people towards life. Like Siddhartha, I have no peace within me. the answer doesn’t lie in letting go of all that has desire in it, the answer isn’t in embracing the honest realization that without a system of “want” I will come to the place where my insides will over whelm with a sense of calm~ The more time I spend with myself, the more I realize the gift and the curse I was born with. This ties in very concordantly to what I constitute to be home. In its purest element when characterized I am a traveler ,A seeker , a wanderer ~ my roots stretch from sweltering plains of a south east asia to the cold desolation of a Midwestern farm land . The truth is, home for me is a dynamically evolving idea of “now”. Where I belong changes with seasons, changes with time , and grows with me to embrace the facets of existence which I wasn’t born with , but chose to be a part of. In retrospective, I have no concrete ideology that defines a home, however what I have is dreams, desire and the need to know – a feeling that at times almost burns out of my flesh , to draw out the design for my future.

Last summer , backpacking across India at times I felt like a visitor and a ghost, like a child and a lover , like a person without and a story within, there were thousands of miles of darkness ahead of me and there was the promise of so much light. Every step I took, every smile that warmed me, every touch of skin against mine: reminded me how much a part of me would never fail to answer the call of this mystic land of wonder and heritage, it was a sense of cultural duty and an almost magnetic pull that emanated from the 18 summers I had spent locked in its brown womb. Yet, there was another voice in my head ~ like the breath of a silent inevitability, it spoke to me: I wasn’t meant to dissolve into the nameless crowds and the smell of fried onions and sandalwood, this was a journey that has started many light years ago, with the birth of a single consciousness in the enigmatic vistas of space: a consciousness that I shared with every living thing on this planet. My birth was just a matter of chance, the formative forces for my fragile nucleus to use and understand. The limits of my cultural and social maturity cannot end and should not end within the confines of a single microcosm of our society. Even though, I draw a lot of my value system from the traditional premise that is India, it leaves a hollow sense of ignorance in my heart. The difference I saw in my last summer was evident in the moral clashes I had with almost every segment of Indian society and my definition of how it should be. Not meant in a condescending manner, or from a more learned perspective but a very humble and rational appeal to the potholes within a system and this further formulated my need to understand the existence of life in the world. Maybe this is a search for the universal sense of “us”. What holds us together in social communion? What restrains the dynasty of violence from shredding apart the very fabric of our national brotherhood and international identity? The more I read, the more I watch, the more I see , I can barely keep still ~ my insides are torn apart with the storms of indecision and helplessness , and a very important question keeps coming to mind : what is my battle ?

When Alexander marshaled his army of 35,000 men against the quarter million Persians that Darius commanded on the fields of Gaugamela, he knew no fear, he knew no god , he knew no death , because that was his war ; He had made it , while Darius was just fighting it. Alexander’s military genius and the story of his victory are a part of legend now and so is his conquest into the lands east of the great desert, but what remains vital in it all is that ~ Alexander knew which battle to fight. He was rash, yet calculated, passionate yet rational, the way he used his potential to rule his empire and to lead his conquest and army of men over thousands of miles is a testimony to the harnessing of resources that made him from inside out. And what a life it was , at 32 , while the known world looked up to him in fear and awe , he had written poetry, listed hundreds of new species, fashioned cities whose glory would stay for centuries and above all had ushered in a system of respect for other cultures and the very origin of inter racial brotherhood. Yet , none of this would have worked had he not known which battle to fight : in the fading light of each day all of us want to be like the great Macedon: courageous, wise , enterprising , passionate and revolutionary ~ yet , few of us ever find him within us because we never try and find the battle that fits us .

I know the paths I have walked are just the beginnings of the journey that started with touch of desire in that initial consciousness and neither with the ebbing of time nor with the decay of old age and mental and physical atrophy will it ever die ~ However, I feel it in the deepest, most sacred memories of this force within me, the need to explore and scatter my roots all over my “home”, the world. I am not on a journey of power like Alexander was, and neither is my battle with the “flesh” that covers my being : It is essentially the need , and quite often the searing pain I feel within me to know , to understand , to belong ~ And yet, everyday, the more I walk, the farther away , the horizon goes ….in my dreams, in my rational designs , I realize that like Frodo, I must carry this ring alone to Mordor : this is my task, my gift , my curse.

There is so much peace in the vision of a future where, the geographical self of the world will run parallel with the social self of it, for me. A journey of immense proportions with more friends than time, more love than ignorance and above all an eternal sense of humility at the incredible system of beauty that makes up this world, my world….my home.

what a life ?

And within this hatred we lay, brother for brother, earth made, fertile with nascent destruction and just a pregnant sense~ O god what’d I do? And the ebbing of a crimson tide is colored in words of divine irony. Around it all, the time for reckoning doesn’t draw us near; the animal within us finds answers in the fallen fragments of the self. What have I inherited? For the ghosts of our parallel legacy aren’t shadow words of fragile selfless mortals, it flows with bones in your flesh, the islands of forgotten memories aren’t isolations for emotional disease- the right of action comes from not the greatest among me, but the honesty among us. The forgotten shards of now, are painful, they cut war lines, new warranted death lines, which you insure with your life. And what a life that is to be …….

Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide

Euthanasia comes from the Greek words, eu means "good" and thanatos means "death". In essence a definition of it would read as the painless and intentional termination of the life of another person at his/her request. The legalization of this process in certain parts of the world and the usage of it by physicians has created significant amounts of controversy and debate.
In essence when looking at the theoretical aspect I see two forces at play – on one hand is the ability for a person to not undergo massive amounts of pain which often result from various diseases and ailments, specially the ones which are going to result in a fatality; on the other hand is the ability of people to find a proverbial “easier” way out of a situation without trying harder to hang on to life. These situations can be better explained. The first one refers to a situation where the patient is diagnosed with a fatal disease and is in its final throes and is undergoing massive amounts of emotional as well as physical pain. The stress and the emotional hardship that a family watching a person waste away in a rather painful and discomfort filled manner, is rather substantial as well. Added to this is the finality that death is inevitable. These three factors together put the patient in a situation where the choice of life by itself is a battle that can have no ends other than death, however the period before death is the one of most horrible emotional and physical agony. In such a situation when death is certain, but pain can be controlled , if a person could chose to not go through this pain , Euthanasia or PAS are the only routes available.
On the flipside is a comparable viewpoint equally compelling – the whole essence of life has to be born from the desire to hold on. Life is sacred and a gift which no matter what should be respected and worked to prolong. Therefore in situations where pain could seem to be a rather unbearable proponent, the presence of an alternative might discourage the very desire of a person to fight on. As any good physician knows healing is mentally propagated, the body follows the brain – If in a situation a person starts to give up , using the presence of PAS then the body deteriorates since the desire to live is gone. I am not suggesting that, just a mental desire could save a person afflicted with a fatal disease, but a lot of times it does prolong and create a “cause” for the person to live on. Therefore in situations like that Euthanasia can prove to be rather debilitating.
Morally there seems to be a rather ambiguous area that this topic delves into. Free will which is the quintessential human trait allows us the right to choose. However due to our lack of better knowledge, often times these choices aren’t the best ones that we can make. Therefore , in this situation it is very important for the person to understand what the choices available are. The decision that will arise from these choices I believe is something that should be respected. It can be argued though that, even when all the choices are given to a person and they have been analyzed, the decision coming out might not be the most favorable one. This is a situation which abounds in the world, a creation of a “subjective” morality. People define right and wrong differently. Thus in the case of someone who wants to end his/her life - given the other vectors which should include them being in a situation where life will not be possible for too long due to the affect of the disease, they are in an incredible amount of physical and mental pain and there is no chance of a cure being found for the disease that they are afflicted with, within the time period they have available to live - they should be assisted in any and everyway possible to do so.
Looking at the practical aspect of PAS and Euthanasia certain facts are very important – Over 99.9% of all people dying in Oregon do so without physician assistance ,84% of people accessing PAS in Oregon cite fear of loss of autonomy as the number one cause , there have been a significant number of people specially in the Netherlands and Belgium who have “illegally” tried to get PAS, there are more than fifty recorded instances of PAS gone wrong and the lethal drug not working the way it should , due to the current moral and legal restrictions not a lot of research is being done on better ways to “euthanize” people which leaves physicians that do administer it with very few options, there has been no significant improvement in the department of pain relief in Oregon after the legalization of PAS – these are just a fragment out of the Pandora’s box of legal, clinical, moral and social issues that this topic raises. Trying to get a feel of what is the right thing to do is something that essentially changes from situation to situation.
Is euthanasia and PAS a moral way to administer healthcare – yes , can there be situations where people use it immorally to achieve ends that have no justification for their use – yes , should this option be available to people – yes, does research need to be done to better the techniques – yes , is euthanasia and PAS an answer to the state of a patient – yes and no , it just depends on the situation, and finally is there one fundamental idea of a pure and sacred death and how we reach it – No.

Fear

In my singularity there is fear,
Dark fear, white fear, lost fear , warm fear,
Little children mothered by fear in my womb,
Naked in tear soaked reality.

So, I sing,
Songs of me, of them , but never of us ,
Cold hands over the mantle,
My roots go deep, their poison cant reach me ,
So afraid , that death sits and waits while I take time to be afraid.

And forever is only mine,
Their truth is but a cripple,
An idea of shadow and dust ,and mortality,
Mine a honey laced righteous oblivion,
I won, but the fear ….

The season

Songs in body versed lines,
Your skin against light,
Colored smells whisper,
Touch rhythm,
Feel.

The room within wet glasses,
Memories of future whisper,
Breath paints you,
Stand together,
See.

Autumn bleeds the grass red,
White feet naked still,
Eyes of honey,
Rain smashed,
Hear.

within a verb

Within a Verb

1.

So I am hiding,

Within a verb,

You know,

Thinking.

Every small drop drowns,

In one bigger ,

But why,

Synthesis ?

Isn’t it strange here?

Crates of masks,

One face,

Unknown.

Breaking new lies again,

Tortured twin existence,

Around me,

Maybe .

2.

Here’s a new line,

“Live naked always”,

Scared introspection,

Nothing.

Sunlight in brass cups,

Captured or afraid ?

Too bright,

Blinding.

Another play curtains it,

Any lines alive ?

Other stories,

Silent.

A future covered chapter,

Thawed and pungent,

Seed nascent,

Infinite.

summer

Summer

Day jobs along the sidewalk,

Scraping dirt, little green murders committed,

My hands look dark, I stare at asphalt,

Above the roar of metal and sunlight, I hear Beethoven.

Over by the lake, the pregnant mud water and smooth,

I slip down; “Here’s the mower…” the sand tastes different on my face,

“A break in two hours…” blue grey eyes, flies swarm over the dead fish,

Monsoons are addictive, “make sure all the weeds are gone…”

Within my legs pain makes families,

Mr. and MRS. Pain and a life of middle class luxury,

I walk into the sunset, only concrete scented and often ecstatic at the freedom,

Subjugation and dreaming, metal soot shovels and silken dragon fly wings.

Another day, I tell myself – the songs are in my head, and my arms are just slaves,

The two lives are in confused tension, which is the mirror and which the reflection?

Within the timeless hours, I find years of dreams, images of futures, possible tomorrows,

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow…”, but tomorrow is already gone.

Birth

Birth

When was I born? A blue warm placental answer is: always,

Within time questions of instance are relative,

The beginning is a chasm filled uncertainty-

A mellow ray of stranger light: a table for I, me and myself,

A warmer truth doesn’t engulf honesty, or swallow it whole,

Are paths to sensibility paths to conformity: you can’t crawl them,

Teachers I’ve known, contradiction texts and headless ideas,

Learning isn’t intestinal: digestion and perception are mutually exclusive skills.

Words and meaning: harmony routes to existence,

What is imperative? Chaos or subjugation: subtle indentations,

Festival coloring hides cancer skeletons stories: mirror surface living,

Reflections, cadences, query, is that breath or an excuse for questions?

If I wasn’t born, what was I?

A force isn’t accidentally productive; purpose is its parent,

My ends are string tied and semi-lost: if I have ends that is,

A journey isn’t the answer: since I’ve always been born with it.

Random

Beauty
Moonlight:
The moon starved moth sat on the moon eaten leaf. It chewed. Crystal balls danced in grey pools of its polythene wings. The tree was a faceless guardian, it connected the leaf to the moon, and the moth chewed on. Color was lost in the concubines of its eyes, the reign of gold was eaten by silver .The frenzy was there; the water boiled under the thick spread of moon that buttered it, fluffing away wisps of little drops which the reeds caught in their arms.

Spring:
You spend afternoons hypnotized by yellow, reading a mixed- time fairy tale where the girl dies in the end. You play with paper boats drenched in rain and you run, run like the light in your eyes has found a tunnel to brighten. The old fort is empty, rooms naked with space. Then it all starts, the tiles move a liquid arm under your feet and the storm fills the corner window; the one you used to sing at. Small footsteps press the dry mud into the earth and living skin touches dead debris, it unearths life from scattered beginnings and smiles. The windows open and through filters of maternal love, the baby season cries.

Pain
War:
Marigolds and intestines have the same color. Often when you stare, the white of your pupil reflects the color, you breathe and nothing registers. You touch your best friend’s intestine and want to believe that they are marigolds. Darkness enhances the white of your eyes, and the red in your heart. The dead metal in your hands arises from slumber, death electrocutes someone else’s best friend .He bends over the body, and as he discovers they aren’t marigolds.



Death:
Grandpa, grandpa are you there? I found a lady bird and the mud under the oaks tastes like macaroni and glue. You promised you would show me the silver birch beetles today. Grandpa can you hear me? Mama says you are a burden. What is being a burden? Is being wonderful being a burden? If it is then you are a burden. Dad beat mom up today. Her broken dishes lay in a half circle across her; he just sat on the chair and drank smelly black water. Grandpa what should I do? I don’t like your hands; they are like the salmon dad brought in, cold and quiet. Grandpa what about the tree house? Grandpa…..

Anger
After sex:
Green paint loves falling of the ceiling .I lay stretched in a pool of crap. My body stinks of its fetid refuse; my arms are pieces of undigested excreta, my hair a mass of dried saliva. The palms reflect back the animal. He lies on the side, his victim drained he burps garlic and orange pop. Satisfied and salivating. The stream of sticky bubbles down his primitive jaw shine brighter than me. I try to find my body, it is lost. I try to cry but some how I don’t remember how to. Concealed beneath his flesh is the seed that runs in my blood now. We are stretched over the same rack, only I can feel it though. My mouth tries to stretch my teeth into obedience. The white bed sheets stare. The stains on them are cleaner than me. Their dirt can be washed, mine can’t.

the Other

Having grown up predominantly in a single race society the effects of racial dichotomy and stigma were a rather alien concept. Even though socially discrimination was a part of everyday life racial and sexual preference issues were not something that I experienced to often. However there was religious prejudice and there was a massive stigma born out of class differences. My grandmother was a constructionist for the most part. Having lived through the horrors of partition and been a part of the religion induced carnage and hate she had a deep rooted hatred for Muslims and the actual religion of Islam. In her ideology meaning was prescribed by her creating the identity. Therefore Islam was a religion of hatred and violence and that picture would not change for anything.
My mother contrary to my grandmother believed in giving everybody a fair chance irrespective of religion. She was more of an essentialist who used her interpretations of instances and people to form her opinions. Born a whole generation later she escaped the scarring experiences that my grandmother had been subjected to, this I believe helped her to shape her concepts differently. That I believe is rather valid point, the stance that people take on issues is directly proportional to the social interactions they have accumulated over time. Therefore it would be unfair to judge people as being prejudiced since the social premise that led them to reach their personal conclusions are not similar to yours or mine. What would we have become had the same forces that mould my grandmother touched me and my mother? I don’t know.
Prejudice and dichotomy are created from fear. Interactions with the parts of society that cause this fear often time helps to remove the pre-assumptions, the clichés and the generalizations that become synonymous with prejudice. A good example in the American society is of California and Indiana. Due to California’s rather diverse and multicultural population there is a far lower rate of racial misunderstanding and hate , as compared to Indiana which even though has small pockets of cosmopolitan groups , on the whole remains very mono-racial ( I use this term to talk of their similar Caucasian heritage). Thus there is a lot more of dichotomy, prejudice, existence of stereotypes and mass generalizations. Exposing Indiana’s rather rural Christian community to the concept of gay marriage can prove disastrous since most of them have never had positive and intimate relationships with homosexuals. Hence their stigma arises from their fear of the unknown, which makes them label an individual and identify him primarily by his sexual orientation. This usage of a single aspect of a person to classify him leads to a rather linear and for the most part very partial understanding of society.
The creation of dichotomy creates sense of plurality and collective viewing of a community. Since it is impossible to classify or group two individuals into one category, it also destroys the uniqueness of people. A person can have many labels and then he can choose to discard any he wants. However socially in American society some labels are given an eternal sustaining life. They hang on long after the individual has stopped practicing.
The presence of the “us” and the “other” is an example of trying to find security and a desire to stay within the confines of the knowledge and the awareness that has been passed on generation after generation. Classifying people who aren’t like us into one massless category creates this sense of surety and clear lines. This creates in the psyche a feeling of being in control since there isn’t anything else to know. We are with our own kind and any body who is not us is them. This subjugates humanity to a rather unrealistic and forced model of existence where diversity is an ignored form. I am reminded of the movie “The Matrix” at this instant. Morpheus when explaining to Neo the concept of the “agent” tells him , “if you are not one of us, you are one of them”. In this context agents are computer programs that can slip into any person who is still plugged in the matrix. Thus any person who is still plugged in the matrix is an agent. Therefore Morpheus creates a black and a white making the whole human population that is plugged in under one similar attribute. Their individuality is destroyed and over looked. That is the idea of the “other”.

windtalkers

“Wind talkers” exposed me to the rather evident ignorance and sense of “othering” which is prevalent in the marines. There are two issues which struck me, the treatment of the Navajo soldiers who were a part of the marines and the way in which the Japanese were represented in this movie.
The Navajo warriors were victims of “preconceptions and stereotypes”. Ben was referred to as a “savage” and the only mark of differentiation between him and Japanese was the uniform. Simple because he was a Native American, he was lumped into one group, even though he made it really clear that he was a Navajo. He was referred to as chief and for the most part “othered”. After his act of great bravery and intelligence during which he risked his life to save the rest of the soldiers, he was commended in no way by the ranking officer visiting the squad. On the other hand his friend Anderson was celebrated with a medal of honor. Ben’s achievements were “evaluated” due to his race and they were undermined. He was looked at like an outsider and his place in the army was still of an alien, not an American. This is a classic example of privilege and racial bigotry.
“It is their home but we are going to take it away from them”, these were the words uttered by the officer that was explaining the invasion of Saipan to the men. Instead of feeling the injustice and the moral contradiction in this statement the men were motivated and inspired by the thought of rendering thousands homeless and spreading destruction. The Japanese are looked at as the faceless other, a horde of emotionless savages, brutal and uncivilized that needed to be taught a lesson by the “white” brigades. The incredible stereotypes at play here render the people they are going to invade from living, breathing human beings to a mass of worthless bodies which are the “evil”. Even towards the end the focus is on the emotional exchange between the two main protagonists of the movie and the massive slaughter of the Japanese is overlooked.
However as it is evident from the movie, the more you know a person the less race seems to matter. Therefore after the soldiers had gotten to know Ben, they stopped evaluating him and judging him and having an image of stereotypes about him. Therefore Ben was just another soldier and their friend.
The point I brought into class was in relation of whom to blame for the situation of immigrants that is being created in the schools. I saw that putting all the blame on the parents of these children would be unfair since the only reason they are here is because someone hired them in the first place. Thus without jobs they would be forced to return back, however since they are allowed to stay here and work illegally whose fault is it? The contractor that hired them is bound to another higher company that obviously wants him to make more and more profit. Thus since by employing illegal labor he can increase his profit margin he indulges in that. The larger company that owns the contactor is obviously trying to survive in the market and the only method of doing that is getting more and more revenue generated every year. Thus were does the problem lie? I say it is in the capitalist system which governs the social structure that this country possesses.
To propagate just one language in a country like the USA is ridiculous. With the rate of immigration that was always been prevalent this country is like the melting for many different cultures and languages. Therefore encouraging a monolingual culture is rather limiting.

economics,human rights and cash crops

The Effects of Cotton Farming and Consumption on Humans and the Environment: A Comparative Study between the USA and India

The English word “cotton” comes from the Arabic word “qutun”. Cotton and humans have a long history together. Oldest traces of cotton were found in México which were dated to be close to 7000 years old. However it was the people of the Indus valley civilization in India and Pakistan, the indo-Aryans who were farming, weaving, and using cotton in large quantities around 3000 B.C.E. Herodotus the Greek historian talks of a tree growing in India which produces wool that has better quality than sheep wool, in his books in 400 BC. Historically the growing and manufacture of cotton was largely isolated to the northwest part of sub-continental India and parts of Egypt , till 200 C.E. that is when trade between India and China catapulted specially in the form of cotton. As Islam rose in the lands west of India so did trade relations. Around 600 C.E. the Arabs helped spread cotton in much of the Middle East and continental Europe. However it wasn’t until the 1200’s that the western Europeans had any substantial amount of cotton which was brought back by Italian sailors and merchants. Columbus found cotton growing on the Bahama Islands in 1492; however the first cotton was planted in the continental USA in 1556 in Florida and in Virginia in 1607 ( the Cotton Story). The industrial revolution coupled with the invention of the cotton gin pushed cotton production to huge proportions. The cotton gin which was invented in 1793 in Massachusetts increased the cotton profits from $150,000 to $8 million dollars. This amount in 2003 US dollars after taking care of inflation and other factors comes to around $144 million (Economic History Services). Cotton forms a large part of the present day American economy as well, adding over $120 billion dollars in business stimulated revenue. India is the third largest producer of cotton in the world, where the cotton industry employs over 4 million workers and creates over 15 million bales of cotton ( a bale being approximately 360 pounds ) a year. The six countries which account for three-fourth of the world cotton production in descending order of production are – China, USA, India, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Turkey. Together these countries accounted for 16 million tones of the 23 million tones of cotton produced globally in 2004 (UNCTAD). Even though the USA and India are both cotton powerhouses, the way cotton is processed, handled and effects that it has socially, culturally and environmentally vary a lot. This paper will try and delve into the significant differences between the production, handling and distribution of cotton in American (USA) and Indian society and the effects that has had environmentally, socially and economically.
Cotton is synonymous with the ugliest part of American history – slavery. The first slaves were brought to the new world in august 1616. However it was only in 1793 after the creation of the cotton gin that the employment of slaves in the cotton industry really took off. Until the thirteenth amendment in 1865, over 1.8 million slaves were a part of the cotton industry for over 72 years. The point to be noted here, however, is how and why did American farmers and plantation owner’s start paying so much attention to cotton and growing it ahead of a lot of other crops that were naturally occurring in the region? Even though cotton fabrics were available in smaller quantities in middle 16th century in Europe, it wasn’t until 18th century when ladies in the high society in Europe started obsessing over cotton dresses. These clothes called, indiennes, after the actual origin of the fabric from India, began to be valued more than silk and muslin. This happened largely due to the availability of this seemingly exotic fabric in large quantities as the East India Company brought thousands of bales back from Bengal. To add to this was the fact that cotton could “breathe” much better than silk or muslin and thus was much more suitable for the summer dresses that became popular during this era. Another major event was the creation of denim. Denim fabric started getting very popular with the working class due to its longetivity and ability to withstand rough use. The market for it started to explode and special mills were made just for the creation of denim and jeans. Therefore Britain started to import large amounts of cotton from the south East Asian countries. As the New World opened up cotton farming was encouraged more, and more to feed the demands of a growing British population and thus even though cotton required immense manual labor to grow, and depleted the soil way more than tobacco did , tobacco farms were converted into cotton growing plantations. Thus after the war of independence the colonies started to produce cotton in large amounts which was mainly due to the invention of the cotton gin and England’s growing demands. Close to the middle 1800s there started to be changes in cotton production, instead of the raw materials being imported to London cotton mills, they were instead sent from the southern states to the northern states. Thus the northern states started processing and making the actual fabric and then importing them to the empire. This led to the northern states sanctioning loans for the purchase of slaves and building of new plantations in the south and added another avenue for the strengthening of the already burgeoning economy. The south on the other hand turned into an economic power house, due to the almost zero labor costs and forever rising raw cotton sales. Thus “while cotton exports totaled only $5 million (seven percent of total U.S. exports) in 1800, they rose to $30 million in 1830 (41 percent of U.S. exports) and reached $191 million in 1860 (57 percent of total U.S. exports). By 1850, cotton consumption averaged five and a half pounds per person in Great Britain and the United States, in large part because the price of cotton textiles had fallen to roughly one percent of their cost in 1784” (West)
While America’s economical backbone was being formed by cotton cultivation, the rigorous use of the land led to the almost complete ruination of the top soil in the southern states. Environmentally cotton was a disaster; it removed large amounts of nitrates from the soil and required copious quantities of chemical fertilizers as compared to tobacco or wheat. The transformation of huge tracts of land to cotton plantations also led to wide spread biodiversity loss. The south east was getting turning into a top soil graveyard with widespread destruction of it, but since the USA had so much land to spare in the west, cotton plantation moved west. This led to removal of Native Americans from their lands and caused bloody wars between the settlers and the natives. The largest factor that was required for cotton cultivation was labor and slavery provided the answer. After the revolutionary war most of the cash crops were hit bad and thus there was a depreciation in market value and slave owners started selling off their slaves due to the lack of work, however with the advent of the cotton age, thousands of jobs were created and hundreds of slaves were recaptured or brought back to work in the fields. Thus cotton helped fuel the last 80 odd years of slave labor. Therefore the supply demand demographic which started with the incessant demand for cotton in the mills in Liverpool led to the total agricultural transformation of the American south to a cotton producing, revenue generating industry which helped regenerate the slave labor in America and led to the destruction of top soil in many southern states, especially Georgia (West).
On a more contemporary perspective, the detrimental effects of cotton growing in the USA can be felt in the form of organophosphate and formaldehyde which are a part of the pesticides that are sprayed on the cotton crops. Around 300 pounds of agri-chemicals and pesticides are applied to an acre of cotton from which 1000 pounds of fiber are obtained. Studies have shown that over 75% of the crop dusters actually miss the cotton crops and dust nearby fields thus exposing people and the environment to powerful organic pesticides (Conventional Cotton Production). Organophosphates which were used to develop Sarin, the powerful nerve gas, are said to have adverse effects on the nervous system and react with skin tissues to cause inflammation and damage. Formaldehyde, which is found in many industrial pesticides, can trigger asthma when exposed to in high doses and has been identified as a carcinogen. Therefore the exposure to the pesticides sprayed on cotton crops can cause serious problems not just to humans, but to any living thing. Another aspect is the rather large demands that cotton makes on the soil. Chemical fertilizer usage for cotton farming is among the highest globally for any crop. Added to that is the fast depletion of nitrogen from the soil and a loss in soil organism diversity (Dept. of Environment and Heritage, Australian Government; Karaliedde, Feldman, Marrs; Benbrook).
In the USA after the abolition of slavery and with the rise of better technology most of the work done in the cotton farming and development is done by machines. Therefore the number of people exposed to the chemical hazards has been reduced greatly (The Cotton Story). Secondly with the coming of the globalization era US cotton industries have sought to purchase raw cotton from the developing countries. As one article boldly states, “Cotton has become a symbol of the inequities of global agricultural trade” (Oxfam Briefing Paper); this can be related to the huge US subsidies that are prevalent in many parts of the world. Due to the subsidies paid by the US, lots of countries lose a large amount of export revenues. Subsidies which are large sums of money make the private investors of the specific region decrease the selling price of their products and often times ensure that their produce doesn’t get sold ; this makes produce from outside competitors find a market. Often this is done by the government of a country to ensure that there is an inflow of cheap raw material to the various industries. Thus in essence the US government pays investors of other countries so that they can increase their imports which greatly increase the market for the American products while the native products are ignored. The US government in 2002 provided a total of $3.4 billion in the form of cotton subsidies. This amount caused for a huge depression in the world cotton prices and ensured that many private enterprises lost thousands of dollars and couldn’t recover back their investments. Sub Saharan Africa which is home to some of the poorest countries of the world lost over $305 million dollars in 2001 due to subsidies while ensuring that these countries didn’t make any positive steps towards lessening their national debt. This is related to the fact that in recent years US demand for cotton has fallen while production has hit record highs leading to large exports. In 2003 the USA exported 76% of its cotton and took in 41% of the worlds exports, this could only be achieved through government directed subsidies. The division of the export money however is very unequal with the top 10 % getting 33% of the total and the bottom 67% receiving less than 10%. On the other hand US subsidies have led to a 6 – 7% increase in poverty in the sub-Saharan countries (Oxfam Briefing Paper; Globe Editorial; AfricaFocus Bulletin).
India’s cotton industry goes back almost 5000 years. However the fabric was created mostly by hand and on a smaller scale to feed domestic markets. India had a rather advanced weaving and textile industry which formed a large part of its exports to other nations. The British rule in India changed all this. The colonials forced their landlordism and individual peasant proprietorship while totally undermining the agrarian economy and self-governing village. The British imposed stringent laws on the creation and weaving of handicrafts and helping the domestic industry, instead the skilled labor were involved in the creation of goods for the British empire whereby India was exploited of its agricultural and natural resources while England got richer. Therefore there was a huge void created in the Indian society from its fast disappearing industrial sector which was then filled up by over-priced British goods which further exploited the people and broke the backbone of the economy. Cotton which was the biggest part of India’s export suffered a huge blow. In order to find a market for the huge surplus of cotton goods being produced in Liverpool and Lancashire the Indian mills were closed down and the weavers and other skilled labor were either laid off or killed. Thus over a century of oppression and transfer of power to feudal landlords and systematic destruction of industry, India’s once flourishing cotton industry was demolished. After independence through the efforts of pioneers like Gandhi the home industry and domestic work slowly started to make a comeback, but over 200 years of exploitation had reduced India’s capital to almost zero and there was unequal distribution of wealth as well as widespread chaos in the agricultural sector. Other than that India was heavily relying on British imports to feed its fast growing consumer market. The government paid huge sums to obtain these products and this further took away from the already weakened economy. Due to the huge advances made by the southern states in USA the cotton produced by the mills in India didn’t as readily find a market anymore, to add to it , many other countries had started cultivating their own cotton crops (European Crusades, Christianization, and Colonization). By the 1880’s using capital from wealthier Indians and personal ambition Indians had reclaimed some of the cotton mills. These mills were unlike the ones that existed before the colonialization. They were Indian hybrids of the industrial revolution. The problem which seems sort of contradictory was that India failed to capitalize on the industrial base that colonials had established. The labor laws that were prevalent in England were implemented in India and so were certain import laws. Thus while countries like Japan were instigated by the competition with the world market to produce better quality , protected by their import laws and worker unions the Indian workers got paid more and worked fewer hours. Thus with the advent of stringent labor laws which were thought to act as a protection for the cotton and other industries the Indian economy never really fulfilled the promise of being a manufacturing work horse. Therefore even though the industry did gain its footing on a smaller more domestic level after independence, due to the lack of large production bases and the absence of influx of trade the total output was far less than countries like China, Japan and Australia (Lal). To add to this is the absence of adequate infrastructure, which has resulted in India becoming the number one country in the usage of crop land for cotton production (9 million hectares) but only third in production. In fact India’s out put of 300 kg per hectare (data collected in 2003) is less than the world average of 558 kg and way lower than Australia’s 1000kg and USA’s 800 kg (Ministry of Textiles, Government of India). This is essentially due to the fact that over the last 20 years the Indian government has paid the farmers 20% less every year in order to keep the textile industry running, therefore due to loss of essential capital the farmers haven’t had the infrastructure to increase yield and due to the low selling price focused on other higher paying crops (Sharma, Menon). As there is no known relationship between increased fertilizer use and crop yield, India’s chemical fertilizer use which is 73 kg/ha and is below the world average of 96 kg/ha is not the main issue even though many would like to say it is, on the other hand the improper management of water resources, a lack of scientific knowledge about agriculture and the presence of low external input farming in small fragmented pieces of land have been at the forefront of a low yield per hectare. The US on the other hand uses close to 87 kg/ha of chemical fertilizers and gets and gets more than double the yield, however the factors which really help the US are the presence of educated farmers, adequate water resource management and a higher external input monetarily. Therefore Indian methods of cotton farming for the most part are just as detrimental to the environment and produce less per hectare which makes farmers transform more land into farmland (Hegde).
In comparison to the USA, where almost 85% of the cotton manufacturing process is mechanized, in India over 80% of the process still requires human labor. This in itself reduces efficiency and also exposes a larger population to the hazards of the trade. These being direct exposure to carcinogenic pesticides as they are manually sprayed, indirect exposure to pesticide residue in the water and often food(since most of these farmers cannot afford to buy processed food) and development of back and spinal problems due to carrying of the heavy pesticide spraying apparatus which weigh over 80 pounds. Cotton harvesting done by hand often requires hours of tedious labor which result in Musculoskeletal injuries due to repetitive and forceful work. Working under the sun for long hours also increases the chances or skin cancer. To add to this in most places 50% of the cotton workers employed is children who are bonded debt slaves that work for in many situations less than 40 cents a day. However hand picking of cotton does ensure that there are no defoliants around. Defoliants which are close relatives of Agent Orange can cause grave mutational defects and are highly carcinogenic. Hand picking also leads to a product that is cleaner and doesn’t require secondary cleaning to get rid of the excess foliage that is present in the collected material. This is environmentally much friendlier than the mechanized process but does subject the pickers to harmful factors that lead to health issues and are also in violation of basic human rights (BBC World Service; International Labor Organization).
Being a developing country for the better part of the twentieth century, India indulged in using heavy doses of fertilizers and pesticides in the cotton industry which resulted in “environmental hazards like nitrate pollution of ground water, increased emission of gaseous nitrogen and metal toxicity” (qtd. in Katyal, 1989). An addition of excess gaseous nitrogen to the atmosphere affects the Nitrogen Cycle. Since there is a certain composition of atmospheric nitrogen which sustains the equilibrium between soil nitrates and the nitrogen dissolved in the water. This results in polluted air and soils depleted of nitrates. Heavy metals like mercury, lead, arsenic and many others are often fundamental constituents of pesticides. Therefore an increase in the use of pesticides often increases the quantity of metals within the food web and thus exposes various different living things to their proven carcinogenic effects. The use of pesticides has gone up constantly over the last 50 years and in fact has often resulted in proving more detrimental to the natural pest eradicators like birds and spiders which has led to large pest outbreaks. The contamination of ground water and the low health care available to most of the cotton workers has affected the labor efficiency and decreased the production. Another problem is the fragmentation of cropland. Due to the rather large population and individualized holdings in India the land is divided into smaller patches which lead to un-uniformity and affect crop growth. Thus instead of competing with the world market there are thousands of private farmers competing with each other , since 70% of the cotton marketed in India is through private trade (Hegde). Cotton is a pesticide hog, as it uses up 50% of the pesticides used in the Indian agricultural sector, making it the highest pesticide/ha crop (Ministry of Textiles). Often times the lack of education on the part of the cotton farmer and the lack of one basic unit of exchange across the whole nation has resulted in very low returns for the private investor which in turn affects the total nation’s output by reducing the quality of the next crop, since a low return means a smaller capital and lower production and care value. A reminder of the devastating effects of industrial pesticides is the leak of methyl isocyanate at the union carbide plant at Bhopal in 1984 which killed thousands of people and has since resulted in hundreds of birth defects and breathing problems and carcinogenic effects.
The USA having industrialized a lot earlier than India and in a position to spend large amounts on the development of better health care systems and schools has for the most part protected its cotton workers in the recent years from both the effects of pesticides and ensured that they get a fair price for their produce. Due to the presence of a huge difference in the standard of living between a cotton farmer in India and one in USA, American cotton farmers in the last decade haven’t negatively affected the environment as much as Indian farmers have. The American government spends approximately five times more money in doing research in cleaner and safer ways to grow crops than the Indian government (Warfield; Fan, Hazel, Thorat).
This brings up a controversial topic of discussion – the use of Genetically Modified cotton. The USA and China have implemented GM cotton since the late 1990’s. After using the most toxic pesticides and spending thousands of dollars on chemical fertilizers the farmers were ready to try something else, thus in 2000 over 2.1 million hectares of GM cotton was planted. They had a gene from the bacteria, Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), and was sold by Monsanto, which controls over 85% of all GM cotton planted in the world, as Roundup Ready. In 2001 the number of hectares planted came down to 1.5 million which was a testimony to the fact that GM cotton didn’t hold the magical answer to the pest problems as the farmers had expected it to. The reduction in the total land area was due to the fact that farmers didn’t experience any large marginal benefits with Bt cotton and thus reverted back to their original forms of agriculture using natural rather than transgenic cotton strains. An added problem was that they were being confronted with various problems that they hadn’t faced before. For example the transgenic cotton planted in the Hebei province in China made the cotton very susceptible to algal infections. In India a rather controversial situation occurred when Mahyco, a branch of Monsanto, distributed GM cotton seeds to cotton farmers in south india that were unaware and ignorant of how to treat this hybrid. Such an activity would require permission from the ministry of agriculture and Mahyco were unable to produce any such permit (Dinham; Bennet, Ismael, Kambhampati).
In the USA the usage of GM cotton hasn’t significantly reduced the pesticide usage. This would make sense since the GM crops don’t provide immunity against all pest types. However to add to this are the following problems that are created by this transgenic variety –
· GM cotton might pass the genes on to the surrounding weeds which would then be a lot tougher to eradicate
· GM cotton affects organisms that are actually beneficial or harmless like the Monarch butterfly
· GM cotton could produce faster resistance in the pest species which would then require the use of pesticide and more money spent on R and D
· It is really tough to always educate the farmers dealing with GM crops, especially in developing countries like India or the sub Saharan countries.
. As an example in South Carolina, GM cotton was growing as a weed within other Gm crops and over $1.3 million was spent in eradicating efforts without much avail (Dinham). Therefore another unknown threat could be the emergence of GM crops as weeds. However in an experiment in southern India where the Bollworm complex is the largest threat to cotton farmers and make them spend thousands of dollars every year on pesticides, Bt cotton showed some positive results. The Bt cotton strain obtained from Monsanto that was used reduced the usage of Bollworm insecticide from 4 sprays a year to just one spray a year. The Bt cotton however offered no protection against weevils and aphids. Thus there was lower usage of organophosphates and other carcinogenic insecticides by the farmers over the period of a year. The variables that weren’t covered in this experiment or for that matter isn’t in any GM crop experiment are the long term effects of the species on the environment. India which spends $180 million a year on pesticides which are rather toxic and environmentally detrimental might gain from the usage of GM cotton (Bennet, Ismael, Kambhampati). Since GM cotton is still in its experimental stages, countries like India will have to learn from mistakes of countries like USA.
The American policy in recent years in terms of subsidies has affected the Indian cotton market as well, which seems to be a reflection of the 1800s when cotton mills in India were shut down in order to find a market for the cotton grown in the southern states of the USA. Cotton grown in USA sells on the world market for 65 cents a pound, while that grown in India sells for less than 40 cents a pound, therefore in order to compete American tax dollars go to payment of subsidies which run into billions of dollars. This eventually hurts the Indian cotton growers and in a way is a form of industrial colonialism which is being practiced by the USA (The Globe editorial). After the not to brilliant results that were obtained from the GM cotton and years of toxic pesticide using Indian cotton farmers are returning to green farming and the organic way of harvesting. They are being helped by the scientists at IPM (integrated pest management) who are working on bio-fertilizers and herbicides and fungicides that are developed from naturally occurring products. This however could spell doom for India’s Biotechnology industry which had invested a lot in the GM crops research in recent years and was actually looking at it to resurrect the economy in the agricultural sector (Organic Consumer Association).
Organic farming in the USA has been mainly concentrated around the west coast, especially California. Currently around 16,000 acres of organic cotton have been planted in the US of A and less than 0.1% of the total cotton output is from organic cotton. The move to switch to organic cotton production was adopted by certain farmers after looking at the rather disturbing data that showed up as a result of pesticide use. Over 14 million people every day in the USA are getting exposed to herbicidal water which is carcinogenic in nature, in California 5 of the top 9 used pesticides are known carcinogens, pesticides killed over 97 million birds in the US every year, pesticide usage areas showed individuals with chromosomal anomalies and other related health effects and over 11,000 Americans die each year of cancer caused by interactions with pesticides (Conventional Cotton Production). Thus in face of such compelling data the move to mobilize organic farming was made. The cost benefit analysis which is usually the biggest decider of such a decision was in favor of organic farming since pesticides cost the USA almost a billion dollars a year. On the flipside organic cotton reduces the productivity by 50% and since there is expected to be a 2.5% increase in the world cotton demand over the next 5 years this could be a problem (Shurley). Thus advocates against organic cotton have often used this against the idea of a more sustainable farming technique, thus the choice here is between: a cleaner more eco-friendly method compared to a higher yielding method. Handpicking cotton eliminates the addition of defoliants which causes serious environmental issues, however logistically it doesn’t work as labor costs skyrocket when cotton is handpicked (Winston;Couger).
On the brighter side the organic cotton farming which is fast spreading in southern India has fostered in increased biodiversity. Pollinators and insects which were the natural pest predators have returned and are actually doing a great job against the organisms that have produced an immunity towards the pesticide. By focusing on the most essential part of a good harvest, the quality of soil, the farmers have returned their focus on what is most important; vermicompost and cow dung are used extensively and the top soil is cared for in great detail. The Bollworm curse which has been the greatest bane to the Indian cotton industry was an invasive species introduced from American cotton varieties that were brought over in merchant ships. With the new surge of organic farming there has been a marked decrease in the bollworm. Organic farming has helped resurrect the Indian cotton industry which was aptly described after the green revolution as “the life expectancy has increased but the quality of life has deteriorated” (Siddaramaiah, Srinivas). Organic farming which is in its fledgling stages is a great remedy to the years of exploitive agricultural practices which involved pesticides that poisoned both the water and earth.
Therefore Organic cotton is much more environmentally friendly, reduces cost of cultivation and helps in the department of handling pesticide resistance. On the whole it also puts forth a much more biocentric ethic, where the farm is looked at as a living organism and therefore farming is done not with objective to exploit the land for the maximum benefit but to create a sustainable environment which reduces strain on the environment and fosters a much healthier lifestyle. Even though the yield per hectare is lower than in agriculture practiced with chemical pesticides and fertilizers, it doesn’t affect the market much since there has been a slow decline of demand and a large increase in supply globally, leading to the decrease in cotton prices and widespread economic loss for thousands of cotton farmers (Shurley).
The US cotton industry has a rather painful past due to its association with slavery and one that in many ways formed the backbone of its booming economy. By creating a market for only American grown cotton the USA successfully managed to spread the pests associated with American grown cotton to other parts of the world, in addition to that it also managed to destroy the cotton industries of other countries. More recently due to the decrease in demand of cotton in USA, the billions of dollars paid in subsidies to other countries have had devastating effects on the economies of developing nations. Their development of GM crops as the ultimate solution to the pest problem has proved to be a stalemate as well, with mixed responses from various regions of the world. The USA cotton industry thus has successfully affected the economies of other nations and also ensured the transformation of huge food crop lands into cotton farms which have resulted in a huge surplus in the world market. The USA was also the pioneer in the use of chemical pesticides which in the last fifty years have had rather horrific effects on both man and nature, from cancer to loss of pollinators; pesticides have on the whole changed the whole balance of ecosystems. However on a more positive note Organic Cotton farming has been represented very vocally by the US for implementation in other countries, even though organic cotton grown in this country remains rather insignificant.
The Indian cotton industry which was rather advanced and producing enough to meet the demands of its local people and a few other nations was almost obliterated by colonization. With the onset of the industrial revolution and the development of the cotton gin, the Indians could no longer keep up with the much more efficient and mechanized countries like USA and China. Post independence India spent a lot of time adopting a westernized model of cotton farming which included the use of heavy pesticides and chemical fertilizers, however due to the different nature of farming practiced in India as compared to the west and the low education level of most farmers added to the very poor management of water resources and fragmentation of farmland, the total out put per hectare was still very low. Due to a mostly non-mechanized farming process, there is a widespread employment of bonded labor, especially children who work under ghastly situations and spend hours every day under harsh environmental conditions working on the farms. This and other aspects of farming (exposure to pesticides) are both socially and physically detrimental to the population. India has had a few GM cotton varieties that were tested but there hasn’t been a substantial growth of transgenic cotton. The last few years however have seen the rather rapid growth of organic farming which is a rather eco-friendly way to raise crops and is also a return to the pre-colonial days when the farmers used the earth and the environment around them to manufacture a crop. This has also helped in the recovery of pollinators and predators that prey on pests and in a way reverted some balance back to the ecosystem.

are you a redneck ?

No offence to anyone that identifies with the word “redneck”, this isn’t an attack on a certain sect or kind of people – rather it is a clarification that is long due. Being more of a global citizen than anything else, I have come across a plethora of people. A very common sentiment most people who aren’t from the USA share is the presence of apparent ignorance in this society, bluntly – people think US citizens are stupid. Having grown up in a culture that stressed the importance of intellect to be prime, I was to an extent a part of that group that was “judgemental” and viewed the USA as a land of economic plenty but intellectual immaturity. People in the US were viewed as having few morals if any, a lot of money, had no work ethic, drank a lot and essentially were a hedonistic brigade of individualistic partiers. A lot of this rather warped and unrealistic view was a creation of Hollywood mixed with rather low interaction that people outside the USA had with common middle class citizens of this country. Therefore it had the same effect as when some of my friends watched Van Wilder and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and thought they knew all there was to know about India. In the absence of a realistic reference plane, media created stereotypes were all we had to create the whole culture of a people – a cardinal sin in my book.
Having had the opportunity to interact with people of over 30 different countries and get access to media and resources which were more apt in revealing the empirical truth about different cultures, a vast paradigm change has taken place in my attitudes. Ignorance knows no color, race, gender, sexual orientation, class, age or nationality. Essentially what that amounts to is – people in the USA aren’t exclusively oriented to acts of stupidity or ignorance and it would be very unfair to judge them in such light, similar to the fact that Africans aren’t all living in utter poverty and Indians don’t own elephants as pets and Arabs don’t fly around on carpets and blow each other up.
Having had the opportunity to travel and listen to the stories of people that have traveled , I have assembled some good examples of human ignorance , which are diverse and shocking in their quaint little way .These conversations are real and happened almost exactly as I am putting them down –
(Keeping in mind the rather monolingual majority here, I have taken the liberty to translate them from the language I heard it, they have a much better effect when heard in their parent language)

Heard on a bus in northern India – (two men talking)

Man 1 - “ You know women in the USA just want to have sex with men all day , and all the men want to do is drink and make money”
Man 2 – “Where did you learn that ?”
Man 1 – “From Baywatch, it’s the real USA”
Man 2– “Wow, what about God ?”
Man 1- “Money , that’s their God”

Singapore Airport – (Mother talking to her teenage son)
Mother – “Stay away from the Chinese”
Son – “Why?”
Mother – “They are dirty and they all have SARS”
Son- “Whats that ?”
Mother – “It’s a kind of Cancer, kills you in a week”

Amsterdam – ( I am in a chocolate shop at the airport)
Me – “How much are the Cadbury Fruit and Nuts?”
Man at the store says the price and then – “Are you Lebanese?”
Me – “No I am Indian”
Man – “No way, you’re too tall and light eyes. You must be a royal family kid or something, I’ve seen the movies, you guys are little and skinny.”
Me – “I am middle class, nothing royal”
Man – “You must have grown up in some other country then, Your English is really good, can’t be Indian”

Tanzania – Open Market near Serengeti National Park
(Two men talking)
Man 1 – “I am sick of this, let’s turn Christian”
Man 2 – “Why? What’s that going to do?”
Man 1- “Don’t you see all these people from the West, they are all Christian and all rich. Once we are Christians we can move to their country and life will be great.”
Man 2 – “Really, well I got to ask my wife about it, how expensive is it?”

France, Paris Airport (I am wearing a 4th of July shirt and reading ; a woman comes and sits next to me)
Woman – “Excuse me , Are you American ?”
Woman (without letting me answer) – “How could you send all those innocent men to their death in Iraq?”
Woman – “Don’t you care about anything ? Typical American - rich, ignorant and self absorbed”
Me – “I am not an American, I am Indian”
Woman – “Oh, well, I am sorry, how is it like living in a reservation?”

These are just a few examples from the countless others that I can think off. Generalizing the mental ability or choices of a population based on media or dissent with the actions of the government is rather immature. Most times the only aspect differentiating the people who know from the ones who don’t is choice. It is very easy to use “I grew up in a small town around people who thought like me”, but that reason doesn’t hold in the light of hundreds of people that grow up in these small towns and yet summon the ability to stretch their social realities to allow room for the difference that exists in the world. The assumption that people in bigger cities are more “liberal” and open minded is a rather flimsy one . Some of the worst racial clashes in USA have been in its biggest cities , be it LA or Birmingham. A very good example of this is my good friend Jessica Hicks (who has a rather vulnerable last name and is the brunt of many a joke). She grew up in a small town which was predominantly similar in lifestyles and attitudes and yet she is one of the most accepting and understanding people I have ever known. A model of what a person can accomplish if they feel the need to respect all that is around them. On the flipside I have friends in India who grew up in cities of millions of people and still live with the image of the USA as a large Disneyland full of hordes of strippers.
Most people react negatively towards something they don’t understand. Fear is born out of a person’s inability to fully grasp the need for differences. Linearity and social singularity are concepts which tend to fragment the very fabric of a nations community. The root of the problem lies not in the identification of the difference, but in understanding it. Walking on the thin line between “all people are equal” and “We are just too different”, isn’t an easy endeavor. Inherently humans love classifying and categorizing. This aspect of problem solving has proved to be our poisoned chalice. Getting out of a state where ignorance can be understood in its deepest sense, has to be advocated from within rather than from “without” and it has to be done without categorizing and grouping each other and in the process reducing a complex individual to a single attribute.
Coming back to my initial argument about ignorance and the word “redneck” – which for a lot of people in this society has a negative connotation and usually pertains to an individual with a low ability to understand and deduce and accept civilized and diverse existence. However , this concept of an individual that stands against social evolution , against growth , against the whole idea of respect and acceptance of the cultural flux is universal and a part of every nations reality. These individuals in reality are the greatest roadblocks to a world order of peace and justice.
No one benefits in a system which bases its fundamentals on conflict born out of fear. We owe it to ourselves, to respect what we have around, even if we do not agree with it, as that is the greatest sign of social maturity. Next time before judging a person , try and hear their story – hear their fears, where they come from and most importantly why they think the way they do , because whether you like it or know it , even as you judge them , they judge you.

the security council

At the aftermath of the bloodiest war in human history , as the central ideas of the United Nations were fabricated , certain essential aspects of the power distribution across its confines were decided by the then superpowers – China, USA , UK, France and Russia . Essentially these countries were thought to represent the geopolitical elite of the world – they were said to have the maximum influence, economically, geographically and politically on the world. The United Nations Security Council was essentially constituted to have a multilateral governing force that would be able to intervene in situations of conflict all over the world and find a more peaceful and civilized way to deal with it. However , the initial selection of the members was done keeping in mind the state of the world in 1946; since Africa at that point of time wasn’t a major shareholder in the international political and economic arena it was completely ignored. Other factors which were considered was the bilateral power differences which existed in the world – Germany and Japan, the defeated “evil” powers , were totally and justifiably ignored from the Security council. The permanent members of the security council enjoyed certain privileges which often made the responsible for deciding the fates of millions of people all over the world, these included – the right to bear nuclear weapons under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and also the right to supply resources and support to the projects or resolutions they favored by exercising their power of veto.
A lot has changed since 1946 and the Second World War, Japan has been he second largest contributor to the U.N. regular budgets. Its payment even surpasses the sum of those of the United Kingdom, France, the People's Republic of China and Russia. Japan has been one of the largest ODA donor countries. India is the world's fourth largest economy in terms of Purchasing Power Parity and is also the second highest contributor of troops to the UN after Pakistan. Germany has emerged as a dominant European state and forgotten the ghosts of the world wars, to add to this is the fact that the 1.6 billion across the globe feel as if their issues aren’t well represented in a security council that is well nigh bereft of any Islamic representation. Since the permanent members of the security council work on a very unilateral set of motivations which have their origins in their national interests the resolutions passed often reflect a picture that is more representative of the one the “security council” wants , rather than a just one. the USA’s constant vetoing of security council resolutions against Israel or China’s rather vigorous policy against letting India be a part of the permanent membership – are examples of nations pursuing personal goals rather than working towards a global agenda.
The African union, which lacks representation in the council, feels as if its issues of conflict and political significance don’t seem to find a place on the Security Council agenda. This is in light of massacres in Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Liberia and the on going genocide in Sudan. Therefore there are some rather compelling arguments in favor of restructuring the Security Council , most of which focus on obvious under representation of certain continents and countries based on their current effect on global economics, politics and culture. It almost seems as if the composition of the Security Council is following a power distribution that existed half a century ago. The presence of this disparity has brought about widespread criticism, mostly due to the fact that the permanent members of the Security Council have time and again focused on issues that were of national interest to them.
On the flipside a reform in the security council would entail opening up a Pandora’s box. Resolution making is tough enough when five permanent members are trying to reach a consensus , but with an expansion the process will be even more cumbersome and less effective .the realist school of thought accounts for the membership of the council as being a rather viable set of nations based on their access to power and resources , however in a world where differences in power are massive and huge discrepancies exist within the social fabric , this idea has found appeal only in the “realist” realm. The existence of regional rivalry among states could get exacerbated due to the reform. Thus states that have had conflicts with each other in the past and that understand that a seat in the permanent “circle” of the UN will give their enemies a rather huge advantage would oppose this decision.
The USA has reason to worry if this “silent revolution” carries through. A big reason for that being that the majority of the prominent countries making a bid for the security council permanent members have voted against US resolutions and decisions most of the time. Brazil, the only contender from Latin America, voted with the U.S. just 29 percent of the time, while India, often touted as a major future ally of the United States, voted with the United States just 20 percent of the time. Nigeria and South Africa voted with the U.S. just 25 percent of the time, while Egypt—a huge beneficiary of American aid—sided with the U.S. in only 18 percent of the votes. Therefore Japan with 50 percent and Germany with 55 percent are two most promising allies to the USA in the UN among the states most clamoring for reform. Therefore an expansion of the council would mean a loss of support for the US encouraged policies and in essence the reduction values of the US vote. The USA’s present “war on terror” their initiatives and workings have come under sever scrutiny and criticism from most of the above mentioned states , thus their inclusion in the permanent membership of the security council might lead to a hindrance in the plans that the US has for dealing with terrorism around the globe.
However with growing displeasure and reduction of US support in the General Assembly in the past few years added to the rise of economically and politically strong nations it might be a good idea for the USA to acquire a few allies. Among the G4 countries (Brazil, India, Germany and Japan), due to the growth of economy and development, the pull they have on geopolitical workings is changing. Thus as these countries become major players in the global arena it is imperative that the USA “keep them close”. This could potentially help them achieve some of their personal objectives and also increase economic and political advantages. However since most of these benefits would be in the form of trade alliances and help with intelligence , the US situation in the UN as it seems to most will in no way improve; infact there is a marked chance of US resolutions getting less favorability.
Expansion of the Security Council is not the only answer to the creation of a more effective governing body. On the other hand equal representation of the nations of the world not just in respect to their rank on the list of power, but to create a more egalitarian organization seems like a necessity. The permanent members of the Security Council at the moment enjoy a great amount of privilege and power which often times lacks accountability and is very nationally biased, however what is to say that the incoming nations on expansion will not follow suit with the current trend. As of now it seems as if a change in the nature of the council is not very eminent, however there is an absolute need for the way policy is made in the council. If not by representation then by some other form of reform, the effectiveness of the UN Security Council has to be increased , before nations give up on the very idea of a just governing body in the world.